Welcome To The Jungle

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 At the start of last year, my personal and professional resolution was to be more sustainable. I wanted my travels to be making a positive contribution. And I wanted to inspire my daughter Kitty to have stronger eco-values and help shape a better future for all – so where better to instil some tree-hugging sensibilities than at a school built from bamboo in the heart of a forest?

At first, a break from London was just a bit of a fantasy. But after a few months, this digital-nomad parent had successfully registered with Green School in the heart of the jungle in Bali for two semesters. Kitty was happy to have a break from urban life, and showing her images of maypoles and swings suspended from palms as an alternative to spending break in a concrete car park made the move an easy sell. Inspired by a friend’s child who is a pupil at Green School and was invited to talk about sustainability at the UN, I headed to the website, and watched the founder’s 2010 TED talk. In ‘MyGreen School Dream’, JohnHardy explains how as a child he wasn’t able to flourish in a traditional education system, and tells his story of being a Canadian art student who arrived in Bali in 1975 and never left.

We packed for Bali not really knowing what we should take, as a mum and nine-year-old daughter off to live in Southeast Asian jungle-clad hills. The Indonesian archipelago of 17,500 isles had always seemed so far away – and I’d allowed myself an image of Australia’s Costa del Sol, despite flicking through