Category: Travel
-
Bhutan — Part 2
I’m alive here. Mountain air rushes through the caverns and folds of my chest with each inhale. The pinch in my upper back has finally released and it feels like I’ve stolen the shoulders of a younger man. My mind is light, as if the strings of attachment have been snipped from the world’s yanking…
-
Bhutan — Part 1
*Below is part 1 of a subsequent piece I’ll publish next week, detailing the feeling and essence of Bhutan as a traveler traversing its landscape. I want to write about Nepal and share the wonders I saw during my recent visit. I want to describe the sensation of seeing my first rhino in the wild…
-
Snow Leopards
*The following is from my journey to Ladakh, India, in March 2022, in search of snow leopards. The morning sun crested the eastern ridge of the Sham Valley, warming the contents of its path as it moved. It peered through windows, past half-closed curtains, and pried sleeping eyes from the last bits of dreaming. Legs…
-
Morning in Kathmandu
It’s 2:44 a.m., and shifting my weight from shoulder to shoulder refuses to lull me back to sleep. Jet lag has shut the doors to my dreams, telling me it is time to stand and face the day. I’ve collected fragments of sleep en route to Kathmandu from Denver—dozing off somewhere over Greenland, and once…
-
Back to the Himalayas
“Pinch me” moments do exist. Even after 20 years of serious traveling, select destinations still send a tidal wave of electricity pulsing through me. This week, I’ll fly to Dubai, then onwards to Nepal. And while returning to Nepal after a 13-year gap excites me, it’s the next stop on my trip that steals my…
-
A Writer’s Fear
A year ago, calling myself a writer felt blasphemous to the craft. Simply uttering the words in front of others choked my throat like an allergic reaction. I’d dance around phrasing and play with semantics: “I love to write,” I’d say, or “I do some writing.” Every escape hatch was prepped and peppered with vague…
-
Passing Through
Before each journey, we’re apt to envision ourselves as characters in foreign scenes, playing out fantasies about how our time abroad may pass. And prior to arriving in Ethiopia, my imagination had me crammed into local buses, scruffy and tired, as long, lush sections of open grasslands reflected back against my sunglasses. Nigerian afrobeats would…
-
Pakistan: The Karakoram Highway & Hunza
I’ve dreamed of this land for over half my life. The Karakoram Highway found root in my mind through a collection of mountaineering memoirs I’d read in my early 20s and flourished like bindweed in a forgotten garden. Climbers en route to K2 and Nanga Parbat pulled aside the curtain with their descriptions, promising an…
-
Heading Home
I’m headed home. After 3 months of weaving my way across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Ethiopia, and Pakistan, I’m returning to the U.S., carrying glimpses of a new reality I’d previously failed to comprehend. I’m thrilled to see my family, my partner, and my friends. But I’m tangled up in the knots of purpose and place,…
-
A Glimpse of Tunisia
In November 2010, I found myself hunched over a table in Amman, Jordan, sitting across from three university professors. The location was a Pizza Hut—the last place I thought we’d be—and I did my best to feign a smile. They thought I’d be homesick after five months of traveling and that a nice taste of…