Stumbling back to our wooden shack plastered with tarp sheets for insulation against the stinging -40 deg C winter, we are disheartened to be leaving East Taiga the next morning without spotting the reindeer herd we had travelled over two days for. Though disappointed, our spirits are lifted when we hear a small commotion near our shack.

Island life in Indonesia usually conjures up idyllic images of expansive Balinese villas with mesmerizing sunset views and and cocktail sipping on cocktails in gorgeous infinity pools. Few but avid divers or the most curious travellers would have heard about the Togean Islands, made up of 56 smaller islands located in the Gulf of Tomini, off the Central Sulawesi coast.

With more than 17,000 islands making up the Indonesian archipelago, Sulawesi may not be as popular as Bali, Java or Sumatra, but it is home to many fringe tribes with a myriad of unusual customs. For that reason, we made it our very first destination after the COVID travel bans were lifted.

Returning home to Singapore fresh from our winter travels in Mongolia, one of the most common questions we got was about our one-week stay with Elik, an eagle hunter living with his 2 Golden Eagles in the frigid steppes of Mongolia. “How did you find him?”

While our remote travels – to places such as Sulawesi, Papua, Mongolia and Xinjiang -- really took off in June 2022, our mental journey may well have begun on a Grab ride in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, a month before that. Our driver had remarked, “Oh, you’re so lucky, born in Singapore”.