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A-Level results day: How to spend your gap year, from Botswana to the Middle East

How Independent journalists spent their gap year

Thursday 16 August 2018 10:38 BST
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Spend your gap year driving the Garden Route in South Africa
Spend your gap year driving the Garden Route in South Africa

If your A-Levels weren't as you expected this morning – why not consider taking a gap year? More than 230,000 people take one every year, according to statistics from Year Out Group.

And if you need some inspiration for where to go and what to do, here's how Independent journalists spent their gap years – from travelling around the Middle East to working on a conservation reserve in Botswana.

Bel Trew​, Middle East correspondent

After I left school in 2003, my sister and I flew to Cairo to travel around the Middle East.

We couldn’t afford to fly around the region, and so took battered boats, buses and shared taxis from the Egyptian capital to Beirut in Lebanon, which these days would mean crossing war zones but back then was entirely possible.

At that point, just a year before a deadly bombing knocked out Egypt’s Israeli tourism trade, the Red Sea coast was buzzing. But the rest of the region was almost empty because the Iraq War had just erupted and the Second Intifada was still raging.

We took an ancient passenger boat from Nuweiba to Aqaba, and then drove up through Jordan and crossed into Syria, which would be unthinkable now. We opted out of going to Palmyra at the last minute, which I will always regret; but naively explored cities like Aleppo and Homs that 15 years on are sadly synonymous with a devastating war.

I got my A-level results in an underground internet cafe in Damascus that bypassed government restrictions on MSN Messenger. I wrote my university personal statement struggling through a travel bug on the bus to Beirut. We then did the journey in reverse.

Although I was born and raised in the Gulf, my trip through Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon – and the friendships forged and lessons learned – is ultimately why I returned to the region for good, eight years later during the Arab Spring. It played a massive part in why I am a Middle East correspondent today.

Ben Kentish​, political correspondent

I spent most of the year working in a series of jobs – whatever I could get, but mostly in bars – to save up some money. Then I used everything I’d saved to cycle round Cuba for three weeks and travel overland across southern Africa, from Cape Town to Nairobi.

Taking a year out was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. It gave me experience of working in all sorts of jobs before I want to university (plus some top-notch pint-pulling skills).

The travelling part was my first time away from home for any length of time, and it taught me to be genuinely independent, make friends from all over the world, value my own company and deal with all sorts of new situations.

It is something I’ll always remember: the trepidation of that first long-haul flight alone, freewheeling down a Cuban hillside surrounded by lush forests and tobacco plantations, camping under the stars in the Namibian dessert, and white-water rafting just downstream from Victoria Falls. I started university a different person to 12 months earlier and completely ready for all the challenges – and fun! – that lay ahead.

Emma Henderson, lifestyle, Daily Edition

Ten years ago I flew to Malaysia on my own to teach English for a few months just outside Kuala Lumpur.

I met a school friend in Singapore and we travelled Australia’s west and east coast where we swam with manta rays on Ningaloo Reef, learnt to dive on the Great Barrier Reef, skydived and bungee jumped in New Zealand, island-hopped in Fiji and did another diving course in Thailand during whale shark season, and came home seven months later with tans, scars, bulging backpacks, no money, dyed hair and extra piercings.

Helen Coffey, deputy head of travel

I eschewed the typical gap year and decided to take myself skiing instead. I signed up as a rep for a tour operator, armed only with basic French and the ability to do snowplough turns, and headed to Les Arcs in France full of youthful optimism.

Five months later I had been yelled at by – and cried in front of – more angry customers than I ever thought possible, got so drunk I woke up in a strange French couple’s apartment and learnt how to do a passable parallel turn. All terribly character building.

Harry Cockburn, reporter

After dropping out from university first time, I took a gap year by mistake, and spent the first half of the remaining year working in an Asda warehouse and coming to terms with the fact my grunge band wasn’t going to catapult me to stardom. It wasn’t terrific.

In a fit of frustration I spent the pittance I’d earnt to go to France, where I spent a month learning how to build drystone walls. When I got back to the UK I got myself into university, and made money during the holidays by building walls. I learned that not everything works out the first time, but sometimes that can be for the best.

Tom Richell, head of video

I spent my gap year…working. The majority of my time was spent as a reporter for The Big Issue in Cape Town, South Africa.

My first story was reporting on protests in the centre of the city against the then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in early February 2011.

It was an invaluable experience for me, allowing me to gain professional experience as a journalist and learn from a no-nonsense editor.

I also had the chance to do some travelling in South Africa, spending the Easter bank holiday weekend on the Garden Route before heading up to Botswana for a month and working on a conservation reserve before flying home.

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