Escapism magazine

2 weeks ago | escapismmagazine.com | Molly Codyre |Jošt Gantar |Suzan Gabrijan

“This used to be a carpark,” says my guide, Simona Skubic from Turizem Ljubljana, gesturing to the leafy square in which we are standing. To my left, an old couple contentedly read books next to each other on a park bench. Children squeal and run through the towering trees as the dappled midsummer light flecks through the canopy. It’s hard to imagine that this now vibrant community space was once a bastion of modern automobiles.

2 weeks ago | escapismmagazine.com | Nick Savage

Ask a child to sketch their dream beach, and there’s a fair chance it would look something like Phang Nga. This stretch of coastline, just north of Phuket airport, is almost eerily perfect. Cross the Sarasin Bridge, and coconut and casuarina trees sway and whisper in the breeze. The sand is just the right shade of ecru, scattered with opalescent shells, creeping crabs and couples illuminated by equatorial light.

3 weeks ago | escapismmagazine.com | Christy Spring

What’s full of birds, has cracking beaches and was crowned the best place to live in 2025? Magaluf? Nah, North Berwick. Christened the Biarritz of the north, this Scottish harbour town, located just a 40-minute train from Edinburgh, is graced with brawny shores, Attenborough-approved puffin populations and lobster rolls worthy of New England. Volcanic outcrops pepper this elemental seascape, including Bass Rock, once a prison for Covenanter rebels, now a stronghold for 150,000 gannets.

3 weeks ago | escapismmagazine.com | Nick Savage |James Appleton

There seem to be three people on the other end of the line at Paragon Aviation Services at Windhoek International Airport in Namibia, their voices muffled. I’m sitting among a dozen other passengers in a minibus en route to Namibgrens Farm, part of a convoy racing 200km across the Namib Desert and the Skeleton Coast to the landlocked Eduard Bohlen shipwreck as part of Race to the Wreck 2024. “Has my luggage arrived?” I ask on a borrowed iPhone.

1 month ago | escapismmagazine.com | Christy Spring

Testing. Testing.” A village elder wearing a microphone headset kneels before a metal table topped with miniature stupa made of marigolds, a one million kip note and plates of bananas, candied peanuts and fluorescent sweets laid on fine lace. He taps the microphone. Nothing. Four women sit on either side of him, wearing white scarves draped on their shoulders; their faces crease with concern as he fumbles with the recalcitrant microphone. Still nothing.