Aloft in Turkey - instead of attending awards night |
The awards are open only to members of the ASTW, i.e. only to professional travel writers, so there's some stiff competition. The other two finalists for this award were actually two of my friends; one of them, Catherine Marshall, won the award last year AND the year before.
I've won this award four times before myself, but the last time was in 2013 so I was pleasantly surprised just to be a finalist this year. I certainly didn't expect to win. I still can't really believe it.
Tamang kids, Nepal |
The call of the high: an essay about why we climb mountains, seek out rooftop bars and choose window seats when we travel.
Kyushu's sacred mountain hike: a story about a 10-day walk I did late last year on the remote Kunisaki Peninsula in Kyushu with Walk Japan.
As fate - and an assignment from Traveller - would have it, I was in Turkey until yesterday and couldn't attend the ASTW awards night in Cairns last weekend. So the ASTW Committee asked me to send my acceptance speech by video. Here's the result (I'm better in print!), shot in a little antique shop and cafe in Istanbul where I'd stopped for a tiny cup of Turkish coffee:
Big thanks again to the ASTW and the judges and award sponsor Visit USA, and to everyone who sent lovely messages via Facebook, which made my brief layover in Singapore's Changi airport the best ever. And now that I'm home I can jump up and down on the outside too.
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