Author Archive
Family
[Italy] I write this and it’s almost 2006. I had some sense in the mid 1990s that there would be an evolution in my travel interests, and that I would arrive at a point in which my family would be ready to travel. I always imagined that I would see more of Europe with my […]
Lower Marisandi river
[Nepal] Sometime in the early 1980’s, a friend showed me his slides of Nepal. I was mesmerized. Over the next few years, I kept thinking about Nepal, and in 1987 I went with my girlfriend Juli (she later became my wife) on a trek around Annapurna. Twenty one amazing days had me deciding to devote […]
The guy in the leather coat turns to me
[Hungary] The guy introduced himself. He said, “Call me Uncle.” I said “why,” and he responded “Well, you can’t call me comrade, because I was never a member of the communist party. And you can’t call me mister, because I wear such pants as these,” and he tweaked at his ancient, blue, polyester slacks.
Taking a break in La Paz
[Bolivia] La Paz is wild and an utterly striking place. The plane lands at 12,500 feet, and the bus from the airport descends 1,500 feet into a canyon, at the base of which sits La Paz. For 36 hours I lay in bed in my little hotel, sick as a dog from the altitude. The […]
Lake Titicaca family
[Bolivia] My ambivalence about myself as a wealthy traveler emerges. It was late afternoon, and I was walking a huge windy expanse of tundra sitting above the lake. To one side the oddly metallic and bright lake, to the other the drama and magnificence of the Andes. A place of supreme, open beauty. I came […]
Gypsy women
[Romania] Maybe it’s just that we do a better job of hiding our various prejudices, but I was continually uncomfortable at the ethnic stereotyping and expressions of dislike for others who were different. Maybe it was the lack of social taboos about these things in eastern Europe. And so it was a constant stream of […]
The town of Veliko Turnovo
[Bulgaria] I met two brothers on the street. We went to the family home and ate a huge meal prepared by their mother. Whatever a Babooshka is, she was it. She prepared food in a spare, concrete floored kitchen with walls covered by Playboy and Penthouse magazines full nude centerfolds. Our conversation was entirely focused […]
Empty road beneath Fan Si Pan near the town of Sapa
[Vietnam] I heard there was this incredible single lane paved road that wound its way around Vietnam’s highest mountain – Fan Si Pan – and headed toward the Laos border. There was a place in Sapa that rented Russian motorcycles, and so I set out. It was empty road winding through jungle and mountains in […]
Halong Bay (2)
[Vietnam] Utterly perfect weather. We periodically climb off the boat and fool around on various islands. We hike on some, explore caves on others. Huynh tells me of his desire to work for one of the new hotels. Getting any sort of entry job requires an enormous bribe to the manager – roughly $500. It […]
Five of us motor through Halong Bay
[Vietnam] I rent a boat, and with it comes a boatman, a guide, a cook, and the boat’s owner. We meander for several days among and through hundreds of islands, stopping to buy meals from floating seafood farms. Shrimp, eels, fish, crab, scampi. As we wind our way through the limestone karst formations that make […]
The town of Bai Chay
[Vietnam] I walk out of the small, dilapidated Hanoi terminal, and find the first taxi that will drive me the four hours directly to Halong Bay. Later, I find myself in a tiny three room hotel on the shore of the seaside village of Bai Chay. Only this morning I had woken up on the […]
Guilin, China – Along the River Li
[China] What brings a place or location into the scope of my attention? My earliest enthusiasm for travel was through pictures in a book about Guilin, China. I got it at a garage sale when I was 20. I looked at the pictures about once a year. But with the exception of London, I didn’t […]
Train through Yunnan Province
[China] I walked across the bridge between Lao Cai, Vietnam to Hekou, China to find my 37 hour train to Kunming. We’d stop at every town, and I’d stick my nose out the window or walk out on the platform. In addition to the smells, the architecture, the clothing, and the faces, the real fun […]
Man and Mosque in Kashgar
[China] This far western part of China is strongly Islamic. I’d been on the road for four days, coming from Islamabad, Pakistan. The buses were filled with Pakistani silk traders who cursed at the slow Chinese driving. I breathed one long sigh of relief as we puttered our way along at about 40 MPH. How […]
Kashgar market
[China] This is ethnic China. Thousands of Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Kazaks converge every Sunday to what some believe to be the most exotic Sunday market in the world. I’d been traveling for six months, yet realized that the world still had some places that could re-trigger culture shock. I walked the entire day in a […]
Mustagh Ata in Xinjiang Province
[China] The mountain Mustagh Ata sits between the Pakistani border and Kashgar. It represents the essence of Himalayan beauty, with a valley floor 13,000 feet above sea level. I went out for an evening stroll from my campsite to get a better view of the ridge that the great, late photographer/climber Galen Rowell had skied […]
Blocked Highway in Hunza
[Pakistan] The 800 mile Karakorum highway from Islamabad, Pakistan had been open a year, and I was heading to China over the highest paved road in the world – the 15,000 foot Kunjerab pass. Earlier on the trip, I had taken a bus from Lahore to Peshawar that was pretty scary, and so I had […]
Fresh Mujahadeen grave
[Pakistan] We walked across to the “Field of Martyrs,” graves of men recently killed in the war with Russia. Next to me was a photographer from the Chicago Sun Times, and the scene got him talking about his own legacy, in this case the body of photographs he wanted to leave behind. It got me […]
Dinner at the refuge camp
[Pakistan] I was struck by the enormous contradictions within the Muslim psyche. On the one hand was the extraordinary warmth, hospitality, and ability to talk deeply about many topics. But then there were the constant hatreds running across the factions within Islam. It played itself out in a couple ways. In Northern Pakistan, 20 miles […]
My room at the Afghan refuge camp in Peshawar
[Pakistan] It was 1989 and I met two Afghan men on the street who were both back from fighting the Russians. One of them had been trained as a doctor in East Germany and he thought I was German. But he also spoke some English. I was invited to their home in one of the […]
New Delhi political event
[India] I was hanging out at back of a political rally. A couple hours went by, and I’m sure there isn’t a person who would have wanted to stay with me as long as I sat there. Almost all my travel has been alone. People ask me why I enjoy traveling by myself. “Don’t you […]
Poverty in Srinigar
[India] The most powerful and original travel magic for me was walking through poor Himalayan and Andean villages. In those early trips, every day was an opportunity to learn details about family customs and economies. And it was so new. Sleeping on dirt floors in simple mud dwellings, sitting around a cooking fire inside a […]
Ladakhi woman above the town of Ley
[India] I think of the places others tell me about that I’ve never been to. As they describe Paris, Bali, or Niger, I’m reminded of the empathetic challenge in trying to connect with their experiences. There’s a lot to find out. “What did you notice about the place?” “What was difficult?” “Did the people have […]
Vicuna Town Observatory
[Chile] I wanted to take my telescope and see the Southern Hemisphere night skies. Fabulous objects are there that can never be seen from Seattle. The Magellanic clouds, 47 Tucanae, Eta Carinae…… The Internet has a ton about the Southern astronomical observatories, and within this mess of information I stumbled upon references to the little […]