I have no fear of flying. I just don’t love it. I find it disorienting to board a plane in one city and land in another, having missed all the landscape and all the people in between. Give me a roadtrip in America any day. When I made the decision to move from Portland, Oregon … Continued
It was exactly what I had in mind when I applied to teach in the Basque Country; green hills, a strange language, separatist protests, and retired shepherds stalking down cobble stone streets that had seen bull and beret alike- this was a strange region in a foreign land, and I was ready for it. My … Continued
The more I travel, the more I realise that my feelings about somewhere do not only come into being because of that ‘place’. My feelings about the cities, towns, beaches, and villages where I end up on my journeys are shaped by the locations I visited immediately beforehand, by the anticipation of the places that … Continued
A sinewy arm reached for my backpack, picking it up as if it were a feather. He smiled and waved for me to follow. Agile and muscled, he ran across the plank and waited. I carefully placed my steps, watching the brown water of the Irrawaddy flow below me. I squeezed through doors, up stairs … Continued
I had been trapped penniless in Phnom Penh for over a month. It had been ten weeks since I was conned out of five hundred dollars by a bank in Malaysia. Seven weeks since my beloved and irreplaceable journal, my glasses, wallet, iPod, all of my bank cards, and most of my money was stolen … Continued
I was a speck on the vast stretch of land sweeping out around me. Tall grasses undulated across the flats and up the hills before seeming to spill back down the other side. Clouds, purple streaks clinging to the last color of the sun’s light, whisked across the darkening sky. In every direction mountainous peaks … Continued
The Air Asia Flight from Kolkata, India to Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia was comfortable and uneventful As this flight took of late it got dark and nothing was visible outside. After flying for approximately three and half hours I suddenly saw a vast area of dazzling lights amidst the pitch-black surroundings. From about twenty thousand feet high … Continued
I belong to a family of preachers and teachers—all workaholics–but inside people. My strength is in my willpower and verbal skills, not my physical abilities. Joining the City of David archeological excavation in Jerusalem, Israel, after my junior year of college was completely out of character. Keith, my boyfriend, a recent history graduate and a … Continued
An obscure village of 200,000 on the west coast of Bali, Negara is where my father was born. It is a country of fertile paddies that climb hills in elegant, terraced steps and spread out seemingly forever until they kiss the sea. I had only heard its name mentioned a handful of times. In idle … Continued
China: Lost in Transition Where does one buy chopsticks in Beijing? This isn’t simply a zen koan, the questions the masters ask their students in order to break habits of thought and open their minds. This question, that I asked myself one evening while contemplating the leftover spicy beef in the white cardboard box, on … Continued