30 photos from 30 years of travel

Last month I turned 30 and was lucky enough to spend the actual day in the stunning Marjorelle Garden in Marrakech. Prior to going away my nearest and dearest threw me a surprise birthday party. One of the highlights of the event was the slideshow of photos put together predominantly by my dad. While the photos spanned my entire life, what became apparent was how much of it has been shaped by travel. Here are 30 of my favourites:

Namibia

England

Holding a baby crocodile in Zambia

Edinburgh

Fish River Canyon, Namibia

Pembrokeshire, Wales

Croatia

The Pyrenees

Talisker Bay, Isle of Skye

Dubrovnik

The Pyrenees

Feria de Cordoba

Victoria Falls

Costa Rica

Stone Town, Zanzibar

Namibia

Caprivi Strip, Namibia

Prague Cow Parade

Updating the Scratch Map

Vatican City

San Isidro School, Sarapiqui

Iceland

Plaza de la Corredera, Cordoba

Iceland

Wild swimming in the Pyrenees

Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon, Iceland

Morocco the first time round

Ireland

Iceland

The Pyrenees

As well as the photos, my mum did a great job of summing up my travelling career in cake form.

Childhood memories of Africa

Back in the 90s, a couple from Newcastle-upon-Tyne took their two daughters - five and nine at the time - on their first trip to Africa. They would return several times throughout the girls' childhood, but little would they know that, 20 years later, the youngest would become a travel writer. Here, Emma Dodd reflects on the impact those childhood experiences had on her development and the memories that outshine so many others.

A few years ago when my parents were moving house, they uncovered a box full of the scrapbooks my sister and I had made of the holidays we went on as children. There was also a photo album that my sister had made after our first trip to Africa. All the photos were taken from knee height and highlighted the things that catch kids' attention, but pass adults by.

Flicking through the pictures really showed how engaged with our surroundings we were and the extraordinary experiences we had. My own first memories include holding a baby crocodile and making friends with an orphaned elephant named Moto in South Luangwa National Park in Zambia, where we stayed on one of our trips.

At the time I didn't realise how fortunate we were to be able to go off to Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania, Malawi and South Africa during our summer holidays. It is only now that I understand what an undertaking it must have been for my parents to pack up their family and take two small children to such an incredible continent.

One difficulty was always to get us to take our anti-malarial pills and my mother used to employ a wide variety of tactics to ensure we did. These included squashing them between two teaspoons and adding strawberry syrup to disguise the taste or hiding them in sandwiches.

As a child I could see the differences between where I lived and the places we visited, taking in stunning views such as Victoria Falls and the paradisiacal beaches of Zanzibar. Going to school had much more significance after seeing children in these places ask my parents for pencils and their rapt attention as my dad pulled one from his bag and sharpened it before handing it over.

Making friends has never been a problem for me and I became adept at connecting with children that I met in all these countries despite, usually, the lack of a common language. This formed the basis of a fundamental skill that has come in useful all through my life.

On visiting the Sossusvlei region of Namibia when I was seven, the whole family climbed one of the smaller burnt orange sand dunes. I was determined to see the view from the top of the very tallest and set off towards the summit. After a while, my parents realised I wasn't going to tire until I had achieved my aim and set off in pursuit to be presented with one of the 'great views of Africa'.

Twice in my life I have seen leopard - once on a night drive in Zambia and then again in Malawi, where we stumbled upon a young cub behind an anthill – and, despite my young age at the time, I can still remember the excitement. By contrast, when I then first visited a zoo during my time at university, I was stunned to see a tiger, normally even more elusive than a leopard, just sitting there. Despite the fact that tigers are Indian not African it was then that I really appreciated the patience required to see a big cat in the wild and how the anticipation and search builds the whole experience into something truly holistic and memorable when the 'spot' is made – crucially, even if one misses the sighting, the looking is part of the fun.

For a long time I have had an interest in conservation and campaigns that extend well beyond my own situation and this interest is directly attributable to those early safaris in Africa. Even when I was quite young I had a much greater sense that the world was a huge place than any of my peers and I  understood that there were people who were significantly poorer than us.

I wore my Save The Rhino T-shirt until it practically wore out and, at the age of 12, announced that I was becoming a vegetarian; a decision that was based on careful thought and what I had seen in the world. Travel broadens the mind and my wonderful African experiences as a child had a truly positive impact on me that can I can, today, still trace back to those safaris.

Travel continues to come as second nature to me and I have spent time volunteering as an English language teacher in a pineapple farming community in Costa Rica and taken up every opportunity to visit new places that have come my way. Before I turned travel into a career, my parents would suggest I should be sensible in my thinking about the future and what I would do. To this I have always replied that they shaped what I wanted to be: they took me to Africa when I was five!

This article was originally written for The Explorations Company and appeared on their website in May 2014

The joys of shooting with a proper camera

Cuba 2005 (Photo by Emma Duckworth)

A friend of mine sent me a link recently to an article entitled 100 years of the Leica camera. What immediately struck me was how many of the most iconic images of the 20th century were shot using this compact device. From the photo of a young Vietnamese girl fleeing naked from a napalm attack to the world-famous kiss between a sailor and a nurse at the end of World War Two - all were taken on a Leica.

I have to admit to being a bit of a camera nut - I tend to use a digital on many occasions these days for ease, but my heart truly belongs to my manual Olympus OM1-N. And the truth of the matter is it has accompanied me on many trips and taken some fantastic photos.

On a number of occasions my travel companions would complain of the time it takes to set up, but it is worth it for the results. And nothing compares to the sheer joy of hearing that satisfying clunk that tells you that you have taken a photo - none of these insipid noises that are added to digital cameras in the 21st century - a proper solid, definite clunk.

My SLR belongs to something of a camera dynasty, as my dad travelled from Manchester to Nigeria overland in the 1970s with an Olympus OM1. It never let him down - from hitchhiking across the Sahara in a date lorry to living off a huge bag of cheese in France. So the logical step was to furnish his two daughters will similar models on their 17th birthdays, which he did.

I have continued that trend and bought an OM1 for my boyfriend before he set off for South America on his epic four and a half month journey. We now have two large bags full of undeveloped films - around 50 in total - and every so often one or the other of us will dip a hand in each and take two films to be developed.

This is something of a pot luck, as my bag of films includes pictures taken in destinations as diverse as Turkey, Ushuaia and Spain. We then sit and look at the two sets of photos together. There was once a funny incidence in which we assumed a film of Iguazu Falls belonged to my other half, until halfway through the pictures a photo of me appeared - I had done my own South American voyage a few years earlier!

Display at the Camera Museum in Penang

So imagine my delight when exploring the streets of Penang on a recent trip to Malaysia, as I stumbled across a camera museum. What is more, one of the display cases held a very similar model to mine inside it. I know I shoot with a digital a lot these days, but I never intend to give up using my manual SLR all together, as I believe consigning it to a museum would be a crying shame.

The Penang Camera Museum is a great place to visit, with lots of different models on display and a fantastic collection of vintage flashbulbs. It is not just appealing to the camera aficionado, however, with some brilliant interactive exhibits and models explaining how various photographic techniques have been developed over the years. Stepping inside a giant pinhole camera was particularly fun and if a member of your party goes outside, you can see how they appear to be upside down.

Quote on the wall of the museum

The well-fed pescatarian cooks stuffed courgette flowers

It has always been something of an ambition of mine to cook stuffed courgette flowers, but the opportunity has never really arisen, until recently. On a family holiday to Tuscany that saw three generations of Dodds all staying in a stunning farmhouse in the hills, I spotted the all-important ingredient - courgette flowers.

My mum was buying vegetables at one of the stands during the weekly market in Ponte a Moriano and there in a pile were the freshest and most tempting-looking courgette flowers I have ever seen. If I was ever going to cook this delicacy, now was the perfect time.

I rejoined the rest of the family at a small cafe on the edge of the square clutching my bag full of courgette flowers and not doing a good job of hiding my excitement. But despite the yellow blooms being the vital part of the dish, you also need to have something to stuff inside them, so off I skipped to the local cheese shop.

My Spanish-influenced attempts at Italian helped me establish that the shop did not sell ricotta, but had something similar and I bought the lot. The kind man behind the counter was patient with me, but when I clearly didn't understand something he was trying to explain to me, he called for a younger assistant from the back. He told me in excellent English that I needed to rub the cheese with olive oil to bring out the flavour.

Back at the villa I did add some olive oil and since the cheese was firmer than ricotta, I chopped it up as small as I could, while adding herbs and garlic. Our accommodation had minimal items in the larder, so we had to buy even the simplest of additions for meals. With this in mind, I made a beer batter, as alcohol was something we were not in short supply of!

It is safe to say that stuffing courgette flowers is a fairly fiddly process. First you need to cut off the stalks and remove the stamens from the centre. This should be done carefully so as not to tear the petals, giving the potential for the filling to ooze out. Twisting the tops once they have been filled helps to keep everything in place, then it is just a case of dipping them in the batter and frying them. Eating them hot is a must.

One member of our party is not particularly keen on cheese, so I made an artichoke and tomato alternative for her. We all ended up trying this variation, which was pretty good, although the cheesy stuffed courgette flowers were definitely the favourites.