Travels with my wife: What we've learnt exploring the planet as a gay couple

On my last day of being 29, my girlfriend and I went swimming in Israel’s Dead Sea. The shoreline was jagged with crystallised salt, making it painful to walk barefoot and the high salinity of the water stung our skin after a few minutes of floating – but it was nevertheless exhilarating.

We’d been together for about a year and this was our first big trip. It felt significant, first because I was turning 30 and wanted to mark the occasion with something memorable, but also because we were laying the foundations of a more long-term relationship in a country that challenged not just our understanding of geopolitics and religion, but where we stood as a same-sex couple. 

Lotte came out with relative ease when she was in her teens; I on the other hand, struggled with the process throughout my 20s. My parents weren’t thrilled about the news and had difficulty understanding my choices. I think it would have been easier for them to accept if I had announced I was gay and that was that. But I was non-committal, suggesting I was bisexual and that my ex-girlfriend (at the time, my first) was the exception to the rule. Sometimes I would jokingly deny being gay to my friends, saying I was straight but had a girlfriend. I was uncertain about how to define myself. 

The desire to travel has always been a driving force within me and, from backpacking around Europe on my own to living in Tokyo for a year, it ended up becoming my occupation as a full-time travel writer. For more than a decade I have taken a trip abroad about once a month, visiting cities as wide-ranging as Cairo and Detroit, Baku and Riga, then written up my reports back in the office. But what I have never written about or considered in nearly as much depth have been the journeys I have shared with my partner, that have allowed me to evolve into the person I am today – someone who is at peace with who she is and however the world might see her. 

Despite being a frequent flier, I always try to remind myself that travel is a privilege. I carry a British passport allowing visa-free entry into 177 countries and have never felt there was anywhere I couldn’t go. I’ve filled in the paperwork for entry into China, India and Russia, and secured a journalist visa for Iran that required two days’ queuing at the consulate in London. But as a member of the LGBT community there’s always a little extra due diligence to pursue and questions you have to ask yourself before going to places like these. 

There have been times when I have felt the need to lie outright about my sexuality or at the very least keep quiet about it. I wasn’t travelling with Lotte, but Iran was the obvious one. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) says, “Homosexual behaviour is illegal under Iranian law and can carry the death penalty,” which is enough to make anyone feel nervous. Before I left, I deleted text messages and emails, made my Instagram private, and got rid of any sensitive photos (swimwear shots could be an issue, for example) from my laptop and phone.

The reality of being in Tehran was pleasantly surprising, though – it was far more relaxed than I expected (younger women wore skinny jeans and some barely covered their hair with headscarves) and all the people I encountered were friendly and welcoming. Even the staff at the airport were relaxed. At night, however, I was careful about what I said at dinner or when calling home, which was just as well as I was told that, as part of a group of UK journalists, the authorities had probably bugged our rooms. 

There are few places I wouldn’t consider travelling to with Lotte, as long as it was safe, although she says she has no interest in going to countries in which LGBT rights aren’t upheld. Believe it or not, the list is quite long. According to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA), gay relationships are still criminalised in 72 countries – including 45 (such as Tunisia, Sri Lanka, Maldives, St Lucia and Barbados) with laws applying specifically to women and eight open to punishment by death. 

Some of the destinations I have been to that have so-called “morality” laws include Morocco, Kenya, Malaysia and Mauritius but, possibly naively, the risks I might have faced didn’t faze me. Perhaps it’s that voice in my head saying that two women sharing a room, especially in their 20s, could simply be friends. As long as there were no public displays of affection we’d be fine. My partner and I had few problems in Marrakech (it’s not the strictest place) apart from some unwanted attention from men in the bazaar, and in Moscow I went to a couple of gay clubs, although that was before the crackdown a few years back (Vladimir Putin passed a federal anti-LGBT propaganda law in 2013). 

Although Israel is the most tolerant country in the Middle East (you can be openly gay in the Israeli Defence Forces, for example), in Jerusalem we checked into a five-star hotel only to find that staff had set up a creaky old camp bed in our double room. Lotte insisted on phoning down to have it removed but I begged her not to. It was the Holy City after all and I didn’t want to offend. But she said she was the one who was offended. Upon returning from dinner that evening, the bed had gone without a fuss.  

In Tel Aviv, known for its annual Pride parade and beautiful young people, we got on with a pair of local power lesbians called Dana and Anat who promised to show us a good time for my birthday. After meeting at a feminist art gallery in Florentin (guarded by a girl in army fatigues with long red hair and a loaded machine gun), we were hustled into a van with blacked-out windows and driven around the city. We drank beer on secret rooftops, dined on Israeli meze and danced in underground bars. Despite my initial silent cries of, “Help, I’m being kidnapped by militant feminist lesbians,” I ended up fully embracing the night – and the sense of freedom. 

Since then, my partner and I have been on holiday to all sorts of places – Vietnam, the Caribbean, Italy, Turkey, Montenegro, the US, Brazil and Japan, to name but a few – and remember them all with warmth. Lotte is a great person to travel with as she has just as much energy and enthusiasm as I do – we both want to see and do everything, and have inevitably had some adventures along the way. 

In Rio de Janeiro we spent an evening with a rock publicist, his two shih-tzus and Brazilian toyboy at their poolside mansion in Santa Teresa; in Vegas we got drunk in a strip club and were woken up by a male nurse who came to our hotel room to give us an intravenous hangover treatment (my idea not hers); and somewhere off the coast of St Barts we found ourselves on a super yacht having a heart to heart with a yacht broker who had never spent time with gay people before. “You’ve really opened my eyes,” he said, while gazing up at the stars. 

In our experience, travelling the world as a same-sex couple has been loads of fun and with far less aggro than one might have expected a couple of decades ago, which is encouraging. But if you saw that 2017 Virgin Holidays advert that humorously depicted a world where straight people are treated like gay people when they go abroad, it is easy to recognise the more subtle modifications in language and behaviour one can experience. “Hi, you must be the fun straight couple at the resort. We’ve heard so much about you,” coos a lady in a lift. “So you two are together, right?” says a guy drinking a margarita in the swimming pool. “I got great straight-dar. But don’t worry about it because I think it is super cool.” 

Lotte and I have experienced this kind of thing plenty of times but it doesn’t bother me. Last winter we were in a swanky LA restaurant when a woman left her table to slide into our booth and inquire as to whether we were a couple. “You’re both so cute together, it’s so nice to see, you look so in love,” she said. We laughed and talked to her until her boyfriend came to take her away. We got the impression that she was on prescription medication but still… Maybe she just acted on what everyone else was wondering? What I realise now is that the way I felt in that situation was totally different to how I might have done 10 years ago – I felt proud and didn’t immediately caveat my reply with a “but I still like men”. 

In summer 2017 we got married in France with 80 of our closest friends and family – it was without a doubt the most joyful day of my life, especially because I could see the progress my parents had made not just in accepting us but celebrating us. For our honeymoon we went to the gay paradise of Mykonos, and ended up being led on to a stage at sunset by a drag queen called Priscilla who serenaded us in front of everyone as the bronzed crowd applauded our newly made nuptials. One year on, and we’ve had our first child – if that doesn’t give them something to gossip about around the pool, I don’t know what will.