Stories of culture and social enterprise.
Discover stories focusing on culture, community, and responsible travel. Travel can be a force for good in the world when you travel with purpose and respect. These stories are all about unique ways to connect to cultures and communities, and profiles on amazing people, organizations, and travelers creating social change through travel.
Stories of life on the road.
Traveling the world these years has changed my life. I am a better person because of the lessons I've learned, the unique challenges and opportunities that have only come to me through nearly a decade of solo round the world travels. These stories share my fears, confessions, and musings on anything and everything related to a life of travel.
Photoessays from around the world.
We live in such a pretty world. So much beauty to witness from nature, from people. Take a visual tour through cities, cultures, and landscapes with a selection of posts that focus on allowing the photos to tell the stories.
Latest stories and blog posts.
Although the blog was once chronological, in my early years on the road, now I share stories, advice, tips, and anecdotes that cover thousands of stories, hundreds of new friends, and more than a decade of traveling the world.
A Little Insight… What Goes Into a Sustainable Tourism Industry?
Around the time that I was struggling to hold down my breakfast, hiking at a clipped pace across the wild Kyrgyz countryside and up a mountain, I realized a few things needed to change. Having just finished hiking 500 miles of Spain’s Camino de Santiago a few weeks earlier, I was fit enough for the hike, but not yet acclimated to the altitude, or the breakneck pace. Motioning my guides […]
A Little Adrift… Dispatch from Barcelona: Finding Home
Finding a way to stop traveling has been an evolving process. When I booked that one-way flight ten years ago, a year of travel loomed before me, an epic round-the-world trip that would fulfill my dreams to see more of the world while also preparing me to contentedly return to Los Angeles at the end. I had no idea that ten years later I would move to Barcelona instead. I […]
A Little Delight… Stories of Responsible Travel in Hoi An, Vietnam
Drizzling rain pattered on my umbrella as I wove through throngs of tourists, their rainbow-hued ponchos forming sudden pops of contrast against the canary-colored walls. I dodged locals pedaling rickety bicycles on the rain-drenched streets, and darted into the calm oasis of a local teahouse-cum-social enterprise in Hoi An, Vietnam. The rain hadn’t let up for a week and the teahouse was my daily respite from the chaos—a respite from […]
A Little Reckoning… On Transformative Travel Experiences and 9 Years of Travel
To call it sadness gives it too much weight. But happiness is too vibrant and concrete. I don’t feel identifiably happy as I enter my tenth year on the road. At least not toward travel, particularly. It’s more like a heavy uncertainty. My life is pregnant with pause. I am waiting to hear from the Spanish embassy, and if it approves my visa application, I am moving to Spain, for […]
A Little Photoessay… What’s Japan Like? Gorgeous. Contradictory. Fascinating.
Shibuya, Tokyo Shibuya represented the Japan I had anticipated—bright lights, vibrant colors, pulsing energy, and so. many. people. A friend from college lives in Japan, a lucky circumstance that guaranteed mea familiar face to lead me through my first days in Tokyo. She navigated us through the metro's maze and the surging mass of people while I tagged along in confused awe. Zojo-ji Temple & Tokyo Tower After the heady […]
A Little Portrait… Stories of Microfinance from the Women of the Oaxaca Valley, Mexico
It's the scent of warm corn that most reminds me of my time in Oaxaca, Mexico. Corn is intrinsically woven into the fabric of Mexico's culture and daily life. And in the rural areas of Mexico, this link is even stronger. First cultivated 10,000 years ago, indigenous cultures keep a link to their past as by cultivating heirloom varieties and maintaining a diet filled with corn in every form. Although I've spent […]
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