Welsh writer and journalist Tim Hartley has travelled the world in an attempt to make sense of globalisation, international culture and politics, football and his own place in the modern world.

Kicking off in North Korea is a series of travel diaries that follow his adventures from herding reindeer with the last of the Sami people to watching football in a silent crowd of 50,000 in North Korea. Through his travelling, Tim casts a piercing and sometimes judgemental eye on the kaleidoscopic world around him.

‘I think the seed for my travel addiction may have been planted when I visited the former Yugoslavia in 1979.’ says Tim, ‘It was still a communist country, I was a politics student and while my family were happy to sit on the beaches of the Dalmatian coast I was peering into offices and government buildings looking for evidence of workers committees, red banners, hammers and sickles.’

‘The travel bug was there, in my head, and I think the aim was to find further, maybe more difficult places to go to.’ he continued.

‘Some of charity drives we did across Europe, to Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Macedonia were fascinating because the landscape and people changed every day. The shockwaves of the fall of the communist empire is still being felt in Eastern Europe.’ he explained.

‘The riots in Kiev, the blood feuds in Albania and the ethnic tensions across the former Yugoslavia are for real, but you don’t have a chance of understanding them without going there yourself and talking to those involved.’ he continued.

But it was not all plain sailing.

‘There have been some hairy moments like when we hitched a lift across the Jordanian desert at dusk with the driver asking us to spell ‘terrorist.’’ says Tim. ‘There have been checkpoints, North Korean minders and young Israelis with guns. But there’s a myth that foreign places are inherently dangerous.’

The travel diaries also tell the story of his developing relationship with his son, Chester, while they travel the world together.

‘It never crossed our minds that Chester would not be part of our travels.’ he says, ‘I have seen him grow in confidence and become thirsty for knowledge of other places, other people.’

Tim Hartley is a writer and journalist. He has worked for the BBC for 17 years and for the British Council and the United Nations Development Programme in Central Asia and Africa.

He is also a regular contributor on radio and television and has shared his obsessions on the BBC’s ‘From our own Correspondent’ and a number of newspapers and magazines including the Guardian, Golwg and the Western Mail.

‘You don’t have to travel to the ends of the world to get some great travelling experiences.’ concludes Tim. ‘North Wales may seem small on a map but every town has its own history and character.’