Rain pelted darts of moisture into my skin as we stumbled off the bus into a huddle of quizzical faces. A slice of doubt entered my mind at their complete bafflement, but within moments the bus handler had hurled our luggage under the shelter and sped down the road, leaving Ana, my dad, and me …
Writing this book over the past nine months functioned as a perfect mirror for my own personal fears and vulnerabilities—my book about volunteering ended up with so much of me exposed in the process that the thought of publicly launching was overwhelming. When I left the United States in 2008 on what became my open-ended …
There is a textbook definition of the word “journey”: an act or instance of traveling from one place to another. Within the framework of our collective consciousness as people, however, the true meaning of a journey lies within ourselves. The word can imply the growth of very specific ideas and understanding within a set time …
Water runs through all of us, and all over the world. It’s impossible to fully grasp the importance of water on our lives. In honor of the importance of water—and of World Water Day on March 22nd—I offer a photo essay on the importance of water to my travels. It’s a looks at the most …
Our pickup truck bumped and jostled down the unpaved path, the driver from Feynan Ecolodge weaving around deep pits and potholes by rote, each piece of this desert clearly as familiar to him as the lines on his darkly tanned hands. For twenty-five minutes we plodded a slow path through stark and open plains and …
Royal Chitwan National Park is a crowning jewel of Nepal, and it’s also one of the country’s most successful conservation projects. It’s a notable place not only in Nepal, but on the world stage, too—Chitwan is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and therefore under international protection. During my month of volunteering, I had only heard …
When I first booked my trip to spend three days at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Royal Chitwan National Park, I had visions of trekking through the jungles to spy on tigers and dodge wild rhinos. Turns out, the adventuring at Chitwan doesn’t go quite that far. I did see one of the rare one-horned rhinos, …