At the risk of sounding smug, I’d like to state that I love my job. It’s a great pleasure plotting travel experiences for readers with such imagination and diverse interests, never mind working alongside the cheerful, bright fellow eccentrics who make up the Lonely Planet magazine team. I’ll confess right now, though, that recently I told someone else they have my dream job. Alastair Fothergill is former head of the BBC’s Natural History Unit, and now lead producer of the immensely ambitious new Netflix wildlife series Our Planet. Alastair’s career has seen him work on several landmark TV series with Sir David Attenborough, and embark on many trips to develop cutting-edge filming techniques, from Antarctica to the Ivory Coast. In my interview with Alastair (p100), you can read more about the spectacles his team (all 600 of them!) witnessed during the progression of this latest project, including tracking down some especially elusive Siberian tigers. Elsewhere in this issue, I’ve enjoyed researching intriguing facts about America’s national parks (p74) – some well of the radar – and deciding which Greek island chain I most hope to visit this summer (p40).
PHOTOGRAPHS: STEVE RYAN, ADRIENNE PITTS/LONELY PLANET, IMAGE BROKER/ARDEA, DRIENDL GROUP/GETTY IMAGES