As summertime nears and travel plans are still tentative, you can still escape to far-flung and exotic destinations with our round up of the best travel podcasts. From holiday recommendations to interviews with some of the biggest industry names - and everything in between - they guarantee wanderlust to inspire your future plans…
The Big Travel Podcast
The brainchild of Lisa Francesca Nand, a travel journalist, writer, filmmaker and regular on radio and TV in the UK. The Big Travel Podcast is a thinly disguised euphemism for the big journey through life. Lisa explores the life stories of well-known and interesting people through their life in travel, from tales of hometowns to where life’s twists and turns have taken them since.
Episode Highlight: India Hicks
The daughter of designer David Hicks and granddaughter of Lord and Lady Mountbatten (and related to everyone from Prince Philip to Queen Victoria), India Hicks talks to Lisa about life on a remote Caribbean island, her famous and sometimes unconventional family, the challenge of taking her 90-year-old mother to Iceland, the joys of backpacking in rat-infested hostels and the harrowing experience of Hurricane Dorian.
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Women Who Travel By Condé Nast Traveler
Condé Nast Traveler's expertise is no secret when it comes to luxury travel and off-the-beaten-path destinations. In this podcast Condé Nast Traveler editors Lale Arikoglu and Meredith Carey dissect the realities of traveling as a woman today, high-fiving all those shaking things up in food, hospitality, adventure, and travel journalism, and celebrating all the reasons why we refuse to stay home.
Episode Highlight: Elizabeth Gilbert on Travel After "Eat, Pray, Love"
The Best-selling author talks about how travel has changed for her since that infamous Eat, Pray, Love adventure, and the role it now continues to play during her grieving process after the loss of her partner, Rayya. She also explains why she chose to set her most recent book, City of Girls, in New York City, and why she loves to break all of the travel rules—from skipping every museum to getting "a little wasted" on the plane.
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Where To Go By DK Eyewitness
Produced by the team behind the award-winning DK Eyewitness travel guides, this podcast will give you the best recommendations on where to stay, what to do and where to find the best food around the world. Each fortnightly episode focuses on a specific destination, with hosts and DK editors James Atkinson and Lucy Richards joined by local experts who have all chosen to call that place home. With deep dives into travel stories, hidden gems and unmissable sights, they also take a look at how destinations have been impacted by recent events, how travel may start to return post-lockdown and what holidays might look like over the next few years.
Episode Highlight: Tokyo
Tokyo is a treasure trove of cultural experiences, best known to the locals. The hosts are joined by travel writer Lucy Dayman, direct from her adopted home of Tokyo. They discuss life in the city, Tokyo's neighbourhoods, must-do experiences and the forthcoming Summer Olympic Games. Listen out for plum blossoms, Pleasure Forest and Mari Kar (not a typo).
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The Travel Diaries
Each week, travel and entertainment journalist Holly Rubenstein interviews a different high profile traveller about the seven travel chapters of their life, uncovering the seminal travel experiences that have shaped who they are today. Expect to be transported to their earliest childhood travel memories and the first place they fell in love with, to their all-time favourite destination, their hidden gem recommendation and what’s at the top of their bucket list.
Episode Highlight: Jo Malone
Her name may conjure the smell of lime, basil and mandarin or the citrusy scent of pomelo – but what you might not know is how these scents are in many ways inspired by the travels that Jo has been on. In this is episode she evokes so vividly the many destinations that have shaped her life.
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Alice in Wanderland
Explore the ancient trails and life today in Africa and Arabia with explorer Alice Morrison on her epic journey across the Sahara and the Atlas Mountains with six trusty camels and three Amazigh guides. The trip, which spans 3,000km, is documented at every stage, including when Alice has a near-death experience in quicksand, walks over landmines, and even stumbles across dinosaur prints and stone-age tools.
Episode Highlight: Season 1 Episode 2
Alice takes us on a tour of her douar (compound) which is made up of three family houses owned by two brothers and an uncle and their wives and children, her little house, and then a downstairs for the cow and the chickens. In the middle, there is a communal yard where the kids play. It is enclosed with a big double door at the end which is locked at night and it is very traditional. She is the only woman who leaves the compound without wearing a full veil and if a man who is not immediate family comes in, the women all retreat into their house.
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