The animal travel regrets we nearly all have

Starting with my chained up tiger in Gorky Park

I have to start off with a bit of an apology for a long-term misquote I’ve been perpetuating for years. Most frequently, I’ve used this when I’ve been talking with people about what we’ve done in our quest to see animals on our travels.

“When we know better, we do better.”

Yes, you might have ridden an elephant in Thailand twenty-five years ago but you wouldn’t today. Know better, do better, thank you Maya Angelou for your wise words.

But: it turns out that while this sentiment does come from Maya Angelou, the correct quote is longer and has more complex origins. Rather than being directly from a Maya Angelou text, it seems that it comes, somewhat surprisingly, by way of Oprah Winfrey! And the real quote is:

You did what you knew how to do, and when you knew better, you did better.

Which, sadly, isn’t quite as perfect for this situation as the oft-told shorter quote but hopefully, you still see where I’m going with this. When we travel, most of us - certainly probably all of you who are reading this newsletter - don’t want to do the wrong thing. Twenty or thirty years ago, or more, it was much less common to even know what the wrong thing was.

And that brings me to Moscow. I highly recommend playing this video in the background as the soundtrack to my story … it’s what I heard during the incident I’m going to describe, and it also will add some much-needed hopefulness to this sometimes worrying topic.