Jeremy - Travel Specialist at Tailored Journeys

Jeremy Snelling

jeremy@tailoredjourneys.co.uk

About Jeremy

I was born and grew up in the UK and in the 1980s I lived in Sydney. I’ve spent my whole life travelling, be that for leisure, business, study, backpacking, educational trips, music, or volunteering. To date, I have visited 66 countries across six continents and ran my own travel company before joining Tailored Journeys.

When you're not working or travelling, you're...

Reading, playing the piano, listening to music, cooking or indulging in gastronomy and wine, going to exhibitions, watching sport or enjoying the cinema, theatre and live music.

How many languages do you speak?

I speak English and conversational French.

Your favourite band/singer and film?

Van Morrison and All The President's Men.

Which place exceeded your expectations on your travels and why?

Panama, for its seventeenth-century Hispanic conquistador history, indigenous culture, artisan arts and crafts, natural beauty, wildlife, exotic birding, soft adventure, world-class diving and snorkelling, and soft white-sand beaches.

What are your top 5 must-pack items?

Adaptor, camera, mobile, hairbrush, toothbrush.

If you could live anywhere else in the world, where would it be and why?

Japan - because it combines the old-world charm, history and culture, and sophistication one can find in Europe with the get-up-and-go energy and entrepreneurial spirit, drive, and tech of new-world countries like the USA, Canada and Australia plus the exotica and mysticism of the Orient. It is the one place where one is truly on the outside looking in. Every day is a new experience.

What is your first great travel experience?

A holiday to Phuket, Thailand in the 1980s. It was my first ever long-haul trip and Thailand

was still off the beaten track. I even got to be an extra in The Killing Fields.

What is your favourite hotel, why and where is it?

Hotel das Cataratas – a Belmond property and the only hotel within the Iguazu Falls National Park. Its location (overlooking one the greatest waterfalls in the world) is unbeatable. At six o'clock, all the daytrippers go home and the small number of hotel guests have the view to themselves and get to see sunset and sunrise over the falls in glorious isolation. All that with world-class luxury.

Which is your favourite beach, why and where is it?

It’s on Lamu, an island in the Indian Ocean off Kenya. It’s pure quintessential, unspoilt paradise: soft white sand, fringed by colourful bougainvillea with a backdrop of Swahili and Arabic culture dating from the days of the old spice trade.

Which passport stamp are you the most proud of?

Myanmar. It was still Burma then, and a closed world. You could only go for seven days

What destination is at the top of your bucket list?

The US Southern states. I’d love to go to Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans, Muscle Shoals and Montgomery, to combine music and the blues trail with plantation history and Martin Luther King’s legacy.

Have you ever worked abroad?

Yes, for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney, and Reuters in New York – and on multiple business trips across Europe, Asia, Africa, the USA and Latin America.

Have you experienced culture-shock, if so, where?

Yes. Three times come to mind: in the immersive Muslim culture in remote rural eastern Turkey; the first time I hit the frenetic streets of Calcutta; and arriving in the Nicaraguan Caribbean island of Little Corn.

If you had just 24 hours in a big city, which one would it be?

Berlin: a great party city and a real crossroads destination with a kind of eclectic gravitas. It’s a tough call between there, New York and London, though.

What do you miss most from home while you're away?

My three grown-up daughters.

What’s the best party you have been to while travelling?

New Year's Eve on the beach in India. I was with fellow back-packers of different nationalities, so we celebrated midnight in nine countries as the time zones passed.