At last I am at my desk editing the new book, drawing together the experiences of more than a dozen extraordinary research trips to Bhutan, Kerala, the Peruvian Amazon, Jerusalem, the US Midwest, South Africa and beyond. if the gods are with me, I will finish the edit by the end of this year and publication will be in autumn 2025.

As many of you will have gathered, I am being remarkably coy about its focus. Even the title has been shared with only three people. My reserve isn’t due to (more-than-the-usual) paranoia but rather because I’m letting both the journey and its chronicling unfold of its own accord. I am giving space as more than ever the process feels organic, evolving with each new journey. I also feel that this is the book that I’ve been working towards for over 30 years, as if all my earlier work was needed to enable me to write this one. To me, it is my most important book, and I hope it will in time resonate with you.

This past week, a bit of KwaZulu-Natal came to my Dorset village. Philiswa Makhaye is a 34-year old Zulu sangoma, a traditional ancestral healer from South Africa. For the last 16 years – after training through her youth under her grandfather’s tutelage – she has practiced divination and worked to heal physical, emotional and spiritual illness with remarkable success. I visited her in Johannesburg earlier this year as part of the book’s research.

Over a dynamic four days, my home echoed with the sound of Zulu prayers and healing chants as Philiswa worked with more than 20 individuals, awakening their ancestors, aligning them with their physical life, healing and bringing forth clarity on that individual’s journey and purpose on earth. The house seemed to crackle with energy and my dreams were very, very busy. Dorset hardly knew what hit it.

(Next summer Philiswa will return to the UK to headline as a “wisdom keeper” at the Glastonbury Festival. She’ll also come back to my village so please let me know if you’re interested in a one-to-one session with her in 2025.)

Only one research trip remains outstanding for me – to New York later this month. I used to visit regularly but this will only be the third time in a couple of decades. My most memorable visit included a week at the hyper-luxurious Pierre Hotel won with my first piece of travel writing (to give an idea of the date, I’d flown in to JFK on Concorde). Two decades later my wife Katrin and I returned the city, staying at the rather less salubrious West Side YMCA. Katrin looked across Central Park towards Fifth Avenue and the Pierre’s tower and said, “Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around? Starting at the Y and ending up at the Pierre?” 😉