Osh Kyrgyzstan

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 …

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plaza real bareclona

A Little Adrift… Dispatch from Barcelona: On 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. …

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laptop typing

How to Build A Community On Your Travel Blog

This is a frequent question to my email inbox and one I continually feel under-qualified to answer. The truth is, I have no single answer or tactic to guarantee success, and half of the time I am not even sure how the ALA community grew into what it is today. The tangible tools I used …

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A Little Bit… About Grassroots Volunteering

After months in Africa this past spring, which was a tough trip for me, I spent summer on a hiatus from A Little Adrift and instead headed to the beach with my nieces and nephews, hiked a bit in the Pacific Northwest, spoke at convention in Atlanta, dinner-ed with friends in Florida, and lost myself in the …

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shannon-odonnell

A Little Update … Speaking Dates and a National Geographic Honor

It’s been a wacky ride these last few months. In late June, I returned home from traveling through Panama with my dad and my niece and I entered a transition period … or I extended the transition I talked about earlier this year. I hunkered down here in Florida  to refocus on projects I have had …

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A Little Update… Travel Plans, Recent Press, and Otherness

Somehow, two and half months have passed since I moved to Mexico and moved into a studio apartment in the tiny town of San Pancho.  Life is zipping along. When I started writing this update, I planned to lament that I still haven’t learned how to relax, despite my decision to use my time here in …

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Antigua, Guatemala

A Little Podcast… Stories of Traveling Through Guatemala

Traveling through Guatemala was an unexpected pleasure; I landed in Central America with the vague idea I would travel south from Mexico and stop in every country for a few weeks, a month if I loved a place. And then I crossed the border into Guatemala and instantly fell a bit in love. Over the …

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