'The Africa bug had got me'
Louise Counsell, 43, traded in her Mercedes, a designer wardrobe and her high-flying job as a sales and marketing director for khaki shorts and work in an African bush camp.

Five years ago I went on a 12-night safari to south Luangwa in Zambia and was inspired by the raw wilderness of Africa, the colours, the sunsets and the animals. When I came back, I was driving to work along the M25 and thought, 'What am I doing here?' I was playing cards one night with a friend and I told her how much I missed Africa. She told me to go back. I said I would if I won the game of cards, which I did.

Within a week I had packed in my job. It wasn't that I hated my work, but the Africa bug had got me. I wrote off to the main African travel companies and got an interview for a job as a caterer at a bush camp in south Luangwa, where I worked for two years before taking my guide's exam and then managing my own camp.

In my third year there I got pregnant - I now have a half-Zambian son called Henry. Winter here is the rainy season there, so I come back with Henry and enjoy a few creature comforts such as television, though I do have electricity in the village where I live. I'm going back this year to set up a trendy cafe called the Camel House in the bush, where we'll sell cappuccinos and cocktails to tourists.

There is a problem with malaria though; one year, I had it three times and Henry has had it once.

I will have to move back to the UK at some stage to educate Henry but for the moment I'm staying put. If I hadn't gone on that holiday, I would quite likely still be in England and probably on that same career path.

· Worldwide Journeys & Expeditions (020 7386 4646; www.worldwidejourneys.co.uk) has a 12-night safari centred on the Luangwa Valley in the southern reaches of the Great Rift Valley with game viewing and walking safaris from £2,645pp full board, including flights.

'People say I'm mad but I'm living the life '
City trader Paul Richardson, 39, fell in love with Spanish culture on a flamenco dance holiday in Granada. Now he has ditched his job, is in his final year of a Spanish degree and is considering a move to Spain.

I took up flamenco when I was working as an equity sales trader in the City as something to keep me fit and stop me going out drinking so much. Then I went on a dance holiday to Granada - it was a week-long fiesta and because it was raining we ended up dancing sevillanas (an easier variation of flamenco) all the time.

By the time I came back I had decided I wanted to live in Spain. I started saving, then quit my job and went to Granada to do a two-month flamenco course. When that was over I started a four-year degree in Spanish and archaeology in London and funded my studies by working on the marketing side of Danceholidays.com, with whom I went to Spain in the first place. I got to live in Extremadura in my third year.

I will graduate in June, am now fluent in Spanish and have kept up my flamenco. I might decide to move to Spain. When I dance sevillanas out there now, people come up and shake my hand - but my pure flamenco isn't so good. Besides, I have blond hair and blue eyes so I will never have the look.

People have asked if I don't think it's stupid to chuck in a great job just for a hobby and sometimes I do have nightmares, particularly when money is tight. But at the same time, I know I am living the life.

· Danceholidays.com (0870 286 6000; www.danceholidays.com) has seven-night sevillanas holidays in Granada for £499 including flights and B&B. The next departure is 27 April.

Diving makes me feel liberated
During a package holiday to Cyprus, Svein Eriksen, 35, decided to give diving a go. That was 11 years ago. Since then he has been diving around the world, has his rescue diver qualification and plans to become a master diver.

I went to Cyprus for Easter week and I walked past a beachfront dive shop and fancied giving it a go. I am not a sporty person but it made me feel liberated. I did a four-day Padi course there, as well as my advanced diving course.

The more you relax, the better diver you are and that really appeals to me. I spend a lot of time working at my computer, so scuba diving allows me to totally relax.

I have been diving in the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands, Norway (where I'm from), Hong Kong, Japan, Florida, California and Mexico. I'd love to do the Barrier Reef in Australia but I don't have the time. Last summer my seven-year-old son went in the pool when we were in Tenerife with an aqualung and he absolutely loved it. I've swum with sharks in Florida and once got too close for comfort to a moray eel in Portugal, but I've never really been frightened.

I took my rescue diver exam three years ago and next year I aim to do a dive master course, which will enable me to organise groups of friends on dives. I have thought about training as an instructor but I see this more as a hobby.

· Visit www.cheapflights.co.uk for good deals on diving holidays. Recent offers include one week at the four-star Avanti hotel in Paphos for £383 B&B with Olympic Holidays.

'What happened? You're glowing'
It took a stint with Raleigh International in Ghana to make chartered accountant Liz O'Brien, 28, realise she was in the wrong job and that she wanted to retrain as a doctor.

Though I had thought of using my degree in natural sciences to go into research science, I ended up in accountancy. After almost five years I was ready for something different so decided to do Raleigh International, whose four-month trips were about the right length. My company said it would hold my job open while I went to Ghana as an administrator.

We did a variety of projects, from building a school to putting up VIP latrines. It was hard - there were lots of bugs, it was very humid, sometimes the electricity and the water went off, and I got malaria six months after I came back. But I had time to work out what I wanted to do in the long term.

We were working with Sight Savers International on an eye cataract programme - they were doing two cataract operations, and then an emergency Caesarean section was wheeled in and we were allowed to stay. When it was over, a girl looked at me and said: 'What's happened to you? You're glowing.' I realised I had just worked out what I wanted to be doing. It was 4 August 2000 - I have the date ingrained in my mind.

While I was in Ghana I searched the internet for medical courses and shortly after I got back I got a place at Oxford University, where I'm now in my second year. I don't think I would have thought about doing medicine if I hadn't had those experiences with Raleigh. It gave me the opportunity to see things I wouldn't have done in my job. I haven't decided what I want to specialise in, but tropical medicine will obviously be close to my heart.

· Raleigh International (020 7371 8585; www.raleigh.org.uk) has four-month trips to Ghana for staff workers over the age of 25 for about £1,200. Volunteers aged 17-25 are asked to raise £3,500 funding.

'I was on a conveyor belt'
On a trip with the Jubilee Sailing Trust last April, Rachel Flew, 24, from Cardiff, realised she wanted to ditch her plans to do a PhD in music and retrain as a speech therapist.

I had some time out after finishing my master's degree in music at Cardiff in November 2001 and starting my PhD the following September. So when my friend's mother, who works with the Jubilee Sailing Trust, asked if I wanted to help out on a voyage as an able-bodied volunteer, I said yes. I had done work in the sixth form with kids with hearing and speech problems, though you don't need to have experience. When I went sailing, I rediscovered how much I loved working with people, particularly disabled people and decided I wasn't interested in becoming an academic.

I was buddied up with a 16-year-old who had spina bifida. I helped her with the basic stuff such as washing and dressing on a trip round the east coast of Ireland. But what really changed my mind was a chap on my watch who had had a stroke and had a severe speech impediment. There was one occasion when we were putting up the flag and he was clearly frustrated, trying to say something, and I realised how desperately important communication was.

I changed as a person on the trip - I felt much more like me and much happier. When I came back I told the college I didn't want to do the PhD and I got on a four-year speech therapy course in Cardiff, which I started in September.

Since that first trip with the JST, I've been back twice and I hope to go again in the summer. If I hadn't gone away with them in the first place, I would undoubtedly be doing my music PhD now. I was on an academic conveyor belt. Going sailing made me think so much about my life; it gave me a sense of perspective.

· The Jubilee Sailing Trust (0238 044 9108; www.jst.org.uk) has voyages for both disabled and able-bodied passengers this winter in the Canary Islands, with an island-hopping trip from Las Palmas costing £490 for eight days' full board, and in the summer from Lisbon to Alicante or Alicante to Nice for £695-£750, also for eight days' full board. Flights extra.

'I had £100 to set up a project'
Educationalist Neil Pullen, 41, had never done a day's voluntary work before he went on holiday to Panama. When he came back he got so wrapped up with voluntary and conservation work that he eventually changed his job, and is now working as Swindon's wildlife officer.

I was lucky enough to get a Millennium fellowship with Earthwatch in 1999, and went for three weeks to Panama to study tropical forest seedlings. It was amazing but hard work too - it was 100 per cent humidity, with temperatures above 35C, and we were living in an old school.

Part of the fellowship involved setting up a community project with £100, so I started a tree nursery in Swindon, which is still being manned by volunteers.

I had never done a single day's voluntary work before the holiday, but I found that you get a great deal back when you do it - it is so satisfying. After that I did more voluntary work with the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers and the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust. That has developed into a full-time job - I left my old job helping special-needs adults find work to be Swindon's wildlife officer. I get enormous pleasure in, for example, showing young adults a grass snake which habitually lies under a piece of corrugated iron. It is amazing the number of people who have never seen one.

· Earthwatch (01865 318831; www.earthwatch.org/europe, which has 130 rojects on offer in 2003, is looking for volunteers to explore the dynamics of a rare dry forest ecosystem in Costa Rica. The cost of £995 includes meals on the 15-day trip but not flights, with departures May-October.

'It gave us space and time'
Choreographer and dance teacher Tamara Cater, 34, met spice trader Andrew Barker, 43, on a yoga holiday in Ibiza last summer. They fell in love and are now moving in together in Bristol.

I went on the yoga holiday to recharge my batteries, as well as to do research for a big choreographic project called 'The Embodied Guide to Dating and Relating'. Because I was thinking about relationships when I was there, I was looking at people in a different way. I noticed Andrew and how considerate he was, and helpful and warm. The fact that we were on holiday meant we could get to know each other in a calm, beautiful setting. And because it was a yoga holiday we had a joint challenge, and I knew we had similar interests. The space and time we had on the holiday gave us a rich foundation for our relationship. If I had met Andrew in London where he lived or Bristol where I lived, I would have probably passed him by. When we got back we went through the interesting process of meeting each other in our home contexts, and it was a bit like starting all over again. He's now moving to Bristol to be with me. Ironically, we have practically stopped the yoga but we do have good resolutions to start doing it again.

· Ibiza Yoga (020 7419 0999; www.ibizayoga.com) has one week's yoga from May to October for £325 excluding flights but including seven nights' shared accommodation, three hours of yoga a day and a vegetarian brunch.

'Thank God for text messaging'
Eleanor Jones, 30, fell in love with a Turkish cafe manager on holiday. She moved out to work for the travel company she had been on holiday with, and at the end of December got married there.

I went to Kalkan in south-west Turkey with my parents in May 2001 for a week. Metin was working in the cafe where we were staying and, as we ate there a lot, we saw a lot of him. I thought he was cute and I got to know him but it wasn't until the last few days of the holiday that we got together and went for a drink. We kept in touch when I got back - thank God for text messaging. I think I got to know him properly over the phone. I went back for a week that October and it went really well, so we saw each other for a couple of weekends in Istanbul. Early the next year I resigned from my job and I got work with Simply Turkey who I had been on holiday with in the first place.

We got married on 28 December in Kalkan - I had a classic English dress but we mixed the traditions a bit. I'm learning Turkish, which is very, very difficult. I do miss my girlfriends, but that is the only downside. The sunshine is fantastic and it is a really interesting place in terms of history and culture. I never thought in my wildest dreams it would lead to this.

· Simply Turkey (020 8541 2204; www.simplytravel.com) has one week at the Korsan Apartments in Kalkan for £580pp self catering including flights, 14 July to 31 August.