My story

A childhood spent trotting the globe has given me an enduring love of travel and a true awareness of other cultures.

My father’s work took our family to live in a wonderfully diverse range of far-reaching places including Dubai, Malawi, Houston, New York, Ethiopia and Singapore.

Enchanting early years in Dubai were spent swimming in vast lakes, riding bikes in the desert, diving into inky-black wadi-pools, avoiding sea snakes and toasting marshmallows with sun-browned arms.

Later, we lived in Malawi where we regularly spent time at Lake Malawi with friends, a beautiful, gigantic ecosystem with hippos who would wander around our cottages at night.

While I was studying for my BA in English Literature at Leeds University my parents were posted to Ethiopia, a beautiful country rich in green fertile landscapes and mountainous ranges.

My first job combined my two passions: travel and research and writing. I wrote itineraries and planned events for economic think tank The Adam Smith Institute. I went on to work at investment bank J.P. Morgan planning international conferences and events: it was here I honed my nerdy organisational skills as I travelled between St Petersburg, Vienna, Paris, Rome and Istanbul … all brilliant fun.

After having children I worked as marketing manager for the National Youth Ballet, a role I loved.

Now Clare Witton Travel brings together my experience in events and marketing with my knowledge of the luxury travel industry, providing unique tailored independent travel advice to corporate and private clients.

My first home
Dubai. I grew up here and returning is always nostalgic: the smell of incense, heat, samosas and sweet oil. I remember hot pink bougainvillea, dust, camels and the constant chant of the cicadas.

The Extraordinary
Our family lived in Ethiopia during my university years, a beautiful country with fertile landscapes, rock churches hewn out of the mountainside and the stunning Rift Valley lakes, some of the deepest in the world. We travelled to Gondar, Lalibela and Aksum and we camped in the forest. Every holiday we drove three hours to Lake Langano, a brown volcanic lake surrounded by Acacia trees deep in the Rift Valley, the car loaded with provisions and jerrycans of oil sloshing in the back. This is where I wrote my university dissertation on Charles Dickens, watched by cormorants with my father fishing for tilapia nearby. There is a hippo in this lake!

Why I Love Travel
Quite often it's the simple things. The smell of Africa or eating fish that's freshly caught, samosas and rich coffee. And not in that order! Exploring reefs, collecting sea urchin shells and sand dollars, drinking tea and just looking at the stunning Indian Ocean view. I have that feeling of being truly alive.

Travel Essentials
Bananagrams, Toblerone shopping at the airport and eyeshades.

Pet Dislikes
The bum-bag. There are no words. And jet lag.

Best Books
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini; The Corfu Trilogy by Gerald Durrell; Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela; Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden, Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton and Tanamera by Noel Barber.

Worst Travel Memory
Returning from a week in Paris and my husband mistaking my dry-cleaning bag for a bin bag and throwing it in the rubbish (Joseph suits and dresses never to be replaced!).

Best Travel Memory
It was my honeymoon in Petit St Vincent, The Grenadines. It’s paradise on earth. We’d spend days relaxing in a hammock, reading, sipping fresh milk from a coconut through a straw and unwinding with Balinese Spa treatments.