Last updated on December 14, 2018

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 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 Journal… 7 Digital Travel Diary Apps Worth Your Time

As travel enthusiasts, we yearn to capture the essence of extraordinary travel moments and freeze them in time. We even want those mundane details preserved—what was the name of that hilarious taxi driver who shuttled you from the airport to your guesthouse? If you’ve logged those details in a travel journal, you don’t have to…

A Little Story… 22 Inspiring Travel Stories from Around the World

It’s easy to share a list of the best travel books out there—although everyone has their favorites, there are a handful of books that always make the list. But inspiring travel stories are a different beast altogether—these stories may come in the form of a book, such as a memoir detailing someone’s time on the…

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…

A Little Adrift… Dispatch from Russia: Upending Cultural Assumptions

Cold air gnawed through my layers, persistent and unrelenting. As an avowed lover of all things tropical—smoothie flavors, color palettes, and, yes, temperatures—I had dreaded exploring St. Petersburg, Russia in November, a month marked by gray skies, drizzling rain, and pervasive chill. Although my unsuitability for cold weather panned out, St. Petersburg upended my every…

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….

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…