Andy Benfield was born and raised in the UK but soon caught the travel bug, quitting his first proper job in an investment bank to go and live on a farm in Israel instead. He returned home to get a degree, feeling that might help sustain him overseas in future, and was off again the day he graduated. A variety of odd jobs followed, including teaching English in the Sudan, interning at the British Embassy in Spain, and most incongruously, showing people how to grow rice in rural Madagascar. A stint living in Hong Kong learning Tai Chi was followed by two years meandering around Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific advising small businesses on how to be more productive, while squeezing in as much adventure as possible on the weekends. Andy eventually wound up living in India, working for a diplomatic mission, and took up riding Royal Enfield motorcycles, fast developing a love of two wheels and the open road. When he was forced to leave his bike behind and move to Ethiopia for work he took up flying instead, which he claims he had pretty much down, apart from the landing bit. Moving on to Namibia, his love of the African bush was firmly cemented as he off-roaded across some of its most remote parts, pretty much destroying an innocent two-wheel drive sedan in the process. Asia beckoned again, and Andy wound up in Bali, where he bought a house in the jungle and resolved to settle down. But the bug wouldn't quite leave him alone, and he ended up turning the house into a boutique hotel and moving on again, this time to Kathmandu. The joys of motorcycling through the Himalayas kept him in one place for over a year, something of a record, before he heard tell of a secret Asian gem that had lain hidden from the world for the past five decades. And that's how he ended up in Burma and this story began.(Andy is currently based in Singapore but may well have moved again by the time you read this.)