Tag: Exploration
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Reflections
It’s been two weeks to the day since I returned to U.S. soil, and already, I find myself reaching for memories that are starting to fade. Faces and names from Morocco and Algeria are slipping through my fingers like grains of sand. Three months ago, their voices filled my days as hospitable hosts and partners…
-
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…
-
Conversations with Walid
Note: This short piece sidesteps the chronology of my present journey and profiles a Moroccan man I met two and a half months ago at the start of the trip. We are all broken records to some degree. We hitch our carts to ideas we identify with and repeat them to each other, ad nauseum.…
-
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…
-
Algeria/Tunisia Border Crossing
I waved at Maleyka and her cousins once more before throwing my bag in the taxi. “Sahha, Merci,” I said, knowing this was the last time I’d see familiar faces for a while. Goodbyes are countless when one travels this way for months on end. As travelers, we forge meaningful connections during our time with…