Stephen Scourfield’s 50 Best Ever Travel Experiences

Stephen Scourfield has twice been voted Australia’s Best Travel Editor, and is the recipient of a UN Media Award. These are the indelible people, places and experiences of his travel.

...and now, in reverse order (& written in isolation) here are 50 to 41...

50 — Dwellingup and Murray River

The morning sun has climbed above the Murray River valley near Dwellingup, less than an hour and a half from Perth, but it is still low enough to backlight the kayakers, silver shards of water sparkling off their paddles.

Winter rains push the Murray’s water level over rounded boulders visible in summer, making smooth rapids between long, flat pools. Paddlers use sit-ons, surf skis and doubles — but for me, a traditional kayak, just for the feeling of having the bottom half of my body turned into a float. A marine Minotaur: half man, half boat.

A day out in Dwellingup’s Lane Poole Reserve is one of my favourite travel experiences, and you don’t even have to be on the river, just hanging out by it. I always feel like I’ve been away a week.

49 — Shwedagon Pagoda, Yangon, Myanmar

At Yangon’s heart is the 2500-year-old Shwedagon Pagoda, and at the heart of this 300ha compound is a gold stupa just under 100m tall. According to legend, this pagoda in Myanmar dates back to the lifetime of the Buddha, though historical evidence suggests it was first built by the Mon people around the 6th century.

It is all stupendous. Certainly somewhere to spend half a day. It is certainly one of my 50 best.

48 — Kvevri winemaking in Georgia, Kakheti

In Georgia, in the Caucasus, wine is still (and increasingly) made traditionally, as it has been for 7000 years. Terracotta pots called kvevri are buried underground, up to their necks and sealed with a round stone.

They may be just a metre tall for family use, or big enough to hold up to five tonnes of crushed grapes. After being cleaned, the kvevri are heated and lined with beeswax to waterproof them.

Winemakers tell me it removes bacteria. Kvevri are the magic of Georgian wine production. They use the grapes’ natural yeast and resources to ferment itself.

The kvevri are sealed and left for three or four months, producing a vitamin and tannin-rich organic wine. The taste, coupled with the welcome from locals and food close to source, make visiting Georgia, particularly Kakheti, a unique travel experience.

47 — Toraja Land animist tombs

A gallery has been carved high up in this rock face in Toraja. There are six human figures in it, seated on a low bench. Through the camera’s long lens, I see their motionless features, staring eyes.

These are effigies of dead people, carved from wood, then dressed. Then one moves. And another. What I thought were six carvings are four — and the two on the right are men who’ve climbed temporary bamboo ladders used during the rare grave cleaning ceremony here in the village of Loko Mate, on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.

They are sitting with their ancestors, passing the time of day.

The effigies are called tau tau, which means “little person”, and, over four days, wrapped bodies are being taken from their high graves and carried down the bamboo ladders. They are rewrapped and replaced, and the tau tau repainted and redressed. There are offerings and prayers before the grave is resealed. The oldest of these graves has been here at least 200 years. Death is not a final moment.

It is the start of what happens next. Makassar, the capital of Sulawesi, is an 80-minute flight north-east of Bali and Toraja is a nine-hour coach trip north from there.

46 Dosa breakfast in India

From a big bowl, the cook ladles a white mixture on to the hot plate with a beaker, then turns the beaker over, spreading fermented batter into a very thin pancake.

Dosas are thin crepes made from short grain rice and urad dal, plain or folded over a masala filling, served with chutney and sambar, a lentil-based vegetable stew. Beside the cook, the chai maker is making pulled tea pouring hot water through a pouch of leaves, dunking them, mixing in thick milk, making it sweet, pouring it in a thin stream from a height so it froths and bubbles.

The perfect breakfast.

45 — Szechenyi Thermal Baths, Budapest

Minerals simmer under the Hungarian city of Budapest and, for 2000 years, people have soaked in the hot waters that spring naturally from the ground.

There are about two dozen public baths with thermal springs, but Szechenyi is one of my top 50 travel experiences. At first, Szechenyi thermal baths are a bit daunting. The steamy corridors are full of sauntering, chatting locals who know what they’re doing. I change into my bathers and pad up the sloppy stairs to burst into the fresh air again.

With 21 pools, Szechenyi Thermal Baths is one of the biggest spa complexes in Europe. The water comes from two thermal springs, at 74C and 77C, and is then cooled. Outside, beside the 36C pool, there’s one at what seems rather tepid 32C and a decidedly chilly 28C pool. The water has been analysed as having sulfate, calcium, magnesium, bicarbonate, metaboric acid and fluoride.

People loll around in the pools, most sitting on the submerged steps around the edge. Some girls pose for boyfriends who take pictures with their phones. Others walk in small posses, high-cut bathers revealing a great deal of their cultural backgrounds.

44 — Manaschi, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Manaschi Samat sits, closes his eyes and starts to recite — a mix of chanted drone and singsong. For, here in Kyrgyzstan, the Manaschi’s job is to perform The Epic of Manas, an ancient Kyrgyz poem.

It has half a million poetic lines and is two and a half times longer than India’s Mahabharata. Yet, as nomads, the Kyrgyz of Central Asia had no written language, and The Epic of Manas was passed on orally for hundreds of years.

It is widely accepted to have been created more than a thousand years ago, probably in AD995.

A biographical cycle of three generations of heroes — Manas, his son Semetei and grandson Seitek — it is full of melody, characters and parables, and catalogues historic events.

The Epic of Manas, performed for me in Bishkek, is precious to Kyrgyz people, and UNESCO has inscribed it on the National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

43 — Bourton-on-the-Water, Cotswolds

The pretty Cotswold village of Bourton-on-the-Water is classic England. It has stone arch bridges over the wide, shallow River Windrush, neat lawns, gift shops, tearooms and restaurants.

And best of all, it has Birdland. It was one of the most exciting places of my childhood, and it’s still there, with penguins and plovers, parrots and pigeons, pheasant and pelicans. And so too is The Model Village, a one-ninth scale replica of the heart of the Cotswold village that surrounds it (but rather smaller than it seemed in my childhood). It took local craftsmen five years to build and opened on Coronation Day, 1937.

Now, to lunch, at the Riverside Cafe, the Chestnut Tree Tearooms or the Rose Tree Restaurant. The charm of Bourton-on-the-Water seems untouched to me.

42 — Dawson City, Yukon, Canada

In a bend in the Yukon River, mountain sides spruced by spruce, Dawson City is a boardwalk and weatherboard town with dirt roads that can’t be sealed because permafrost would buckle the bitumen.

There are fewer than 2000 people living in this remote Canadian town, though at the height of the gold rush there were 30,000 and Dawson City was capital of the Yukon. The town was declared a National Historic Site in 1960.

At Dawson City’s heart is the Jack London Cabin and Interpretive Centre, which enshrines the work of Jack London, legendary author of Call of the Wild and White Fang. London’s books sit alongside those of the Yukon’s other famous writer, Robert Service. Facing the river, the Danoja Zho Cultural Centre brings to life the traditional ways of the Tr’ondek Hwech’in First Nation.

For the evenings, there’s the colourful can-can casino Diamond Tooth Gertie’s and the Downtown Hotel, with its famous distinctive Sourtoe Cocktail — a human toe is added to the drink of your choice. Dawson City is authentic.

41 — Ngorongoro crater, Tanzania

Up to 25,000 animals live in the 600m-deep Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, East Africa. It formed three million years ago when a huge volcano, probably 5000m tall, erupted and collapsed in on itself.

Today, it is the home of African wildlife, and a place for one of my favourite days as a photographer. I stay in a comfortable forest tented camp on the crater’s lip, leave early in the morning, and drive into “another world” — lush, green and full of wildlife.

The journey continues, from 40 to 31. And there are a few big surprises...