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Marika McAdam
Marika's adventures in travel started at the age of four, when her parents took her on an epic adventure through South America. As she grew up, both her passion for developing countries and her motor skills developed, and she started scribbling her travel memoirs soon after she gained her pen license in grade two. At the age of 10, Marika had a revelation during a blackout in India as to how best fuse her trifecta of interest (travel, writing and developing countries), when she found herself reading aloud by candlelight from a Lonely Planet guide. Her fanciful musings as to the unwritten adventures that lurked between the lines and behind the scenes led her to a casual job in Lonely Planet's Marketing and Communications Department, where she wandered in and out for almost a decade.
Immediately upon graduating from university with degrees in law and political science, the opportunity to author the Lonely Planet guide to Bangladesh was the zenith of dreams come true and an 'extreme travel' experience that has raised the bar on her adventures since. After dancing the cha-cha with an undercover military official in Burma, sleeping through a train crash in Thailand, throwing a hand grenade in Cambodia, dodging a car bomb in Peru and attending a democracy rally in pre-Independence East Timor, Marika decided to seek respite in the developed world, only to find herself fleeing from 108 neo-Nazis in Stockholm.
After a stint as a research assistant for the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, then as a volunteer legal intern with Advocats Sans Frontieres (Lawyers without Borders) in East Timor, Marika knuckled down to gain admittance to practice law back in Melbourne. Coming to her senses immediately after signing the court register, Marika returned to travel writing with Lonely Planet's Goa guide. She then relocated to Bangkok for a year where she worked with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Marika is currently based in Vienna where she alternates (sometimes in the same day) between travel writing (most recently about Poland and the Western Balkans), writing her post-graduate thesis on freedom from religion, and consulting for the United Nations.
If pressed for advice on travel, Marika would say "it?s always a good idea". She also recommends breaking down cultural barriers with a simple travel experiment (a fusion of her passion for travel and her passion for onomatopoeias): "ask a local what sound a train makes in their country."
Marika's favourite place: probably wherever she goes next, but then, there?s no place like home.
