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Travel That Made Me

Travel That Made Me

Indio Media 3 Episodes Oct 2, 2026

How has travel shaped your life? BBC broadcaster Rajan Datar asks the world's most fascinating people how travel made them who they are.

Episodes

From Snow Cranes to War Planes: The Stories of Season One
From Snow Cranes to War Planes: The Stories of Season One Oct 2, 2026 1664 A package holiday to Moscow. Cranes circling a Buddhist monastery. A one-way ticket to Jamaica. A mob in Lebanon. Death row in the Caribbean. Bombs falling over Afghanistan.For our Season One finale, Rajan looks back at some of the extraordinary journeys and moments that have made Travel That Made Me what it is.Our guests have taken us to some truly remarkable places and shown us just how much a j
Why the Best Travel Means Losing Yourself
Why the Best Travel Means Losing Yourself Sep 10, 2026 2123 Colin Thubron once sat in a Soviet customs office watching a KGB officer read his travel notes, unable to tell whether the book he had spent years building was about to be confiscated forever. The officer looked up and said: “This is very poetic. You could publish this.”Widely regarded as the travel writer’s travel writer, Thubron has travelled alone, writing books on Syria, Russia, and China, dri
What Travel Does To Your Mind
What Travel Does To Your Mind Sep 3, 2026 2090 Why does travel change some people, while leaving others exactly as they were?In this episode, Rajan speaks to Dr Andrew Stevenson, psychologist and author of The Psychology of Travel, about how travel only changes how we see other people if we actually meet them as equals. Staying in hotels, being served by staff, and moving through a country as a tourist can expose us to another culture without
The Journey to Jamaica That Saved 400 Lives
The Journey to Jamaica That Saved 400 Lives Aug 27, 2026 2618 A man walked into a meeting room in the Bahamas trembling, convinced he was being taken to the gallows. He was actually there to meet his lawyer. Three weeks later, he was executed anyway. The law that might have saved him changed just three months later.This week Rajan speaks with Saul Lehrfreund to find out how cases like this have defined his work as an international human rights activist and l
Travel and the Power of Awe: Dacher Keltner
Travel and the Power of Awe: Dacher Keltner Aug 20, 2026 2123 Snow cranes that circle a Bhutanese monastery prayer pole exactly three times before migrating to Siberia, in sync with monks who emerge to chant at the moment the birds arrive, is not a local legend. A Berkeley professor of psychology witnessed it, wept, and says it launched his scientific career studying awe.Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, t
I Do Not Wish To Be Good. I Wish To Be Hell on Wheels: Sara Wheeler
I Do Not Wish To Be Good. I Wish To Be Hell on Wheels: Sara Wheeler Aug 13, 2026 1748 On her first morning in an Antarctic field camp, Sara Wheeler watched a scientist come sprinting across the ice, wind pants around his ankles. Why? A seal had surfaced through the hole beneath the camp toilet. She’d spent two years and every spare penny getting there, as the first female writer in residence under the US Antarctic Artists and Writers Program.Wheeler grew up in a working-class Brist
Three Minutes From Watching a Civilian Plane Get Shot Down: Mandy Hickson
Three Minutes From Watching a Civilian Plane Get Shot Down: Mandy Hickson Aug 6, 2026 1961 Mandy Hickson was accepted onto RAF pilot training, in her own words, as a “test case,” to see how far she’d get before she failed. Instead, she became one of a handful of women to fly combat missions on the frontline of RAF fast jet operations, flying reconnaissance and strike missions over Iraq and Kuwait.The drive behind all of it goes back much further than the cockpit, to her single mother, a
He Took the World's First Selfie With Jesus to Save His Business: Lee Thompson
He Took the World's First Selfie With Jesus to Save His Business: Lee Thompson Jul 30, 2026 2052 With £500 left in the bank and a failing business, Lee Thompson flew to Brazil, doorstepped a church, and convinced the archdiocese to hand over the keys to Christ the Redeemer. Then he climbed inside the statue and took a selfie from the top of Jesus’s head.That photo got 100 million views and rocket launched Flash Pack, the group travel company Lee built with his wife Radha. Before that, he spen
Sweden to the Sahara By Kayak - with Johan Ernst Nilson
Sweden to the Sahara By Kayak - with Johan Ernst Nilson Jul 18, 2026 2448 He got the lowest possible grade in gymnastics. Then he cycled to Africa.Swedish explorer Johan Ernst Nilson joins Rajan Datar on Travel That Made Me to trace a 30-year odyssey sparked not with ambition, but with a schoolboy bet: could someone with the lowest grade in gymnastics cycle all the way to Africa?Three decades on, that bet has become 196 countries, 80-plus expeditions, and 3,000 nights i
Can Travel Heal Grief? - with Jessica Nabongo
Can Travel Heal Grief? - with Jessica Nabongo Jul 11, 2026 3070 She visited every country on earth, becoming the first Black woman to do so. But the real reason she did it only became clear years later.Jessica Nabongo joins Rajan Datar on Travel That Made Me to trace a journey that started not with a passport but with a murder: her father, killed two days after her 19th birthday.From quitting a six-figure pharmaceutical job over a three-figure bonus, to rerout
Palestinian Activist: Making Peace with Israel - with Aziz Abu-Sarah
Palestinian Activist: Making Peace with Israel - with Aziz Abu-Sarah Jul 4, 2026 3351 He grew up without citizenship, without a passport, and with a burning rage after his brother died after being tortured in a military cell. Then, at eighteen, Aziz Abu-Sarah did something almost nobody in his position would do: he walked twenty minutes to the other side of Jerusalem and started learning Hebrew. His world opened up.That one decision, to embrace what he had been taught to fear, runs
Paul Simonon (The Clash): Have Bass, Will Travel
Paul Simonon (The Clash): Have Bass, Will Travel Jun 27, 2026 2729 Some people are just made differently. Paul Simonon certainly is. From smashing his bass on stage, which would become the most famous album cover in punk to cooking spaghetti for inmates in a Greenland jail - Paul Simonon has lived many lives.For fifty years he has roamed the planet, from a Brixton boyhood to “cowboy land” in 1960s Italy, touring the world with Joe Strummer to busking unrecognis

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