Wanting vs Being Wanted: Why Does Female Desire Still Make People Uncomfortable?
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-3it2i-1aaa2de Bridgerton, Fifty Shades of Grey, the new adaptation of Wuthering Heights… oof are we getting into it. On the surface, it looks like we’re living in a moment where female desire is more visible than ever. But are we actually getting closer to understanding it… or have we just found new ways to package…
Part III: The In-Between Days
(Read part I and part II here) If you’ve been following along, you’ll know things have already started to unravel. Our captain is lying on the stern of the boat, shivering, mumbling to himself, his leg leaking pus. We’re in a remote region of Eastern Indonesia with no way to reach shore, and our international…
Part II: An Adventure Unravels
If you read Part I, you’ll know how we ended up here… forty-eight hours of straight hitchhiking across Indonesia, a goat bus, a spontaneous invitation, and a stranger waiting in the dark. So let’s pick up where we left off. The boat where I now, for all intents and purposes, live is called Thetis. Named…
Part I: The Unlikely True Story of How I Ended Up Living on a Sailboat
I am living on a sailboat. Quite by accident and under rather preposterous circumstances, I might add. About two weeks ago, we got an invitation from a Canadian sailor to join him on a 10-day journey from the island of Flores to Raja Ampat, a region of Indonesia that edges a little too closely to…
A Treatise for Dreamers (or, on lalala-ing my way around the world)
My brother once told me, white-faced and gripping the car door, that I drive the way I live. “And how is that?” “LALALALALA,” he shouted, as I changed lanes with what I maintain was perfectly adequate foresight. He didn’t mean it as a compliment, of course. But it might be my favourite one. Because from…
A Good Time Trying
I’m in a time in my life right now where a cup of coffee from a machine feels like the rarest luxury in the world. It feels like a small miracle when my desperate attempts at “tidak pedas” are understood and my noodles arrive sufficiently non-spiced and edible. When a pickup truck stops with enough…
A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Northern Sumatra
The first hitchhike of the day was in a police van. Three Indonesian officers pull over, grinning, motioning for us to climb into the back. They look like they’ve been living off mie goreng since childhood. Between scraps of English and enthusiastic hand gestures, we try to figure out where each other is going. A…
An Ode, Or Something Like It
I didn’t think I’d be home again so soon, all fluffed up in big duvets, looking out at the gardens of Ouklip, listening to the familiar orchestra of early morning birdsong, dogs barking, the day happening slowly as it prepares itself. I’ve been thinking a lot about death recently. And life. And how the two…
Light Enough to Leave By
2025 did not end in the way I thought it would. Not even close. In the days leading up to New Year’s Eve, I found myself on a (semi) deserted island somewhere in the Gulf of Thailand, wild camping with three Germans and a Dutchie who, over the past few months, have become my second…
Before The Storm Rolls In
It’s lush on the farm this time of year, balmy. Early summer means thick rainstorms rolling in from the Wallmansthal township, bright mornings turning wet and stormy well before my third cup of coffee. That’s when the dogs climb deep into their wooden shelters, piling on top of each other, watching the rain fall with…
Nine Days to Saigon
We made it to Saigon. The drive down took nine days. Twenty-five hours of riding in total, almost a thousand kilometers by motorbike from Hoi An to Saigon. Saigon… I love that name. It feels more haunting than the one it was given after the war, heavier somehow, like it carries ghosts. Saigon drips with…
Rice Fields, Late Summer
Cicadas hum. The South China Sea ripples, an endless sheet of azure glass shattered by light. Rice fields bow and rise in the wind. In the distance, an old Vietnamese man pedals slowly through the green, his conical hat tilting like a sail against the late light. In the seaside town of Hoi An, you…
Love, Post-Mortem
Last night I dreamt I was pulling a dead bird out of my mouth.A white dove.Feathers clung to the back of my throat, its hard little beak and twisted wings scraping past my tongue.Ribs, spine, the delicate snap of its neck. Beady eyes, lifeless, filled my cheeks.It didn’t stop.I was choking on it.And still, I…
The Great Ordinary Courage of Being Alive: Café Musings from Hanoi
At the table across from me a little girl sits hunched over a crayon sketch, her brow furrowed in pure concentration, nothing in the world existing outside of the carroty-orange slopes on her page. A cup of hot chocolate leaves a milky stain in the corner. Her brother isn’t allowed to look too closely at…
The Barefoot Years
When I was eight years old, my parents dropped me off at big kid school for the first time. My fingers fidgeted at the hem of my dress. Two tight braids pulled my scalp smooth, each tied off with a too-blue scrunchie. From a distance, I looked like the poster child for well-behaved girlhood. But…
A Sacred Unmooring: Reflections on a Life in Departure
It’s a very particular feeling – getting on a plane with no one to see you off at the terminal, no one to text on your layover, no one waiting for you on the other side, on the other continent. It is a deep, dizzying freedom. One I’ve come to relish, maybe even more than…
Of Wind & Skin: A Fortnight in the City of Lakes
I’m turning 24 soon. Allegedly. Which means my prefrontal cortex is nearly done developing. Allegedly. Last night I woke to the wind carrying the balmy coolness of Lake Pichola right into my bed. I’ve been writing a lot here. Sleeping naked with the big bay windows open. Somehow, that feels very 24. Some nights I’m…
Heat, Dust & Garam Masala: Notes from North India
Soft hands smear sandalwood on my forehead. The air curls thick with nag champa incense, garam masala and sizzling ghee. It wraps around you, thick and spicy and relentless, every breath burning just a bit too hot on the inhale. Colours and heat swam around the edges of my vision as I dropped my 16…
A Long Overdue Introduction (and a little life update)…
The first time I travelled alone, I shared a room with two geckos, a broken fan, and an elderly hippie couple who taught me about polyamory over beans and rice. That was five continents ago. Hi, I’m Karmen. If you’re here, maybe you’ve seen some of my travel photos on Instagram or stumbled across a…
Bombay, With Love
Heat. That’s the first thing I felt — thick and immediate, wrapping itself around my shoulders like a heavy shawl. The streets smell of chai, garam masala, and something sweet I can’t yet name. Motorcycles graze past my elbows. Rickshaws honk and weave and hum. I can practically taste the colours — turmeric yellow, marigold…
Lessons on Love from Broken-Hearted Travellers
I have this tattered notebook that I’ve been carrying around for a year. If you flip through its pages, you’ll see the change in my handwriting—how joy makes my vowels loop longer, how anger sharpens my t’s. Argentina through Brazil live in messy, carefree blue ink, thanks to a cheap ballpoint borrowed from a bar…
Breathing as Memory, Breathing as Being
Ometepe is hot and green. The world here moves differently, the energy hums beneath the earth—you can feel it from the moment you step off the ferry, salt-crusted and swaying as if it, too, is relieved to have made it all the way from San Jorge across the choppy Lago Cocibolca. The twin volcanoes loom…
A Constant Uncovering
It’s early morning in Puerto Viejo, and I’m sitting on a threadbare couch in a hostel, cradling a cup of strong black coffee. The rain has just begun to fall in the jungle outside, and somewhere not too far away, howler monkeys greet the day with their low, resonant calls. This place is new to…
Sip Slower: Reclaiming the Art of Lingering
I used to be the kind of person with a laundry list of New Year’s resolutions so long it could make your head spin. Every January, I’d fill entire notebooks with ambitious plans: running marathons, cutting out sugar, launching a small business, acing my exams, and penning tens of thousands of words. I was relentless…
Untethered: Why Solo Travelling Is the Best Gift a Woman Can Give Herself
I came across a mind-blowing statistic recently: solo travellers now make up 11% of the international tourist economy, and that number is climbing fast. Even more remarkable? Of that 11%, a staggering 84% are women. Let’s unpack that for a second. Why are so many women packing their bags and heading out into the unknown,…
Lessons learned from running the Two Oceans half marathon
Heart pounding, feet aching, smile widening, an elation building in my chest that feels like electricity. Then – people, music, blue skies, arms in the air. I did it. I actually did it! I ran the Two Oceans half marathon. When you stand at the precipice of a journey with the moment of initial commitment…
Cultivating Belonging
It’s Wednesday afternoon. Outside, the sky is an opaque grey, and rain darkens the pavement. Victoria Street’s auburn walkways glisten amidst bustling wet feet. Some trees have begun the progression into gold and rust but are unhurried. It’s still early March, yet Autumn trembles around the day’s edges, imbuing dawn and dusk with a fresh…
Unfinished Selves
(Cover photo by Ineke van Wyk) Everything is soft here – the rain, the light, the language. It’s autumn, but still warm enough to sit outside a café in the afternoon or stroll the Jardine des Tuileries at dusk. The streets and city lights glimmer with the unknown, yet I feel profoundly at home. Something…
Active Recovery: Nourishing Body and Soul
Last year, just before my final exams, I teetered dangerously close to the edge of burnout. I remember at one point sitting on the floor of my dorm room, feeling like I didn’t have an ounce of focus or creativity left in me. We still had full days of classes which I was juggling with…
The Art of the Everyday
Outside the window of my little apartment, the sun has just started to rise. This dawn does not bring with it golden streaks creeping over the buildings or flickers of fledgling light flirting through the trees. The sky is dark and hangs heavy over the mountains. A meagre scattering of birds can be heard announcing…
A Soft Becoming
It’s interesting. The more I run, the more I prefer silence. Or at least, the human noise that goes along with it – the rhythm of my foot strikes, breath moving through my body, my beating heart. I used to be scared of running without music blaring in my ears. I didn’t want to hear…
Voyage Into Awe
“Take daily voyages into awe,” Robin Sharma writes in his book, the 5 AM Club. Isn’t that beautiful? I love how it emphasises the active participation of the person in awe. When you voyage into awe, you are not a passive receiver of the emotion. You do not exist in listlessness, hoping for awe to…
The Permeable Self
For most of my life, I believed I wasn’t a runner. I can pinpoint the exact moment this conviction took root: primary school race day. It was a hot summer afternoon in Pretoria, and the sun was beating down on the unknown track. Because I attended such a small school, I made the athletics team…
My Murakami Year
I have decided to do two crazy things this year: run a marathon and write a novel. I’ve been running for two years now and writing since before I could properly read, but it was only over the past month of running and writing every day that I realised how similar the two activities are.…
