As a traveller, I never expected a government-mandated colour scheme would become critical to choosing where I can go. Now, with the green-amber-red traffic-light system, the UK has joined many countries in dividing the world’s nations into three colours. Curiously, there are governments choosing black, white, grey, even blue in their effort to tone-translate ‘go’, ‘don’t go’ and – I guess – ‘maybe go’. At the time of writing, the designation of France as ‘amber plus’ is a shining example of just how bizarre and confusing the system has become.
Here at Wanderlust, we always try to show our destinations’ true colours; indeed, we’ve ended up working with a much broader palette. Let’s take Uganda (p64) as an example: It currently features on the UK’s red list but if we…