Author: Mark Jackson

I was born in the North of England in 1969. I moved to London in 1987 for three reasons. There was no work in the north, I had a chance of going to University and the music and nightlife scene were the best in the world. I studied Town Planning to Masters Degree level, with the intention of helping build better lives for people, whether it was in the U.K. or abroad. I got involved with the music and nightclub scene in London. With “planning” being a dirty word under the Thatcher government, I had no employment opportunities once I had left Uni, other than the bar management work. I took a year to travel and got the travel bug, the things that I had read about in my geography and social policy text books were alive in front of me. But I couldn”t think of any way of sustaining the lifestyle abroad. Back in the U.K. and as a manager at University of London Union, I had long summer holidays in which I took the opportunity to travel some more. This continued as I changed jobs and gained promotions, most summers going to far flung places, much to the puzzlement of my managers, friends and everyone else. Girlfriends didn”t understand it either, so they came and went. In my early thirties, I decided that backpacking was not for me anymore and took an organised tour. That had me hooked and I dreamed that if I could ever have the balls to quit the well paid job, I would want to be a tour leader. By 2006, I was being offered a voluntary redundancy in a re-structuring. It wasn”t long before the application form was on its way and in 2007 I became a tour leader in China.