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 […]