David Pilling

David Pilling is a news and feature writer, not a specialist travel writer, and it shows in the travel pieces he produces for the FT. He writes in a broad variety of tones and styles that go beyond the typical travel offering. The pieces submitted cover the gamut from a hard-hitting look at what lies behind the creation of a safari experience to a more or less conventional, if slightly tongue in cheek, piece about the opening of a deluxe hotel in Morocco. In the first piece, the author profiles African Parks, an organisation that has won much praise for protecting the wilderness areas visited by tourists but one that has also attracted severe criticism for its alleged militarisation of conservation. The piece, which centres on a visit to Zakouma National Park in Chad, features interviews with rangers and the head of African Parks, a normally publicity-shy organisation. The piece has been much praised as a balanced if tough, examination of the tradeoffs that lie behind conservation and the cost of protecting species such as elephants and the wilderness areas they inhabit. In the second piece, Pilling travels to Morocco for the opening of a hotel where staff outnumber guests, though they move about the hotel through secret underground tunnels so as not to disturb the exclusive clientele. It's a conventional piece, but with a twist. The third piece, which appeared in the FT's How To Spend it Magazine, is a journey not only to a remote part of Kenya around Lake Turkana, but also into the past, specifically the origins of man. The article centres on a visit to the Turkana Basin Institute from where paleo-anthropologists have made some of the most important discoveries of our early ancestors. But it also describes the modern-day pastoralists who live in the area and ends up discussing subjects as varied as the apparent perennial nature of war and the temptations of modern life, even for the most die-herd Samburu warriors.