If you’re searching for silence, go somewhere remote, right? When Ryan Enslin scratched a ten-year itch to visit a tiny island in the middle of the South Atlantic, he discovered a deep stillness, unexpected friendships and a night sky that made him feel both small and whole.

I first heard whispers of St Helena a decade ago, carried not by wind or wave, but by a band of islanders who had crossed the Atlantic Ocean to South Africa, where I live. Hearing of this lone outpost – adrift in the South Atlantic, 4300km away, suspended in that ethereal no-man’s land between continents – stirred something within me that I would truly grasp only years later. A quiet yearning not just to reach those distant shores, but to step into a mystical place where the world grows still and my soul, perhaps for the first time, would be free to roam and listen.

Stories of Napoleon’s final exile, of Boer prisoners of war and a banished Zulu king only deepened the intrigue, adding layers to what I’d begun to imagine about this seemingly forgotten spot on the planet. Could such a place truly exist? It seemed unlikely. But there it was, on a map. A pixel of mystery floating in the blue.