archives: Notes From Road
Notes on Having AK-47s Pointed at You
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"Maybe they stumbled upon me while they were doing who-knows-what with their AK's. Either way they whistled for me to turn around and with a gesture t More »
The Future of Freelance Journalism, Part 2A: Sweaty Balls
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In which the editor of Esquire makes a case for The Magazine as the greatest medium ever invented. And lays out how much blood, balls and marrow-sappi More »
Notes on Abuelo Colque
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"Even New Years, standing with his sons drinking beer by the fire, it was like he was just waiting to fix something . . ." More »
Bariloche Juxtaposition
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"I think about how Nazis³ used to live here and probably still do. If I had the chance to meet one, would I say anything? Would I paint PUEBLO JUDIO More »
Notes on Getting Robbed in the Land of Gandhi
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Vinay, 26, brings solar energy to rural villages, and I bring my squares of writing paper. What did these gentlemen bring, hands fallen to their si More »
Notes on a World Cup War Cry : Mexico vs. Argentina
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I can contain myself. I am good at containing myself, but I want to leak out into this crowd. I want the jeers and energy and tacos and booze to penet More »
The Future of Freelance Journalism, Part 1
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Notes, quotes, tweets, links and other distractions from the confab at Stanford University. More »
14 Ways of Looking at Place
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David Miller identifies and examines 14 common ways that people look at place. More »
Notes on The Calcutta Metro
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"The uniformed woman at the Park Street Metro Station, with the standard issue black Indian braid, tickles my backpack to make sure I am not going to More »
Notes from The Grand Del Mar Hotel, San Diego
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I am rolling in the layers of linen, reveling in the concept of sheets with a thread count higher than my IQ. I now understand why dogs do that nose- More »
Notes on Backcountry Visa Renewal
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Km 14. 7 - "Began limping due to increasing pain in left knee. Continued worrying how I'd make it tomorrow / wondered about transport options out of L More »
With Aryeh Under the Bodhi Tree
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Robert Hirschfield visits the Bodhi Tree, where "one breathes first and asks questions later. More »
Glitter, Sky, Dead Reckoning and the Value of Buffalo Dung
At night they built great bonfires, shot off their guns, sounded trumpets and beat drums in order that those who had been lost during the day might fi More »
Notes From a Round the World Comedown
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Tom Gates gets self-involved on a Morrissey level and writes about the comedown after traveling the world for 12 months. More »
Notes on a Pilgrimage to the Bodhi Tree
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Robert Hirschfield visits the Bodhi tree where "a man got it straight about suffering." More »
Writing and Driving: Notes from 1000 RPMs
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"We'd picked up a hitchhiker on the way out. He was wearing a dark suit, a pressed white shirt and tie, and a porkpie hat. He held a document folder o More »
Notes on Temporary Homelessness in Italy
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"This is where you reluctantly settle, under some scratchy old shrub, on a punctured water toy, in Sicily." More »
Notes on my Rickshaw Driver
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Robert Hirschfield finds "some holy men carry long staffs, others carry rickshaws." More »
Notes on Getting Sick in an Equatorial-Region Hostel Dorm
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Brandon Scott Gorrell recalls the experience of getting terribly sick in an equatorial-region hostel dorm room and having no way out. More »
Notes on The Jewish Cemetery in Calcutta
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Robert Hirschfield visits the Jewish Cemetery in Calcutta, thinking of the last Jews left in India, and of last places. More »
Back to Sender
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Lola Akinmade is confronted with the energetic survivalist frenzy of Lagos, one that was sheltered away when growing up. More »
Inventory of Things Sold, Given Away, Lost, or Stolen due to Travel
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What things have you named in your travels? And can this tell the story of where you've gone and what you've done? More »
Notes on Longing at the Kali Temple
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"In disordered Calcutta, I feel a vulnerability that could lead me anywhere. Every morning, it leads me to the Kali Temple." More »
After the Quake: Images of a Catastrophe
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Acclaimed Chilean novelist Sergio Missana considers the short- and long-term effects of the latest earthquake in his country. More »
Notes on a Naked Man in Calcutta
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Robert Hirschfield finds that "our existential ground zero is always closer than we think." More »
Notes on Remembering Distances Traveled
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How do you remember the distances traveled? More »
Notes from Easter in Caceres
Troy Nahumko finds unexpected ghosts are reborn in Caceres every Easter. More »
Notes on a Woman in Calcutta
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Robert Hirschfield finds that in Calcutta, "the pavement speaks to you." More »
Fear of the Big Drop
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"Forging your individuality is a painful process. It’s scary and hurtful when those you care about question you and what you’re doing. Surfing i More »
Notes from a Medical Volunteer in Haiti
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A journal of a medical volunteer in Haiti, "just trying to make it through each day as courageously as possible." More »
Notes on Storm Traveling
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When the advisories go out, when the chairlifts shut down because of wind, and the chain laws go into effect, some folks want nothing more than to sui More »
Notes on Morning Darkness in Calcutta
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"The rickshaw drivers wait like well-mannered ghosts. . ." More »
Notes on Running out of Money
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With a dysfunctional debit card and dwindling cash, Joshywashington is shit out of luck in Vietnam. More »
Past Tense: Or How I Lost My Dad in a Strange American City
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“If you don’t like it, you can get out,” I said, pulling over before I'd had a chance to think. More »
Fear Among Men: Notes on Traveling with a Girlfriend
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"You and I both know that it wouldn’t be the same,” a Canadian said to me as we walked through Bayon, one of the temples of Angkor. “You and I b More »
Notes on Trespassing as Travel
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"The impasse now separates me from the dispirited couple and who amble back down the trail to find solace in a day at the beach and a dozen pumpkin ra More »
Notes on Meeting People in Bangkok
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"I said, “Well, goodnight,” and went to my room. In my room I thought about how I wouldn’t normally hang out with those people if I was in Seatt More »
Skiing Death Valley: Outtakes from the Men’s Journal Expedition
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"Where's the snow?" asked Wentworth, arriving Paris-Dakar-style out of the moonless desert night... More »
Notes on Tourists Accosted by Religious Zealots in Jerusalem
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The woman had come flying out of the nightly news to hang out. Magical tourism. More »
Notes on Celebrating New Years with Los Colque
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Celebrating New Year's with people you've just met can remind you of exactly where you come from and who you are. More »
Notes and Analysis of the ‘Typical Traveler Conversation’
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Brandon Scott Gorrell lists the main facets of the ‘typical traveler conversation’ and shows how they function, to create and reinforce emotional More »
Notes on Finding a New Home River
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I couldn’t quite believe how, if you lived here, you could literally just wake up in the morning, whip up some breakfast, check the internet for a w More »
Notes on Going off the Map
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How do you reconcile following your flow away from family and friends and into a totally different place where you have to relearn everything? More »
Notes on Thanksgiving in New Jersey
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Going back to visit family for Thanksgiving lends itself, inevitably, to reflecting on how much has changed in your neighborhood, and what stays the s More »
Notes on (Almost?) Getting Robbed in Laos
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I button my jeans and dozens of Vietnamese notes crunch in my underwear. If this is a full on strip-search-jungle-shake-and-bake, well, at least the m More »
Watching Obama’s Inauguration with the Expats
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I was surrounded by people who had made a life outside of The United States, yet still held some kind of buyer’s remorse with this decision. Their More »
Notes on the Ghosts of Anjuna, Goa
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Robert Hirschfield shows that even on beaches like Anjuna, Goa, with "bare European breasts peering up" at you, somebody has to remember the ghosts. More »
Coming to Goa for ‘None of the things Lonely Planet can offer me’
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"I joke to Aimee Ginsburg, a Westerner from Israel: 'A lot of people looking for the perfect spiritual beach.'” More »
Do it while you’re young.
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Does the old saying 'do it while you're young' hold true? At the Cambodian border an elderly Parisian suggests otherwise. More »
Locked Down At London Heathrow
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I was ushered into a room that contained thirty folding chairs, a TV and a ten foot stretch of bullet-proof glass, behind which I was observed by thre More »
Notes on Climbing Mount St. Helens
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"The mountain levels off and then you realize you are standing on a 20 foot cornice that hangs off the edge of the crater." More »
Notes from the Faisal Hostel
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"They don’t think non-violence will work, and they don’t think violence will work. They think I am naive. A point of view I find almost companiona More »
Notes on Walking Around Saigon
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Joshywashington walks around Saigon snapping photos and making friends. More »
Notes on a Walk through Silent Jerusalem
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"Long Jewish shadows flit by me on their way to the Wailing Wall. I find I have less to say to them than to the columns." More »
Notes on Love at First Sight
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Brown from a lifetime of Montagnana afternoons, she is tall, dark. The smile that breaks across her face and never fully retreats breaks my heart. More »
Notes on My Polish Informant
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He grabs my hand and pulls me forcefully. He drags me through underground caves. We sail through masses of sweaty people. More »
9 Notes on What to Do With Your Old Writings
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What do writers do with all their leftover notes and contributors' copies? More »
In Search of the Real Dude: Notes from a Lebowski Fest Past
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Once I get it in my head that in fact I may be The Dude, everything starts to pick up. More »
Notes on Burning Man
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They don't call it Burning Man for nothing. Virgin burner, Joshua Johnson, takes us for a walk beside the flames. More »
Working with Mental Patients the Morning of 9/11
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"James pulled the TV out of a therapy room and into the common room, tuning in to the only channel whose signal could penetrate the basement. The plan More »
Notes on Not Being Able to Pray at The Wailing Wall
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"I am shy around strangers; it keeps me from talking to God." More »
Adventures in Weaning: Cold Turkey in the Great American Desert
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A father helps his son replace the boob with the road. More »
Notes on Nariman House: The Travel of Remembrance
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"Other Jews visit Auschwitz and Dachau. They stand very still and listen, as I am listening now." More »
Notes on the Silence
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"You go to Chicago to admire something man made. Not the union of the Ansel Adams Wilderness Area and Yosemite National Park." More »
How Travel Saved my Life
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"When the surgeon took the golf ball sized tumor out of my father's head he apologized and said my father would be lucky to see two more months." More »
Notes on Two Rivers: Benares Through My Lens
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"In Benares, foreigners move too quickly, either towards something or away from something, usually the crabbed beggar, the public defecator. Nothing e More »
Notes on How Not to Write a Book
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"I went to Chile knowing that this was the moment I would really have to start writing a book, which was a rotten feeling." More »
Notes on the 4th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina
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"At night he could see more stars than he’d ever seen. In the distance, electrical or gas fires burned in unidentifiable buildings." More »
Buenos Aires Bus Ride in the Wake of Swine Flu
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"The woman's head snaps to the right in a gesture of confrontation that goes unnoticed by the man whose bald, liver-spotted scalp bounces in time with More »
Bombs Over Phonsavan
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I just have to stand here for a minute and bite my lip thinking about 4.5 billion lb. of bombs... what that might look like.
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Losing My Travel Virginity: AmeriCorps NCCC
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Megan Hill loses her travel virginity--in her own hometown. More »
The Dharma Shack Chronicles
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Notes from Summer 2009 in the Dharma Shack, a lean-to at 9,200 ft. in the Rocky Mountains. More »
Losing My Travel Virginity: Ghana
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After spending four years abroad, MaryAnne Oxendale finally loses her travel virginity to unlabeled microbuses, crunchy ants, and a barrage of languag More »
Notes from Zion
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"Sure, it might be hard to find a good cup of coffee, and you might have to live under the watchful gaze of holier-than-thou polygamists, but damn, yo More »
We had our slingshots out and knives drawn.
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Tomorrow we’re fixing the door to the trailer. One of the bears ripped if off while we were all away last weekend. More »
Losing My Travel Virginity: Beijing
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Kaitlin Mills shares the moment she lost her travel virginity in Beijing. More »
Losing My Travel Virginity: Guatemala
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That trip forced me to consider that while I slept in a carpeted, air-conditioned bedroom with a closet full of clothes and a stereo system, much of t More »
All Aboard!
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"A tall jolly man who is minus one eye is slap-knee belly-laughing and has been since they saw me in the waves." More »
The Protector of Tophane
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"I could see his horizontal form flying up toward our windowsill then disappearing down from sight." More »
Here We Are
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Learning more than just how to cook in Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca. More »
Brandon Scott Gorrell Goes to Oakland
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Seattle writer Brandon Scott Gorrell goes through the Bay Area on a book tour, seeking authenticity via “ragers”, street preachers, and hipsters w More »
Florence Defaced By Graffiti, Declared Ugly and Depressing
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"Cops in the city center socialize in circles, looking as if they might break out a hackysack at any moment." More »
Notes from the Road: To move under the Big Sky
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In our 2nd Montana Road Trip video, Josh ponders the what it is to travel under Montana's famous vault of Heaven More »
Finding my Mouth in Mexico
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While traveling in Mexico, contributor Melanie Pinkert learns that sometimes "you just gotta ask." More »
Losing My Travel Virginity: Majime
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". . . I wasn't a traveler, but an American living in Japan." More »
Winter Night Hiking on the Appalachian Trail
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The night air becomes darker and denser as we drop into the Cumberland Valley. The land is flat and sectioned off in wide fields. All of it blends int More »
Losing My Travel Virginity: Homeless in Paris
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"We ate when we were hungry. We slept when we were tired. We’d go visit the Louvre if we were bored. We saw the sights and sounds of Paris in a u More »
Whilst Traveling via Eurail
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"Their bags lay open, passports out in the open. Somewhere, their mothers are worrying, and not needlessly. Their daughters are idiots."
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Notes on Oaxaca Since the Swine Flu
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These days--since swine flu hit--on a good day, twelve people show up. On a bad day, the guides and ticket takers wait out their shifts without seein More »
Fishing Montana: Lamar River Cutthroat Trout
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I honestly didn't think trout fishing got this good. More »
Losing My Travel Virginity: Life and Death on The Ganges
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The smell from the flames was pungent and frightening. It was “my world” unveiled. More »
Hiking the Chacaltaya Glacier: Global Climate Change Firsthand
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Bolivia's Chacaltaya Glacier is dying. By some accounts, it's already dead. Hal Amen summits Chacaltaya for a firsthand look at global climate change. More »
I’d created a super-star.
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"The minute I whipped out the HD camera I'd brought over from the USA, he bravely scooted over to see what the new toy was. I never touched that came More »
What’s Being Lost
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After sixteen generations, a family faces what might be the end of the line for their art in Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca. More »
Notes on Losing My Travel Virginity
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"This was the first moment I really saw the world more as a traveler than anything else." More »
It could’ve been a Tuesday night in Connecticut, except I was on a river in India.
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Tom Gates rolls through the backwaters of India by houseboat while listening to Jimmy Eat World, playing Nintendo, and recalling an early childhood me More »
I was on the rebound with a Chinese clown.
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"I went from only having seen him zipped inside a polka-dotted coverall to beholding his reed thin body, swaddled only in snakeskin Speedos." More »
Notes from the Road: Just Getting Oriented
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“Get your feet down,” he commanded, informing me of my crime. I swung them to the ground, and he grunted and walked off in the direction of a cou More »
This is the last day of smoking for me.
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I’ve made up my mind to change a lifetime habit in a city where it would be easy to justify it. What difference could it possibly make to a set of More »
Moynak is a depressing place.
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After the Soviet Union diverted its water for growing cotton, the Aral Sea dried up leaving the town of Moynak a kind of skeleton. Stephen Bugno notes More »
Conscious Acts
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A marathon Holy Week drive across Mexico is a chance to ponder: what is "lo maximo" for a woman? More »
Three Penises and a Wedding
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A mob of giddy housewives, plenty of tequila, a secondhand wedding gown, an orgy's worth of penises, and five bananas. More »
I had fully crossed the line.
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Then we come around the corner. A parked car with its doors wide open, joints being smoked in full view, the hip hop blasting, and about five guys arm More »
From a Flashpacker to a Backpacker, take 2
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"I call airline reservation lines until I get the right agent, usually a wrinkled warhorse in Houston or Chicago." More »
Watching the Pig Slaughter with Albina
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"In the morning Doña Adela, rapidly patting out tortillas, confirms that the chancha’s number is indeed up." More »
From Mumbai to Northern India by Train
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The curtains of my berth were drawn and I heard the policeman ask the conductor: “Who’s in here?” More »
Tim and Tom’s Excellent Adventure Part 1: Cashews
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"Disposing of my boxers in the bathroom garbage can, I free-balled through the rain to the guesthouse Tom had chosen, Lani Guesthouse, a lovely inn tu More »
The Train out of Krakow
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How does it feel to ditch your travel partner and jump on a train in the middle of the night? More »
The gringo puts everyone to bed.
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Notes scribbled during a house party in Buenos Aires after a day of watching piquiteros blockading the neighborhood with stacks of tires set on fire. More »
Notes On Receiving Contributor’s Copy of Fodor’s Patagonia
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What's it like finally getting your contributor's copy? More »
Notes from the Road Submissions Call
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We're currently reading submissions again for travel narratives and notes. Here's what's up. More »
Notes on Buenos Aires: A City de Mierda y Capos
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"The train rocks through the curves and we all lean into one another, then recoil, pretending we never felt or smelt each others' bodies." More »
On the Ropes
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"There's not a race problem in Brazil," an American colleague tells me authoritatively. "It's a class problem." More »
On the other side of the world someone awaits you.
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"When the bus stopped in Osorno, I thought this is the last chance I’m going to get to know this person." More »
A Way of Seeing: How to Travel at Home
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"Travel should not merely be the act of getting way the hell out there into the Himalayas or hitchhiking your way across Borneo." More »
The Last Iceman of Chimborazo
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"And like every other Thursday and Friday since he was 15, he will go up the mountain again, alone."
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