Fashion editor turned travel guru Bonnie Rakhit aka The Style Traveller has an enviable job, combining luxury travel and fashion but having been bullied badly as a child her aim now is to start using her platform to raise awareness. Bonnie and Lisa talk Instagram and blogging, iconic train journeys, iconic hotels, fashion front rows, racism, taking a beating, cave raves, dancing under the stars, Coachella, Leonardo Di Caprio snogging Rhianna, California convertibles and the tangible sea-change in Instagrammers starting to use their profiles for meaningful causes.

On this episode we cover:

How she went from fashion editor to travel guru

How instagram has changed travel

The Intercontinental Hotels survey showing that –

-Luxury travels feels obliged to visit bucket-list destinations

-People feeling jaded with the bucket list/insta must-dos

-#Eiffel tower being the most used travel insta hashtag

-#BuckinghamPalace being the most used one in the UK

–Intercontinental Icons compiling a list of alternative experiences

Paris’ beautiful backstreets

Live jazz in the summer in Paris’ parks

The Jardin des Tuileries

Lisa’s most romantic picnic ever next to Île de la Cité and Notre Dame

The boat trip being one of the most romantic ways to see Paris

Celebrities saving Notre Dame

Lisa’s train journey from Istanbul to London staying in Intercontinental Hotels all the way

The magic of long train journeys

How to do Peru and Machu Picchu on a luxury train Belmond Hiram Bingham

How luxury travel can feel like a step outside what’s real

How beautiful old hotels can become part of the fabric of a destination

The ‘real India’ also being the palaces

Bonnie touring Rajasthan with Taj Hotels

The King of Jodhpur at breakfast the Taj Umaid Bhawan Palace

Lisa’s podcast with the Mountbatten family; The India Hicks Podcast

Bonnie’s parents from Calcutta – a doctor and a Calcutta ‘IT Girl’

Incentives for India doctors to move to the UK in the 1970s

Growing up in the 1980s Stockport and Blackburn

Her ‘charmed life’ not being all it seems

Being subject to childhood racism –graffiti daubed on the door, being spat at in the street

Being bullied at school, physically and mentally

Being severely beaten up at the fairground

Spiralling into depression

Wanting to get involved in anti-bullying charities

The big change coming – Instagrammers wanting to ‘give back’ more

Wanting to use her social platform for more good

Are there women working in the top of hotel management?

The full moon illegal cave rave in Tulum in Mexico

The awful encounter with violent locals on a bus in Thailand

Back to grass roots in Bali

How dancing under the stars until sunrise cannot be beaten

California Dreaming being the best back drop to a road trip

Driving a convertible Mercedes Benz from LA to Palm Springs for Coachella

Bonnie’s most Coachella moment ever at Coachella

(Leonardo De Caprio and Rhianna sharing a snog back stage!)

Oh and the absurd outfit changes