Road Trip to the Spiritual Assembly
Nancy Davis Kho
20th Annual Solas Awards Bronze Winner in the Funny Travel category
Growing up, it was not uncommon for gatherings with my mom’s extended family to include an assessment of which kids were showing psychic powers, or whether the Magic Eye pendulum had predicted rain for the weekend. My mom’s oldest sister Eunice, whom we called Noonie, was an adherent of Spiritualism, a religion that believes the Spirit world found “beyond the veil” is just another train stop on our ride, and that mediums can help communicate messages back and forth between the living and dead. Read full storyRainy Day in Reykjavík
Robert Klose
20th Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Culture & Ideas category
I have been in Reykjavík for seven days, and rather than rue the weather, I look at the clouds in wonder. They plaster the firmament like icing on a cake. The ceiling is gray and unbroken. There is no movement, only stasis — these are not roving clouds. With due frequency, the sky weeps. Not a downpour, but a dispersed, tentative rain of the smallest drops that makes me question the weather’s true intentions. It is July, in a land where “summer” has dubious meaning. Read full storyThe Prophecy
Russell Working
20th Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Adventure Travel category
The weather was hot when it was supposed to be cold, the tinnitus of cicadas drowned out every thought, and the sand on the beach was the wrong color, a pale reddish gold. The birds were too mad or too bright: kookaburras issued jungle cackles unheard in America outside TV cartoons, while rainbow lorikeets in tie-dyed T-shirts fluttered through trees with bluish leaves. And as I spent my first week in Australia at an orientation camp near Sydney, I kept thinking I had made a fatal mistake, leaving home to be an exchange student here. Read full storyLand of Wrenching Beauty
Ben Stubenberg
20th Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Travel & Healing category
It’s our last night in Haiti, and nobody wants to leave. Spicy aromas from Creole lobster, shrimp, and red snapper caught that afternoon waft through the humid air and invite us to dine. We take our seats at the table set for us on the beach at the water’s edge under a black Caribbean sky strewn with a billion stars, bright and sharp in the absence of ambient light. A breeze blows in from the sea, and we let the serenity of the moment settle over us. Dr. John Brusky, an anesthesiologist who has led many of these surgical missions, taps his glass. All eyes look to him. Read full storyA Bullfight in Madrid: Pageant or Macabre?
Margaret Wagner
20th Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Travel & Sports category
The bull fell to his front knees, then struggled and stood up, shaking his head. I exhaled a soft “oh no.” The animal panted, quivering the banderillas, the two-and-a-half-foot red and white sticks tipped with two-inch barbed hooks which had been stabbed into his back. Wet bands glistened from the top of his spine down hefty flanks, blood darkening mahogany hair. I groaned; my stomach flip-flopped. When I was in a tween in the 1970s, my family visited Spain. We saw flamenco dances in the evening, and no bullfights. Now, in 2025, I was attending one in Madrid, Spain as part of my mission to retrace the seven-month European trip that my mother had taken in 1951. Read full storySummer Canning
MJ Pramik
20th Annual Solas Awards Bronze Winner in the Travel & Food category
Growing up in rural Ohio, our parents “recruited” us to help with the canning of strawberry jam, which required us to search for the perfect deep-ruby strawberries that intermingled with the morning’s mist. The tiny bright fruits ripened in waves. Each day for a week, we picked and filled wicker baskets to mash, sweeten, and cook, filling twelve or more boiled and baked half-pint jars at a time. Read full storyThe Watching That Hurts
Lisa Boice
20th Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Travel & Transformation category
A trio of zebras kicked up plumes of orange Kruger National Park dirt as they crossed the road in front of our Land Cruiser. We had stopped to look at the impala hanging lifeless from the branch of an acacia tree ten feet away. It hung like meat in a butcher’s freezer. The leopard that killed it was likely hiding nearby, our guide told us, watching over its kill. What looked like an oval brown bag about the size of a 10-pound sack of rice was slung over the limb near the impala. “What’s that next to its head?” I asked. He checked through his binoculars. “It’s the stomach,” he said. “Leopards don’t like it, so they pull it out. It’s full of grasses, which don't interest them.” I could feel my own stomach turn as I looked at the morbid tableau. I didn’t expect grief to follow me into the bush. Read full storyMy Crazy Idea
Marek Garcia
20th Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Travel Memoir category
I can’t shake the feeling I’m forgetting something. I pack, unpack, repack – but something’s still missing. How do I fit everything I need into a backpack for a whole year? How do I pack if I don’t know where I will be in three months? Or in three days. I spend my last two weeks getting ready for The Trip. Trying to fit everything I’ll need into a 40-liter backpack. I repack because I have way too many shirts, according to r/solotravel on Reddit. I unpack one more time and then repack again using packing cubes. I ask myself what I’ll actually need. Read full storyReplanting the Future
Allison Burtka
20th Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Travel and the Environment category
I’m walking through the grounds of an organic tea farm and estate in the Uva highlands of Sri Lanka. I step carefully through a field of low-lying tea plants that are interspersed with seemingly random skinny, taller plants. But the estate manager, who’s showing me around, points out the tags on the taller ones. They’ve been planted recently. These trees are either native species chosen to shade the tea plants, an agroforestry practice that also enriches the soil, or they’re fruit-bearing trees that will boost the farm’s production of mango, avocado, and other crops, which fuels the estate’s robust community development work. Tree planting is inherently a good thing. But beyond sequestering carbon and reforestation, tree planting can help uplift struggling communities—if they’re true partners in the process. Read full storyA Taste of the Simple Life with the Naso River People in Panama
Tim Leffel
20th Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Men's Travel category
When we walked through the village and down to the Teribe River, called the Tjer Di by the locals, we felt a mix of excitement and trepidation. On the one hand it seemed like good fun to take motorized canoes up the river to visit the home of the king. On the other hand, that river water was moving really fast and what was that part about needing a guy in the front with a pole in case we got stuck? The people who live beside this river certainly didn’t seem fazed, though, unloading supplies from one canoe and dropping off some residents who had been off to see someone in another village. Read full story.Craft Brewery Conservation in the Heart of Africa
Heide Brandes
20th Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Love Story category
Mississippi Goddam
By Jacqueline St. Joan
20th Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in Family Travel category
Easter Sunday, 1986, a bright, warm Denver day. The kids and I crossed St. Paul Street to get Grandpa Bryson from the nursing home. Sol had been living there since January, when my ex-husband, Pete, brought his father from Puerto Rico, after his mother, Babe, died there of a sudden heart attack. I imagined Sol in their high-rise studio apartment that overlooked the Atlantic Ocean, leaning over from his wheelchair, reaching to touch her, fearful of what he saw and fearful of falling, trying to say a comforting word or two, until hours later, maybe somebody in the hall heard him crying and knocked on the door. It was hard for him to hold up his head in those last days, but his eyes rolled upward when he heard us enter. Read full storyThe Board Between Us
By Dean Moghadham
20th Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Doing Good/Kindness of Strangers category
I was seven years old when my family took me to New York City in the winter. We did what families from the suburbs always do there: wandered through Times Square’s riot of light, drank cocoa that scalded our tongues, marveled at a store that sold nothing but candy in every color. We stopped to stare at street performers, let snowflakes melt on our jackets, and laughed at the strange energy of a city that seemed to stretch endlessly upward. It was loud and chaotic, yet wrapped in the kind of magic only December can give.And yet it is not the neon or the sweetness that I remember most.
What I remember is a chessboard in a park. Read full story
Half Dome the Hard Way
By Michael Shapiro
20th Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Most Unforgettable Character category
I. BELOW
“I need you to sit down,” the doctor told Kirk Keeler, a nature photographer who was born and raised in Sonoma County and is now living in Nevada City, the Gold Rush town on the California side of the Sierra Nevada. Keeler had just had his first colonoscopy and was still foggy from the anesthesia.
“We found a tumor in your colon,” Keeler recalls the doctor saying. “He just kept on talking. But I just went into a kind of a shock. All his words sounded like echoes.” It felt like dropping into the abyss. Read full story
Sanctum Sanatorium
By Anastasia Austin
20th Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Doing Good/Kindness of Strangers category
For two days, we battle off-road mountain passes through the jungle. Below us, the Suárez River cuts through the green swells of Colombia’s Eastern Cordillera. The rising sun caresses the water’s surface, sending clouds of condensation into the air. Our bikes, loaded with gear for a year’s journey, slip and slide on the clay-covered rocks. By 10 a.m., the merciless heat and humidity have already sapped my energy, making every pedal rotation a slog. Sweat soaks through my long-sleeve shirt. My partner, Douwe, and I are journalists on a multi-year bicycle journey from Colombia to Argentina through the Andes.Often we wile away the hours by chatting, but on this climb we are silent, focused only on the next hundred meters, then the next — and the next. Read full storyNavigating the Fault Line
By Ann Joachim
20th Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Cruise Story category
An early morning on the Nile, our cruise ship travels from Cairo to Aswan, moving through Middle Egypt, nearly 200 miles south on the river. For two weeks, twenty tourists share ten cabins, confined on this small floating world. As tour manager for one of the world’s premier travel companies, I’m responsible for their well-being, knowing that things might go wrong. My elite group of travelers are affiliated with a top U.S. research center and can afford this extended luxury cruise. Along the ancient waterway, we’d visit the major antiquities in the river valley and view scenes of Egyptian life that most tourists miss. I awake before my clients and walk the upper deck. Read full storyGiving The Devil His Due
By Maxine Rose Schur
20th Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Destination Story category
Here come the nuns! So eager to get to church, they’re running down the street. BUT WAIT! These are the nuns from Hell! As they come, they swing rubber sand bags the size of ping pong paddles. The nuns have a lot of suspicious facial hair and are itching to whack the rear ends of anyone looking like a sinner or just anyone with a large derriere. THWACK! I suspect I’ve fallen into both categories for I feel a swift blow to my bottom. Read full storyPreserving An Ancient Threat
By Margherita Bassi
20th Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Culture & Ideas category
Chiara Vigo sits behind a wooden desk covered in baskets of what appears to be brownish fur. The walls of the room are decorated with framed textiles, and an ancient-looking loom sits in the corner. Vigo is dressed entirely in black and wears her white-streaked, dark hair back in a tight bun. Without looking up, she lifts a glass jar containing a cloudy green liquid, takes a deep breath, and starts howling into it. A couple of onlookers watch in reverential silence, seduced by the demonstration. After a few moments, Vigo lowers the jar onto the desk again. “There,” she says in Italian, her eyes large behind her thick red glasses as she looks up at her audience. “Now it can capture light.” Read full storyGo To Sleep, You Never Saw Them
By Scott Monaco
20th Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Bad Trip category
We didn’t exactly plan to suffer. If anything, we were feeling kind of smug when we booked the sleeper bus from Dali to Jinghong. It felt adventurous. Authentic. Like the kind of gritty, off-the-grid experience that separates “travelers” from plain old tourists. We weren’t just going somewhere—we were earning it. Somewhere deep in our brains, we must have believed that discomfort equals depth. That enduring a 13-hour overnight bus through rural China would give us stories, perspective, and maybe a deeper connection to the country we were about to leave after living there for the past five years. And to be fair, it did give us all of that, just not in the way we expected. Read full storyLibraries Beneath the Sand
By James Michael Dorsey
20th Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Adventure Travel category
When the words cease to come, I turn toward the delicate, water-stained manuscript that has sat framed on my desk for almost two decades. Centuries have aged the paper. The sepia-colored ink has bled in places. It has become an old friend whose simple presence brings back memories. I can see its author, quill in hand, laboriously creating lyrical Arabic. I imagine him hunched over a single candle in his desert home, recording a page of history; one page from the knowledge of the world, but a history important enough to be preserved. Nineteen years ago, this page and I traveled across half the Earth together, and we both have a story to tell. Read full storyBoob Deck
By Paulette Perhach
Grand Prize Bronze winner in the 20th Annual Solas Awards
Just when she thought she was international enough to tan topless...
From far too close, a man’s voice asked, “Anyone sitting here?”I turned my head, keeping my parts held down to the towel, to see two guys standing over me, a bucket of beer in hand, blocking out the Caribbean sky. They were older by about a decade, at least in their 30s, and, although they were topless, too, something about their manufactured smiles gave me the impression that they had booked this cruise as part of their search for those coeds they saw in American Pie 5.
The one with the rainbow-tint reflective Oakleys pointed at the two lounge chairs next to me, like right next to me, lounge chairs I had assumed would remain empty or, if needed, dragged away in observance of the unspoken personal space radius that I'd seen as the norm among the women in this sacred sanctuary I’d come to calling the Boob Deck. [Read the whole story]
Truth Is the Timeless One
By Gary Singh
Grand Prize Silver winner in the 20th Annual Solas Awards
A nagging sense of loss, a sudden discovery, and the personal impact of the 1947 Partition of India.
At the Jalandhar train station, dead bodies littered the platform. Inside, hundreds of others hid in waiting rooms with only the clothes on their backs. The rains were late that year, and even from nearby villages, one could see smoke rising from the city.“It was summer and we slept on the roof, on charpais, and you could see that the city was burning,” recalls Khan Hussan Zia during an interview with the 1947 Partition Archive, an oral history project.
“There was a lot of disturbances, riots, and killings, and Jalandhar City, half of it was burning at that time,” Zia said.
When the British abandoned the remains of their empire, they partitioned the subcontinent into India, Pakistan, and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), geographically dividing the land along widely opposed religious lines. Anywhere from 14 to 20 million people were forcibly displaced from their ancestral neighborhoods and then relocated to the other side of the new border, creating the largest single mass migration event in human history. [Read the whole story]
Going to Water
By Stephen Carr Hampton
Grand Prize Gold winner in the 20th Annual Solas Awards
A Cherokee returns to his ancestors’ homeland in Tennessee.
I went, knowing I was the first in four generations, back to my family’s homeland. Back to where my great-great-grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Parks, was born high up along the Ocoee River, a stone’s throw from where today’s Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia touch each other. When he came into the world in 1821, this was Cherokee Nation.Thomas was sixteen when he was responsible for driving a wagon on the Trail of Tears. His older brother was with him, as well as many others in his – my – family. This was the 11th Detachment, led by his uncle – my great-great-grand-uncle – Dick Taylor. Uncle Dick was a member of the Cherokee National Committee. Decades later, in Indian Territory, he became Assistant Chief.
After the Trail of Tears, no one ever went back. Not my dad, nor my grandparents, nor my great-grandparents. They lived and died in Indian Territory, which became Oklahoma, which is now, at least in part, again, Cherokee Nation. [Read the whole story]
Good Omens
By Sophia Shidlovsky
19th Annual Bronze Solas Award-winner in the Adventure Travel category
“We see you opted to for an automatic car, so we ensured we had one readily available for you.”I closed my eyes and exhaled a little sigh of relief.
It was one of the many things I was worried about when I woke up that morning. With my luck, they’d give me a stick shift and I'd be completely screwed. The alternate option would be to take 2 trains and a bus up the Italian mountain. Better off walking at that point.
“And, sorry, we are giving you quite a big car.”
“No worries. I’m used to driving something a bit bigger in the U.S anyway.” I said.
The rental car employee smiled softly. Typical American. Read full story
Pay As You Go
By Mardith Louisell
19th Annual Bronze Solas Award-winner in the Doing Good or Kindness of Strangers category
I was lucky to get a seat on the streetcar. I took out my book and began reading In the Land of Pain, in which the ailing author searched for a precise language to describe pain. A few stops later, a young woman carrying a yoga mat sat next to me.“You don’t by any chance have two quarters?” she asked. “I don’t think I do,” I answered. Quarters were precious commodities for laundry and parking meters and I didn’t give them away easily. Nonetheless, I opened my purse and searched my wallet. Read full story
Can Anyone Still Make It as a Country Singer in Nashville?
By Adam Szetela
Bronze Solas Award-winner in the Culture & Ideas category
In June 2016, Tiffany Gassette looked for a place to park her RV. She ended up in Lyles, Tennessee, an hour from Nashville. For the next six months, she and her three-year-old daughter, Calliope – named after the Greek muse of epic poetry and heroic song – lived off a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. For 20 miles, there was nothing but a Walmart. Read full storyOne Big Splash
By Mary Jo Maguire
Bronze Solas Award-winner in the Elder Travel category
Although my travels have been few, I don’t feel that I have been short-changed as my imagination has taken me places. Books have provided adventures as have film and interesting people with stories to tell. I am an observer and listener, so I think I could fool you with a memoir of my life as either a spy, an actress, an archeologist, or a world-renowned photographer. I know that I could have swum across the English Channel, designed high fashion or been a missionary. I have imagined myself as a fortune-teller with all the garb that goes with it. Read full storyAmongst The Giants
By Mark Hendricks
Silver Solas Award-winner in the Men's Travel category
“Now. In quickly, go now.” With that command I slid off the inflatable starboard of a zodiac into the chilly waters off the Azores archipelago. My heart rate was already pounding as I prepared to enter the abyss. Now in the ocean another jolt of adrenaline shocked my body further. Even though a 5 mm neoprene wetsuit covered my skin, the sensation of the 60-degree water on my face was enough to increase my respiration further. This is in part due to increasing adrenaline, but also in part because I did not fully zip the back of my wetsuit in my haste to get into position on the vessel. Read full storyThe Magnificent Mother of Sea Country
By Jayme Moye
Bronze Solas Award-winner in the Travel & Sports category
I kick my flippers hard to catch up to Alfred “Touché” Gray, an Indigenous Land and Sea Ranger. We’re snorkeling at night above one of the 3,000 coral reefs that make up Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, and his flashlight is the only thing keeping the darkness of the ocean from swallowing me whole. I try not to think about what else might be swimming through these waters, unseen in the sapphire-black of night. Instead, I keep my focus on the beam of light emanating from Touché — it has suddenly stopped moving. Read full storyLjós
By Gretchen Ayoub
Bronze Solas Award-winner in the Travel & Healing category
The sky is still pitch black at 9:00 a.m. but there is a glowing orange band gradually appearing along the horizon. Here and there an occasional light from a home is briefly visible, like a firefly in the darkness, as the bus smoothly navigates snowy roads in the silent countryside along the southern coast of Iceland. I have been awake since 5:00am but it feels like midnight, save for that horizon. The bus is quiet; other passengers have fallen back asleep and I am the lone observer, gazing out on this frozen land as the ribbon of orange ever so slowly rises and expands. I am in the in between place, darkness with the anticipation of light. Read full storyThe Birth of Wanderlust
By Erin Byrne
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Travel Memoir category
It is a windy day in Wyoming in 1938, in the perpetual present tense. A four-year-old girl stands in the middle of a spacious plain, her arms spread wide. She begins to walk, then run, yellow prairie grass rippling in waves upon her ankle-socks and calves, her blue dress fluttering against her thighs. She tilts her body to the left and jumps, to the right and turns. She is an airplane, soaring to faraway lands, places of grand mosques and cathedrals, castles and favelas, and colorfully clad people with skin of every hue. In this moment, the girl is presaging her life. She will grow up to traverse the globe more than a hundred times, bring news of the wider world to thousands, and inspire generations of travelers. But right now on this plateau, all she’s doing is instinctively acting out her deepest longings.(read full story)
A Watchtower in the Desert
By Nathaniel Murray
Silver Solas Award-winner in the Funny Travel category
It overlooks a lush, green borderland, giving watchmen a panoramic view of the Central Asian steppes, allowing enough time to warn villagers whenever a Xiongnu raiding party approaches.At least it did, two thousand years ago. Now, the watchtower is just a blocky mound of clay overlooking a scorched desert, whose corn fields struggle to produce anything out of the gravel. The gravel itself comes from all over Asia, having flowed in for centuries before the rivers finally dried up. Read full storyBar Calisto
By Isabella Cascio
Silver Solas Award-winner in the Destination Story category
Bar San Calisto is a place that seems to exist outside of time. It exists at midnight as it does dawn; in 2022 as it did in 1960. In a way, it feels as eternal as the city that it stands in. Upon first glance, it is a place without a name — a sign ‘Bar’ is affixed to an otherwise unremarkable apartment façade. The lack of adornment makes it somewhere much easier to stumble across than to search for. Because of this, I like to think that I didn’t discover this place but that it discovered me. Read full essayThe African Queen Swamp Tour
By Onie Grosshans
Silver Solas Award-winner in the Adventure Travel category
Carol, from San Jose State, and me from the University of Utah, were in New Orleans for a convention when we decided to join several other colleagues on a swamp tour. I had read books with the swamp being the setting for the story, watched movies with the swamp in it, so was curious to see the real thing. We boarded the Greyhound bus in front of our hotel, and an hour later turned into a gravel lot next to a flat-roofed structure. Read full essayTo the Woman in the Santiago Bus Terminal
By Emma Morrell
BronzeSolas Award-winner in the Most Unforgettable Character category
Twenty-five years on, I can’t remember why my friend, Katherine, and I, aged eighteen, were in Santiago’s main bus terminal with you when it was dark. Maybe we were early for the morning bus and had arrived before a 1998 autumn dawn. Or maybe we came before dinner to buy tickets for the next day’s journey to San Pedro de Atacama, near the border with Bolivia. The least likely, but possible scenario, was that our budget hadn’t stretched to include accommodation, and we arrived at the darkest point of night. Whatever the reason, we were there when it was dark, and so were you. Read full essayThe Shaman’s Cave
By MJ Pramik
Silver Solas Award-winner in the Travel & Transformation category
Many deserts have a shaman’s cave. Or, at least, the rumor of one. The speculation that one exists brings with it a sense of anticipation. The wilderness expanse of sand, rocks, cacti, pokeweed and chaparral at the base of the San Jacinto Mountains in Southern California’s Palm Desert is no exception. Read full essayThe Quest To Save the World’s Most Coveted Chocolate
By Heide Brandes
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Travel & Food category
Of all the heirloom cacao pods laid before us on a rickety wooden table, on this quiet hillside outside the city of Manta in Ecuador, the ancient variety known as Nacional was misleadingly plain. It was hard to believe this shriveled yellow pod contained one of the world’s rarest and most coveted cacao beans.Then I tasted its fruit in its fresh, raw, pure form. Read full storyDesert Pas de Deux
By Cyndi Goddard
Silver Solas Award-winner in the Travel and the Environment category
In March 2023 on a solo road trip through the high Mojave Desert, I heard Bono’s voice. It was soft and lilting, his manner thoughtful as he responded to the hosts of the podcast my personal DJ — Spotify — had spun up for me. It was a prescient selection, given that I was headed to the national park named for the plant Bono had made into an international icon. To U2 fans, the story of how the singer came to name the band’s 1987 album The Joshua Tree is legendary. Read full storyThe Wizard of East Jesus
By Laurie McAndish King
Silver Solas Award-winner in the Most Unforgettable Character category
East Jesus is not an easy place to get to. It’s in southern California, off the southeast side of the Salton Sea—the opposite side from Palm Springs. The unpopulated side. Highway 111 takes you to the turnoff at Niland, which leads you over to Slab City, and then you’re almost there. Read full storyTango of Death
By Lance Mason
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Men's Travel category
In The Resurrection, Tolstoy said, "People instinctively keep to the circle … who share their views of life and their own place in it." Yet today’s world vividly illustrates the risks of “keeping to the circle,” of reinforcing, rather than challenging, one’s closely-held beliefs. Through the various lenses of history as well as regional cultures, relative ethics, and tolerance, "The Tango of Death" attempts not to justify but to explore and understand Spanish bullfighting, a topic and tradition outside many people’s “circle,” and charged with emotion and politics. Read full storyThe Goat in the Stairwell
By Lisa VanderVeen
Silver Solas Award-winner in the Family Travel category
The commotion outside our apartment highlighted the quiet within. It was loud, this silence. Unspoken words fingered the cracks in our marriage, picking them apart, unraveling their edges. They were becoming harder to ignore. Read full storyNile Holiday, Tears, a Marriage Proposal
By Ann Joachim
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Cruise Story category
Some people travel to Egypt at Christmas and New Year’s purely for pleasure—to experience thousands of years of history and savor the delightfully dry and sunny weather, to escape the wet grayness of London or the blizzards of Michigan. Others travel to forget: a bad love, a disappointment in work, loneliness, a dire medical diagnosis, or a recently dead spouse. When their world has failed them, they take to the road. As a tour manager for one of the world’s premier travel companies, I always found the holidays a mixed challenge; you try to create a joyful experience, all while mindful that some tourists have simply come to flee the dark. Read full storyThe Safari from Hell
By Rosie Cohan
Silver Solas Award-winner in the Bad Trip category
Busy separating night from day, the red African sun turned the clouds into mounds of pink cotton candy. In the distance, a few acacia trees stood silhouetted against the vast golden savanna. Annoying screams of the aptly named Go-Away Bird drowned out the lilting song of the iridescent blue and orange Superb Starling. Both competed for airtime with a chorus of cooing mourning doves. Tanzania was rising to a glorious morning. But for me, it was the beginning of another horrible day on my “safari from Hell.” I was being held captive with a dangerous species: ten bigoted, selfish, mean human beings. Read full storySurprise Encounter in the Amazon
By Laine Gonzales
Silver Solas Award-winner in the Animal Encounter category
Willowy mist drifts upwards, obscuring my view. Bright pinks and oranges glint across the water’s glassy surface. I stretch and wipe the sleepiness from my morning eyes. It’s sunrise on the Amazon. From my boat, I see treetops poking through the mist. The tropical rainforest lining both riverbanks shelters a diversity of birds, more than inhabit the entire continental United States. Erupting from those unseen avian singers, a chorus of chirps, squawks and whistles rings through the still air and beats against my eardrums. Read full storyBear Heart
By Linda Ballou
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Travel & Transformation category
I leaned into a cold wind whipping up off the tiny boat harbor of Haines, Alaska on my way home from school. I arrived to find my father strapping the last bit of mailing tape around two boxes containing my belongings. I was to go on a trip that would change my life for better, or for worse, forever. I was fourteen and had never gone anywhere on my own. “Get your jacket, the plane is waiting for you,” he growled. “What plane?” I asked, horrified. “The mail plane. I already talked to the pilot. You are leaving here today.” Read full storyRadioactive Memory: What I Didn’t Say About Fukushima
By Theresa Lin
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Travel and the Environment category
In 2017, I visited Fukushima on a travel grant from Columbia University’s MFA program to research why, six years after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami ravaged the eastern coast of Japan, 35,000 individuals continued to live in temporary housing. The small, prefabricated houses spread across the greater Fukushima Prefecture were quickly deteriorating. Tens of thousands of Japanese were in limbo, news sources insisted. Even after half a dozen years, contamination levels in evacuated nuclear zones remained unsafe, and no one was certain how much longer the displaced would have to wait before they could return home. Read full storyYour Vessel Can Handle More Than You Can
By Kurt Ela
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Family Travel category
We didn’t know it at the time, but we were meant to buy the boat. We were meant to buy and voyage with it, if only to save our family and make another family whole. At least, that’s what my wife, Paige, thinks. In fact, she’s sure of it. My view is less certain, but still, I wonder. As you hear the story of our voyage, you can make up your own mind. Read full storyA Sacred Ritual
By Tania Romanov
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Elder Travel category
Friends were coming to dinner, and I had walked to my favorite Indian restaurant for takeout. Having just returned from travels abroad, I wasn’t about to do any cooking. Usually a younger man took my order. This time, someone else emerged from the aromatic haze of a steamy kitchen. “Wow! Your beard is interesting!” I said.Not my most profound opening. The man, Yusuf, had a narrow, lightly wrinkled face. Graying hair on his chin glowed, colored by henna, a reddish-brown hair dye popular with older men in Muslim countries. It wasn’t something you saw every day in San Francisco. “Where are you from?” I needed to know. “Oh, I am from Delhi.” “Really?” I pulled out my phone and brought up a picture. “Your beard reminds me of this man, but I think he’s from Pakistan.” “Oh yes, he is definitely Pakistani.” When he saw the inquisitive look in my eyes, my new friend continued. Read full storyKhamak Feeds Our Family
By Mary Littrell
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Doing Good or Kindness of Strangers category
Soon after the pre-dawn call to prayers in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Rangina stands at my bedroom door. Tears stream from her eyes. “My friend was just killed. On her way to work at the United Nations office, she asked her driver to stop so she could buy a box of juice. A man rode up on a motorcycle and gunned her down.” Rangina gulps, “She's dead!” Having no words to comfort her, I jump from bed and envelop Rangina in my arms. Her body heaves. She sobs. Read full storySpark Bird
By Lisa Boice
Silver Solas Award-winner in the Love Story category
On an early Autumn Saturday morning we drove across the 7-mile causeway. Mountains reflected upside-down in the Great Salt Lake on each side of the road, and the brisk October air soothed my face. “Slow down a little bit here,” Steve said as he scanned with his binoculars, looking for birds on the water This was our third date. I had met him online through a dating site in Spring and for our first date, flew to Scotland where he was living at the time. That was our first date. Read full storyThis Horse
By Carol Moen Wing
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Animal Encounter category
This horse I’m riding is smaller than I’m accustomed to — although I’m not sure if “accustomed to” is even a fair thing to say anymore, since my own horse has been gone for nearly a decade, and I’m lucky if I ride even once a year now. Or maybe it’s the wide open steppe that makes him seem small, the vast stretch of undulating hills and waving grass all around us, the view I see framed by his delicate brown ears. He doesn’t have a name, like most of the horses here, and so I give him one in my head. Bataar. He doesn’t need to know it, but I do. Read full storyFinding a Sense of Belonging on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula
By Allison Torres Burtka
Silver Solas Award-winner in the Travel & Sports category
I’m running through the woods in Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula with about a dozen other people. The air is cool, and the trees’ leaves are shiny and wet from the morning’s rain. Our group has spread out by pace, and I’m in the middle group, which is speeding up and slowing down as needed over hills, rocky switchbacks, wood boards covered in netting and shallow streams. I can hear the women near me breathing. The trail leads down a hill, and then the woods open up to the sky. In front of us is a bridge that spans over an inlet. It smells like the ocean. We cross the bridge, enter the woods on the other side and then emerge again near the shoreline of a bay. As we get closer to the water, yellow-green grass gives way to flat, charcoal-gray rocks. We turn to run along the shoreline, the misty air fills my lungs and a wave of gratitude hits me. I’ve never run anywhere like this before. (read full story)
Lost Luggage: 9 Days in the Jungle With One Pair of Panties
By Heide Brandes
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Bad Trip category
As I knelt by the murky waters of the Amazon watershed far west of Manaus, Brazil, I scrubbed furiously at the one single pair of underwear I owned. Clad in only a swimsuit, I treated that pair of gray panties like the treasure it was, washing them for the fourth morning in a row as I hoped the piranha would stay away for the time it took to get them clean. The sun was still just a fiery orange smear of light on the horizon, so the nasty relentless biting black flies had yet to launch their blood-seeking assault of the day. Only the distant roar of howler monkeys broke the silence of the Japura River, one of the many tributary rivers that link to the mighty Amazon. (read full story)
It’s Not Greek to Me
By Dan Wake
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Funny Travel category
Europeans have a saying: If you speak three or more languages, you’re multilingual. If you speak two languages, you’re bilingual. If you speak one language, you’re American. I was twenty years old when I got to Greece in August 1977, two months into a college summer of hitchhiking around Europe. Being American myself, I spoke only one language when I got there, and it wasn’t Greek. I wasn’t going to be in Greece very long. I wasn’t anywhere very long. When you’ve never been overseas, it’s hard to resist the urge to go, go, go! I have to see everything! The Eiffel Tower? Check. The Roman Forum? Check. I would soon learn the benefits of slowing down while traveling, but “slowing down” and “twenty years old” rarely cross paths, and maybe they never should. (read full story)
Climbing the Mountain
By Nate Murray
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Travel & Ideas category
Palms up and resting one atop the other, to keep the water energy—representing blood and other bodily fluids—circulating through your arms. Chin down, to block the fire energy—representing digestion and body heat—from escaping through your mouth. At least, one meditation guidebook called it energy. Another called it air. Another, wind. So, which was it? Or did the original Tibetan term, Lung, have no direct translation? Buddhists and yoga practitioners might better know it by the Sanskrit term prana, often translated as vital energy or vital wind—wind here having a spiritual meaning like life force. But I also saw Lung used in Lung Ta, Wind Horse, the mythical creature who carried the blessings written on multicolored prayer flags across the Tibetan Plateau. Did Lung have the additional meaning of physical wind, which the Sanskrit prana did not? (read full story)
Of Paunch and Punches: Boxing in Ukraine
By Paul Shields
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Travel & Sports category
It was a late summer evening in Kyiv when Yuriy, my 80-year-old boxing trainer, punched me in the mouth.
“Hands up!” He continued to drive jabs to my head before charging an upper cut to my belly. I considered a left-hook to his ribs, a counter to the shameless pounding. Yet there is an untouchable quality to those leathery trainers who somehow, over the years, magically shrink to the size of prunes. All I could do was stoically absorb my beating from this Ukrainian grandpa. (read full story)Honoring the Dead
By Mike Bernhardt
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Travel & Healing category
Yellow and orange marigolds blanketed the grave like a delicate golden carpet. Two dozen candles flickered amongst the blooms, pushing away the night and casting a warm glow on the faces of friends and family of the man buried there. They sat graveside drinking mezcal or coffee, sharing memories and singing his favorite ballads. A child clambered onto her smiling mother’s knees. At that moment—having followed the musky scent of the marigolds like a beacon in the dark— the man’s spirit returned for the evening from the land of the dead. He delighted in the babbling toddler, in the mezcal and food set out for him. His heart was full as he listened to the stories, grateful to be remembered with such love. (read full story)
The Boys of Avele
By Angela Hemmeter
Silver Solas Award-winner in the Doing Good or Kindness of Strangers category
Giant leaves and leaning palms framed our view of the field, bright with the morning sun. On the far side, a long driveway cut along the field’s edge where a line of trees cast sharp shadows in the tall grass. “Here they come,” Ron called. I looked to the bend in the driveway. Hunched figures emerged, swinging machetes with quick, downward thrusts, and then back up, sending hacked vegetation flying with glinting blades. They crept along the road, too far off to make out the faces, but we could tell who were the teachers by the way they stood straight and idle like guards of a chain gang.It would be a while before they reached us. (read full story)
Dervla Murphy: Traveling at a Human Pace
By Michael Shapiro
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Most Unforgettable Character category
Serenaded by birdsong while walking up a cobbled lane in Ireland’s County Waterford in 2013, I arrived at the iron gates that guarded the rustic home of one of the world’s most beloved travel writers. Dervla Murphy, then age 82, greeted me with a powerful bear hug and thrust a can of beer into my hand. I hesitated—it was still morning and I’d only been up for a couple of hours. Dervla laughed and toasted debauchery, saying: “I love debauching people!” (read full story)
Why to Climb a Volcano Twice
By Marcia DeSanctis
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Love Story category
The morning after we dropped off our youngest child at college, my husband and I sat in a bar at the St. Louis airport and shared a beer. “We did it,” I said. “We sure did,” he said. “Hello,” I said. “I’m Marcia. And you are…who exactly?” I fell asleep on his shoulder on the Southwest Air flight and woke up in Hartford to the third chapter of my life. The moment coincided with another milestone. Mark and I had been married two weeks shy of twenty-five years and in a few days, we would flee the bleak and alienating emptiness in our home and return to the place of our honeymoon. (read full story)
In Antarctic Light
By Sivani Babu
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Adventure Travel category
Surrounded by a curtain of ice and snow, I held tight to the rope in my hands. My teeth chattered as the cold bit into the little flesh I’d left exposed. As I struggled to gain purchase, I tried not to look toward the gaping maw of the mountain, a crevasse I knew was nearby but could no longer see. Instead, I searched for my fellow expeditioners in the scattering light, but there was nothing — no one. In every direction, there was only blinding whiteness. My feet were slipping, and panic was taking hold. I felt a tug at the rope, and exhaled. A second tug urged me on. I pulled back as if to say, ”I’m on my way.” One step. I dug my toes into the snow. Another step. I just need to take it slow, I told myself. Another. Almost there. Then a thunderous groan reverberated down the mountain — an avalanche. (read full story)
Risk Management
By Marianne Rogoff
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Women's Travel category
Lexy arrives with three salt-encrusted shot glasses and a bagful of weed and edibles. “You took that across the border?” Andrea says. (She does not do ganja anymore, it gives her panic attacks.) Lexy claims Google said it’s legal. “Not a risk I would take,” I tell her. The plan for our girlfriend week in Mexico is “strictly fun.” Besides bouquets of giant calla lilies and Catrina market bags, I offer top-shelf tequila and spicy guacamole. (read full story)The Tangled Web We Weave
By Dana Zartner
Gold Solas Award-winner in the Destination Travel category
It is the crunch of the legs that has lingered in my mind. The sound reminds me of the shoestring potatoes that topped many a hotdish (or casserole, for those not from the Midwest) at neighborhood picnics when I was growing up. But this crunch is definitely not from shoestring potatoes and Cambodia is about as far from my rural Minnesota upbringing as can be. (read full story)
Everything Is Great on the Bosphorus Strait
By Charish Badzinski
Grand Prize Bronze winner in the Nineteenth Annual Solas Awards
How do we process the ceaseless reality of war?
We are crouched along the hallway of Brandon elementary school, our heads tucked between our knees, our fingers laced and cupping the backsides of our tiny skulls. This is rural Minnesota: small-town America where the prairie sweeps toward the Dakotas. Where the winters are long and Paul Harvey is gospel. Where the grocer knows us all by name.And this is our best plan of defense in the event of nuclear war.
It’s an early memory, and my first indication that the world is not a peaceful place. Read full story.
The Donation
By Stephanie Knapp
Grand Prize Silver winner in the Nineteenth Annual Solas Awards
Life can take us to the ends of the Earth, and to the end of our rope.
1. The Sticks
“Age et date de naissance?” The nurse was asking my age and birthday again. She was the nicer one, with that easy elegance that women effuse even in community centers in Nowheresville, France. The Romanian doctor, or French doctor of Romanian origin (I hadn’t exactly understood this part of our conversation), had smiled at my baby, but had been less obliging in all other aspects. I’d gotten passed off to her after completing the softer, phase one questions by the intake nurse. To be honest I’d failed the first round of those.“Identification?”
I handed over my pass-éducation: a laminated card with my name, photo, and post. It seemed official enough. She turned it over in her hands, as if she would find something more with each flip. Read full story.
It Can Be Beautiful for Everyone
By Katrina Woznicki
Grand Prize Gold winner in the Nineteenth Annual Solas Awards
Los Angeles is beguiling, and painful, but also home.
Near the 405 overpass, lined with plastic dome tents, rusting grocery carts, and litter, a topless woman stands alone in the middle of the street. You see her, but she doesn’t see you, or see anyone. It is one of those many, many bright blue, ribbon sky kind of days—weather so flawless, so consistently perfect that it launched an entire industry that now gives us 24/7 celebrity culture.Homeless people struggling with addiction are as ubiquitous in Los Angeles as celebrities and sunshine—and addiction is everywhere but here—it’s all about who can afford to hide it. Heartbreak and hope fight for every street corner, and it doesn’t matter how gorgeous this city is: rejection and pain are powerful, and numbness offers a reprieve. Numbness comes in many forms, and is sought everywhere. A violet and tangerine sunset on the beach can only do so much. The view is always postcard-perfect in Los Angeles—you can rely on that—but the people suffer. They suffer hard. Read full story.
Safety Boat
By Lisa VanderVeen
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Bad Trip category
We reunite in Bangkok. It’s more of a hand-off than a reunion, as we are not reuniting. This is my first time handing my teenage daughter off to spend four weeks with her father, my soon-to-be ex-husband. She and I spent the last month backpacking through Vietnam and Cambodia while he was working in South East Asia, so Bangkok felt like a logical place to meet up.
We are slated to spend a day together as a trio. It will be good for Sophie to see that we are cordial; still a family unit, strained and unorthodox though we may be as we navigate this new normal. My goal for the day is to remain graceful. Read full story
A Mother and Daughter Meet Halfway in Wrangell, Alaska
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By Holly Robinson
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Adventure Travel category
By the time I arrive in Wrangell, Alaska by ferry, it's seven o'clock in the morning. Through the soupy fog, the harbor lights twinkle like a necklace missing a few jewels. I have traveled 3,781 miles from Boston over the past 30 hours to visit my daughter in this remote corner of the world. Now I'm shaky and seasick: The planes grew smaller and the weather worse as I traveled, until the final plane was grounded and I had to journey the last leg by boat. At 23, my daughter Taylor's age, I would have loved this adventure, but all I can think about is sleep and a shower. Read full storyAmong the Sheep
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By Darcy Fryer
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Animal Encounter category
Walking in the English countryside means walking with sheep. Walking in early summer, as I usually do, means threading your way among gamboling lambs and past the tsking ewes who wish their foolish offspring would grow up already, stepping carefully around mounds of fresh and fossilized sheep dip, negotiating flocks of scores and hundreds without a shepherd in sight, and averting one’s gaze from the roast lamb that invariably features on guesthouse menus in the evening. Read full storyComing of Age in Borneo
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By Laine Gonzales
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Destination Story category
I stare across a sea of palms. These plantation trees replace the dipterocarp trees that once towered 100 to 200 feet above the forest floor. What became of the canopy dwellers once their habitat vanished? Maybe they moved on. I don’t want to think about the alternative. Read full storyEye of the Whale
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By Martha Ezell
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Animal Encounters category
About a dozen small boats were scattered around the large lagoon. Suddenly there was a swooshing of motion directly beside me, and an enormous gray mottled back rose from the water. The whale's body undulated parallel to the boat in a mesmerizing rhythm, swimming just a few feet away. He released a moist, ethereal heart-shaped spray above his head before he vanished as abruptly as he had appeared. I looked at Mary, her broad-brimmed hat above a smiling, wide-eyed expression. It was the first time I'd seen her happy in months. Read full story.Dinners with Kosti
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By Amanda Summer
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Most Unforgettable Character category
He is a man of bravado, of grand gestures. Of droopy eyes and hound dog expressions. Of large, breathless truths, which he reveals with the sweep of a hand, barely grasping his pre-dinner ouzo while maniacally arcing the air. He is a pharmacist, a lover of life...and my friend. And we met, more than twenty years ago, over birth control pills. I had come to the Greek island of Ithaka, along with an international group of archaeologists, in search of the palace of Odysseus, the hero of Homer’s Odyssey. Yet I had no way of knowing the effect this epic tale, symbolizing one’s endless longing to return home, would have on me. Just out of grad school, oblivious to the pitfalls of handsome Greek men and a landscape that would come to speak to my very soul, I never bothered to ask myself: how much trouble could a young woman living on a remote Greek island get into? Read full story.Cruising
By Sandy Korey
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Funny Travel category
This ain't no fairy tale, you know. This is a true-life adventure of a modern-day princess, one who got rolled away in a big blueberry by her very own Mr. Wonderful. We just didn't fall off no pumpkin truck neither, no sirree. It all came about due to hard work, sacrifice, long-range planning, and a big dollop of good luck as high as whipped creme on top of a double banana split tossed in for good measure that built up to this here surprise of the century or a lifetime, depending on which ends first. Here's how it went: Read full storyEmbracing Freedom Through Foreign Love
By Sahar Elhallak
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Love Story category
In September 2010, while living in Northern California, I received an email from my credit card company suggesting I use my points for a travel destination as they were about to expire. I've always had a passion for traveling, but with my husband being self-employed and having four children, I was uncertain if we could manage to travel anywhere. At 39, I had been married for twenty-three years, but the arranged marriage had been marked by unhappiness and misery. However, cultural norms in my background demanded that I remain in the marriage. I felt trapped, as I had no other place to turn to. My parents had firmly stated that visiting them without my husband was not an option, and divorce was completely off the table. I stayed in that marriage for the children's sake and because I lacked an alternative place to go. I had never experienced independence before. Read full storyThe Gift of Hospitality
By Rhonda Wiley-Jones
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Doing Good or the Kindness of Strangers category
All I had done in England and Scotland was lug my backpack on and off trains, try to make sense of routes, search where to purchase a ticket, hunt for B&Bs, and find a bite to eat before re-boarding. My patience was wearing thin, like my shoes.As I headed to Chester, I reexamined my decision to travel alone. I’d spent three years anticipating independent travel. I paid off my car and credit card debt, got accepted to the University of Missouri graduate program in Higher and Adult Education, applied for, and received a student loan and internship. I emptied my pension plan, what there was of it, moved from Little Rock and in with a roommate in Columbia. Read full story
Rain, Mud & Beauty
By Jeyn Jack
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Doing Good or Kindness of Strangers category
Seven kilometers I pedaled on my rented bicycle to get to Poukham Cave and a beautiful blue swimming hole along the river. The morning sky was nearly cloudless and the sun was beating down over the rocky dirt road underneath my spokes. By the time I arrived at Poukham, my body and clothing were drenched in sweat and I was ready to be embraced by the crystalline river. An old banyan tree-lined with wooden steps led up to a platform about 15 feet above the water, and there was a rope swing that dangled from the branches. I grabbed hold of a long bamboo pole with which to guide the rope to my hands and plunged into the water. The refreshment was immediate, sweat-washed clean by blue beauty. I climbed back up the platform for a repeat experience, loving this place that continuously drew me out of my shell. I swam up to a shallow cave in the rock formations to the side of the river and mired myself underneath its cool overhang, the dank scent of mud and clay permeating the air. Read full storyBali Shadows
By Anne Sigmon
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Travel & Shopping category
“Both light and shadow are the dance of love.” —Rumi
“Why go back?” my travel-loving, adventure-obsessed husband, Jack, wanted to know. “Places like Bali are never as good the second time around. I was planning to return, alone, after twenty years to a land steeped in ritual, myth and mystery, the most popular island in the South Sea, the artistic heart of the Indonesian archipelago. I’d discovered Bali in 1991 at the tail end of a wild Borneo exploit, my first-ever trip to the bush, my first-ever overseas journey with Jack, a month after he slipped an engagement ring on my left hand. Read the full storySkiing on the Surface of the North Idaho Panhandle
By Tim Leffel
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Travel & Sports category
As we made fresh tracks in the powder skiing down from one of the summits at Lookout Pass, our views were mountains in every direction, open ski slopes in front of us, and no towns or cities anywhere in sight. In this rugged part of Northern Idaho where silver mines once flourished, the biggest feeder city to the ski resorts is Spokane, WA—not exactly a metropolis. “Lift lines” are something that skiers in urban areas far away talk about. Not here. We four men traveling together never saw a lift line in four days of skiing at three different Idaho Panhandle ski resorts. Read the full storyAt Home in an Irish Castle
By Gillian Kendall
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Funny Travel category
We were lost, and we didn’t even know what country we were in. My boyfriend and I were driving around near the unmarked border between Ireland (which is still in Europe) and Northern Ireland (no longer in Europe, still part of the UK), looking for our lodging, which actually was a Lodge: the Lodge at Castle Leslie. We were nearing the end of a long journey, flying from California, and the fulfillment of a travel fantasy: to stay at a real castle. Our Peugeot (a rental upgrade that already had us us feeling like royalty) had come with a GPS, and the GPS lady charmed us with directions in a delightful accent, but as we entered the town of Glaslough, she wasn’t making much sense. She seemed lost, too. Read the full storyCrouching Tigerfish, Hidden Hippos
By Andrew Tarcia
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Travel & Sports category
It’s possible to travel just about anywhere these days to catch a fish, but when you venture into the deep bush of southwest Tanzania, you are officially taking your fishing into the danger zone. Yet, as I cast my fly in the placid Mynera River, the risk seemed distant. The rumble of thunderclouds only served to warn me that tigerfish season in East Africa was ending. The urgency today was trying to catch what many consider the hardest-fighting freshwater fish around. The day had been a grind, with tigerfish proving elusive, the midday sun frying us alive. Suddenly, the river erupted like a bubbling cauldron. A crocodile’s tail slapped at the surface, awakening another submerged creature from its afternoon nap. Upset and groggy, this semi-aquatic mammal emerged, all four tons of him, and scurried up the muddy bank. “Hippo!” screamed fishing guide Oliver Santoro. “Rods in the boat! Let’s get out of here!” Read the full storyMother’s Ruin
By Tiffany Hawk
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Travel & Food category
At the height of the 18th-century Gin Craze, London didn’t just have an alcohol problem. It had a woman problem. If you believe the reformers of the time, women were sloshed beyond reason, neglecting their husbands and children, keeping messy homes, pawning their household goods, even selling their bodies and spreading syphilis. No fewer than eight Gin Acts would be put on the books before the tide would begin to ebb on the addictive spirit known as Ladies Delight and Mother’s Ruin. Nearly three centuries later, London is amid a new gin craze, and I’m a 40-something wife and mother who is soon to be so hammered on gin at 10 a.m. that I fear I’ll stagger right off the iron footbridge and into the Regent’s Canal. Read the full storyTurn Left at the Pigeons
By Lisa VanderVeen
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Women's Travel category
I hear them before I enter the Kora. Flapping and cooing, they feast on corn offerings from red plastic bowls. I know this because I’ve been here before, in what feels like a different life. I watch a woman crouch down in a position not available to me since I was five, hands busily tying a piece of brown straw around the base of a small piece of bok choy. Finished, she tosses it neatly into a pile, and grabs the next from the box, all the while chattering animatedly to her neighbor in Nepali, a language I cannot understand. It's 6:30 a.m. in Kathmandu and the pilgrims have come to circumambulate the Kora at Boudhanath Stupa. Read the full storyManhauling From The Right Side of The Brain
By Karen Joyce
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Bad Trip category
It was a typical Sunday at McMurdo Station, Antarctica: cement-grey skies and a thirty-knot katabatic heading straight at us from the South Pole. All week long we’d worked our 10-hours days with the mid-summer November skies a clear cerulean blue, with hardly a breath of wind. And now of course, Sunday: our only day off, always with this misery weather. Read full storyMeeting Baba Yaga
By Elizabeth Van Zandt
Eighteenth Annual Solas AwardsGold Winner in the Most Unforgettable Character Category It’s evening, and I’m sitting at a café table alongside the cobbled main street of the ancient village of Sarlat. While I wait for my dinner to arrive, I sip a glass of Bordeaux, enjoying the mellow taste and the soft hum of French coming from nearby tables. “Hello.” I look up and there stands Rayna, the only other American in town and the last person I really want to see. Read full storyBoya
By Heather Corrigan Phillips
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Travel & Transformation Category
Beneath the low staccato of whispered Arabic, it was unmistakable, that look of derision: a sidelong glance, subtle tilt of head, and subsequent eye roll to the girl in the row next to her. That flush of intimacy between two girls sharing a cruel secret. A young girl’s mockery is apparent in any language, it seems. Read full storyEscaping Firecrackers in the Desert
By Lisa VanderVeen
Gold Solas Award Winner in the Adventure Travel category
The night is black. I can’t read your features, but I know you’re scowling. We’ve been held captive behind your blockade for the past six hours and we’ve found a way around it. You threw rocks at the car that came to rescue us and now I’m running to it, through the frigid Bolivian desert, clinging to my suitcase. We don’t speak a word to each other–I don’t speak Spanish, and you don’t speak English. Your anger transcends words, though, and in the end, I understand: It’s not about me. I’m a pawn, and I’m terrified. Read full storyLittle Paris
by Taylor Jennings
Eighteenth Annual Solas Award Silver Winner in the Destination category
Dracula’s castle. I could just see it perched on the top of the hill. Not an ominous silhouette for a sunny day in Transylvania, where it’s known as Castle Bran, the reputed home of Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration for Bram Stocker’s classic tale. Here I was at the beginning of the 21st Century to investigate a plan by Romania’s Ministry of Tourismto transform the medieval castle into a million-dollar Dracula theme park. It was an irresistible story for the foreign press, including me, but Ruxandra, my Romanian friend and colleague, said it wasn’t popular with locals and has yet to be built despite repeated attempts. Read full storyToiletry Bag
By Jennifer Elle Lewis
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Bronze Winner in the Women’s Travel category
I spent five days packing a toiletry bag. It was for my first business trip post-baby. I’d already read in the Attachment Parenting Handbook exactly how many days I could be away from my six-month-old before he was irrevocably traumatized, calculated how many times a day I must pump before my milk would dry up, and ordered the most efficient and quietest breast pump for the long journey to New Delhi – but I wasn’t finished packing yet. That damn toiletry bag just wasn’t ready. If only I could get it organized, I’d be ready to go. Read full storyThe Art of Crossing the Street
By Emma Morrell
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Family Travel category
The complete bedlam in Hanoi’s old quarter sent thrills through me, but only from the safety at the edge of the road. Hundreds of motos – bicycles, motorbikes and scooters – dodged around each other on the street in front of my children and me, as if they were weaving an intricate braid. Cheerful tooting and honking intermingled with invisible clouds of exhaust fumes and fragrances of phô broth and fried spring rolls. I couldn’t help but catch my breath and smile. The hum of the city’s motos buzzed through our bodies and fizzed as far as our skin and eyes, making Hanoi everything I had never dared hope it would be. As long as I didn’t have to cross that road. Read full storyThe Tides of War
By Mike Bernhardt
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Gold Winner in the Culture & Ideas category
Our journey began in 1997 with an old, hand-bound book, its thick, padded covers wrapped in light green fabric embroidered with a pattern of cracked glass and flowers. We found it hidden underneath a sweater in Margaret Hansen’s dresser drawer. By the time Margaret died at the age of 103, she had lived through two world wars and survived her children, two husbands, and a 96-year-old boyfriend. Everyone, even her neighbors, called her Oma — German for grandma. Her eyes were gray and piercing but kind. They smiled when she looked at you. Read full storyTo the Thai Woman Who Touched Me
By Pier Nirandara
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Grand Prize Bronze Winner
Your hands touch my bare skin. They press, stroke, rub. “Pressure okay?” you say, the English heavily accented. I recognize the intonation immediately. “Khon Thai ka.” The words leave my mouth in a strange way—muffled from the pillow pressed around my face, and rusty from disuse. Your fingers pause. After all, I don’t look Thai. I thought you were Chinese, you respond in our mother tongue. People always think that. It’s because they can’t tell us apart. To them, we’re all the same. Especially here. Read full storyThe Lessons of Drnc
Lance Mason
Grand Prize Silver Winner in the Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards
Early August, 1970. Gearing down on the last hill, a quartz-white sun rising behind me, aiming the VW microbus onto the Bay of Kotor’s perimeter road. Last week I’d farewelled Istanbul’s Golden Horn and the Old City’s bazaars, swung west and north though Greece, motoring up through Macedonia and Skopje. In a week I’d load the bus on a ship from Bremerhaven to California, but was detouring now up the Adriatic coast because, weeks before, some German friends in Köln had praised its beauty. So, I’d crossed the Kosovan passes near Pech, encircled by the fists of igneous, snow-strewn crags, and then wheeled down through Montenegro to Kotor. Read full storyYou Can’t Get There From Here
By Sue Parman
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Grand Prize Gold Winner
“You can’t get there from here.” The young woman working in the Tourist Office in Stornoway pointed to the map between us. Stornoway was on the Island of Lewis and Harris, the largest island in a hundred-and-thirty-mile chain of islands called the Scottish Outer Hebrides that lay, like the fossilized skeleton of a giant fish, some forty miles west of the Scottish mainland. Forty-five miles to the south of Stornoway lay the island of Berneray where I wanted to go in order to visit a Danish anthropologist named Susanne Barding. Read full storySummer at Nrityagram Village
Sumitra Mattai
Gold Solas Award Winner in the Women's Travel category
I arrived at Nrityagram dance village in Karnataka, India in July of 2014 with the monsoon rain. Red clay earth stained my socks and sneakers as I followed the worn stone pathways. Coconut trees and banana palms slow-danced in the breeze, and the air was fragrant with jasmine and frangipani. Stone structures rose from the verdant landscape in gentle, curving lines, their henna-hued facades painted with white line drawings. As I wandered the campus, I felt the presence of spirit life, of souls lost and found. Read moreThe New Ascentionist
By Kang-Chun Cheng
Gold Solas Award Winner in the Travel & Sports category
When I arrived in Kipwa, it was so hot I nearly threw up. It was February, in the middle of summer, just a stone’s throw from the equator, with the kind of ferocious heat that steams water in a Nalgene, disintegrates cheese and chocolate, and makes me want to do nothing but lie down on a bouldering mat –– anything other than go cragging. Read moreCrushing Christmas with the Coast Guard
By Gillian Kendall
Gold Solas Award Winner in the Cruise Travel category
Holidays have been weird the last couple of years. Masks, distancing, vaccines or the lack thereof have all made the season a lot less bright. And forget merry: the 2021 season of light could be darkly depressing. But despite the general angst in America and Covid-concerns worldwide, I'm spending this December with a bunch of people who put the "sea" back in "season" and break through incredible obstacles to enjoy the "holiday routine" -- I'm a civilian instructor on a US Coast Guard icebreaker. Read moreWhere is their Tibet?
By Mary Litrell
Gold Solas Award Winner in the Elder Travel category
A crowd of more than a thousand folds me in as we climb a hill toward the plaza outside the Dalai Lama’s temple high in the Indian Himalayas. Today, March 10, 2019, marks the 60th Anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising—the day His Holiness fled Tibet. Three stoic-faced elders motion me to join them on a low wooden bench. I sit among hundreds dressed in faded Tibetan attire—well-worn leather boots, dark holey sweaters, and knitted caps pulled down over the ears. Read moreEnduring The Promised Land
By Shoshi Parks
Gold Solas Award Winner in the Adventure Travel category
It’s unbearably hot in Portland, Oregon. Not humid, Pacific Northwest hot, but dry hot. Southern California hot. Desert hot. Last night, lying awake in the canicule, the acrid scent of wildfire smoke rippling through the room, I finished Narcissa Whitman’s journal. In 1836 she and her new husband, Marcus Whitman, a doctor and Methodist missionary, began their journey on the Oregon Trail — a trek that made her and another traveler with their group, protestant missionary Eliza Hart Spalding, the first white women to cross the Rocky Mountains. Read moreHow the Swiss Make You Say Bad Words
By Ben Ren
Silver Solas Award Winner in the Funny Travel category
It was during dinner that Mom uttered a most terrifying sentence: “I want to visiting Europe again.” Dad, who was in the midst of airlifting a swath of noodles into his mouth, immediately paused operations, the carb-heavy threads dangling precariously from his chopsticks like loose wires. I gulped as a wave of anxiety washed over me. It had been three years since we last set foot on the continent, and for that my feet were grateful. The blisters–our painfully-won souvenirs–had only just healed. Read moreIn the Garden of the Fox
By Anne Sigmon
Gold Solas Award Winner in the Travel & Healing category
My visit to Kyoto’s famous Fushimi Inari shrine veered off track even before I left the parking lot. One of Japan’s oldest and most revered Shinto shrines, Fushimi Inari was the one site I’d most wanted to explore in depth as I traveled around the country with a group of friends. Fushimi is a UNESCO World Heritage site founded in 711 AD. The shrine sits on a holy mountain, a shaded retreat with altars dotted on a tangle of forested trails that snake up a seven-hundred-sixty-four-foot peak. It is guarded, believers say, by magical foxes, those tricky denizens of Japanese folklore. Read moreShopping for Salvation in Nicaragua
By Tiffany Hawk
Silver Solas Award Winner in the Travel & Shopping category
My Spanish 101 may be buried under 25 years of rust, but when our bus driver says, “quince minutos,” it’s clear that I’m in big trouble. Our guide, Jesus, doles out facts about Lake Nicaragua’s freshwater sharks and the lagoon atop the nearby volcano, a UNESCO biosphere reserve. A woman across the aisle complains about her knees as her husband pretends not to hear her. The couple behind us teaches bridge strategies to the couple behind them. In our mid-40s, my husband and I are 30 years younger than anyone else on this tour, which is important: it means no one on this bus can help me. Read moreThe Treatment of Dead Enemies
By Laurie McAndish King
Gold Solas Award Winner in the Most Unforgettable Character category
Four decapitated heads, each the size of a large grapefruit, materialize as my eyes adjust to the shadows. The heads, which hang at eye level on thin cords, each have long dark hair and shiny black faces, with eyes and lips that are sutured shut. They are human heads, on display in a tall glass case at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, England. I creep forward until my nose touches the glass and gawk. Two of the heads sport long, braided hair with red and white feathers plaited in, and decorative threads sewn into their upper and lower lips. The other two look more natural, with straight hair and no facial adornments. They are tsantsas—shrunken heads—made by the Shuar and Achuar people who live in the Amazonian rainforest. Read more...Ghosts in the Black Forest
By Marianne Rogoff
Gold Solas Award Winner in the Love Story category
Jayne and I are traveling to Switzerland, to an international conference on the depth psychology of Carl Jung. On our way we’re staying overnight in Freiburg with Josef, a German she met here over thirty years ago when she was a young American exchange student. She had told me he was her first true love and first hard breakup so I am a little worried about the plan, but when we arrive he welcomes us with warm hugs and smiles as we leave our shoes and baggage at the door. We’ve been on the move through airports and train stations for days; we’re animated, wired and tired, and when Josef offers fancy house slippers to wear, they are all so sparkly we can’t decide. He is excited, playful, as he slips his favorite pairs on our feet and carries our carry-ons upstairs to show us around, sliding across the wood floors in his socks like a kid. He suggests “some good German beer and a bite to eat” and we accept and settle in while he bustles around, aiming to please, at home in the kitchen, arranging plates of food with panache and ease. Read moreReconciliation
By Rosie Cohan
Silver Solas Award Winner in the Travel & Healing category
I land in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital in April, 2000. Kosovo, a small land-locked republic that was part of the former Republic of Yugoslavia. This ravaged land was part of the Serbian massacre of Muslims, as was Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1998-1999 Balkan war. Trudging down the metal steps onto the tarmac in the Spring of 2000, I see at least fifty UN and NATO soldiers in brown and camouflage uniforms, loaded down with ammunition belts and automatic weapons. They scurry around guarding a few commercial and military planes, tanks, and several white Red Cross ambulances. Entering a temporary metal shack that serves as an arrival area, a bald, middle-aged man is eyeing each passenger. Below his faded, black leather jacket is a slightly wrinkled white shirt that resembles his pale, drawn face. I am one of the few women and my bewildered look must have identified me. He asks my name, and introduces himself as Mustafa, Vice President of the Riinvest, the economic think-tank I am to consult with on behalf of a Washington, D.C. non-profit. Read moreNegotiating with Nomads
By Mike Bernhardt
Seventeenth Annual Solas Award Gold Winner in the Travel & Shopping category
A parade of tables lined the sunny, cobblestoned promenade, displaying hand-inlaid wooden boxes, ceramic vases, fossils, and silver teapots. A beige stone wall, festooned with colorful tapestries and inset with arched, wooden doorways, bordered on one side. A hint of brine wafted on the light breeze. As I strolled in Essaouira, my favorite town in Morocco, a man called out to me from the entrance of his emporium. "Come into my shop and have a look around!" His ample frame was clothed in a brown robe and a black turban; his round face wore a smile radiant as the morning sun. "I'm not buying, I did all of my shopping last year," I called back. On that first visit to Morocco, my copious purchases nearly exceeded the airline’s weight limit. Somehow, his smile brightened even more. "No problem, just have a look anyway!"The Ride
By Heather Williams
Seventeenth Annual Solas Award Silver Winner in the Bad Trip category
It was 1972 and I was hitchhiking with my friend Wendy in Northern California. It's hard to believe now. Women eagerly climbed into cars with strange men back then, especially in California where everything, anything, was possible. I was an adventuresome 22-year-old. I had dropped out of Oberlin College and traveled west on my own. Wendy was eighteen, from New York. She and I became friends in Los Angeles where we were volunteer community organizers for Cesar Chavez’s lettuce boycott. Now, having moved to Berkeley, we were headed far north for our next adventure: visiting her brother at a rustic summer camp high in the Trinity Alps. The campers hadn’t arrived yet. We would be hanging out with counselors as they prepared. Read moreLines of Duty
By Lauren Napier
Seventeenth Annual Solas Award Gold Winner in the Family Travel category
A chain-link fence topped with barbed wire guards a collection of crumbling adobe buildings. Scrawled graffiti warns “DANGER” through splintered wooden beams. On the other wall, “home” and “daddy” can be made out — the spray paint faded. I cannot step any closer to read the graffiti in its entirety. Cowboy boots cover my ankles and protect against snake bites, but the brambles and burs collected in the dry ditch between the unpaved road and the base of the fence, roughly six feet away, prove treacherous. No car has passed since my travel companion, Vic, and I pulled over at this forgotten site in Arizona. Driven by a never-waning desire to seek the less seen, we had followed roads that looked like pencil sketches on the map. On this day, my journey here is not yet personal. Read moreThe Cauldron of Calamities
By Masha Nordbye
Seventeenth Annual Solas Award Gold Winner in the Bad Trip category
On an unseasonably cold January evening in Los Angeles, I excitedly boarded my flight to Barbados. After several years of unpredictable travel due to the pandemic, I had signed on for a small Caribbean cruise (with only 60 guests). With COVID cases declining and being triple vaccinated (and everyone onboard required to wear face masks), I surmised that my risk was fairly minimal. The voyage would depart from Bridgetown, the capital, and sail on to St Lucia, the Grenadines, and Grenada, with final stops at the Dutch ABC islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao. Having just completed an intense work project, I looked forward to tranquil sailings amidst the tropical islands. But after landing, security informed me that I had taken an incorrect PCR test, and thus needed to repeat one at the airport.
...little did I know then the dramatic fate that awaited me in the weeks ahead. Read full storyA Magic Itinerary from a Stranger in Morocco
By Tim Leffel
Seventeenth Annual Solas Award Gold Winner in the Kindness of Strangers category
(this essay originally appeared in Perceptive Travel)
It was an eerie kind of quiet as we walked along the huge dunes at dawn, the only sound being the crunching of the sand under our feet. From this spot on the edge of the Sahara Desert in Morocco, it was nothing but dunes as far as we could see, extending beyond the horizon to Algeria, though borders seem rather meaningless in this landscape. "I'm so glad we made it here," I said as we stopped to take a photo. If it hadn't been for a random stranger we met when we arrived in Morocco, it probably never would have happened. Read full storyTime Passage
By Alenka Vrecek
Seventeenth Annual Solas Award Gold Winner in the Destination Story category
(this essay was originally published on AlenkaVrecek.com)
I am standing on the starboard side of the ferry, just behind the bridge, stretching my neck and entire upper half of my body as far over the railing as possible. On the verge of plummeting into the emerald-green sea below, I am scanning the shore for my parents. Returning to the island of Šipan in Croatia, where I spent endless summers in my youth, simultaneously fills me with excitement and trepidation. Over thirty years have passed since I moved to California. I have tried to return to the island as often as my work and family life permitted, but the pandemic has delayed my current visit by nearly two years, which for my parents, who are nearly ninety years old, must have seemed like an eternity. Read full storyPteropods in the Balance
By Laine Gonzales
Seventeenth Annual Solas Award Gold Winner in the Animal Encounter category
(a version of this essay first appeared in Hidden Compass)
Clad in three layers of thermal underwear, insulated bib overalls, a parka, and waders, my range of motion is seriously impaired. I cautiously step into the Antarctic waters of McMurdo Sound — inching my bulbous “bunny boots" forward, carefully securing one foot before taking the next step. I am undeniably out of my element. This Southern California science teacher lives a routine existence, my days dictated by a 5:30 a.m. alarm and the structure of a high-school bell schedule. That’s not to say I don’t navigate tough terrain in the classroom, ever pivoting between the biological wonders of our world and the stark facts of a changing planet. My students, who are inheriting both the awe and the urgency, hang in the balance. Read full story.Encounter at Hadrian’s Wall
By Connard Hogan
Seventeenth Annual Solas Award Bronze Winner in the Travel & Sports category
The early hour, along with the jet lag which gripped me like a vise, muddied my senses and conspired to mute my enthusiasm. But I re-stuffed my day pack, and with Hadrian’s Wall Path guidebook in hand, legged it the quarter mile under gray overcast to the ruins of Segedunum Fort, the eastern terminus of Hadrian’s Wall. I could’ve hired a car or used convenient countryside buses. I could’ve accessed “the Wall” from two-lane roads in dozens of places, taken short strolls, and arrived at my evening’s lodging with my feet none the worse for wear. But no! I wanted to hoof Hadrian’s Wall Path westward for the entire eighty-four miles from Segedunum (Wallsend, Newcastle) to Maia (Bowness-on-Solway). I’d decided to collect the six stamps on a “Hadrian’s Wall Path Summer Passport.” Read full storyA Long Century
By Yefim Somin
Seventeenth Annual Solas Award Bronze winner in the Men’s Travel category
(a version of this essay was originally published at YefimSomin.com)
My cousin Suzanne left Russia for France in the early 1970s, when only a few managed to emigrate. Little communication was possible across the Iron Curtain, but one thing stuck in my memory: there is a place in Paris, she wrote, where the name of our common relative is on a memorial wall. Almost 30 years later I am taking my teenage son on a grand tour of Paris. Metro Picpus is in the outer 12th arrondissement, far from the tourist crowds, but that’s where we are heading one day. Read moreThe Hotel Ricardo
By Taylor Jennings
Seventeenth Annual Solas Award Silver Winner in the Adventure Travel category Of all the gin joints in all the hotels in all the countries in Africa, the Hotel Ricardo in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, probably most resembles Rick’s Café in ‘Casablanca’ if not physically, at least metaphysically. It was long after sunset when we left the endless desert behind and entered a populated area where golden charcoal fires flickered across the hills. Accordingly, I was completely unprepared for the shock of electricity when the driver stopped at the end of a short driveway in front of a two-story tin-roof hotel with a welcoming open doorway. Read full storyLetting Go of Hungary
By Ying-Ann (Annie) Chen
Seventeenth Annual Solas Award Gold Winner in the Funny Travel Category
When I turned twenty, all the things I wanted got in my head. So, I went to Hungary. I scrolled through the program website of simple synecdoches. Brazil: Christ the Redeemer, Croatia: lakes, Mauritius: monkeys, Mongolia: yurts, Thailand: temples, Poland: colorful buildings, and Romania: Medieval architecture. Hungary: sunflower fields. Off I went. I stood in a clean suburban house under a slanting red tiled roof and windows that opened outwards. This was my host home in the village of Zalaegerszeg. I gifted my host-family Ghirardelli chocolate, a Sather Gate magnet, and pineapple cake. The city near where I live, where I go to school, and where I am from, I explained. Read moreMy Posthumous Ally
By Gary Singh
Seventeenth Annual Solas Award Gold Winner in the Travel & Transformation CategoryAt the Casa Pascoli Museum in San Mauro, Italy, I found a posthumous ally.
Over the years, I had written several travel stories “walking in the footsteps” of deceased writers. Abandoned buildings and old haunts, long-gone locales, gravesites and the outskirts of history all inspired me more than contemporary attractions.
I didn’t care about four-star restaurants in Venice. I wanted to raise the ghosts.
Many of these stories were contrivances—art for art’s sake—but something about the process must have served a healing purpose. I never thought about it, therapeutically speaking, until I explored Casa Pascoli.
Ambush on the Cumberland Plateau
By Brian Reisinger
Grand Prize Silver Winner in the Seventeenth Annual Solas Awards
A hunting trip in America’s original colonial backwoods was supposed to be full of lessons for his 12-year-old nephew.
We were deep in rural Tennessee when the rain came. It was light and so quick that the sun was still out, and it danced in the sunlight as we drove on, coming and going. It was hard to tell whether the rain was just starting and stopping, or whether we were traveling through different pockets of a land with secrets. That land was the historic Cumberland Plateau, and we had come to this high wooded country to hunt wild hogs. [Read more]The Weight of Paradise
By Cherene Sherrard
Grand Prize Gold Winner in the Seventeenth Annual Solas Awards
(this essay originally appeared in Hidden Compass)
Given the picture-perfect day, the narrow Oahu beach was peculiarly empty. A pair of newlyweds had the entire panorama as backdrop for their wedding photos. Far from shore, streaks of cirrus clouds formed a cross in a cobalt sky that met the white foam of the break. The rainbow arcs of parasails spun their stick figure riders like marionettes.
The water was the aqua blue of my dreams, but I couldn’t enjoy it. Turning away from the waves, I kept my eyes fixed on the bride and groom as they cycled through predictable romantic postures. We didn’t say a word, but I could feel my husband watching them, too. We were steeling ourselves — for the unpredictability of the water, and for the challenge that awaited us there. [Read more]To the Young Mom on Flight 1122
By Pier Nirandara
Grand Prize Bronze Winner in the Seventeenth Annual Solas Awards
Fourteen hours, five passengers, three seats, two longed-for countries, one memorial.
You shuffle down the aisle, toddler in tow, before plopping down in the middle seat beside me. Already flustered from the delayed flight and whatever connection you had to make, strands of hair escape down the sides of your face, framing brows downturned at the corners. Your expression crumples ruefully as you apologize profusely in advance: it was to be a long 14 hours, especially with your child in your lap. I smile politely—but the gesture quickly drops when your husband closes the aisle seat, armed with another child, a newborn.House of Transfiguration
By Dianne Cheseldine
Travel and Transformation Gold Winner in the Sixteenth Annual Solas Awards
Finding an oasis in the ancient medina of Fez.
Only a small plaque indicated the entrance to my riad, Dar Attajalli, meaning House of Transfiguration. The door opened and with one steep step I entered a new world. The young employee, Idris, greeted me with Salaam Alaikum in a soothing voice. He was tall and slender and moved with ease as he crossed the tiled floor of the courtyard. He was casually dressed in blue jeans and a light-colored cotton shirt, sneakers and a baseball cap, his dress contrasting with the old courtyard surrounding me. He lifted my heavy suitcase as if it were weightless and showed me to my room, the only one located on the ground floor. It was more beautiful than I had imagined, dimly lit with a huge bed clothed in an emerald-green spread and amber pillows displaying Berber designs. The floor was covered in carpets and several leather poufs in varying shades of blue, brown and red. The window of my room opened onto the courtyard from where I could contemplate the patterns of the wooden panels aligning the walls. I could hear the soothing sound of the fountain twenty-four hours a day.Journeys with an Amazonian Shaman
By Johnny Motley
Men's Travel Gold Winner in the Sixteenth Annual Solas Awards
Further proof that lives can change in an instant.
On the sixth day aboard an Amazonian cargo ship, I spied the faint outline of São Gabriel da Cachoeira from the aft deck. Located deep in the Upper Amazon, São Gabriel held the title of “Most Indigenous City in Brazil,” although “city” was a misnomer: São Gabriel was little more than a village that had sprung up around a Brazilian military base, an outpost intended to secure the nebulous borders between Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela.Boots Bilong Mi
By Patrick Ritter
Grand Prize Gold Winner in the Sixteenth Annual Solas Awards
On a dugout canoe trip through the interior of New Guinea, how far would you go for a pair of shoes?
I heard a splash behind me and I froze midstroke. Sounded close. I twisted around to see a large tree crashing into the water. The Sepik River winds across the swamplands of Papua New Guinea like a massive snake, its diet trees and eroded silt. The tree shuddered in the current. From the branches startled kingfishers escaped into flight, screeching. I glanced to Randy, my buddy from California, at the front of the dugout canoe. His face was sunburned and questioning. “No,” I said, “not a puk-puk.” In New Guinea the Pidgin English word for crocodile is puk-puk.Honor and the Sea
By Janna Brancolini
Grand Prize Silver Winner in the Sixteenth Annual Solas Awards
How a female pioneer of underwater archaeology teamed up with a Sicilian winemaker to save a priceless ancient shipwreck.
Buried beneath the floor of the Mediterranean, in waters so turbulent the epic poet Homer had imagined the thrashings of sea monsters, the ship waited. She had once defended an ancient settlement near modern-day Marsala, Sicily—until she was sunk in a dramatic battle during the third century B.C.E. For two millennia, people passed by her, unaware. As time wore on, the sea and its banks shifted, until water just deep enough to submerge a person stood between the vessel and its reclaimed glory. Yet her hiding place wasn’t the ship’s only secret: Her timbers held a clue to history.The Shakeout Trip
By Robert Dale Fama
Grand Prize Bronze Winner in the Sixteenth Annual Solas Awards
A premature midlife crisis, a sack of money, and a backpack combine to reveal that a beginner traveler learns quick in the Sahara.
We had already broken down five times when Amadou snapped the ignition key off in his dilapidated Land Rover. He reached up and rubbed his necklace, a black leather amulet that contained gris-gris, written prayers to protect and bring luck to the wearer. Beltrán lowered his head and made the sign of a cross. In Mali and surrounded by sand on the last leg to Timbuktu, a turn of a key changed everything. Suddenly, I thought we would never arrive, and with that, that I’d fail to accomplish the first phase of my round-the-world trip.Lifer
By Lisa Boice
Animal Encounter Gold Winner in the Fifteenth Annual Solas Awards
“The life list of a birdwatcher is of a different order. It’s not what you cross off that counts, but what you add.” —Terry Tempest Williams
The black sky was like a drop cloth over the prairie grass and the only thing we could see were the bugs darting in and out of the light from our car’s headlights. We were only 60 miles west from Houston in Eagle Lake, Texas, but the big city felt a lifetime away. I turned my neck to see behind us and the brightness of the headlight beams from another car made me wince. My husband, Steve, yawned, which made me yawn. It was early and we hoped we weren’t too late. We were in a hurry to get in line at the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge to witness the Attwater's Prairie-Chicken’s courting ritual. During March and April, the males go out to a lek, an area where animals—or in this case, birds—assemble to engage in courtship behavior. In the human world our leks have evolved from parties and bars to smartphone apps where singles attempt to impress and be impressed. But at this lek all the hope that male Prairie-Chickens can muster is on display in the middle of an expansive field as they perform an elaborate dance just after sunrise, which is why we were up early in the black of night. [Read More]Why I Love Baboons
By Lynn Brindell
Adventure Travel Gold Winner in the Fifteenth Annual Solas Awards
I think Beatus did it because he felt guilty. Or because he thought we’d give him a bigger tip. He’d gently rustled our tent flap that morning, the bright slit of light slicing through dark green shadows. “Good morning!” he softly called. “Game drive now!” We, The Newlyweds, usually slept in. But on our last day in Africa we left camp early, bundled against the mist and chill, our jeep the first to growl out and bounce along the rutted, mud way that passed for a road. I leaned into Rob, cold air rushing against my cheeks. We weren’t supposed to be in an open-air jeep, without windows or ceiling to protect us from the sudden onslaught of a storm or an animal’s pounce. But I think Beatus wanted to deliver, finally serving up that signature moment, an exotic and extraordinary miracle of nature, witnessed in the bush. [Read more]Laura: Lady of the Mexican Nights
By Edward Stanton
Grand Prize Bronze Winner (tie) in the Fifteenth Annual Solas Awards
You wanted to get farther away from home, beyond the border and Baja California, deeper into the country. The city of Saltillo lay on a slope of the Sierra Madre Oriental, just north of the central plateau, about 5,000 feet high. There you found a boardinghouse with a courtyard on Calle Xicoténcatl of sacred memory.
Your room opened onto the light-filled patio with a gurgling well, shade trees, cracked flower pots, a colossal zaguán or foyer with a carved wooden door. The courtyard was the hub of life for everyone in the house: the landlords Don Alfonso and Doña Hortensia; their daughter, her husband and their children; Panchita, a plump Indian woman who did most of the shopping, cooking and cleaning; a bachelor who taught Latin and Greek at several schools to make ends meet; uncountable dogs, cats and birds in cages. And then there was the woman who scandalized our whole house and neighborhood. Laura. [Read more]
Marriage, Dubois Style
By Colette O’Connor
Grand Prize Bronze Winner (tie) in the Fifteenth Annual Solas Awards
"Just add three letters to Paris and you have paradise." —Jules Renard
The family Dubois of Avenue Foch are French. That is to say, the family Dubois are different. In an age when nearly half of American marriages collapse, often in smoking heaps of anger, bitterness, pain, I often wondered, what does it take? Really, what does it take – to keep it together, if not forever, at least through thick and thin? So when I met the family Dubois of Paris’s Avenue Foch, I thought, Ah! A chance to understand how it’s done. I thought, Oh! If Tolstoy’s “happy families are all alike” idea was working out for the family Dubois, as it certainly seemed to be, given how they appeared so rich and thin and cheerful at lunches I shared with them, or quick aperitifs, then here was a family to study. So observe them, I did, like an explorer a continent foreign, with fascination. Here is what I found:The House Within
By Jacob Kemp
Grand Prize Silver Winner in the Fifteenth Annual Solas Awards
When I turned twenty-one, I spent the better part of a year in an attic, hiding from Nazis.
The calendar read 2011. I had just graduated from college. I was offered a role in The Diary of Anne Frank, to play Peter Van Daan. So I packed a suitcase, a carry-on, my winter coat, and left New York only weeks after I arrived—for Amsterdam, 1942. The actress playing Anne was a rising star in Chicago theater. A year later she’d be in a superhero movie, a blockbuster based on a comic-book. Onstage, she was a marvel. Scenes together, despite the long run of the show, the work and the sweat and the reaction of our energies each night, had that flinty and rare combination of absolute safety and vulpine unpredictability. We were well-matched. I awaited her articulation, her transformation into Anne, with the zeal of a tennis player anticipating a worthy opponent’s next serve. But in addition to being a formidable talent, she smoked.Headlights
Grand Prize Gold Winner in the Fifteenth Annual Solas Awards
There was danger, even in the presence of angels.
February is not the ideal time for a road trip to northern France, but the moodiness of the sea, wind, and sky appeals to a certain breed of loner like me, drawn to the echoing voids of the off-season. Coastal Normandy is famous for its dramatic weather, and in winter, it grows wilder still, with thrashing winds and squalls of frozen sleet that churn up from the English Channel. The region is a sweep of battlegrounds and fortified castles, stone-cold Norman abbeys, and craggy ports that have hosted centuries of departing and returning soldiers. Here, God and war forge their strange alliance, as they often do, and the backdrop of tempests, tides, and occasional shards of sunlight render it fertile ground for ghosts and their keepers. I had endeavored to Mont St. Michel to seek some perfect solitude.Passage of a Revered Teacher and Spiritual Leader
By Frances Klatzel
The Sherpa people of the Everest region mourn the Abbot of Tengboche Monastery, Ngawang Tenzin Zangbu, who passed away on October 10, 2020. Renowned for his commitment to the sacred valley of Khumbu and the Sherpa people, Tengboche Rinpoche was also well known among trekkers and mountaineers to Everest.
The allure of Everest, the highest (8,848 m) and most famous mountain, moves people of every nationality to visit the once remote Khumbu Valley, the homeland of the Sherpa people on the south side of Everest.
On a ridge in the heart of the valley, Tengboche Monastery holds a special place in the hearts and minds of both Sherpas and world visitors. Sherpas are an ethnic Buddhist people who settled valleys in the Himalaya about 500 years ago but have in the past century earned an extraordinary reputation on mountaineering expeditions.
Over the past sixty years, thousands of trekkers and climbers have paid their respects to the long time Abbot of Tengboche Monastery, Ngawang Tenzin Zangbu. His title, Tengboche Rinpoche, refers to his status as a ‘precious one’ and revered reincarnation of the monastery’s founder. The Sherpa people venerated Rinpoche as a strong unifying force and spiritual protector of the environment and culture of the Khumbu Valley. [read more]
The Trip That Took Me
By Marcie Kaplan
Elder Travel Bronze Winner in the Fourteenth Annual Solas Awards
The Himalayas helped her find intimacy, faith, and reassurance.
I had my first tingly feeling when we were hiking up through woods from a 10,000-foot Himalayan pass to a monastery, and we passed soldiers in camouflage. I expected surprises in Bhutan, a Buddhist country about happiness more than money, and had been surprised by the trail’s red limbs with bulbous, mossy growths that seemed to reach out at me. But I hadn’t expected soldiers in camouflage. My guide, Pema, greeted them, “Kuzuzangbo la,” and continued on, signaling me not to ask questions, I thought, so I nodded politely to the soldiers and followed Pema.Cubana Be, Cubana Bop
By Tom Miller
Grand Prize Bronze Winner (tie) in the Fourteenth Annual Solas Awards
The best guitar maker in Cuba.
Three events—baseball, Pope Jon Paul’s visit, and the Elián González case—exposed Cuba to the American public far beyond the embargo. Yet it was the improbable success of a handful of aging musicians that exposed a Cuba few knew and expanded the country’s audiences far beyond its bashers or its cheerleaders. The musicians went by the name of the Buena Vista Social Club, their music came from the 1950s and earlier, and their appeal was resolutely apolitical. On a visit to Havana, the American musician and producer Ry Cooder, not finding the musicians he sought, teamed up with Cuban producer Juan de Marcos to produce an album of exquisite sounds from another era.Our Ravaged Lady
By Erin Byrne
Grand Prize Gold Winner in the Fourteenth Annual Solas Awards
Little by little, his spirit expanded in harmony with the cathedral. —Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
She’s had many lives and here was the burnt offering of another. Notre Dame’s lace spire sizzled and crumbled as it fell, and the gigantic hole it created became a cauldron. Flames, golden to orange to red, assaulted the lavender-tinged Paris sky, and smoke billowed in gray and white explosions. Silhouetted against glowing cinders, her bell towers stood dignified but unprotected.Dark Train to Cusco
By Chase Nelson
Grand Prize Bronze Winner (tie) in the Fourteenth Annual Solas Awards
A modern-day rescue mission raises questions of life and death.
With her husband looking on, we took turns pumping her heart for her, pushing blood to her organs, to her extremities, hoping for a gasp to bring her back, tearful and afraid, from wherever she was now.Technically, they were called compressions. Less technically they were called rib-breaking, breast-exposing, desperate attempts at resurrection.
Love in a Time of Abundance
By Amanda Castleman
Grand Prize Silver Winner in the Fourteenth Annual Solas Awards
Navigating grief with the Okavango Delta’s last generation of Bushmen hunter-gatherers.
When he was 15, Ditshebo “Dicks” Tsima took his spear into the bush. Hunting was still legal in Botswana’s Okavango Delta then, so he could follow an ancient coming-of-age tradition, practiced for around 200,000 years by his people: the Bushmen.Most young men ran down giraffes, their lean muscles churning to pace the world’s tallest animals, which can cruise comfortably at 10 mph. Hour after hour, they pursued the lolloping giants through the mosaic landscape where Africa’s last wetland wilderness drains into the Kalahari Desert. Islands, scrub, and grasslands all flashed by: a fractal terrain of riverine lushness and heat-seared dust. “You chase them until they get exhausted and stand their ground,” Dicks explains. “Then you spear them. That’s the best way for a family to judge your worth. If you can chase down a giraffe, then your in-laws know you will take good care of your bride.”
Almost Blond in Nepal
By Nancy Bartley
Funny Travel Story Gold Winner in the Thirteenth Annual Solas Awards
I never asked to look like a female wrestler. You know the blondes in bikinis who toss each other around the ring or wallow wantonly through mud. But then again, maybe my problem simply was a matter of hair color – streaks of blond highlights in my brown hair, hair-coloring that marked me as distinctively western from my bangs to my trekking pants.I was in disbelief when one of the men gathered around the television at my hotel first mistook me for a pro wrestler. I’m a writer, not a wrestler, I protested. I was in Nepal, going to Mount Everest Base Camp to do a book on an American mountain climber who had two-minutes of fame for the heroic rescue of a climber left for dead. But the trouble began long before I boarded the Twin Otter for Lukla and the remote regions of Nepal. It began in Thamel, the tourist section of Kathmandu where trekkers and climbers buy outdoor gear at good prices. I was minutes from the hotel when a young man began to follow closely behind me. As I would learn, he had a great fascination with my hair.
Nuns on a Train
By Ashley Seashore
Doing Good or the Kindness of Strangers Gold Winner in the Thirteenth Annual Solas Awards
Half of my money is in my right shoe. My passport is in my left. The other half of my money is in an envelope in my underwear, and my credit cards, family photos, and one traveler’s check are in a flimsy pouch slung around my neck and hidden beneath my clothes. I have arrived in Rome in the dead of night at the wrong train station and I’m certain that the only reason I’ve been unmolested so far is thanks to the grace of a small crew of Sicilian nuns who have now left me.Stazione Sant-Oreste is dark and empty. The shops and ticket counters are closed; the people are gone. There are too many shadows and echoes. I wait nervously as furrow-browed station patrolman Pierre-Luis takes my measure. Will he fulfill his promise to the nuns to look after me? Or will he do what I can see he wants to do, which is abandon me to whatever awaits me in the night? After all, he only made the promise so the nuns would stop yelling at him and poking him in the chest with their godly, determined fingers.
Strangers in the Bush
By Susan Bloch
Destination Story Gold Winner in the Thirteenth Annual Solas Awards
I’m traveling into unknown territory with a man I just met. His name is Karl, my safari guide here in Namibia, and we’re driving along a coast shaped by death and diamonds. A coast where shifting sand dunes bury secrets, mysteries, and skeletons; where for centuries, Atlantic waves smashed sails, masts, gunwales, and rudders, against treacherous rocks; where secrets drowned and secrets were lost at sea; where secrets skulk in rusted ships’ keels and hulls and lie camouflaged inside the bleached whale ribcages littering the beaches. The secrets of what shipwrecked sailors did to survive the torture of thirst, hunger, and exposure; secrets shared between sailors and prostitutes about buried treasure; and in the late 1930s, how Germany’s secret plan to recapture Southern Africa was smuggled to Nazi sympathizers in the region. These tales had captivated me for decades. But no secret was ever so carefully guarded as that by Karl—his family scandal. The secret I didn’t know when the two of us trekked alone into the bush.That Other Hijab Story
By Maryah Converse
Culture and Ideas Gold Winner in the Thirteenth Annual Solas Awards
When I tell people that I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Jordan, the response is usually predictable: “Wow. How was that?” How am I supposed to answer that in few enough words that their eyes don’t glaze over? Overwhelming. Amazing. The hardest job you’ll ever love. A place where I was always and inexplicably a foreigner and a daughter of the desert at the same time. And sooner or later, they ask the inevitable question: “Did you have to…?”This Never Happens
By Anne Lowrey
Bad Trip Gold Winner in the Thirteenth Annual Solas Awards
"Nunca ha pasado aquí," he repeated. I shrugged as if I didn’t hear him, though I understood every word. “This never happens.” Except it did. I sat silently in the back of the rusted car that was taking me slowly away from the events of the past few days. I had run out of words to say in Spanish. In the middle of Colombia’s coffee country, with nothing but the clothes on my back, I was too exhausted to be angry. “This never happens” was all anybody seemed to be able to say to me when I told them. Each time the phrase came it spoke with a loaded look that also pleaded, “Please don’t tell anyone.” Why did getting robbed with a gun to my head feel like some terrible secret I’d be forced to keep?The Place Where Norman Slept
By Teresa O'Kane
Animal Encounters Gold Winner in the Thirteenth Annual Solas Awards
Norman is a solitary old bull elephant who lives on Amakhala Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Years ago, he spent his days with his elephant friend George, until George had a battle with an electric fence. These days Norman wanders alone, joining the breeding herd only during mating season. The rest of the time he observes the other elephants from a distance or ignores them completely. Norman is bigger than most elephants his age. He is the one who asserts discipline over the herd and metes out punishment when he and his eight tons deem it necessary.The House on KVR Swamy Road
By Sivani Babu
Grand Prize Bronze Winner in the Thirteenth Annual Solas Awards
We push through a sea of people and cows, the dust and smog swirling red and heavy, giving the scene around us the hazy air of a vintage photograph. A calf chews languidly on a banana as flies buzz around its head. We walk down the street as the tinny sound of temple music floats by and the aromas of everyday life assault our senses: fruits, spices, incense, the musk of oxen, diesel, smoke. Nearly two decades have passed since I last walked KVR Swamy Road, but I still remember the childhood admonitions to keep the dust down by not dragging my feet. I laugh. A drop in the bucket, I think to myself, but I make sure to pick my feet up anyway, hopping, jumping, leaping over puddles and pungent piles of cow manure.The Citroën and the Pomegranate
By Matthew Félix
Grand Prize Silver Winner in the Thirteenth Annual Solas Awards
I’ve traveled extensively. But you’d never know it from the looks of my apartment. Between an almost obsessive insistence on traveling light—never carrying more than one backpack, which fits into any overhead bin—and a general aversion to accumulating things, I hardly ever bring back mementos from the road. That’s what made my attraction to the pomegranates all the more peculiar.The Mystery of the Sahara
By David Robinson
Grand Prize Winner of the Thirteenth Annual Solas Awards
In 1965, I was driven across the Sahara by a woman whose real name I never knew. I’ve been trying to find her ever since. I was working in Nigeria at the time. In West Africa, even if you never see the actual Sahara, you are always conscious of its presence to the north. During the winter months, the desert asserts itself through the Harmatan winds that kick up dust storms and cause dry skin, hacking coughs, and chills among the populace as well as vivid sunsets. But in any season, just to see a Hausa man on the street is to feel the pull of the desert.Mideast Uprising
By Sharon Kreider
Travel Memoir Gold winner of the Twelfth Annual Solas Awards
Before the internet, Google, or cellphones, the journey overland from Europe to Asia took time, ingenuity, and more than a little courage. Travel through Turkey, Iran, and Syria can be difficult today but was especially challenging for a young, white twenty-year-old woman touring these regions alone in the 1970s.In February 1977, I found myself stuck at Gubulak, the border crossing from Turkey into Iran. Johan, someone I met in Greece, and I had been turned away from a Syrian boundary a few weeks earlier. Naively, we thought a bus service would just be there. Not only did such a thing not exist, but Iran had travel bans from sunset to sunrise. I was also completely unaware that civil resistance had commenced in Iran which led to the Islamic Revolution and the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi or 'the Shah.' I didn't see another woman anywhere.
Hung, the Boat Woman of Hue
By Maxine Rose Schur
Most Unforgettable Character Silver winner in the Twelfth Annual Solas Awards
I raised the expectation, You shook your head sadly. Like fish in water and fowl in the air It’s not easy to meet… I saw you off on your way And felt hundreds of jumbled feelings. —Nguyen Binh (1918-1966)
For years I had loved the words “Perfume River.” I imagined sailing down this Vietnam waterway of which I knew nothing. I imagined it smelled gorgeous and the experience would be one of romance and poetry. That’s why on my single day in Hue, the ancient, imperial capital of Vietnam, the first thing I did was to inquire how to take a boat ride on the Perfume River.Finding the House My Father Built
By May Gee
Elder Travel Bronze winner of the Twelfth Annual Solas Awards
A few thin, gray hairs skimmed the top of the elderly man’s pointed head, just like my father’s hair used to on his. Faint crinkles touched the skin around the old man’s eyes and deep creases ran from the edge of his nostrils to the outsides of his lips. All that was missing was a chest-length wispy mustache and goatee, and he could have been one of the Eight Immortals from Chinese mythology.Welcome Back Again
By Matthew Félix
Doing Good or the Kindness of Strangers Gold winner of the Twelfth Annual Solas Awards
Nine hours after leaving Fez, my French friend Sophie and I arrived in Tangier. Although we had walked to the train station the morning of our departure, this time we were arriving late at night. We opted to get a cab, a ride that shouldn’t have cost more than five or six dirhams, or less than a dollar. Past experience having left me with a strong aversion to taxis—I’ll always choose walking great distances over taking a cab in places I don’t know—my stomach was wrapped in familiar knots as we came out of the station.The Five Wise Men of the Voodoo Trail
By Kevin Dimetres
Under the Cedars of Parc Perdrix
By Becky Band Jain
Time Travelers
By T Stores
Family Travel Gold winner of the Twelfth Annual Solas Awards
On a rainy fall weekend, leaves brilliant with failing light, I hear Mr. Spock from my living room in rural Vermont: “Live long and prosper.” I smile, glad that James and Izzy have discovered Star Trek, good viewing for twelve-year-olds, especially those who are about to embark on a year-long adventure, “exploring new worlds, going where”—well, not no man but many men and women—“have gone before.” While I finish packing for our trip to Europe, the refrain echoes in my mind. “Live long and prosper.”The Last Surviving Sea Silk Seamstress
By Eliot Stein
Culture and Ideas Silver winner of the Twelfth Annual Solas Awards
Byssus, or sea silk, is one of the rarest and most coveted materials in the world. Today, there is only one person left on the planet who knows how to harvest, dye and spin it into elaborate patterns that glisten like gold. Each spring, under the cover of darkness and guarded by members of the Italian Coast Guard, a 62-year-old woman named Chiara Vigo slips on a white tunic, recites a prayer and plunges headfirst into the crystalline sea off the tiny Sardinian island of Sant’Antioco.Rogue Wave
By Tina Dreffin
Cruise Story Gold winner of the Twelfth Annual Solas Awards
I awakened to someone caressing my foot. It was my husband Peter, announcing my 2 A.M. dogwatch—the time period for me to steer our sailboat at sea, offshore Namibia along the west coast of Africa. When Peter turned around to head back on deck, I luxuriated beneath the covers. A low, eerie sound of ooooohm-hummmmm reverberated through the hull, like that of a pipe organ. The eerie call was the wind in the rigging as the air filled the hollow boom. Rushing waves echoed through the hulls, sounding like volumes of cascading water.On the Road with the Lady of the Rockies
By Linda Ballou
Destination Story Gold winner of the Twelfth Annual Solas Awards
As I crested the bluff overlooking Estes Park, the summer sun pushed away the gray that had followed me from Denver (an hour’s drive away) to reveal bluebird skies. The sweet mountain town, guarded by 14,000-foot peaks of the Rocky Mountain National Park, rests in a cleft carved by the Big Thompson River. I was drawn here by the vivid descriptions of this magical place by Isabella Lucy Bird who journaled her stay as she rode 800 miles solo on her mare Birdie in 1873. I imagined her sense of relief at having finally arrived at what she dubbed the “Inner World.”That Old Time Religion
By James Michael Dorsey
Adventure Story Silver winner in the Twelfth Annual Solas Awards
Stories have always come to me in Africa. I can’t say if it’s the taste, the smells, or the sheer antiquity of the land; or maybe it’s just the sense of belonging I have while I am there, but the words always come.Because it is a continent lacking in written languages, storytelling serves to preserve not only local history and culture, but also the daily lives so often lost in recorded history. In Africa, more than in the west, storytelling is an art form. In West Africa, everyone has a story, and Abraham Boko had more than most.
Mitty in Rome
By Juilene Osborne-McKnight
Grand Prize Bronze winner of the Twelfth Annual Solas Awards
Trastevere
They have cleaned the fountain in the Piazza of Santa Maria in Trastevere. This means that it no longer works. Water spills over the basin and down the sides.On the lone dry step, the King of the Gypsies has taken his throne. He is young – well, younger than me, which qualifies enough of the world these days. He wears a patchwork coat of many colors and a pair of old pajama pants. He carries a tall staff whose top is adorned with feathery rags in profuse colors. Some days I see him begging; in early mornings on my way to work I have seen him asleep in doorways. But I have also seen men kneel before him and buss both of his cheeks.
Crossing Shibuya
By Aaron Gilbreath
Grand Prize Silver winner of the Twelfth Annual Solas Awards
Within Tokyo's populous Shibuya ward lies the world’s busiest pedestrian crossing. By some estimates, 2,500 people cross here during rush hour each time the signal changes. Locals call it “The Scramble.” Every day, over two million passengers pass through neighboring Shibuya Station, commuting to work and enjoying the area’s countless shops and restaurants. Many of them pass through The Scramble. When traffic lights turn red, they all turn red simultaneously, stopping ten lanes of automobile traffic and sending pedestrians from five separate crosswalks into the massive intersection. For nearly one full minute, people flood the street in what seems an explosion of human buckshot. To the casual observer, the surge resembles chaos ─ all these bodies, weaving and darting, moving in different directions across each other’s paths. Yet there is order to it, a choreographed chaos. As Los Angeles Times writer John M. Glionna said in 2011, “Despite so much humanity inhabiting such a confined space, there’s rarely a collision, sharp elbow, shoulder-brush or unkind word.” When you watch footage of The Scramble, you can’t help but wonder what holds this system together. How do people remain so well-behaved?All the Grains of Sand
By Angelique Stevens
Grand Prize Gold winner of the Twelfth Annual Solas Awards
It was a full moon, which meant from my vantage point, I could see his naked silhouette shining blue as he washed his body behind the big lorry. I was naked too, behind the Land Rover. The body was so familiar, that wiry frame, those graceful hands, the shaven head and the point of his beard. We had both gone, separately, to bathe behind the circle of vehicles that surrounded our camp. I had been so careful about choosing a spot farther away from the men sitting around the fire that I hadn’t realized I moved myself closer to the place where the crew washed. At some point, mid-bath, I turned my head and there he was, no more than 20 feet away bent double scooping water from his basin and splashing it on his chest.The Fan Over the Dining Table
By Donna Lawrence
A reach for understanding of an unknowable past.
My grandmother wrote a genealogy tracing her family, the Corbins of Virginia, and it was fun to flip through the slender book and find interesting connections. Some of it was speculation. One Hanna Corbin married John Augustine Washington, brother of George Washington. She may have been connected to our family of Corbins—that was uncertain. But one connection that Grandma was sure of was William Tappico, King of the Wiccocomico Indians of the Algonquin tribes, whose granddaughter, called Mary Tapp, wed our ancestor, John Corbin in 1799. My dad was so proud of that, our Native American blood. But, among the records of births and marriages and deaths, one entry stopped me cold. It was the last will and testament of William Corbin of Culpeper County, who died on December 3, 1796: “I give and bequeath unto my son Benjamin Corbin one Negro wench Sarah and her child Lydia and all their future increase.” Reading those words, I forgot to breathe.Some Vague Stars to the South
By Dave Zoby
Syria, and the ancient lessons of friendship.
Dust-covered aluminum satellite dishes rimmed the rooftops. During the heat of the day, electrical circuits popped audibly, faltering all afternoon. Mid-day, the bakers came out in their floured aprons to read the state paper in the shade of their doorways. There was the sweet-shop, the pharmacy, the place to buy shoes, a booth for a haircut. And always the joyful roar of farm tractors strumming the streets, the farmers seated at the wheel, a load of watermelons stacked on a wobbly trailer. We snapped the requisite photos of the Omayyad Palace in Damascus—even me, in a half-hearted way, with a cheap camera my mother had leant me. There must be hundreds of images from our meeting with the Grand Mufti: the Mufti in the middle of the group, the Mufti smiling, looking serious, pious. I memorized his famous quote: There is no holy war. Only peace is holy.Like Dust in a Storm
By Sivani Babu
A tragic close call in rural Colorado.
Useless. I wiped at my sunglasses with my dirty hands, trying to clear the droplets that settled on the lenses. The water smeared and streaked across, creeping into dust filled crevices and turning to mud. It became even harder to see and I gave up, pushing the glasses into my muddy and matted hair where they came to rest atop my head. Useless. I could relate.Last Stop in Oklahoma
By Robert Reid
An Okie expat and his 76-year-old uncle aim to summit the Black Mesa in the USA's most unlucky and unwanted rectangle.
The road’s empty and rising slightly. I lean forward in the driver’s seat and look through the windshield to the biggest skies I’ve ever seen. An immense block of sea-blue smeared in white clouds presses down on fields of cut wheat, peppered in parts with small clumps of trees, a far-off farmhouse, a wind pump. My cellphone signal’s gone, and with it my GPS, so I’m guessing. Is this it?Warp Thread
By Leslie Oh
A weaving workshop on the Navajo Reservation bonds a mother and daughter and offers a lesson about how to live a balanced life.
Mom and I breathed deeply four times in the cool shadow of Table Mesa. In the distance, a worn road led southward through the Navajo Reservation and northward to Shiprock, New Mexico. The white tips of Dibe Nitsaa, Mount Hesperus, the sacred mountain of the North, whispered above. We stretched our arms into a sky as turquoise as the stone in the necklace Mom made me. Father Sky. Swollen gray clouds drifted slowly by. Then we folded ourselves in two; our fingertips brushed the red soil swirling about our feet. Mother Earth. Mom’s eyes remained closed as she inhaled one more time and brought her arms to her chest, the way she normally embraced me with all her might. I wanted to melt there but instead I stood awkwardly beside her, trying to mime a graceful pattern of arm and leg movements that resembled Tai Chi. We faced East (thinking), then South (planning), West (living), and North (wisdom).Monks and Monkey Poop on the Mountain
By James Michael Dorsey
A pilgrimage gone wrong.
At first sight, the temple on the mountain seemed a folk tale come to life.On my journey through Burma, the gleaming temple on the rock that guards Mount Popa had become my challenge, my grail, my pilgrimage, and there it towered above me like a finger of God pointing towards heaven.
Into Celtic Twilight
By Erin Byrne
The air is the region of the invisible. —John O’Donohue, Anam Ċara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
It is morning on the west coast of Ireland on a swath of pebbly beach with an emerald hillside and plateau off to the right. Cloudish sky, pewter water. Beyond the lapping of the waves comes a faint yet beckoning wail, like the highest note of a flute, heard by those who achieve a certain kind of quiet. A haunted sense of synchronicity surges through me: I’m home again.
In Search of a Shining Moment
By Anne Sigmon
We all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits. ―Michel de Montaigne, The Compete Essays
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. ― Martin Luther King Jr., speech in St. Louis, March 22, 1964
The front page pictured a lifeless Syrian child, dusty limbs splayed in the gray rubble of Aleppo. I felt cold and lost. That poor boy might be a little brother, perhaps to one of the mischievous kids I saw roistering on the playground when I visited Aleppo in 2010, not long before war overwhelmed the city. He could be the son of the jovial grinder in the bazaar—the boy who giggled at me when I stopped to have my pocket knife sharpened.Life Sentence
By Steven Law
Faced with a difficult life decision, he seeks solace in the wilderness.
The air was cold and still, a skin-tightening astringent kiss from mother nature welcoming me back. And nothing moved. The precedent stillness before the storm. Like God pausing to wrap a pull cord around a tornado. It gave me a buggy, spooky feeling. The same feeling you get when you feel eyes staring at the back of your head. The kind of nervous calm that makes birds take flight, horses run in circles around the field. Everything’s still, but there’s a barely perceptible vibration underlying it all. It’s the kind of stillness that pulls dreamers from their work-life routines to see what the hell’s going on.The Swankiest Rodent in Cartagena
By Darrin DuFord
For one well-traveled Colombian chef, the culinary intersection of country and city is served with a side of 80s arena rock and a phantom mouthful of water hyacinth.
The structure I’d just entered loosely counted as a building—part indoor, part outdoor, depending on how much light pierced the gaps in the zinc roofing. Several turns later, a concrete ceiling appeared with its jumble of electrical mains dangling from beams. The inner sanctum, perhaps. I was inside the bowels of Cartagena’s Bazurto Market, following the steps of Charlie Otero, co-owner and chef of the restaurant La Comunión.Paddling the Sewershed
By Brice Particelli
Two friends, a leaky raft, and the Bronx River.
We splurged on the raft. While the picture on the box clearly showed two young kids paddling a placid lake, it also boasted a “motor-mount fitting” for an engine. It was comforting to know that this raft at least pretended to be built for rougher stuff. My paddle-buddy, Cuong, paused in front of a cheaper one. “Are you sure this one won’t do?” he asked. It had one air compartment and looked even more like a toy. “It’s only $32.”The Uncertain Certainty of Leaving
By Kathy Harding
They discover what they’re willing to risk for love.
Buoyed by the brazen optimism of our new love affair, my Kiwi, Rob, and I cast ourselves adrift in a revelatory landscape, the South Island of New Zealand. I was 41 years old and desperate for a baby, he was a stranger from the bottom of the planet, and nothing about our romance made sense. Spring he rented a townhouse, summer he decamped to expedition ships, fall he floated on private yachts, and on Christmas he woke atop ice floes, drifting 60 degrees south of the equator. I could be found in my bed every day of the year.From Tsetses to Chimps
By David Myles Robinson
Nirvana’s Horizon: Discovering the Soul of the Golden Land as a Buddhist Monk in Myanmar
By Kevin Dimetres
He was seeking a new level of travel.
The reflection in the mirror was virtually unrecognizable; the spelling of my name remained obscure; what might happen next had become a perpetual mystery. Before I could make sense of it all, Burgundy-robed monks whisked me away, up a dusty spiral staircase, to their secluded 5th floor rooftop. With endearing fervor, the monks excitedly pulled out their smartphones, gathered around me as a group, and began snapping selfies, with me, against the backdrop of the Yangon skyline. Had I stumbled down the rabbit hole, only to arrive in Myanmar? I peered over the ledge to the chaos of once-familiar city life below; I became as dizzy as the moment was surreal.White Water Death
By Steve Gardiner
A drowning in Yosemite National Park
A park ranger on a horse rode up behind Terry Rypkema and me and pleaded for our help. “You have a climbing rope,” she said. “Bring it up to the bridge, please. We have a possible drowning.”The Elevator in Rome
By Bill Zarchy
Stuck on a hot day.
“I’ve gotta get out of here!” shrieked the voice from the corner. “You don’t understand. I’m claustrophobic!” It was a warm summer day. Susan and I had boarded an elevator in a poorly air-conditioned archaeological museum in Rome, along with a dozen people from our tour group, and Rachel, our English guide.Making the Great Migration
By Sarah Enelow
An American woman makes a pilgrimage to Mississippi, where her black family lived during slavery and segregation, then retraces their 1941 exodus to Detroit by train.
I stared up at a concrete obelisk streaked with black dirt. It bore an etching of a confederate flag and read, “The men were right who wore the gray and right can never die.” A dozen people, black and white, milled around on a sunny, 60-degree afternoon in January. This tiny town consisted of a central square, a few roads leading away from it, and not much else.The Remnants of War: A Meditation on Peleliu
By Anna Vodicka
On Peleliu, the roads are paved with coral—a once-living thing, a hardy animal. The coral came from the inland ridges and valleys of this two-by-six-mile speck among specks in the island nation of Palau, in western Micronesia, an almost invisible scene in the shadow of bigger acts in the Pacific, where land itself is a kind of debris, cast from the ocean by tectonic clashes and shifts that left things topsy-turvy, bottom-up, fish-out-of-water. Before: an underwater reef, an ecosystem of competitive individuals. After: a coral atoll bleaching into a future island paradise. Something new under the sun.Bubble-Up
By Katherine Jamieson
A tropical love story in Guyana.
The one-room schoolhouse rang with the din of teenage girls’ voices in the humid afternoon air. Someone had erased the sentences with their adjectives and nouns underlined from the black wooden slab we used for a chalkboard and scrawled out a rough schedule for the upcoming concert: Indranie—Chutney dance; Onica—I Believe I Can Fly; Wanda—Modeling. Scratchy dub music played on the school’s dinged up tape deck, and a few girls gyrated their hips seductively to the deep bass line while the others sat around languidly braiding each other’s hair.Deborah, the school prefect and informal director of the concert, was complaining to me. “Miss, dem first year girls actin’ stupidy, talking nuff nonsense. Miss, we must tell dem speak properly, and learn they lines, right, Miss?”
“Yes, yes, Deborah, please help them learn their lines,” I said fanning myself with some loose papers. I was sitting at one of the student desks, trying to imagine how the chaos in front of me would turn into a performance in the next six weeks, when we heard thumping sounds on the staircase.
Jordan’s Bull
By James Michael Dorsey
A magical day in Mali.
Hippos surfaced with wiggling ears as the boat man poled our dhow past the submerged herd. We were both tense, expecting a bluff charge, while only feet away white pelicans with long golden beaks floated in the shallows casually scooping minnows in their great fleshy pouches. On the opposite shore the grass huts of the Fulani glowed like fiery tumbleweeds in the hazy sunrise as bare-breasted women pounded their dirty wash on river rocks. At this bend of Mali’s Niger River, the lethargic water resembles dark roasted coffee as it slowly meanders on towards the fabled city of Timbuktu. I was in old spear-and-loincloth Africa to chase the end of an era with my camera.Bellagio People
By Suzanne Roberts
Getting naked with your new lover's family.
Your lover’s family doesn’t like that you’re from California, that you’re only half Jewish (and the wrong half), but most of all, that you’re still married. While nobody seems to question your lover’s decision to have an affair with a married woman, everyone wonders about your lack of scruples. When you meet his sister in the lobby of the Bellagio, the first thing she says to you is, “Are you divorced yet?”King Cotton
By Rosemary Davis
A visit to the home of the Mississippi blues.
Sometimes the answers aren’t easy. Driving down endless country roads—seeing nothing but identical rows of crops covering the flat, uneven land, one ponders the meaning of life. But in one Southern town, the meaning of life can be summed up in two words: cotton and the blues.Driving with Gods
By Carol J. Arnold
An old gypsy teaches a retired American visitor that getting lost is often the best way to find what you're looking for.
It came out of nowhere, a horrendous crash like something had dropped from the sky, shattering the passenger window only a few feet from my face. “It’s okay,” my husband Andy said as I grabbed his hand, his rapid breaths only slightly less ragged than my own. “The glass is in one piece.”Ali’s Heritage Garden
By Rosie Cohan
The Tour du Mont Blanc
By Marianne Bohr
Mother Nature always wins.
The Tour du Mont Blanc, affectionately known to its devotees as the TMB, is one of the world’s classic long-distance footpaths and is a capstone event on our European itinerary. Experiencing the Alpine wilderness in the presence of the dramatic ice-capped peaks is the proverbial icing on our backpacking, sabbatical-year cake. In seven days, we’ll hike seventy-five miles around Mont Blanc, the highest point in the Alps at 15,770 feet, undertake elevation gains and losses of over 36,000 feet, cross through three countries with seven companions, and complete one magnificent hike.The Terracotta Life
By Lola Åkerström
Gift Along the Way
By Rosemary Hanrahan
The healing power of being present.
“Give me five dollars, Blan.” A young Haitian woman, unknown to me, asked in perfect English and extended her hand. I had received many such requests during my five months living in the mountainous rural community of Fondwa in Haiti as I made my daily journey up the mountain to teach at the university.A Village Under the Sky
By Donna Lawrence
A view of another woman’s life.
The road to the Maasai village is gouged with deep holes and littered with rocks. It is barely a road at all. Our Land Cruiser slows to a crawl to tip and sway through a gully. The Maasai don’t need to keep their road in good condition. They don’t need a road at all. They walk.Moorstones
By Anne Sigmon
Youth Hostel Cuisine
Bonnie Morris
Notes from a Woman Backpacker.
When I began to travel, as a young woman of twenty back in 1981, I traveled cheap. I had no trust fund, no credit card, no aspirations to Grand Tour prestige. I’d just arrived in Israel for my junior year abroad, and Israel was the first other country I’d ever traveled in, aside from border crossings to Tijuana with my parents.Parahawking in Nepal
By MJ Pramik
Seeing the world anew.
When I hit sixty, my eldest daughter said, ‘Sixty is the new forty.’ These words spawned in me a wanderlust the likes of which I couldn’t believe, and weeks after my birthday I challenged myself to go alone to Antarctica. After cavorting with flocks of frenzied penguins and climbing out of a dormant volcano, I returned to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego—and an email bearing the news that my ninety-one-year-old father was fading fast.Singing Lesson
By Megan McNamer
Taking Communion in a karaoke bar.
In the late Seventies, when all of Taiwan was under construction, there was a bar in the capital city of Taipei called the Club Kotobuki. It was a place to go for Japanese businessmen missing the home office. It may still be there, I don’t know. I haven’t been back.From Morocco, With Love
By Anna Elkins
A progressive encounter of possibility.
Paris, Night, Letters My love letter from the Sahara begins in Paris. It is March and just after dark on the Île Saint-Louis. My friend Christina and I have arrived at a literary salon in a swanky apartment with high-beamed ceilings and low lights. The evening’s theme: letters written by hundreds of women a dozen years ago to a man featured as an eligible bachelor in Marie Claire.The Physics of Regret
By Lance Mason
A suicide memoir, disrupted.
While any high-speed “get-off” from a motorcycle is a brush with death, each one is unique. So here you are, zipping over the asphalt at sixty miles per, and the next moment your machine’s wheels depart the ground. Its normal exhaust note, a throaty, twin-cylinder rumble-and-thump, vanishes, immediately replaced by the alarming, metallic whine of a combustion engine freed from resistance.The Spinster of Atrani
By Amber Paulen
Stories from the old can change the direction of life for the young.
Someone called my name and a figure came toward me—a shadow against the yellow lamplight of the road, and beyond that, of Atrani. It surprised me that someone knew me. I had been in the small town for only three hours and spent most of that time sitting in a damp cove where hearts and initials were etched into stone, watching the gray sky become night and the sea turn black and shimmery.To Live or Die in the Danakil
By James Michael Dorsey
How to survive a suicidal trek up a volcano.
All six gunmen arrived at sunset, bought and paid for, and all we had to do was choose who would go with whom. Moussa was quite small as Afar tribesmen go and yet, everything about his manner suggested he was a predator. He squatted in the sand, chin to his knees, his opal eyes darting back and forth, missing nothing. Slowly producing a bone handled blade he began to sharpen it on a stone next to him, gently, methodically, running it back and forth, and as I watched his movements with interest I remember wondering as I chose him whether he would protect me or kill me.If Cats Could Type in Key West
By Shelly Rivoli
It would be a literary pilgrimage for the grownups, but what would it be for the kids?
Their eyes combed the lush jungle landscape as we stood waiting at the gated entrance to 907 Whitehead Street. With a quiet gasp from my travel companions, the first orange splash of cat appeared, a bold stroke sauntering on four legs before the chartreuse shutters of the porch. It paused for a moment, gazing toward us as if daring the children to skip the queue, then turned to walk through the open door as if it owned the place.Somewhere Under the Florentine Moon
By Pamela Wright
What’s the Italian word for cougar?
I wasn’t overly concerned when I heard the shouting start in the apartment next door. I’d neglected to learn more than a few pleasantries in Italian before leaving Atlanta for Florence, so I was unable to decipher so much as the rudiments of the argument. I stopped unpacking my overstuffed suitcase and listened for a moment.Progressive Supper
By Jacqueline Harmon Butler
There’s romance on the menu.
Ernest Hemingway called Paris a “movable feast," and I have always agreed with him. On my last night in Paris, I decided to have my own movable feast—a progressive supper, with each course in a different restaurant. I wanted the restaurants to be within walking distance from one another, the last one near my hotel in the 6th arrondissement.The Wild, Wild West Bank
By Erik R. Trinidad
A tale of Bedouins and bladders.
“He said that he’ll drop us off at the settlement and that it’s a far walk... And it’s unsafe... And that we shouldn’t be heroes for doing it,” my new friend Sarit explained to me, translating the bus driver’s warning in Hebrew at Jerusalem’s central bus station. “But he’ll take us.”Café Tables
By Amy Marcott
A souvenir becomes a symbol of hope.
At the end of my first trip to Paris, I had come to the Place du Tertre to buy a painting. I could not afford this. I’d just finished an MFA in creative writing and financed my trip with my student loan. But intuition told me that I should not leave Paris without a piece of artwork. I didn’t realize then that I would buy something more significant than any souvenir could be. Something I would have paid any price for: hope.
Ghost Ship
By MJ Pramik
USS Hornet conducts spook maneuvers.
Darkness hangs opaque around me. I hover close to my crewmates assembled tonight on the USS Hornet, berthed in Alameda, California. We all breathe aloud as heaviness fills the air. I ask oceans of questions to keep any lingering spirits at bay. I’ve joined an evening “History, Mystery Tour” on the USS Hornet, the CV-12 battleship, or what’s left of it. Several tour attendants voice a belief in the paranormal.Alsace’s Unique Character, Through the Eyes of a Local
By James Ullrich
In a corner of eastern France, a unique, hybridized culture has evolved from two very different sources.
Jean-Claude Schroeder, the kind old man with the French first name and the German surname, looks out over the tree-carpeted Vosges Mountains. The Black Forrest is in the distance. He can see into Germany. Squinting in morning the sun, he lifts a liver-spotted hand and points eastward toward France’s old enemy.On the Trail of Jack London
By Nicholas Fox
Communing with Oakland's greatest writer in the bar he used to call home.
You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. —Jack London
He was a dropout, a hobo, an oyster poacher. He was an excellent sailor, a less excellent rancher, a deeply committed socialist, a boxing fanatic, an early ecologist. He was an alcoholic, a voracious reader, a boat builder, a failed gold miner and, in the language of the day, “a bastard.” He was perhaps the greatest adventure writer America has ever produced.The Way
By Felice Neals
She travels an ancient road in Spain and discovers the value of solitude.
Somewhere in the north of Spain, surrounded by a glorious, yet unfamiliar landscape, I began to notice my solitude. The steeples of Santiago had long faded into the vibrant glow of early afternoon; and yards of green grass and purple violets enveloped every angle of my vision. There was no one anywhere that I could see.A Love Song
By K.M. Churchill
Walking on the edge of myth in Ireland.
Snow rarely fell in Ireland. When it did the dusting was so light it looked like confectionary sugar had been sprinkled all over the green ivy and winter-blooming roses. So I knew our first winter storm in Union Hall, a tiny fishing village on Glandore Bay in the remote southwestern tip of County Cork—where I’d moved with Francis, my Irish chef husband, and our two young children to open a restaurant—would be nothing like the New England blizzards I was used to. The joyous, drunken raucousness of the Irish holiday season was upon us and, even with the storm clouds spreading out against the sky, our seaside village seemed festive rather than pensive.A Wide-Eyed Schoolgirl
By Marianne Bohr
Stalking Cézanne and other Provençal pursuits.
I was born in the wrong country. There must have been some mistake. Then again, if I’d been born in the hexagon, my passion for all things French wouldn’t exist. I’d have been raised with the language’s romantic euphony, and the fluid succession of words would be part of my everyday world. Some other tongue and faraway culture would have caught my fancy—so perhaps, just perhaps, it’s fortuitous my birthplace was Fort Wayne, Indiana, and not Paris.
Time or the Sahara Wind
By Marcia DeSanctis
Both are relentless, and impossible to stop.
In my favorite photograph from my first visit to Morocco, I appear as if on the floor of a canyon. Behind me is a cinematic backdrop: a towering pomegranate-red clay mountainside speckled with clusters of trees. I’m standing on a wide open restaurant terrace, wearing white Capri pants and a black tank top, sneakers with no socks. The wind blows my hair into chaos but one hand pushes the bangs off my face. In the corner, over my shoulder, there is a sliver of Matisse-blue sky. I am 24 years old.A Day in the Sun
By Bill Grant
Running with the bulls in Pamplona and oil wrestling in Istanbul.
I vividly remember running through the narrow and winding cobblestone streets of Pamplona that early July 7th summer morning - hearing the thundering hooves of a dozen aggressive bulls getting closer as I approached the funnel-like entrance to the bull ring. The adrenaline rush was indescribable as I joined the throngs of runners that had assembled on the compressed dirt floor of the arena to fight each of the bulls that were soon released to challenge us. Some of the more daring amateur matadors met the challenge with their tee shirts serving as makeshift capes, and others, such as myself, kept our distance, staying close enough to hop over the protective wooden perimeter walls when the bulls directed their charges our way.Speaking in Hats
By Darrin DuFord
The language of fashion may be difficult to decipher, but in Panama, a fashion accessory may be more difficult to keep on one’s head.
After decades of nonreligious life, my churchless streak had been broken. But not for any spontaneous rediscovery of God. Apart from attendance at the occasional wedding or funeral, a humble straw hat was the unlikely force that had finally prodded me to sit in a holy pew.We Will Always Have Paris
By Mara Gorman
Sharing the City of Light with New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik.
The night I met Adam Gopnik, his train from New York to Wilmington, Delaware was delayed. A soft breeze moved across the parking lot as I leaned into the car’s headrest; I sweated even though the door was open. As of that spring evening in 2011, Gopnik had written for The New Yorker for 25 years. He was an intellectual, a man of letters, so brilliantly capable of casual erudition combined with self-deprecating humor and just a dash of name-dropping that I could only hope for myself that I would bask in his genius for just one evening without saying anything silly. I discreetly checked my armpits.Burmese Tea
By James Michael Dorsey
A drink he hates got him his best photo ever.
Whenever I look up, the trail mercifully fades into the clouds above, obscuring all distance. The word trail is used loosely here as the term, in my mind at least, usually refers to a walkable surface associated with hiking. This churned quagmire of mud and loose rocks does not even vaguely meet that definition. The jungle of northern Burma is hostile enough, but I am pushing a titanium hip and deteriorating knee to their limits here. For two hours we have been steadily climbing through a cotton candy haze that has me asking myself why.A Stranger in Jerusalem
By Sasha Vasilyuk
As she made her way to the Wailing Wall in the middle of her mourning, a shopkeeper stopped her with a question.
The hot wind whistled quietly through the row of Jerusalem’s labyrinthine cemetery, built into the dusty yellow mountainside. I would have never found my grandmother’s grave if it weren’t for Inna, her college friend back from the Soviet Union, where we all had once lived. I called Inna as soon as I landed in Israel, the last stop on my year-long solo trip around the world.Free Willy
By Tina Koenig
What did Michelangelo know about David?
My husband Michael is the Goldilocks of travel. A window seat is too claustrophobic. Coach does not have enough legroom. First class is too expensive. There are two ways to get Michael on an airplane. Book him on a flight that is less than three hours, or tell him there is an obscure Jewish heritage site that he must see.French Cassoulet
By Sylvie Bigar
An obsession boils over.
The minute I breathed in the scent of caramelized sensuality rising from the massive clay cassoulet pot, I was bewitched. It made no sense. Born Jewish to a fashionably thin French mother and an ascetic Swiss father, I was raised on steamed sole and haricots verts. My father regularly asserted that he didn’t live to eat but ate only to live.Passing Through
By Carol Smith
There are limits to our knowing in the vast atomic wilderness.
The road to the Mozumi mine winds up along the Takahari River in the Japanese Alps, a four-hour train ride north of Tokyo up the coast that faces Russia. A blue heron swoops off the riverbank and a hawk floats above us as our bus zig-zags up the side of Mt. Kamioka. In the valley we’ve left behind, newly planted rice paddies shine like mirrors in the sun, and a red bridge arches across jade-green water, a still life of images as old as any brushed in wet black ink on rice paper. I’ve come halfway around the world to find this place, oddly drawn here in search of something. I feel a mounting sense of excitement as we barrel straight toward the abandoned mine shaft that will carry me to the heart of the mountain, and the heart of an even older mystery.Paul Theroux’s Cape Cod
By Michael Shapiro
Wayfaring author returns annually to revel in joys of summer after arduous journeys.
At first glance it might seem surprising to find the roving travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux spending his summers on Cape Cod. Best known for unflinching accounts of extended, gritty journeys, Theroux helped redefine modern travel writing with his 1975 book, “The Great Railway Bazaar,” an account of his train journey across Europe in Asia.No Polish Jokes
By Lance Mason
An unscripted chapter at sea.
I'd looked forward to this day since the previous New Zealand winter, when I bought the boat ticket in Dunedin. Now it was August again, and I found myself at the Antwerp dockyards about to board a small, rust-encrusted Polish Ocean Lines freighter, the Czaszki, for a two-week voyage to Venezuela, the fabled land of Simón Bolívar, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s “Wages of Fear” (starring Yves Montand), and, in years to come, several Miss Universe winners. It would be our first stop after crossing the Atlantic, and my blood stirred with the thrill and apprehension of the unknown.In Vincent’s Footsteps
By Erin Byrne
What else except pain and suffering can we expect if we are not well, you and I? —Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to Theo van Gogh, February 1889
What if all you can do is all you can do? Curl up. Breathe. Exist. Breathe, exist. In. Out. This was not what was meant to happen here.Honey Colored Lies
By Michael Sano
Secrets surround a romance between a visitor and local in the mountains of Nicaragua.
The music at the discoteca is so loud that I have to shout to be heard. I'm nodding my head, pretending to listen to one of my co-workers, while searching the green slices of light on the dance floor for a particular pair of calves. We are sitting around a group of white plastic tables taking turns on the concrete pista de baile. The tabletops buzz with each beat of the bass causing a mob of empty bottles to clamor out its own shaky melodies. One fall could bring the whole clan down.The Battle of Waterkloof
By Gerald Yeung
Bruce Lee vs. the Namibian Baboon Army.
Namibia was founded on two indisputable truths. One: it never rains. Thus I lose my favorite excuse to opt out of a hike. Two: every Asian person is Bruce Lee. These two random facts play pivotally in the attack of the baboons.Swimming for Sure
By Steven Law
When things go wrong during a Grand Canyon rafting trip, the author's friends are there to set things right.
About 260 million years ago, massive aeolian winds blew with enough ferocity to carry sand from the far-distant north and deposit it in large dunes, 500 feet deep, in what is now northern Arizona. These new sand dunes eventually petrified into Coconino Sandstone, which is found throughout Marble, and Grand Canyon.The Good Captain
By Glenda Reed
“When the sea is calm, every ship has a good captain.”
—Sailing proverb
The Train to Harare
A lesson in southern Africa, circa 1988.
In Africa, we are all children. Everything is new, and everything is old. The sapling sprouting among the creepers is new; the forest, old. Though the baby in the kaross sling is new, his tribe is old. The dawn’s breeze swirls the dust over the Magadigadi pans and is gone, but the ancient dust remains, the scorched powder of a continent’s bones.The heat of the Kalahari, thick and mighty across this sweep of gasping desert, has a life-force of its own. Like an animal, it waits, resting, through the African night. But with the day it stirs, and grows with the sun, gathering power like a sky-borne fist.
Love and Lies in Iran
Most people dream of spending their honeymoon on exotic beaches. My American bride and I opted for a road trip through the land of the ayatollahs.
We raced through the darkness and didn’t see it coming. Mehdi sat erect behind the wheel, honking slower cars out of his way. But one car stayed in its lane; it challenged his hierarchy. Mehdi honked, flashed, tailgated, and when the other car slowly made way, he barreled into the opening. Then something crashed, glass shattered and the other car’s sideview mirror went flying through the air, leaving a trail of silvery dust glittering in its wake.
Deep Travel, Notre Dame
By Erin ByrneGathered wisely into your inner ground,
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.
Stone apostles frowned down over their curly beards, and I withered. Again and again, I had flown from the U.S. to France in an arc, but as organ music thundered from within, to step over the threshold into Notre Dame seemed a farther distance to travel. Something near scratched my nerves.
Remember This Night
By Katherine Jamieson
The neighbors might talk—but it will be worth it.
The teenage girl you live with, the younger one with the jutting chin who rarely smiles, is laughing at America’s Funniest Home Videos. A kitten falls off a window ledge onto the back of a large dog. A small dog runs so fast it trips and flips over itself.Oranges and Roses
By Amy Gigi Alexander In Paris, the discovery of Africa on the outskirts of the city assuages sudden grief. Women stand above me, brightly colored boubou dresses blending into an African origami screen blocking my
Ohio House Tour
By V. Hansmann Some people say the most splendid thing about a road trip to Ohio is the road trip from Ohio. I might have agreed; benighted rustbelt, flyover, swing state that it is.
Notes into Lines
By Hannah Sheldon-Dean In the middle of the St. Charles Bridge on a warm day in Prague, we wait with our binders of music, wondering if anyone will bother to show up. There are
Creating Global Thinkers
By John Girard For the first four months of this year I voyaged around the world with 600 college students as part of the Semester at Sea program. The experience of traveling with so
Celebrity Cruising
By Leena Tailor It's 4 a.m. on the Carnival Imagination, midway between Miami and the Bahamas, and two Backstreet Boys are giving an impromptu but heartfelt lecture on love, marriage, sharks and Twitter to
Siren Song of the Capybara
By Robin Cerwonka Why did I go to Antarctica? A good question, considering the warm-weather joys of the world—the thousands of tropical beaches I’d love to lie on and coral reefs I’ve never scuba dived.
The C Word
By Sarah Enelow 60-something Pete looked like he was on heavy sedatives, and to my unsettling surprise, he was also a professional pilot. "So, you flew commercial airplanes for Air Canada, with passengers in
Remembering Jane
By Simone Gorrindo I’d known Jane less than 24 hours when she told me a secret she’d been carrying around for months. She was driving me to see her Swiss doctor to take care
Dura La Vida: The Other Side of Paradise
By Jillian Bright There is a force stronger than the sea itself in that little fishing town. It is mysterious and unidentifiable, ever changing and unquestionably powerful. I can feel it pounding in the
Sleepless in Southern Africa
By Dave Fox It’s 4:23 a.m., and all is quiet in the Okavango Delta. Wait, no. That’s not right. Let’s start over. It’s 4:23 a.m. in the Okavango Delta, and I can’t sleep because
Satan’s Very Own Island Retreat
By Greg Rodgers “You're staying here tonight? Seriously?” My eyes drifted from the rough, wooden dock where we were standing, up a perfect pair of tanned legs, to a set of blue eyes that
The Exquisite Loneliness of Nyai Loro’s Beach
By Melinda Misuraca The Javanese don’t like to be alone. To them solitude is a sickness cured by surrounding themselves with people. In Java the only encouraged antisocial activities are bathing and using the
The Great Escape
By Biju Sukumaran Saline solution pools on my palm, magnifying the dust and specks of camel hair in my contacts, and cleaning them is now an almost futile gesture. But this was the least
The Same River, Twice
By Pam Mandel He was tall and good looking and had attended an expensive prep school where he learned to talk pretty. He liked dancing to pop music and drinking beer and traveling. His
Of Danger and Beauty
By Anna Elkins The citywide siren filled every corner of the house—a house in Tel Aviv without a bomb shelter. During one of the siren’s low levels, I heard Tsach’s voice from the garden, “Anna,
Inside the Tower
By Keith Skinner As we walked into the room, I first noticed the bed—broad, slightly concave, uncomfortable-looking—covered with a thin, antique quilt. But it was the west-facing windows, unusually close to the floor, that
From the Ashes
By James Michael Dorsey The smoke of wood fires dulls the sunrise, silhouetting the spires of Angkor Wat as hazy apparitions. The incomparable beauty of these temples, the soul of the Khmer nation, are
Fish Trader Ray
By Lisa Alpine “Sitten ze down!” The German’s livid face was as red as an equatorial sun setting through the pollution haze of a Third World metropolis. Flora and I looked at each other.
The Tea in Me
By Bill Giebler Packing It looks like a dance floor, a 30-foot-square section of smooth wood among the rough planks that make up most of the flooring, all surrounded by giant locomotive-like drying machines.
A Saharan Love Story
By Ted Beatie It was midnight in a nearly deserted bus station on the outskirts of Marrakesh, and my fiancee and I had one-way tickets to the edge of nowhere. We knew we wanted
A Shared Indian Cake Is Never Forgotten
By Margaret Wagner On the morning of my sixth birthday, before I stepped off the airplane in Mumbai, India, then known as Bombay, my mother gave me a present, a Tammy doll. Tammy, more
Misha and the Young Belarussians
By Michelle McAlister NINE-YEAR OLD Misha thinks no one is watching. His unusually large, round blue eyes scan the kitchen. His papery, quasi-translucent hand reaches out to steal fruit from atop a plastic table.
Adaptor Plug Not So
By Sarah Enelow Kermit, my devoted partner and laptop, was sick. His screen was cracked, he wouldn’t charge, and he’d cannibalized most of his battery life. We were in Beijing for a month and
Islands in Time
By Catherine Watson From the mountaintop road above Kvivik, green slopes fell steeply away to the sea, and the sea swept my eyes outward, over the village, to the soft shapes of other islands
The Remover of Obstacles
By Amanda Mander “Stay away from my son,” his father said as we stood alone on the balcony. Tears were threatening to burst through my barely-calm exterior when I noticed Kirin, my fiance, listening
Gore Vidal’s Old House
By Mary Jo McConahay In later years...President Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter, Alice Longworth, congratulated me every time we saw each other: “You got out. So wise.” —“Reflections on Glory Reflected,” in United States: Essays 1952-1992
In Search of The Scream in Norway
By Chris Epting In my mind, travelers are hunters. What do you hunt for when you travel? Experiences, people, souvenirs? We all hunt for something. I hunt for places. We were in Oslo, Norway,
Pricier than Prada
By Peggy Jaffe At first I ignore the mail piled in the foyer, take my shoes off, and absorb the warmth of the terra cotta floor. Outside the living room window, a carpet of
Cuba Libre
By Jessica Dur Taylor It's not that we hadn't fallen in love with Cuba, her slender crocodile figure and rhythmic hips, her bawdy street corners and crumbling veneer. We had. We'd been all the
Decoding Lagom
By Lola Akinmade Akerstrom Eight of us — six Swedes, one Finn, and me — are gathered in a modest city-center studio apartment in Stockholm’s eclectic Sodermalm district. Next to our dinner table is
Seven
By Pam Mandel I slumped back into my chair, overwhelmed. My seat at the window faced the stern, we were sliding past giant blue glaciers, their cracked faces a wall above the blue black
Flying Dutchman
By Catherine Watson I’m startled, now that I am writing this, at seeing the many links to the sea in my life. And to exile. When I was eight, my heart’s desire was to
Infectious Laughter
By Bruce Berger During the early Nineties I became aware that a new word was circulating in La Paz, borrowed from the English. The word was privacy and so fresh was the loan that
Brazzaville Blues
By Marie Javins I awoke and peeked out of my room at Hotel Gabriella, which I'd crawled into late last night, after the 14.5 hour, 140-mile truck journey from the Congo-Gabon border to here
Like Their Own
By Saya Des Marais Dedicated to Humpeng and family of Sabai Sabai Massage & Restaurant in Nong Khiaw, Laos. May your compassionate laughter never change. I was in Nong Khiaw, a dry, quiet village
Trumpets of Warning
By Lisa Alpine Waking early our first full day at Little Governors' Camp in the Maasai Mara Reserve in Kenya, we were startled to see elephant, hippo, and warthog tracks circling close to the
The Wind Horses of Mustang
By Molly Beer “Having a horse here is like having a motorbike in the city,” Bhupendra Sherchan explained the first day we rode out together on the flanks of snow-capped Nilgiri. The day was still
Before the Rain
By Bunny McBride . . . before the rain begins I always waken, listening to the world hold its breath. ~Lianne Spidel It was late, and I lay in my bed in a small round
On the Trail of a Man Called Snake
By Taylor Jennings Crossing ethnic lines to find a notorious guerrilla leader. It was early March 1999 when Ilir, my young interpreter, and I set out from Pristina in a battered Lada cast off by
Walking the Roof of Africa
By Laura Lee Huttenbach An unprepared trek up Mt. Kilimanjaro turns into an adventure of a lifetime. “If you ever make it home from Africa alive, I’m going to kill you myself,” said my mom.
Of Desert Nomads and Whales
By James Dorsey From the back of a camel the Sahara seemed endless; an infinite sea of low rolling dunes baked by a swirling sun that would be at home in a Van Gogh painting.
Moving West, Writing East
By Tom Miller I moved west to escape the East. I stayed west to inform the East. This took place in the late 1960s, when the anti-war movement and its cultural twin were both flowering.
Storykeepers
By Erin Byrne Alchemy: A power or process of transforming something common into something special; an inexplicable or mysterious transmuting. —Merriam-Webster Dictionary"I haven't been a saint my whole life, but I have done this one
Barren in the Andes
By Laura Resau With the help of a shaman, she rediscovers what she truly wants. Breathless, I hurry along narrow trails between Quichua family farms, past barking dogs, squawking chickens, curly-tailed piglets. My destination is
Into the Hills
By Matthew Crompton “The ball that we hurled into infinite space, doesn’t it fill our hand differently with its return: heavier by the weight of where it has been?” —Rilke [1] Calcutta The impression of
Out of Smyrna
By Gloria Kirchheimer The author's ancestral homeland in present-day Turkey turns out to be startlingly familiar and shockingly alien at the same time. Was Homer blind? I hope not. Did he really live in Smyrna
Paris, With Parents
By Colette O'Connor My parents' marriage, on public display in Paris, possibly is saved in the bed department of Bazaar Hotel de Ville. In the bed department of Bazaar Hotel de Ville, Mademoiselle in charge
Grandma Steps In
By Margaret Wagner Grandma taught me to step up by stepping in. I sat on a stone bench outside the ruins of Ephesus, Turkey with my 85-year old Grandma. She was a petite woman of
Letting Go on the Ganges
By Kristin Zibell India held her ticket to transformation. Our boat dropped anchor in the middle of the Ganges, and a slight breeze brought relief from the October heat. Two men interrupted the live, languid
A Good Place
by Pickett Porterfield Sometimes you have to sit down and watch the movie. The hotel stood on the corner of a dusty square where several dirt streets intersected just outside the crumbling stone walls of
Warm Enough
By Suzanne LaFetra Going to the dogs with my mother. “It’s your human environment that makes climate.” Mark Twain The day before my mom and I were to leave balmy California, the dogsledding trip suddenly
A Sea Change
By Judith Works How I floated into retirement. The countess was drunk again, floating motionless on her back in the warm water of the ship’s swimming pool. Wrinkled, thin and heavy with jewelry, she seemed
Dear Madame Renaud
By Erin Byrne Dear Madame Renaud is the story of a woman in Normandy, France who eased the suffering of American families whose loved ones died during the Liberation of France. After she had been
One of Them
By Mary Anne Mercer A nurse volunteering in Nepal struggles to adapt to an alien culture. Someone was calling to me from just outside the tent. My wake-up call turned out to be Bhim Raj,
My Friend, Moses
By James Dorsey A Maasai education. Travel does not always begin with the boarding of an airplane, but rather at the moment one opens the mind to new possibilities, and that is why I was
Embargoed Brothers
By Tim Weed An American in Off-Limits Cuba. A decade ago I was riding along the Havana Malecon in a white and blue ’57 Ford with a four-cylinder Toyota engine. The taxi driver overheard my
No Agenda
By Kim Brown Seely A Girls' Trip to Italy. Men have their golf weekends, their guided fly-fishing, and that ultimate male-bonding ritual, the heli-ski week, which costs practically as much as a child's education. But
Surreal for Real: The Hidden Jungle Dreamland of Las Pozas
By Tim Leffel Hidden in a remote Mexican jungle hours from any large city or airport, the sculpture garden of Sir Edward James is like a dream manifested in the waking world. It all starts
How I Missed the Punchline in Russia
By Kevin McCaughey A traveler to Russia learns he is not allowed to understand Russian humor. “It’s impossible for you to understand.” That’s what Galina told me. She was head of the university English Department
Becoming Dostoyevsky in St. Petersburg
By Veronica Hackethal What happens when a New Yorker follows the trail of Dostoyevsky's characters in wintry St. Petersburg? A transformtaive tale of literary intrigue peppered with cool humor. During the St. Petersburg winter, dawn
The Tundra
By Kathleen Spivack I am walking with my father in the mountains, high above the tree line. He is telling me about leaving Europe during "The War"...Yet there are secrets he has never spoken of.
Death and Life on the Nile
By Veronica Hackethal What happens when two sisters and their mother encounter Agatha Christie's Egypt three months before the recent revolution? An account of Egypt's timeless mysteries, with observations about how the contemporary living situation
Persepolis
By Laura Lee Huttenbach A mother-daughter cruise to Iran. “You know, honey, I was thinking it would be fun to go on a cruise together,” said my mom. I looked up from my computer screen.
Force 10!
By Lois Hofmann Cruisers experience a night of sheer terror while sailing off the Colombian coast. Howling like a pack of ravenous wolves, the insatiable wind chases Pacific Bliss through the churning seas off the
Travels With Emmy
By Elizabeth Creely A hiking trip turns disastrous for two sisters in California's Desolation Wilderness. Last July I went to Desolation Wilderness with my sister Emily to celebrate her fortieth birthday. I woke up at
Dreaming of Djurjura Cafe
By Rosalie Justus Hiking sola in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca, the author worries about same-species predators and other problems. I know right away, the Dutch aren’t going. Marlie’s teeth are all purple from the herbs she’s
Touched by a Gorilla
By Kim Brown Seely How Rwanda reached out and grabbed me. Charles weighed 400 pounds, stood nearly six feet when fully upright, and was one hundred percent alpha-male. His massive black head was luxuriantly hairy,
How Not to Almost Die Twice in an Elephant Rampage
By Wendy Inouye When you are tramping around on foot in the middle of the African bush, you are offputtingly far from the protection of the police, your embassy, and even Robert Mugabe. Best, then,
Climbing Vaea
By Catherine Watson A Pilgrimage to Vailima. “Pilgrimages,’’ I reminded myself, as I struggled over yet another fallen tree, “aren’t supposed to be easy.’’ But I had thought this one would be. I had gone
Beyond Timbuktu
By James Dorsey A Western infidel journeys into the Muslim Sahara. There are places whose names carry an instant association with the romantic and exotic, and for me the foremost has always been Timbuktu. I
Rabies
By John Calderazzo It's hard to remember how quickly your life can change. The bite came out of nowhere—came when I was thinking of other things or maybe nothing at all, jet-lagged and exhausted as
Mysterious Fast Mumble
by Bruce Berger Solving a linguistic puzzle in the Baja backcountry. A plunge into Spanish at its worst proved, in retrospect, an odd stroke of luck. The year was 1965 and I arrived in Spain
Spirals — Memoir of a Celtic Soul
by Erin Byrne If you do not bring the kind eye of creative expectation to your inner world, you will never find anything there. —John O'Donohue, Anam Cara A shell-shaped spiral emerged in my center
Protected
by Peter Wortsman The fates take strange twists indeed. It was my last night in the lavish villa on the lake in Berlin-Wannsee where I had holed up for the winter. A noted Indian economist
Counting Stars
by Sabine Bergmann Busing despite the paro. No lights. No sound. Just silence and held breath. It is pitch black and I can’t see a thing, but I can feel Carolyn tensing. In a moment
The Bush Taxi that Went Pop, Pop
by Tom Weller Driving through bandit country. As we all waited for the rains and watched food stores dwindle, tales of roadway bandits flourished in Beinamar, the Chadian village where I lived and worked as
The Fun Run
by Kathleen Kelly Wogging toward the finish, sprinting for the pink. Truth is, I only signed up for that 5K because my husband tricked me into it. Stretched across the bed, he was the picture
Where Have the “Vieilles Filles” Gone?
by Kathy Comstock Remembering women of another age. Years ago across France one could set a watch according to the ‘vieille fille’. Dressed in black and with laced shoes supporting a stocky or painfully thin
Beyond Thunder
by Jeffe Aronson Searching for light miles underground. Autumn, 1976 The air is cool, damp. The walls coated with long undisturbed, powder-like talc, virtually liquid. My feet sense every irregularity of the limestone floor through
Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Puking: A Whale Watching Tour in Monterey
by Marianne Ruane Learning to live at forty. Whether it was all of the rocking the boat did while stalling for us to photograph the whales, or the fact that I was getting chilled, or
Elephant Driving 101
by Kate Crawford Riding with elephants means hearing new songs. “Is that my elephant?” I ask as the first mammoth mammal lumbers into camp. “That’s Lawan,” John replies, watching her undulating gait. “She’s our youngest,
Death Road
by Sabine Bergmann What is the cost of thrill-seeking? I leaned cautiously towards the road’s edge, which gave way to a sheer cliff, a gashed rock-face stretching towards the distant earth. At the bottom, a
Close Encounter of the Yakuza Kind
by Anne Van A day's adventure through the Tokyo underground. I’d been a college student in Japan for eight head-spinning months and never thought this day would come. I stood in front of the Jumbo
Sinyala Fault
by Jeffe Aronson The Grand Canyon is no place to be sick, lost, and alone. I glance back uphill at the slowly disappearing shape of Alan, where I left him perched on an overhanging rock
True Stories
by Kathleen Spivack She combats loneliness with writing. For many years I was alone and I found that—but I am already putting it in past tense. So—for many years I’ve been alone and I find—what?
Beneath the Rim
by Michael Shapiro A journey down the Colorado River with Captain John Wesley Powell. Our boats are four in number. Three are built of oak, stanch and firm (with) water-tight cabins.… These will buoy the
Masha
by Marcia DeSanctis Two women, one skirt, and an untold story. The first time I met Maria Konstantinovna, she was wearing a black leather skirt. It was Italian, brand new, and it was mine. Masha,
The Memory Bird
by Carolyn Kraus She uncovers secrets, and memories. On a warm and windy July morning, we were headed south on the Partisan Highway out of Minsk, Belarus. Marina, the friend of a Jewish Belarusian expatriate
Tengenenge, Village of Stone Sculptures
by Barbara Cunliffe Singleton Finding faces in Zimbabwe's stone sculptures. A cassette of Zimbabwe's top singer, Thomas Mapfumo, vibrates the dashboard and his rhythm muffles the bumps of the last five miles. Having delivered a
Running in Puglia
by Mary Jean Pramik It became a spiritual experience. An hour before sunrise on a June morning, Puglia beckoned. When I stepped out into the dark, the blackened narrow meandering streets of Alberobello opened like
Walkway to Nowhere
by Lola Akinmade A day in the life of Lagos, Nigeria. "You this idiot man!" Seyi yells at Samson. "Why are you listening to Fashola?" Samson is leaning in close to a parked car, listening
Wisdom, from Defeat
by Cheryn Flanagan Looking for Gung Fu street cred. Deep down I knew I didn’t belong there-I wasn’t at the monastery to live an ascetic life, gain a greater spiritual understanding of the world, or
Traveling Companions
by Bonnie Smetts A good read. The specter of a transatlantic flight without a book drove me into the airport bookstoreand into the unfamiliar arms of a lusty romance. With the final boarding call for
Notes on an Andean Pilgrim
by Tom Miller A poor man's writer. He came to my Quito residence for dinner that equatorial night in 1982 wearing blue jeans and a recently washed button-down work shirt. I had delayed meeting the
French Dolls
by Catherine Watson Coming to terms with a father. To the end of his days, my father insisted that my travels were nothing more than “escapism.” Whenever I said I was going somewhere alone, he
Dance Cadaverous
by Kevin Kaiser Sixteen in the Hollywood scene. Scarlet and I are making out in a bathroom stall in the men’s restroom of a Hollywood eighteen-and-up club. Her fist twists the cityscape image on my
Identity Games
by Pearl Chen Opening yourself to your homeland. “Do you speak English?” the blonde woman asked casually as she plopped right down next to me on a block of concrete outside the bubbly Water Cube
Design a Vagina
by Johanna Gohmann Casting your undercarriage. One cozy night at home, while enjoying a pizza dinner, I flipped on the television just in time to see a close-up shot of a woman’s labia being “trimmed”
The Unexpected at Delphi
by Nancy Middleton Discovering Delphi. As we boarded the bus outside our hotel in Athens, I took a look at my five students and wondered if we should skip the day trip to Delphi. We
Winged Victory
by Erin Byrne Paris and the art of transformation. Imagine being placed at the top of the main staircase inside the most visited museum in the world. Daylight streams from above, bathing the arched walls
Ditching Mom
by Rick Steigelman Looking for ways to leave momma off the pub trail. At the risk of sounding like a scamp of a child, ungrateful towards the one whose generosity has provided him his first
Thank the Good Lord for Duct Tape
by Brege Shinn Trying to decide what to wear—without clothes. I awake naked. I'm on my bed but there are no sheets. The pillow case is gone. I scramble to my backpack for something to
The Moustache Brothers of Mandalay
by Shauna Sweeney She gets lessons in political dissent, through humor. It takes fifteen minutes to confirm I’m being followed. At first I had my doubts, kept second-, triple-, quadruple-guessing. I thought fear was playing
At Home in Afghanistan
by Diane LeBow In which we gain a new perspective on this troubled land. “That’s the Hindu Kush Mountains, the killer of Hindus.” An Afghan man sitting next to me on the Ariana Afghan Airlines
Tibetan Bargain with a Twist
by April Orcutt Learning the real deal in Tibet. “Please! Please!” the Tibetan woman pleaded, her young son trailing behind her. She approached me in the ancient market of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, holding
The Tiny Red Kettle
by Jan Burak Schwert Discovering an emerging Sarajevo. “Sarajevo is ready for tourists,” read the article in the London Times. Pictures of red roofs and snow-capped mountains leapt off the page. Bosnia had emerged from
Unbalanced in the Sinking City
by Tim Leffel Below the tilting surface of Mexico City. Am I really that bad of a photographer? Every shot of a building looks crooked. It’s like I got drunk in a cantina and then
Hulk and Me
Almost all of the people I met in Rio de Janeiro who lived in houses rather than apartments were dog-owners. They loved their animals, Im sure, but first and foremost these dogs had a very
Surviving the Mystical Experience
by Kevin Sebesky Ignoring the rules of the mesa - and coming back to tell about it 09-12-08 – Monastery of Christ in the Desert, Abiqiui, New Mexico Hikes on the mesas above the monastery
Shadow Animals
by Kevin McCaughey A writer's moments with a very different Natasha. Natashas have always seemed long to me. Long-haired, long-legged, comfy at great heights, like in an expensive revolving restaurant. Which is funny, because I
Showdown at the West Esplanade Canal
by Darrin DuFord Can two hundred tons of chili save a city? Exciting events are not supposed to happen in the suburbs. I mean, what would the neighbors think? So I wondered what the neighbors
Hot and Cold Cans of God
by Bonnie Morris A tour leader unlocks the coffee bonanza of East Asia. Western visitors to Hong Kong, Korea and Japan expect to find teahouses, tea ceremonies, rituals steeped in steeping leaves of tea. But
Siliguri
by Megan Lyles Who can you trust when you're traveling solo? It was 4:20 a.m. when I heard the faint hum in the distance. The noise grew steadily from a barely perceptible hope to a
A Border Rat in the Twilight Zone
by Tom Miller A journalist recalls his four decades exploring the US-Mexico border. I am a border rat. I've been one since the day I hopped back and forth between countries over a fallen, rusty
The Marvel of Seville
by Jennifer Arin Flamenco performance, Gypsy life, it's all part of the scene. Que cara! What nerve! I mutter, exiting the cab with two heavy bags. It’s almost midnight, and I’m exhausted from the long
Tres Cheap: A Travel Writer Storms the Caribbean
by Charles Kulander It's all in a day's work. I travel faster than bad news. I comb my hair with a plastic salad fork and use a toothbrush handle to stir my instant coffee, flavoring
The Rarest of Editions
by Erin Byrne "There is something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life." —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby"The good man possesses a kingdom." —Seneca, Thyestes.380. If books are humanity in
The Suffer Fest
by Mary Caperton Morton From around the road’s bend: a shriek of metal, a cloud of smoke, and a bus careens at our van, head on. We swerve madly for a near miss. Then I
Searching for the Holy Ghost: Jerusalem’s Two Tombs
by Maureen Littlejohn Sometimes a symbol is more important than authenticity. It is dark inside. The dim surroundings are a stark contrast to the glaring white sun outdoors. I have just entered the Church of
Fruits of Childhood
by Mo Tejani Nothing transports you faster to a distant time and place than scents and flavors. This morning, perched on a wooden chair in my teeming tropical garden in northern Thailand, I am writing
The Train at Night
by Gina Briefs-Elgin Sleeping on a train can be a mystical experience, or a challenging one. According to Hasidic tradition, thirty-six “saints” (lamed vavnik) are hidden in the world at all times, holding it together
We Wait for Spring, Moldova and Me
by Kevin McCaughey There are many lessons to be learned teaching in the former Soviet Union. It was a mistake, finishing that bottle of Kagor. But with no heat and no lights, no TNT all
Ashes of San Miguel
by Tawni Vee Waters There’s bones on the beach. There’s ashes in the jar. Ghosts in the air laughing at fools in the bar. But somewhere inside, this river don’t run to the sea no
Meeting the Marabout
by Gwen Hopkins Surprising revelations come in a meeting with an Islamic holy man in Senegal. The man in orange wasn’t the marabout. I’d been staring at him, barely breathing, as he sat calmly and
Into Borneo
by Ken Matusow He did his best to get away from it all. Yogya was stifling. The heat and humidity of central Java was always difficult to endure. But it was more than that. I
Bellissima
by Bonnie Smetts Shopping in Italy is a culture unto itself. I tiptoed up the gray-carpeted stairs of the Gucci store in Rome. A single sweater folded with precision lay on a counter and another
If He Cries, They Kill Him
by Ken Lovering In unfamiliar cultures, honesty has its risks. It would be easy to blame my sweat on the mid-afternoon Tanzanian sun. But there’s more to why my glands are working overtime: I am
12 Hours in Barcelona
by Marianne Rogoff Make the most of the time you have. The flight from Palma, Mallorca, Spain, to San Francisco, California, includes a long layover in the city of Gaudi. I land in Barcelona at
Los Muertos
by Barbara Robertson “The Mexican is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it; it is one of his toys and his most steadfast love.” —Octavio Paz This is what
The Chaperone
by Jann Huizenga All she wanted was a work permit. "Signora," reads the message in Italian, "we request your presence at Police Headquarters for fingerprinting on February 11." This is great news: I applied for
Living Twice in Ghana
by Matthew Link What sort of box do you fancy? Death never takes a vacation away from us. It’s tied to our feet like an arrogant shadow wherever we go, as a constant reminder of
Lost and Found in Prague
by Jan Burak Schwert It's often hard to know who will help and who won't. Ron and I had just arrived in Prague and needed a room for the night. We parked our car and
Rumble in the Jungle
by Phil Goldman Sometimes it's hard to tell who is the guide and who is the guided. If my first three weeks in the Thai jungle taught me one thing, it was this: I was
A Cultural Lesson Lying in the Gutter
by Sandy Sims Sometimes you have to step out of the crowd. Helping someone in another country can sometimes mean a slip between cultural cracks. At least that's what I felt late one afternoon in
The American Engine
by Tom Bentley He went out looking for the American character, and became one himself. Long ago, when I was still in high school, I took a road trip from Southern California with three of
Subdued by Street Vendors
by Darrin DuFord A gastronomic exploration of Nicaragua's post-war highlands reveals renewed talent for suckling and a stubborn joie de vivre. “Chicken, chicken, soda, soda!” I was sweating in a parked bus, serenaded by barks
Cripple Creek
by Michelle McAlister Sometimes you can find hope in the most unlikely places. I have a photograph taken 30 years ago ingrained in my head: My twin sister and I are posing behind one of
Chadian Soccer Lessons
by Tom Weller It was the spectacle that mattered. Clouds of dust bloom around feet pounding across the bronze field, bare earth baked hard by the Chadian sun. I move with the flow of the
The Great Butter Caper of Chartres
by Eileeen Cunniffe Dining in France is always a unique experience, with or without the butter. Visions of French food danced through my mind, prompted no doubt by my growling stomach, as the train pulled
Let’s Spend the Night Together
by Chris Epting He goes in search of rock star rooms with a grisly past, or “places to check out”—permanently. When booking a hotel room, what drives your decision? Price? Location? Size? Amenities? I’m drawn
True Home
by Marianne Dresser A place we really belong is sometimes hard to find. Hazy late-afternoon sunlight filtered through the pines, revealing an undisturbed layer of duff on the path. The taxis from the train station
Bread, Clay and the Spanish Civil War
by Diana Cohen A potter in an Andalucian village shares his craft—and secrets—from Spain's dark history. Pepe and his pottery yard were both ramshackle and to the casual passerby may have looked dilapidated, even unpleasantly
Freedom of Religion in Cuba
by Peter Delevett Things have changed in Cuba: you can worship as you wish. Editor's note: Peter Delevett, an editor and sometime-travel writer with the San Jose Mercury News, visited Cuba in 2003 right before
Highly Unusual
by Sophia Tellen A long time ago she found her home in Barbados. On February 27th 2008, World Travel Watch posted this alert for Barbados: “Crime against tourists is low here and usually takes the
A Vast Difference
by Deborah Fryer Summer camp is the first adventure for many a traveler. Like many kids, I went to summer camp to learn to sail and ride a horse and tie a bowline. I whittled
The Empty Rocker
by Kathleen Spivack Lives of quiet desperation are sometimes not what you think. The empty rocking chair echoed slowly, its arc poised in mid air. The chair’s body still held the motion of another’s warmer
Discalced
by Bruce Berger Some things never change, and that is a good thing. Ever since I started camping in tents, I have enacted a nightly farce. On the advice of desert dwellers who warn that
The Bamenda Syndrome
by David Torrey Peters Insanity is very much a point of view. In mid-June of 2003, Raymond Mbe awoke on the floor of his dirt hut. A white moth had landed on his upper lip.
The Coffee King of Irapuato
by Pickett Porterfield Sometimes you have to take life one day at a time. Luis doesn’t like Mexicans. He says they’re stupid and lazy. The funny thing is that Luis is Mexican. He owns a
Out of India
by Elizabeth Galewski You'll know it when you're really gone. My alarm went off and I shot out of the hard bed in my dingy Delhi hotel room, every cell in my body charged and
Beijing Hostage
Michael Shapiro discovers it's hard to know if he was conned.
A Brie-f Moment
by Cecilia Worth Opportunities for kindness exist just about everywhere. Friday evening and the Safeway in Homer, Alaska is half empty. No end-of-week-thank-God-it’s-time-to-party festivities going on in this supermarket. On the other side of the
Comb of Rebellion
by Darrin DuFord Sometimes it takes a machete. Three dollars. It can’t even get you a beer in a New York City bar. But it’s the going rate for a haircut in Panama City. Peppered
Red Beacon of Europe
by Jann Huizenga They built Albania's socialist state and were made to feel special—then they grew up and tore it down. "I built that block of flats," says Lule, pointing past a disemboweled Fiat to
The Streets of Paris
by Adrian Cole "The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong, but he is perfect to whom the
A Visit to Brokeleg Mountain
by John Dalton You're only as old as you think. My son Chris thinks I should stop roaring down fire trails on my mountain bike. He hasn’t told me this directly—he uses his mother, my
The Light in Florence and the Golden Age of Man
by Tuan Phan It's all a question of dogs and donkeys. My friend Omar and I were sitting at an outdoor bar in Florence, sipping six-euro beers in silence. In front of us was the
Into the Sahara
by James Michael Dorsey When the opportunity arises to don blue robes and enter bandit country, what do you do? The blowing sand rocks our Land Rover as we reach the outskirts of Timbuktu. Mahkmoud
Don’t Dread the Dread, Mon
by Jennifer Wells It really does make the world go 'round. I have a theory, supported by a great deal of data, that Western women lose 20-30 IQ points in the presence of a beautiful
Follow the Calves
by Simon Hodgson There are many eyes in the jungle, lots of them on you. There are no crocodiles in my creek. For minutes I stare in silence at the brackish water before me, hoping,
A Bottle of Calvados
by Tom Cheche Sometimes men do ask directions, and reap the rewards. Shade kept us from seeing the sign. The narrow country lane, devoid of traffic, meandered through farmland of the Cotinten bathed in glorious
Honey and Blood
by Tracy Barnett A reporter finds hope at the fabled bridge of Mostar. A maple tree grows out the window of what was once someone's tidy little flat on the Croatian side of Santica Street
Vampires from Venus
by Zack Kushner There's nothing like a 30-hour bus ride for escaping what ails you. Lost in the swirling dust, the sun scalding our scalps and our pursuers gaining, we go for broke. In order
Escape from Darien
by Cameron McPherson Smith They were on their own on a raft. Another big Pacific swell came up fast and silent, moonlight flashing on its face. Hurrying east, it lifted and then dropped our sixty-foot
Big Cats, No Guns
by Laurie McAndish King They took a walk into the lion's den. The first time I tracked lions, it was from the relative safety and comfort of a large—although open—Land Rover, with a loaded rifle
Billi Billi
by Tom Weller It was a true taste of local culture. The soldier sat down, uninvited, next to me. He wore dusty, faded green fatigues and shower sandals. He swung his battered automatic riffle off
Is This a Great Country?
Larry reflects on the privileges we take for granted.
Easter Island: Where the Roads Diverged
by Catherine Watson Finding your true home is one thing—staying there is quite another. I was in Ecuador, on my way to a folklore performance, sharing a ride with two other tourists – a middle-aged
The Ringer
by Jennifer Williams She gets in the game and makes a breakthrough. At low tide, the white sands of Mombasa’s northern beaches stretch nearly half a mile out to sea. The shore is framed by
Eight Seconds
by Peter Bronski A moment can seem an eternity. A hot, dry wind whips across the arid Arkansas River valley, blowing sand and dust between my teeth. I tip my head forward into the harsh
Antarctica Concerto
by Cecilia Worth There's something more than wilderness at the bottom of the earth. Except for the gangway’s frenzied chunk-chunk against the flank of the anchored ship, the Antarctic blizzard furies around us in eerie
Crazy Diamond
by Adrian Cole One day he found himself in Texas. I couldn’t really ever tell you why I left home. I’d come up with some superficial reasons, of course, but just so that we could
Greek Hospitality
by Sophia Tellen It was generous then, as it is now. Greece was burning. In August 2007, 175 fires erupted simultaneously from the Ionian Sea in the west, Ioannina in the north and the Peloponnese
Cefalo
by Eliot Stein Traditions come and go, like the tides. There exists an inherent sorrow in the Italian culture—the kind that drives you towards theatrical hand motions, delicate flicks of the tongue, and designer fashion
The Worst Motorcycle in Laos
by Christopher Tharp It was the ride of his life. It was a 100cc Chinese make – a glorified scooter, actually – the type of four speed bike that is ubiquitous throughout Southeast Asia. The
Gods Who Smell Like Goats
by Mary Patrice Erdmans She joins the river of souls that is the Way of St. James. Ulrich, a robust 52-year-old pilgrim dressed in a red flannel shirt, told me, “I want to walk through
Philomen and Baucis
by Pamela Cordell Avis A modern tale of metamorphosis. I was at one of life’s crossroads, you know, the kind that either can or cannot divert you to a journey down an untraveled road. To
Ghost on Ice
by Cameron M. Smith He spent a month—in winter—on Alaska's North Slope. I knew that polar bears tore apart cabins every winter, so the first crunch—the sound of a large animal stepping carefully in deep
Red Lights and a Rose
by Joel Carillet He discovers the meaning of paradise. I was thinking about paradise, a word so often flippantly tossed around in churches and mosques, at Club Med resorts and on Norwegian cruise liners. The
Mama Rosa’s Coconut Bread
by Celeste Brash Her spirits rose with the dough. Mama Rose impaled the coconut onto the wooden spike making a tear in the husk. Self-rolled cigarette hanging out the corner of her mouth, she continued
Stalking Asparagus
by Jann Huizenga The secret to life can be found in a wild Sicilian plant. "Ne ho travato uno!" crows Signor Battaglia. "I found one!" Six pairs of female eyes turn his way. Signor Battaglia,
Africa by Bus
by Mo Tejani Small tyrants illustrate large problems. Bouncing off the potholes on the dirt road in Tanzania, the rickety blue bus is packed with black bodies dripping sweat. Every inch of space is taken.
Camino Encounters
by Sophia Tellen Everyone has their reasons for joining the pilgrimage. At the end of August a few years ago I set out on the Way of St. James from St. Jean-de-Pied-de-Port to cross the
El Otro Lado (The Other Side)
by Pamela Alma Bass Patience is learned in the knitting of a sweater, the telling of life stories. The tiny sweaters catch my eye every time I pass them on my way to the biblioteca,
The Galapagos by Small Ship
by Peter Mandel He had to see for himself. Ecuador. The Equator. The Galapagos Islands. There is unusual magic in these words. You can read and read about the blue-footed boobie. About Darwin's five-week visit
Hardcore Pig Problem
by Dave Mondy Sometimes enough isn't enough. I don’t idolize pig parts and I don’t own a Kiss the Cook apron. I don’t search for secret spices. Which is to say, I’m no barbeque fanatic;
Thank God for the War
by Lone Mørch Schneider Roots run deeper than we sometimes think. “A Queen cannot come from such humble beginnings,” Frieda objected, standing in the remaining rubble of her Transylvanian childhood home. We were in Zendersch,
It’s the Little Things
by Jann Huizenga Sicily reminds you what it means to be human. On a flawless autumn morning en route to the market that hugs Ecce Homo Church, you round a bend into a narrow lane
Borrowing Time in Balestrand
by Augusto Andres Our seasons come and go, leaving wakes large and small. Kingdon and I sit in his wooden fishing boat, drifting slowly into the end of the ever-narrowing Esefjord. Before us, a double
Why Tuk-Tuks Make the Big Bucks
by Kristin Barendsen A farang tries to tame the wildest creature of Thailand’s urban jungle. It looks easy, like driving a car, except that the gas is a flick of the wrist. But when I
Miami in Heat
by Dave Mondy He went to South Beach to visit his brother. Really. The men of Miami Beach have fish hooks in their nipples. At least they walk that way. Connected by invisible wire to
Someone Who Cared
by Sophia Tellen It was 1956, she was out of boarding school—forever. Sixteen, and free, prepared for everything but life. “The Hungarian immigrants to South Africa will be arriving in Vanderbijlpark next week. The Red
Driving Lessons
by Janet Riehl The lessons of childhood are never forgotten. A girlhood in rural Illinois wasn't bad preparation for life in upcountry African nations. "Up country" meant the northern regions innermost from newly built capital
Tea for One
by Lara Endreszl January in Vienna induces cafe dreaming. My new chocolate-brown boots can’t compete with cobblestones. Three-inch, stiletto heeled, pointy-toed beauties, but my feet aren’t appreciating this walk. My eyes, however, love it. I
The Magic
by Elizabeth Striebel We're all looking for something. What startled me most was his candor. He had a soft way about him, present, but not crowding. Actually, he pulled you towards him, as if to
Jungle River
by Peter Mandel The Amazon is a blur of animals and fish and trees. The Rio Negro, I am told, is a river like any other. This is Brazil, the jungle, so it keeps tropical
True Relic
by Mary Beth Ray A simple hello can lead to surprising connections. I walked to the Duomo early in the morning to watch people for a while. I was glad to be able to set
Chartres: Ecstasy at the Altar
by Bill Zarchy It wasn't the usual cathedral tour. “We’re not even Christian,” wailed Danny as I dragged my family to Chartres on the train from Gare Montparnasse. “Why do we have to go to
Anusha, Saver of Splashed Cats
by Kevin McCaughey He needed a happy ending in the worst way. Anusha was late to my apartment. She came in soaked, harried. Storms had drenched the north of Poland the last four days, a
Finding My Rock
by Jennifer Baljko When you need to quiet your mind, sometimes it helps to return to your childhood, both yours and your parents'. Lost in a dense forest with prickly bushes attacking my calves, I
Shoes Like Gondolas
by Jann Huizenga It took Sicily to teach her about fashion. The best thing about my short-term rental in Ragusa, Sicily is that it comes with a cleaning woman. Lucia arrives every Monday morning sporting
Superior Sanctuary
by Michele Bergstrom On the island in the lake she found her own divinity. Fog. Like delicate tatting, it weaves silver filigree between white birches and gnarled cedar roots, coating with the tiniest of drops
The Unquenchable Sea
by Matthew Link The ocean has a peculiar attraction, and is full of lessons. When we were out at sea on Bungo Rye, we kids always wanted to jump into the crystal Pacific when it
Castles in the Sky
by Jennifer Baljko Performance art, acrobatic prowess, and political defiance merge in the streets of Barcelona. I close my eyes, hoping not to witness imminent destruction. A young child, about five years old, hovers two
Flamenco Form
by Nancy Penrose She found her calling in Spain. I am a traveler in search of flamenco. In a nightclub in a cave in Granada, I sip Cruzcampo beer and watch and wait for the
Fishing with Larry
by Tom Joseph They got together for one last adventure. Don Juan says the Río Grande de Quetena holds trout. To make the point, he extends a muscled arm as if signaling a left turn:
Italian for Beginners
by Teresa Joseph Something usually gets lost in the translation. “Mi scusi, dov e l’ufficio de turismo?” I said hesitantly—but rather proudly—having memorized the phrase from out of the back of the guidebook. The Milanese
A Tonga Tale
by Bill Markley You never know when you'll breathe your last. Antarctica, December 1973, Jim Borchers and I had spent four months at McMurdo Station, a US base on Ross Island, and at a field
A Spin around Moldova
by Albert Englehardt It isn't your typical tourist destination. I pulled over to the side of the highway, hoping that when the policeman saw that he had caught two hapless tourists, he would let us
Gypsy Girls
by Jonas Knutsson Strangers on a Train meets The Wolfman. The tawny plains of Lombardy unfold in my window, billowing in the middle of the serene solitude of my train compartment. The land of Virgil
La Zisa, La Cuba, and La Cubula
by Natalie Galli It started as a simple tour of Palermo. "I'm taking you to visit La Zisa, La Cuba, and La Cubula," Maia, my elderly cousin informed me, folding her newspaper. "Friends of yours?"
The Tree
by Carmen J. Semler As long as we live, there is still time to say “thank you.” “I wish for you that when you grow up you will return to Malta and visit the good
Silver Dust
by Alexis Sathre Wolff A budding humanitarian learns that a lot happens when things don't go as planned. Several weeks into my four-month stay in Niger, I walked through the gates of le Musée National
Skeletons in the Closet
by Tibor KrauszFrom dust to dust, more or less."There lies my grandmother!" exclaims the prickly-haired 20-year-old Sagadan curiously named Birdy, who has volunteered to be my guide. Casting my gaze horizontally in search of a
Flashback
by Jan Burak SchwertMusic makes the world go 'round.It was time to say goodbye. Our 21-year-old son was leaving for Semester-at-Sea, a journey to third-world countries around the globe. My husband Ron and I flew
Los Dias de los Muertos
by Ethel F. MussenLife is always reflected in art.The San Francisco Opera season of 2006 opened with The Masked Ball and this year it is included in my Sunday series. Just as the last time,
The Last Good Woman
by Sophia TellenMany things—good and bad—never change.“We were both born in Israel and love it here,” Jocheved said. “I just hope they’ll let us live in peace.” It was 1963. One border was peaceful. My
Kick Boxing for Pride and Peanuts
by Antonio GraceffoMuay Thai fighters duke it out in the sticks of Thailand.When I was a young boxer in the United States, the most I ever made for a fight was $150. And I only
San Francisco: The Native Son Tour
by Robert Andersen An exile takes an intimate look at his favorite city. When the Golden Gate Bridge observed its 50th anniversary in 1987, so many pedestrians thronged the (nautical) mile-long roadway in reenactment of
The Green Wardrobe
by Jonathan Callard What does it mean to be moving, constantly? When I was nine I killed the ants in the driveway of my Connecticut home, right in the middle of the boarding school campus
Ice Cream Diplomacy in Baghdad
by Kelly Hayes-Raitt She went to Iraq to help women, but lost her heart to a girl. The one I wanted to wrap in my arms and bring home was Nebras. I didn't even know
Cayman Conscience
by Victoria Adams To eat, or not to eat. Friends call me a tree hugging liberal—I take it as a compliment. I recycle. I turned a corner of our backyard into a compost heap. I
Grandpere
by Ken Matusow The secret to navigating West Africa is its people. The first time I saw Grandpere he was sitting on a stoop inside the courtyard of a dilapidated hotel in the suburbs of
La Belle Province: A Pandora’s Box
by A C A trip across the border can be a journey to another planet. “Kell johnruh duh pane voo fayil vwah?” the woman behind the Subway restaurant counter seemed to ask. I shook my
The Tale of Kieu: The Last News from Mr. Hat’s Neighborhood
by Richard Sterling In which Crawling Lady gives Mr. Hat a poignant surprise. I thought after the incident of the brat cat (the one I tossed across the alley) I might be on Crawling Lady’s
Love and Loss: More News from Mr. Hat’s Neighborhood
by Richard Sterling In which we discover the pain of separation, from a child. I beat Heidi at a game of pool a few weeks ago. But it was too easy. She was very much
Copyrights and Courtesans: More News from Mr. Hat’s Neighborhood
by Richard Sterling In which we encounter cats, crumpets, and pirates. I’d let myself get out of shape for while. At home I normally run around Lake Merritt (4 miles) four or five times per
Not Running on Empty: More News from Mr. Hat’s Neighborhood
by Richard Sterling In which we hear news of Heidi and learn about the importance of custom. Miss Tittie is still without paramour. I am surprised. I thought she would fill the void immediately. I
One Man’s Swiss Journey
by Sophia Tellen It was a life well lived. I recall his boyish smile, the beret tilted over his right eye—his strong, sinuous frame, the sap rising straight from the earth. Simmering beneath the surface,
It’s All Good: More News from Mr. Hat’s Neighborhood
by Richard Sterling In which we discover some of the quirks, and pleasures, of Vietnamese culture. Every time I try to speak a little Vietnamese I get the damned tones wrong. I’ve inadvertently told a
8 Ball in the Corner Pocket: More News from Mr. Hat’s Neighborhood
by Richard Sterling In which we explore the effects of altruism. I stepped into Regional HQ the other day and Alfalfa told me he had just seen Heidi walk by in tears. Suzi Q had
Ministry of Correctness: More News from Mr. Hat’s Neighborhood
by Richard Sterling In which we simplify the origins of the Panama Hat. This damned hat! Make no mistake, I love the thing. It’s the best I’ve ever owned. But the folks in Hat’s ’Hood
Love in the Time of Communism: More News from Pagoda Alley
by Richard Sterling In which we discover what makes the heart spin. Valentine’s Day came to Vietnam, and the Patron Saint of Love was loaded for bear. Make no mistake, this is still officially a
More News from Mr. Hat’s Neighborhood
by Richard Sterling Our Vietnam expat gives us another tour of his Saigon world. It is sunset. The An Lac Pagoda, from which our alley takes its name, is full of congregants, as it often
Snake Dance
by Charly Heavenrich Nature is full of surprises. In the early days of my work as a river guide in the Grand Canyon the subject of rattlesnakes rarely came up. If we saw them it
Outside of Trevi, a Car Approaches
by Angela Hamilton She discovered the secret to happiness, but it wasn’t what she expected. I remember it now. I was standing at the kitchen counter on the phone with my friend David, an art
Not Until the Fat Lady Sings
by Jake Weirich A baseball lesson, Nicaragua style. I’ve been in Granada, Nicaragua for a day. Lot’s of interesting buildings and architecture, and, of course, I have to check out the baseball stadium. When I
Human Nature
by Marianne Rogoff They walked for days under dust-devils, nights under whirlwinds to get there. ~ Elsa Cross, Malinalco Clay has strong opinions about everything. Americans: materialistic, all they care about is money. Colombians: dangerous.
A Survivor of the Khmer Rouge Genocide
by Antonio Graceffo A ride in a Washington, D.C. taxi places a journalist in the path of a lost soul. “I risked my life to get here, and I have done nothing with my time
Ridotto!
by Bonnie Smetts At what age do you become a senior citizen in Italy? My first days in Rome I kept up an ambitious program of seeing museums and churches that I’ve always wanted, but
The News from Pagoda Alley
by Richard Sterling It isn't quite Lake Wobegon, but... What is it about a Panama hat? Other than the fact that mine is probably the only one in the country. You all know that the
Mr. Hat’s Neighborhood
by Richard Sterling There are many characters in the alleys of Saigon. Palm trees grow, rents are low and the feeling is layback. It’s been raining daily, but it’s that gentle tropical rain that lasts
The Morning of the World
by Jane Merryman You can learn a lot about yourself when forced to do nothing but fool evil spirits. It is dawn on the day of Nyepi, Balinese New Year, and the only sounds I
At the Foot of Mount Yasur
by Usha Alexander An active volcano in “paradise” conveys many lessons about life, community, culture, and hubris. I am six hundred miles east of the Great Barrier Reef in the archipelago of Vanuatu—or, as they
The Barber
by Dustin W. Leavitt A bit of grooming allows time to reflect on Vietnam-U.S. relations and the tentacles of power. The first time I thought about traveling to Vietnam was thirty-some years ago, and what
Christmas Day in Greece
by Susan Kegel A small effort to learn Greek leads to a big pay-off. She clasped my hands warmly and tightly, wishing us chronia polla, season’s greetings, and much more that I did not understand.
Unforgettable: A Ballad
by Ethel Foladare Mussen An octogenarian traveler in France relives the days. Pierre and Martine Eisenlohr embraced me twice each and motioned me toward a table facing the bar and just outside the very crowded
The Canals of Wuxi
by Susan M. Tiberghien Nothing is simple in China. We arrive in Wuxi in the morning so that we can travel down the Imperial Canal in the afternoon. The four-hour boat trip will take us
Immortality, and the Art of Losing It
by Thaddeus Laird A brush with nature is both humbling and uplifting. The wind outside the hut threatened the paper-thin window panes with each new gust, causing loose paint chips to bounce around on the
Getting Grandma
by Barbara Robertson It's important to know when to raise a stink. The nicely dressed young man who had shared our compartment since Düsseldorf said goodbye in Munich, pressed a brown nugget the size of
Spider on the Wall
by Paul Yee A rural teahouse provides an unexpected window on Burma. The spider was well camouflaged, silent and still as the flickering oil lamps cast dim shadows on the wall of the teashop. Gathered
Desert Therapy
by Halina Balka A Canadian gets a new lease on life in a playland in Nevada. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, or so the saying goes. Since I’m not good at keeping secrets,
Clutching My Soul in Paradise
by Joel Carillet A boy learns indelible lessons about time and life. “‘Oars! Oars!’ he intensely whispered, seizing the helm—‘grip your oars, and clutch your souls, now! My God, men, stand by!’” Herman Melville’s Ahab
Confessions of a Travel Writer
by Robert L. StraussHe explores a four-letter word that everybody loves.My career as a travel writer began innocently enough. I was looking for a way to deduct the $10,000 cost of my five-month honeymoon in
The Gigolo
by Dustin W. LeavittThe underworld of Japanese tattoo is full of surprises.Akasaka enjoys the world he lives in, a world of geishas, gangsters, and dragons. It’s not an imaginary world. The world Akasaka inhabits is
One Man Down, One Species Up
by Brad NewshamIt wasn't the usual night driving his taxi in San Francisco, or was it?I had just dropped a conventioneer from North Carolina at the Fillmore Auditorium, when on the sidewalk over to my
More Interesting than a Naked Woman
by Timothy WestonThis is the fate that awaits us all.I feel as if I’m the knight in Ingmar Bergman’s classic The Seventh Seal. When inquiring as to the identity of a pale, black-robed figure that
Conversations on a Pakistani Bus
by Joel CarilletThe North-West Frontier is about as far away as an American can get, but you can still find some semblance of home.It was dusk now and the bus continued its rumble west on
The Holy Grail
by Maria DolanA non-birder discovers a new way of seeing in the forest.To get to the Albergue de Montana Savegre, a recommended pitstop in our guidebook, we caught a bus from the beach that pulled
The Longest Day
by Michael ShapiroThe grip of love reaches through time.As a planeload of people stared at their tiny seat-back screens, I raised the cover of the oval window and witnessed my second dawn of the day.
A Nice Little Holiday
by Barbara RobertsonIt makes the world go 'round.He angled toward me casually and then stopped, tugged at the sleeves of his black leather jacket and settled it with a slight shrug. Behind him, the Mediterranean
The Dangers of “Going Local”
by Olivia EdwardPicking a Mandarin name for yourself in China can be perilous.“So what’s your Chinese name?” “I haven’t got one,” I replied “Well how can we print your business cards?” tutted the production manager
Imagining Bohemia
by Pamela Gerhardt Reprinted to mark the passing of Vaclav Havel. In 1993 Prague, it was the Sixties all over again. In the late 1980s an entire generation of 20-something Americans read The Unbearable Lightness
Yankee Goes Home
by Donald A. RanardA week of living strangely thirty years ago in Laos."Nine years, and they give us an hour to get out," Ruth Stone said to the Frenchman. Ruth was the wife of Sandy
Gently You Have to Avoid a Frightening Behavior
by Marcy GordonIt was an emergency in a foreign tongue.Last year I decided to improve my scant knowledge of Italian and enrolled in a three-month intensive course at the Universita per Stranieri in Perugia, the
The Richest Gift
Richard Sterling remembers a small kindness he once offered in a time of war, and its surprising ramifications many years later.
The Cherub
by Gina Briefs-ElginIt’s hard to know what will push you over the edge.After my mother’s memorial Mass, a young friend confided that my mother had taught her an important life lesson: never serve cantaloupe on
Raven
by Marianne Rogoff“You might say the streets flow sweetly through the night.” —Xavier Villaurutia, Nostalgia for DeathDavid, Richie, and Raven were all together in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, because Raven lived here now, and
Kilimanjaro Dreams
by Ken Matusow Strange things happen in the thin air of high altitude. Do you believe that dreams come true? With a graduate degree in applied mathematics and a career in computer science, I generally
Working-Class Hero
An interview with writer Tim Cahill at his home in Livingston, Montana, excerpted from A Sense of Place: Great Travel Writers Talk About Their Craft, Lives, and Inspiration by Michael Shapiro.Night is enveloping the Colombian
Detour
by Mija RiedelSometimes the best trips are unplanned.The speedometer read 80 miles an hour. Not much time to deliberate. I wheeled sharply off the highway. It was 8:30 Saturday night, almost dark. Hundred-foot pines, silhouetted
Letter From Morocco
by Melissa Manlove A few years ago, a traveler in North Africa reflected on the Muslim holy month.Casablanca, Monday—Ramadan is over, and I have emerged with a new appreciation of the small pleasures of food
Traveling Coat
by Peter ValingIt has seen the world, and so have its owners.In recent times, it has become fashionable to appear as though you have just emerged from a garage. Clothing is worn, torn, and synthetically
Finnish Blueberries
Anita Erola reveals that a life, and culture, are reflected in a fruit.
Into the Mouth of the Wolf
Bill Fink discovers on a visit to his girlfriend's house that he needs a lot more than good luck.
Balkans? No Problem
Marcus Ferrar discovered that getting to Bucharest as the Iron Curtain was collapsing in 1990 was, well, not so easy.
Clicking in Greece
by Mija RiedelWorry beads are both a solace and an art form.“They’re plastic.” Aris Evangelinos snatched the komboloi from Peter’s hand and put a match to it. The orange and yellow beads—my gift to Peter
A Juarez Holiday
Tom Bentley discovers just how much traveling he can do in three days.
A Lesson in International Business
a Tibetan shepherd teaches travelers the essence of a bargain.
Working Men of Tokyo
Lenny Karpman discovers that the warmth or urban Japan rises before dawn.
Keys to the Outback
Laurie McAndish King discovers there's one thing you don't want to forget.
The Oldest Tourist Trap in the World
Scott Stoll discovers that some things never change.
Souvenirs
Constance Hale and her mother return to Paris to rekindle memories of a place that came to symbolize life, love, and loss.
I Came, I Cooked, I Conquered
Suzanne LaFetra gets entangled with an octopus in Mexico.
First Flight
Do you remember the first time you flew? Sometimes the simplest thing can shake you loose from your moorings and show you the world again through fresh eyes. I was daydreaming at 30,000 feet above
Vita Nova
Augusto Andres visits an unusual museum and is moved to delve into unresolved issues from the past.
Spinning Caps in Ekelbhatti
Scott Bernard introduces a new child's game to the Jomosom region of Nepal.
Two Rupees
James O'Hara learns an important lesson on a street in Old Delhi.
Javelina Sunrise
by Kate RobinsonShe seeks solace in the wilderness and gets her fill.I had sought neither a vision quest experience nor an answer to my predicament. I simply needed a break from a difficult relationship—a long
Samurai in the Garden
Lenny Karpman looks back through time in the gardens of Chiran, Japan.
The Accidental Hotel
Donald A. Ranard discovers that it was there all the time, obscure, disheveled, but bearing the riches of a bygone era.
Which Way is North?
Laurie McAndish King gets disoriented in more ways than one.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Bold Man
by Chelsea Bauch, the author ponders the wonders of Florence.
Swiss Family Habegger: Luzern and Mount Pilatus
Larry and family hone their skills at missing trains and discover central Switzerland.The only Swiss train in the last decade to run late was the one we were on, the cogwheel from Grindelwald to Interlaken Ost. Our connection gave us exactly five minutes to catch our train to Luzern Added on October 24, 2003
My Journey with Anna Maria
by Scott Bernard Three hours above the suspension bridge over the Urabamba River on Peru’s Inca Trail, we stopped at Huayllabamba, a village of a few scattered houses. The porters had set up camp in front of the one room stone school on a rough dirt patch used by the children for play, and I set up my tent among the others. Throughout dinner a woman watched from the shadows at the corner of the school building, stepping forward, then retreating. When everyone was finished with hot chocolate, she crept from the shadows, crossed the black gap between two worlds, and entered the camp light, stepping carefully. She said something quietly and rubbed a finger up and down her forearm.
Night of Oranges
by Flavius StanA child comes of age. It is Christmas Eve in 1989 in Timisoara and the ice is still dirty from the boots of the Romanian revolution. The dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had been
Swiss Family Habegger: At the “Top of Europe”
Larry and family explore Grindelwald and the Jungfrau region, coming face to face with the Eiger.The highest railway station in Europe perches at 11,333 feet on a razor ridge with glaciers falling off in all directions, wedged in by the soaring peaks of the Jungfrau, Mönch, and Eiger. Added on August 30, 2003
Swiss Family Habegger: More Adventures on Swiss Trains
Larry begins to get a handle on using the Swiss rail system, embarrassing himself along the way. Missing the train in Geneva wasn’t my first mishap with Swiss trains. The day I’d arrived with elder daughter Alanna in Zurich from the U.S. I thought I was handling all the niggling details of travel pretty well. Added on August 15, 2003
Shedding Masks
On a warm October morning in Egypt, I ventured into Cairo’s labyrinthine Khan Al-Khalili market to lose myself. I passed stalls of gold, sliver, and brasswares, brightly patterned galabeyas and linen scarves draped across narrow passageways, colorful bowls of spices shaped into delicate, powdery pyramids.
Swiss Family Habegger: A Tale of Mountains and Roots
Larry Habegger takes his family to Switzerland to see big mountains and search for clues to the past. Cow bells jangled from the far side of a hut as we strolled through the meadow, wildflowers brushing our legs, dramatic mountains rising rugged and sheer beyond the valley. "Have people climbed that mountain?" Added on August 04, 2003
Learning to Speak Italian
by Annette Jarvie Wilma is tall and blond, with a square jaw and a big, strong body even now that she’s in her seventies. She talks with a thick Florentine accent, peppered with local colloquialisms.
Pretty in Pink
by Erik R. Trinidad When I wrote an email to Jennifer Leo, editor of the Women's Travel humor book Sand In My Bra, I volunteered myself to be her intern during her book's promo tour in Montreal, Canada. I was so enthusiastic about the idea that I even suggested that I'd pass out flyers on the street with the only relevant eye-catching gag I could think of: while wearing a bra.
Writing About Travel – Larry Habegger
The best travel stories are really stories about life, with lessons for the writer and reader about ourselves and the people and places in our still magical world. We don’t have to travel far
Walking the Kerry Way
By Tim O'Reilly
A candle in a dark church illumines family history.
I hadn't spent much time with my brother Frank since he was about twelve years old, back in 1973. That was the year I'd gotten engaged to a non-Catholic, and my parents wouldn't let me bring her home because "it would scandalize the children." I was nineteen and equally sure of myself, so I refused to come home without her.Sail Away: They don’t scuttle ships anymore, do they?
Chill wind ruffled the flags atop the pier fronts as I skated toward my South of Market office. The broad walkway of the Embarcadero led past joints that had been here for decades, reminding us that San Francisco was first and foremost a port city: The Boondocks, Red’s Java House, Java House. These places are relics, but they’re lively ones, and they give the San Francisco waterfront its personality.
Just past Java House the chill forced my head down when I heard the rending of something large, the shriek of splintering wood. I snapped toward the bay and my breath caught.
The sight was a stab to the heart. A giant back-hoe, its huge maw crashing ...
A Thought On Editing: Cut 50%
The other day I wrote an essay about the demolition of a 19th century sailing ship on the San Francisco waterfront that I had witnessed by chance on the way to work. I was appalled, and moved to write about it because it represented to me how San Francisco is losing touch with its heritage. I got it just the way I wanted it, then showed it to a friend. "This would make a perfect Op-Ed piece in the Chronicle," he said, and I thought, hey, he’s right. It’s been years since I’ve sent any Op-Ed pieces around, so I called to see what the procedure was. "The essay has to be 650 words or less," the friendly editor said. Mine was more than 1,200. So I set about the exercise of cutting it down by almost half. I’m a firm believer that a story can always be tightened, and here I was presented with a challenge. Could I cut away half the essay and still make it work? I had to abandon a lot of stuff I liked, but I was able to keep the essence, and if I allow myself to admit it I might say that the shorter piece is better ...
Where I Am
White sand beach, blue sky, palm trees, thick novel, suntan lotion, me. That about covers it, the real-life version of the glossy travel brochure. The only thing missing was the big, happy-go-lucky Hollywood grin on the lounging sun bather. It wasn't there, it was more of a scowl.
The Protest of Señor Sapo
Rubbing my hand twice across the wooden slats of the bench to sweep off the water, I sat, immediately realizing the impotence of the gesture as my pants and back ribbed with damp. The rain had been short and uncommitted, simply glistening the dark grass and gilding the walkway pavers and the cobbled streets surrounding the Plaza de Armas with reflected gold from streetlights, shop windows and the fairytale twin spires of the cathedral. Carmen sat next to me with a smile and no concern for the wet. She had been one of my first customers and my partner most every evening for two weeks. She was seven and spent her days selling chewy candy, two for one sole or three for one sole or "A special price just for my friend," four for one sole, to the tourists that haggled. Tucking her cardboard box inside her coat knowing she would sell no candy to me, Carmen looked at the clock on the cathedral and said, "It’s almost time."
Lard is Good For You
In Costa Rica, I lived on lard and coffee. There was lard in the bread, in the rice and in the beans. There was lard in the cookies, in the imitation Doritos I ate at the school where I taught; it was coating the potatoes and being used to fry bananas in the cafeteria. Damaris, the woman I lived with, normally bought only three food items when she went to the supermarket in the city: a sack of rice, a sack of beans, and several sticks of manteca vegetal —vegetable shortening. Everything else we ate came off the farm.
Helping Italians in Thailand
"What his name?" an emergency room nurse asked, pointing to a man surrounded by a swarm of doctors. I told her I didn't know. "You know her name?" she asked, pointing to an unconscious woman lying on a gurney, blood soaking through her jeans.
The Sound of Silence
The crying woke me. It began as one woman sobbing, then was joined by another, then another, until a chorus of wails pierced through the quiet morning. The cries grew louder, then settled into a mesmerizing rise and fall of raw emotion that left me transfixed. Was this some religious ritual, I wondered, thinking back to the muezzin call to prayers that echoed through every Muslim country at dawn. Or perhaps some ancient tribal custom to start the day?
The View from the Roof
Up on the roof, I stood, stretched, and surveyed the earth around me, a vast sea of prairie grass spreading out in all directions. I could see that the land wasn't really flat at all, as I had expected, but consisted of ebbing and flowing hills. That way ran a river, for there was a deeper crack between the hills with a few scrubby trees jutting up. And over there were some roads, splicing through the hills as straight as the edge of a 2x4, leading off the reservation in four directions, towards Rapid City, Pierre, North Dakota, Wyoming. Yet for all this expanse, which could lead one to ponder a lonely existence, a remarkably communal feeling began to spread through me.
Secret Bus to Paradise
The low rumble of the engine dissolved the tension that held me upright and my body slowly slumped into a state of relaxation bordering boneless. I sighed. Something flew out the window and I instinctively reached to grab it before it got out, but it was too late. Stress. Then something else. Worry. Then anxiety. I didn’t grab anymore.
The Summer of the Lost Ham
We weren’t the only canoeists paddling down the Yukon River that summer. About a dozen people were paddling along the same route at the same time. We all had our own pace and stopped at different times, but two or three times a day, we’d come across the same people, especially at campsites which were usually abandoned miners’ camps or old Indian sites. We got to know our fellow river people, even fairly well sometimes, all of us part of a friendly assemblage of people of different ages, different countries and lifestyles but all encountering the same scenery, the same rain and sunshine, the same moose, and all with the same whimsical compulsion to paddle the Yukon River.
Balinese Canoes
By Dustin W. Leavitt A sailor goes beneath the cultural surface to observe the rituals of a dying craft. Our second order of business, having already negotiated a daily fee for services rendered—a detail elevated
Normandy 2001
The date was September 14, 2001, three days after the horrifying terrorist attacks in the United States. I was traveling in France when the massacres took place, and on this day the Normandy American Cemetery at Omaha Beach seemed an appropriate place to be. Solemn, reverent and a haven of solitude and reflection amid a world now filled with turmoil.
Le Coeur dans la Montagne (The Heart in the Mountain)
Speeding across the desert in our white rented Renault, we were nothing more than a careless splash of paint against the backdrop of velvet sand that stretched out before us like a body in repose. The sun loomed so close and low I thought we might drive right through it as we tore across the landscape with crazy abandon, taking in deep lusty gulps of hot desert air. It was impossible to discern speed in the midst of such expansiveness. The feeling was intoxicating.
Citizen Mulenge
The second, and last, spare tire blew out just before noon somewhere between Butembo and Beni. Ian and I were three days out of Rwanda, heading for Mutwanga, a town in northeastern Zaire near the Ugandan border. From Mutwanga we planned to climb the Ruwenzoris, The Mountains of the Moon. It was 1993, less than a year before the Rwanda genocide, when the Hutus massacred the Tutsis and the whole region fell apart and eight years before somebody with a wonderful sense of irony changed the name of Zaire to The Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Paris, When It Drizzles
"Then there was the bad weather," begins Ernest Hemingway's memoir of living in Paris in the twenties, A Moveable Feast. "It would come in one day when the fall was over. We would have to shut the windows in the night against the rain and the cold wind would strip the leaves from the trees in the Place Contrescarpe. The leaves lay sodden in the rain and the wind drove the rain against the big green autobus in the terminal...." Hemingway knew exactly what he was doing when he began his poem to Paris with a cold, rainy, windswept day. He knew that bad weather brings out the lyrical in Paris and in the visitor, too. It summons up feelings of regret, loss, sadness—and in the case of the first pangs of winter—intimations of mortality. The stuff of poetry. And of keen memories. The soul aches in a kind of unappeasable ecstasy of melancholy. Anyone who has not passed a chill, rainy day in Paris will have an incomplete vision of the city, and of him- or herself in it.
Up Your Nose
Deborah J. Smith It didn't take the ancient Romans long to figure out the Tiber River wouldn't support the water needs of Rome. So they built a system of aqueducts and channels that transported fresh
Pancakes and Coffee
On the way to his coffee plantation, Vishwa mentions that he has one son and two daughters. We pull up outside his fancy new house, the only source of light in the area for miles, and two female figures descend from the front porch to meet us. Both are visions of beauty. The elder, dressed in a seductive blue saree that complements her black hair, heads straight for my bags and is halfway inside before I have a chance to carry them myself. "This is my wife," explains Vishwa. The younger, a child perhaps ten years old, is even more beautiful than her mother. Her skin is darker, her hair is as black as the night around us, and her deep brown eyes radiate as they reflect the light streaming from inside the house. "What a beautiful daughter you have," I remark to Vishwa’s wife. "Actually," she says, "that is a servant girl." Blushing with embarrassment, I pick up my remaining bag and go in.
In the Kitchen with Yuyo
It is a mild afternoon in Morelia and warm streams of sunlight filter in from the open-air courtyard of the house, brightening Yuyo's kitchen. Although I've been in this room many times, I‘ve never really taken a good look around and a part of me is disappointed by what's not here. I admit to having some romantic notions of the Mexican kitchen. I picture beautifully decorated, clay pots bubbling over with savory pozoles, an oversized copper kettle simmering frijoles de la olla, a sturdy hand-fired comal roasting deep-red chiles anchos. On the countertop of blue and white tiles from Puebla, I see an aged molcajete, the secrets of previous generations ground into the well-worn basalt tejote.
Scared Shitless on Safari
Heavy sighs filled with terrorized angst woke me from a dead sleep. Wrung out at the edge of her cot was the silhouette of my best friend and worst-matched travel companion, Beth. "Do you hear the lions?" she quivered.
Kitchen Matters
Sreedevi. Her name means prosperity. "Not a goddess," her daughter tells me, "more a god energy, a goddess who is a presence but has no body to represent her." OK, I think, not like Lakshmi sitting on her lotus, or Kali with her snakes, more like the western God who is everywhere.
The Butt Reading
OK, so I’ve never actually known anyone to pick up a dog and bring it back home only to discover that it was, in fact, a rat. And I’ve never been chased down the highway by someone trying to tell me that there was a serial killer stashed away in my backseat. If I hear a story that happened to my best friend’s uncle’s cousin’s sister-in-law’s nephew and later discover that it also happened to my neighbor’s dog-walker’s brother’s ex-girlfriend‘s English professor’s wife, I quickly dismiss it as urban legend.
Wrecks and Pissers
The Bombay-Pune Road has long been notorious and dangerous. The road snakes and twists through the Western Ghats, a stretch of mountains dotted with cave temples and fortresses, from the coast up to the Deccan plateau. Centuries ago, it was an ancient trade route linking the Indian Ocean to the interior. Silk and spice caravans passed this way, trying to evade the bandits who lurked in the rocky hills along the way. Early in the 21st century, it was still treacherous, and the spontaneous setting for our odd travel game.
Mataji
"Beware of wild monkeys," I was warned. Somehow, I had foolishly relegated those words of advice to a minor side-note on the typewritten priority list I prepared for my journey to India. Now that self-admonition reverberates of life and death proportions to me, as I stand frozen in my tracks staring down the colossal-sized monkey about to pounce on me from the roof of my ashram cell.
Great in the Sack
My boyfriend, Alec, has come up with some pretty loopy ideas, but not long ago he topped himself: He suggested I run around Yerington, Nevada, with a 50-pound sack of chicken feed around my neck.
The Shepherd’s Mantra
I hesitated to say it before thinking that perhaps I was being deceived by a late January winter thaw but, no, Spring has arrived. I have been ensconced in this corner of Provence since September, not the gentle, sybaritic Provence of the Côte d’Azur and Avignon, but Haute Provence, a rude and wild country, where the dark alpine hills stream like a school of humpback whales toward the distant shores of the Mediterranean and sheep and lavender share the land. The wind is fierce, the people few, the soil stony. I was quickly snared by the region's stark enchantment.
Sesriem
It's a long drive to Sesriem from anywhere. It's in the hottest part of the Namib desert, in the Naukluft Park, central Namibia. Where the dust pours like liquid penetrating food seals and tightly closed lips. But despite all the dust the air seems so clean and sounds seem clearer. Our old faithful Ford F250 has taken a beating from this rocky land as the heat shimmers off her hood in the shade of a large thorn tree. We're parked at the campsite at Sesriem. Apart from the few trees there is nothing living as far as I can see. As you look into the distance the horizon seems to dance like a mad thing. Tomorrow we will drive to the huge Sossusvlei sand dunes, the largest dunes in the world, and the "vlei" itself. In a place like this it's hard to imagine that we, soft, water filled humans, have had any impact on this planet at all.
Doublestar (Why I Write)
By Dustin W. Leavitt A searcher probes the depths of the sea, the psyche, and the writer's life.Twenty-five years ago I worked in the Bering Sea trade. My ship, the tramp freighter Doublestar, had seen
Doing Good In Far Places
I was sitting by the fire in the tea room of the old Windamere Hotel in Darjeeling on a cold winter afternoon. The Windamere is the sort of faraway place where travelers whose paths happen to cross tend to talk to one another unless they are British.
Into The Land of The Stone Age Bootlegger
On my first day in the Guajira, an arid region in northeastern Colombia, I got off the chilly climatizado bus at an unremarkable junction known as cuatros vias. Four roadsthree of them pavedtraveling the points of the compass. West to Barranquilla, Colombia's largest port. South to Exxon's enormous Cerrejon coal mine. East into Venezuela, towards Maracaibo, a soupy petropolis. Or north through the Guajira Peninsula, along a branching network of corrugated ruts that ran past the hidden homesteads of the fiercely aloof Wayuu and terminated at sheltered bays and temporary airstrips used by contrabandistas. This was the road I'd be traveling when the truck to Uribia finally showed up.
Crab Season in Northern California
The pickings are abundant on the Mendocino coast. The boat blazed through salt spray, the skipper piloting the craft from the starboard deck, squinting into darkness. He reached into the sea with a hook on
Africa: Where The Fighters Are Hungry
Suspicion reigned at the Zimbabwe/Mozambique border. It was a month or so following the controversial re-election of President Robert Mugabe, and the border guards had their eyes peeled for trouble-making foreigners, especially journalists. Having mingled with members of the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change), Mugabe’s opposition, and several families of white farmers, Mugabe’s scapegoats, I now feared complications exiting the country.
King Kong in Shanghai
I am five-foot, 4-inches and 125 pounds. I have a long, slim face, wide shoulders, long arms and legs, short-waist, skinny ankles, average-sized breasts, and a medium-sized butt. I’m about a size 8. I’m not your garden variety, extremely slim and petite Asian-American woman. O.K., hardly noteworthy in the United States but in China…I might as well be King Kong. I am HUGE. I am a deviant. I’m an alien squared because I actually resemble someone who belongs to the same race living in China but I’m shaped very differently. I find nothing fits me except for the occasional XXL. I need a dress and I’m in China for another three months. I only brought functional wear, thinking that no one cares about fashion here. Silly me. I missed China’s fast forward into consumerism in the four years since my last visit. I also surprise myself. I discover I want to look more feminine while I am in China. My good friend, Shirley, takes me to downtown Shanghai, to dressmaker row, to a cheongsam dressmaker she knows. The dresses stun the senses in copper, iridescent blue, bright green, searing red, sumptuous eggplantall luxuriant silk fabrics shot with gold threads and Asian patterns. I try to squeeze into a ready-made dress. Nope. Here in China, I’m a lush and voluptuous woman. The dressmaker, a small fireball of a woman, charges over from the other side of the shop and takes over my dress selection, clucking and emitting a slew of Shanghainese and Mandarin phrases. She doesn’t quite believe that I can’t fit into any of the off-the-rack dresses. I look smaller than I am and taller than I am. My body is an optical illusion. People constantly misjudge my shape, size, weight, and age. She tries to stuff and zip me into a custom dress they are making for an Italian woman half my size. I think that Italian women and Chinese women must come from the same genetic stock judging from this dresstiny people stock.
A Note from the Toyota Motel
It’s a hot July night, Lyle Lovett’s "If I Had a Boat" is blaring from the CD player and I’m contemplating an uncertain future. Driving my husband Patrick’s maroon Toyota pickup across Highway 50 and heading east out of Fallon, Nevada, the immediate future looks pretty good. I’m on my way to Kanab, Utah, to meet my best friend Mean Vick and attend the Fourth annual Kanab Bluegrass Festival. If there are three things I love in the world (after Patrick, of course), it’s Kanab, Mean Vick, and bluegrass. The weekend promises plenty of fiddles, beautiful redrock cliffs, and maybe a cold beer or two on the festival lawn.
In My Father’s Footsteps
My father was not a religious man. He had been raised a good practicing Jew in Europe; they didn’t have many reform or modern Jews there; if you were Jewish you generally went in for the whole thing. But the Holocaust changed everything, and after it was over he had no more relationship with the deity or any other aspect of religious practice. What good had any of it been? My father had always been a giver and one who had a profound sense of responsibility to his community, both locally and worldwide. And so, still young, he willed his body to a medical school upon his death, wanting to find one last way to serve his fellow man. Thus when he died four years ago at age 77, his body was whisked off to the medical school, and there was no marker of any kind for his family. We all approved of and supported his decision, but it did leave us a little empty. However, there is one place on this earth where there is a marker and testimonial to his life. It is a plaque in a tiny French village in the mountainous pre-Alps. How that plaque got there is a whole story. Last summer, I visited the village both to see the plaque and to meet the villagers who thought as highly of him as he did of them.
Mongolian Rhapsody
by Leah KohlenbergMatisse was the name of the smoky bar cum bordello in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia's capital city, where we found ourselves at 3 a.m. my first night in the country. Named after the famous artist,
Hungry?
So when I saw a sign inside a shopping mall somewhere off the beaten path in Malaysia that said 'Kenny Rogers' Roasters,' I was more than a little curious; I had never heard of such a place. Was it a country music store? A feathered-hair salon? A cowboy apparel store? Kenny Rogers was as out of place in South East Asia as apple pie. Whatever it was, it was going to be very, very interesting. I opened the door.
Japanese Tattoo
by Dustin Leavitt The author learns the history of this art straight from the masterAkebono desu ne, I said, pointing with a forefinger at a patch of grey: dawn. A grunt and a curt nod
A Home in the Himalaya
I first saw Mount Everest from a 12,000-foot ridge on a trek near Darjeeling, India. From ninety miles away it was just a bump on the snow-capped Himalayan horizon, but it was a siren that drew me, by agonizing overnight bus, to Nepal. Many people I know who have traveled extensively throughout the world have had a reaction similar to the one I had when I tumbled off that bus at dawn not far from Kathmandu's Durbar Square: I was never the same. Added on January 13, 2003
Memory
Flies, in search of moisture, settled on their perspiring heads, infected eyes and cracked lips. I was in the Children's Nutrition Center in Monze, Zambia and these children were diseased. Each suffered the swollen joints and crusted skin of malnutrition and were admitted in a final, desperate attempt to save them from starving to death. Their mothers held them closely, each woman wearing the African sarong, two yards of patterned cotton wrapped around the torso, descending downwards to leathery ankles, bare callused feet and spread toes.
Pike Dreams
By Andrew Tarica He went to Alaska to catch a prehistoric fish. "This is the entrance to the Pike Lagoon," Cliff says as we drift lazily down the Anvik in a flat-bottom boat, fly rods
Death by Toasting in Beijing
You can fly from Washington to Beijing on a United flight leaving Dulles at 10:00 a.m. and arriving at 3:30 in the afternoon the next day, without the sun ever setting across your bow. You will make a pit stop in Chicago to take on fuel and honey roasted peanuts, and sometimes another stop in Anchorage if you have strong headwinds over Canada.
Cairo Tambourine
The old Egyptian tambourine, called a req, is encrusted inside and out with a geometric design in mother-of-pearl and bits of black and white wood. Some of the chips have worn away to rough ridges on the edge where it was held. The mother-of-pearl gleams dully through a smudge of grime built up over years of use. Five pairs of brass cymbals, hand beaten and slightly irregular in shape, are set into the rim. The resonating head is made of fine translucent fish skin, Nile sturgeon. The weight and balance of this tambourine feels better to me than any other I have found. It almost seems to have stored the knowledge and spirit of its former players.
Tom Miller’s Thoughts on Africa
I have a tendency to return to the same places time after time - I can tell you the best places to cross the Rio Grande, where to find black-market lobster in Havana, and which weavers make the finest Panama hats. Constantly visiting Cuba, the border, and Andean countries affords a certain expertise, but it can get tedious after a while. Africa was a refreshing challenge
The Elephant in the Room
We all experience it. We all have moments on rough trips when we wonder why we bother. We wish we were home, or someplace else, anywhere else, where simple things weren't Herculean challenges and the water was safe to drink. Then once we're home those thoughts vanish like vapor in the Saharan sun and all we remember is the exhilaration of the journey and we dream about the next one.
The elephant in the room for me on my recent trip to Nepal was illness. When you travel to Nepal you just about know you're going to get sick, but the phantasmagoria of Kathmandu, the soul-wrenching magnificence of the Himalayas exert such a pull that you forget about it and expect that, as you are at home, you'll be fit and healthy and capable of handling any physical challenge. But the bugs of Nepal are persistent and pernicious. And they brought me down ...
Disbelief of Wonder
"You want to hear something funny?" The young cook Cisco asked me in his native-Botswanan accent, as he prepped up a beef stew for dinner in our safari camp in Kasane, a town just outside the Chobe National Park in northern Botswana. "I hear there is a man from America who plays the piano, but he is blind." He chuckled as if it were some silly urban myth that all the kids in his hometown of Maun were told. Maun is a small town in the middle of the Kalahari Desert, so I guess it was more like a desert mirage.
The Importance of Stories in Travel Preparation
When computer book publisher Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly & Associates was heading to Australia for a conference many years ago, he intended to bring his family along and take an extra week to explore the Great Barrier Reef. He read about places to go and things to do in several guidebooks, but as appealing as everything sounded, it all sounded the same, and he couldn’t find a way to make a choice. Added on November 21, 2002
Fruity Pleasures
The old man lounging on the sidewalk slowly nodded his head and mumbled "tamam" (meaning "good" in Arabic) when he saw me. Other men heartedly called out "Sudanese" and waved their arms in approval, while passing women met their eyes with mine and gently smiled. Walking through the streets of the eastern Sudanese town of Kassala, I was creating quite a stir in my traditional Sudanese outfit.
A Double Surprise
by D-L Nelson"I've a surprise," Christian said as soon as I stepped off the train In Lyon, France. He drove me up to the hills behind the city pointing out the yellow buildings and telling
I Have Lice
I work as a volunteer in Guatemala City with the children of a community of families who live in the city dump. It sounds impressive, eh? People are always fascinated when they I tell them what I do and they often go into an extensive session of questioning regarding the who's, what's, where's and when's of my work.
Tikal
by Larry R. Moffitt "Hi," she said. Her red bandana headband was saturated from the sweat pouring off her face and forehead, and my hair, under the straw hat, was soaked with it. We both stank to high heaven. Hi, followed by conversation, happens easily on the road, easier even than in line at the supermarket. It's the backpacks. They proclaim we are both strangers here and neither of us have any turf to defend or local image that needs propping up. As mochileros, backpackers, we have nothing to offer but ourselves, no story to tell but our own.
Travel Safety
The other day I was a guest on KPFA-FM in Berkeley discussing travel safety in this era of terrorist threats, war posturing, and receding economies. The mood was more upbeat than I expected, with callers wanting to travel but looking for small bits of reassurance about places they thought may be dangerous. I was wearing my "World Travel Watch" reporter hat, acknowledging the risks in the world today but trying to provide context for the warnings, cautions, and public announcements produced by the U.S. Department of State and its counterparts in Canada, Australia, and the U.K. We discussed the importance of Americans traveling today if only to reassure the rest of the world that we are not villains intent on global dominance, but good neighbors and friends.The half-hour show flew by, and I think all of us, callers and the three of us in the studio, felt we could have talked much longer and still not exhausted the subject ...
Thoughts on September 11th
Many years ago I was traveling in India and weighing plans to head north to wintry Kashmir or south to Bombay. I desperately wanted to see Lake Dal and absorb the splendor of the Himalaya,
A Tale of Two Parks
I can't say for sure, but I'd swear that the gristled carnival barker who took my two-year-old's ticket for the car-carousel was the same guy who took my ticket when I was two years old almost fifty years ago. I had returned to Como Park in Saint Paul, Minnesota for the first time since I was a child, this time with two young daughters of my own in tow, and to my jaded 49-year-old eyes nothing had changed. Added on August 22, 2002
In the Shadow of the Mount Fuji
At the top of the stairs, the men stood waiting around and smoking cigarettes. They sweat in their long skirts and fanned themselves. Around them, people climbed wooden stairs into the old, dimly lit Shinto shrine, cramming into the tight corners.
Busman’s Holiday
By Jim Mannix Try finding a contractor in the African bush. The orientation meeting was haloed by a single overhead 300-watt light bulb which attracted most of the mosquitoes in sub-Saharan Africa, but did little
A Pretender in One of Europe’s Finest Hotels
It's easy to be seduced by exceptional service. Many hotels claim to be the best in their class. They boast about having the best service, the most luxurious amenities, the greatest concern for their guests. But who judges? Added on April 13, 2002
Some Thoughts on Travel Writing
Story ideas are like dogs nipping at your heels...
The Curse of Monolingualism
An embarrassed American finds himself at sea in a French-speaking copy shop.I never feel ill at ease in a country where I don't speak the language. Whether it's Tibetan or Swahili, Tagalog or Sinhala, I
Writer’s Block
Writer's block is the ultimate out for those of us who can't seem to get the juices flowing when we either want to write or need to write to fulfill our job responsibilities. Walking to
Clicking in Greece
Mija Riedel discovers that worry beads are both a solace and an art form.