⚠️PLEASE READ ALL PROFILE BEFORE MESSAGING ME. It is important that you understand my current circumstances.

🌷🌾🌸🌻🌴🌹🌼 🍃🌷🌸🍀🌻🌹🌵🌼 ☘️🌷🌴🍁

I feel very lucky in having had opportunities to travel and explore 🗺 🧭 in many countries and on every continent of the world 🌎 during my life. Gaining insight into various cultural traditions has been fascinating, along with learning to appreciate and tolerate differences in outlook and opinion but with universal human values.

High mountain 🏔 ranges including the Andes and the Himalaya have been amongst my favourite destinations, but I have spent time in all types of environment ranging from the jungles of Borneo and the Amazon to the Sahara, Namib and Atacama deserts 🏜 and the ice ❄️ sheets of Antarctica.

From around the age of 19-20, I developed a condition called thoracic outlet syndrome, causing pain in both arms and shoulders, for which I had two surgical operations, removing the top rib on each side of my chest. Then around the age of 40, I had severe worsening of neuropathic pain mainly in my left shoulder and neck, also associated with continuous headache. I had further surgical procedures in 2019 and 2021. The constant burning pain from nerve damage limits what I can do every day: it impairs my attention and concentration ability, limits my exercise capacity and causes difficulty sleeping.

Due to the effects of this pain, I have had to stop my former work as a doctor 👨‍⚕️ and expedition leader 🧗🏼‍♂️ and have moved from Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 to Iberia. Currently I have a base in Tavira, Portugal and another at Estepona, Spain. As I no longer work, I have a lot of time and flexibility within the limits of my abilities. I have stopped driving for now, so mainly use public transport or ride sharing to get around.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

To meet you

Interests

Living in and appreciating the present moment, whatever this might entail. Although raised in the Christian tradition, I have floated between transitional phases of belief in a secular humanist and morally relativist worldview and slightly more Eastern and universalist ones, but in reality I feel most comfortable as a committed atheist with Epicurean leanings. Aside from the big questions about our place in the Universe ✨, I think it’s a good philosophy not to limit ourselves and instead aim to be interested in everything (see quote below!) and everyone.

• folklore
• photography
• lgbt rights
• human rights
• music
• medicine
• philosophy
• art
• nature
• friendship
• health
• feminism
• humanity
• planet earth
• epicureanism
• swimming in the sea
• dolphin watching

Music, Movies, and Books

MUSIC 🎶 : I played classical cello from the age of 8, then traditional Scots fiddle 🎻from age 18. Both instruments provided wonderful opportunities to play at workshops, concerts, camps and festivals around the world. I am recently learning to appreciate more varieties of popular music. As I write this, I am preparing to hear Lana Del Rey sing live at FIB Benicàssim Festival 2019!

MOVIES 🎥 : I should watch more movies. I have often found theatre 🎭 , especially Shakespeare, to be more stimulating and intimate than movies. My most memorable experience of cinema is of a fantastic Bollywood romance 💕 action movie in Gurgaon, a suburb of New Delhi.

BOOKS 📚 : Here are some quotes I like —

“A person who knows why to live can bear any how to live.”
- Nietzsche

“Friendship dances through the world bidding us all to awaken to the recognition of happiness”
- Epicurean saying

“What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life, by those who interest their hearts in everything!”
- Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey

“Life itself is not the most important thing in life,
Some cling to it as a miser to his money and to as little purpose,
Some risk it for a song, for a hope, for a cause,
For wind in their hair.”
- Theodore Fox

“The old storytellers were the first real explorers and frontierspeople of the abyss. They brought the world within our souls. They made living within and without as one. And I think now, in our age, in the mid-ocean of our days, with certainties collapsing about us and with the dark descending nights ahead - I think that now we need those fictional old bards and fearless storytellers, those seers. We need their magic, their courage, their love and their fire more than ever before. It is precisely in a fractured, broken age that we need mystery and a reawakened sense of wonder. We need them in order to be whole again. We need to be reminded of the primeval terror again. We need to be humble again. We need to go down to the bottom, to the depths of the heart and start to live all over again as we have never lived before.”
- Ben Okri

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

✔️ My first foreign trip (with family) was at the age of 5, when three months of my Primary 1 education were in rural Tamil Nadu, south India.
✔️My first solo foreign trip was again to India, for 6 weeks at the age of 16.
✔️I spent my 18th birthday stranded in the jungles of Guyana, eating fish 🐟 caught by some friendly Amerindian tribespeople who happened to be passing by in a dugout canoe.
✔️I took a piss directly off the top of the world’s largest single-drop waterfall by volume of water flowing over it, 226m high Kaieteur Falls on the Potaro River in the Amazon rainforest.
✔️I once lived in a cave with the idea of saving on accommodation costs, before this website existed.
✔️Whilst still a medical student, in the first week of my Elective studies at a mission hospital in the Indian Himalaya, I assisted in surgery for constrictive tuberculous pericarditis.
✔️The next day, I performed the role of paediatric anaesthetist under direct instructions from the operating surgeon, for an infant with ruptured bowel and peritonitis.
✔️I worked as ship’s doctor for two cruises to Antarctica, but was amongst the worst affected by sea sickness 🤢 , on both trips ☹️😩🤮. Swell 🌊 was about 7m in the Drake Passage.
✔️I have led more than 20 land-based expeditions, mainly in Africa, South America and Asia.
✔️For 15 years I was a volunteer member of Dundonnell Mountain Rescue Team in the Scottish Highlands.

Teach, Learn, Share

👨🏼‍🎓 TEACH: Right now, I am learning to live with chronic neuropathic pain. This is the greatest challenge I have ever faced and I have found no effective treatment. If you spend time with me, you might discover some insights into the functional impacts of invisible pain or ill health. I’ve already travelled to more parts of the world than most people will in their entire lifetime and could perhaps teach you some things about the places I’ve been.

👨‍🏫 LEARN: I think the feminist 💁 ♀ movement is a profoundly important phenomenon of global social change, for the benefit of everyone. We need to work together for a world where men are not feared by women, where we can interact together without guilt or shame and where people of all genders can express the emotions they really feel. My only firsthand experience of living life is from the privileged perspective of a white, heterosexual, middle class male; I try to listen for stories of what life is like from other perspectives.

💁🏼‍♂️ SHARE: Experiences, walks🚶‍♂️ 🚶‍♀️ , small explorations or travels, conversation, food 🥘 , drink ☕️🍻, places for sleep 🛏 or relaxation. Occasionally, complete strangers from opposite sides of the planet can be instantly familiar 🤷‍♂️; such people I love to meet, as it seems they connect me up to some great power. Shared experiences of all kinds can be of special value; what’s more: every moment is unique, and life is short ⏳.

What I Can Share with Hosts

My majority of my experiences with Couchsurfing have been as a host rather than a surfer. I do, however, still hope to couch-surf occasionally if I feel able to provide something of real non-monetary value in return for the hospitality. This could include being an attentive listener, sharing life experiences, being ready to help with household or garden tasks or anything else we might agree or think of. I would make all the effort I can to take genuine interest in you as a person alongside having full respect for your generosity, kindness, privacy and home.

Countries I’ve Visited

Antarctica, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Cyprus, Falkland Islands (Malvinas), France, Germany, Greece, Guyana, Iceland, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Lesotho, Malaysia, Morocco, Namibia, Nepal, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Poland, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Spain, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom

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