Adventure Awaits: Discover Cyprus Beyond the Beaches

  Travel Has Always Been My Healer I've always loved the idea of travelling. Long before I actually started doing it, I travelled through television programmes and the pages of Lonely Planet guides. I'd buy the books, read about faraway places and imagine myself there one day. But I didn't actually start properly travelling until my late twenties. By then I'd made myself a promise. If I was going to travel, I wanted to go far. I wanted distant shores, different cultures and places that felt completely removed from everyday life. And my first proper solo adventure took me back to South Africa. Starting Somewhere Familiar South Africa – where my solo travelling adventures really began. South Africa wasn't completely unknown to me. I already had connections there and, importantly for my first solo trip, I had a support network of friends if anything went wrong. Looking back, that was probably the perfect way for me to begin. I was lucky enough to take a few months away...

  There are some places that make you smile without really knowing why. Cyprus has a unique way of doing that. Leave the busy towns and the well-known tourist attractions behind, follow the quieter roads into the hills, and you'll discover a completely different side of the island. The roads become narrower, the pace slows down and before you know it you've arrived in a village where life seems to move to its own rhythm. These are the places that made me fall in love with Cyprus. Some villages feel as though they've been frozen in time. Others have been lovingly restored, bringing old stone buildings back to life while preserving the character that has been there for centuries. Then there are the abandoned villages, where silence tells a story just as powerfully as the people who once lived there. I think that's what I love most about Cyprus. Every village has its own personality and every one has a story waiting to be discovered. Kathikas – More Than Just a Pretty Vill...