What Dreams May Come – Those personal favorite moments that explicitly remind you why you went traveling in the first place.
- Tender-ife November 27, 2023The original plan was supposed to be Libya in November. But due to world events and the difficulty of obtaining visas in time, I didn’t want to try to push my luck that I had enjoyed 16 times over with Syria the month prior. So I moved Libya in April and had to come up ...
- You’re Going To Miss … Syria October 5, 2023Once again the premise is simple: Write about a trip without stopping. PRESS play and read the post with the music . . . < You’re going to miss seeing familiar names on a roster and the 17 other monsooners willing to join you to a country that’s been on your mind for the last 12 years. Although not ...
- Let’s Go-lan, Far, and To New Heights Together September 25, 2023After saying our goodbyes yesterday to Francois and this morning to Rajani and Chris this morning, all of whom had to leave much earlier for their scheduled flights, we took a detour drive west to the Golan Heights before we’d make our own flights back home from Beirut later in the evening. About 20 minutes into ...
FML. – Moments where I /someone/something failed at life and it was pretty funny.
- La Gran Canaria In The Coalmine November 29, 2023The plan was to get up at 8:30am, pick up our rental car parked on the street to drive to the airport by 9:15am, and board our 10:45am flight from Tenerife North Airport to La Palmas, Gran Canaria. However, in true adventure monsoon fashion everything went wrong at the same time…and somehow getting resolved just as ...
- The Nigerian Tourist Visa for Americans/USA Passports October 18, 2023It has never been a secret that a visa to visit Nigeria as a tourist has been one of the most difficult if not impossible to obtain: Traditionally travel companies would instead exploit a loophole and issue a business visas on arrival for exorbitant amounts, which was similar to how tourists had visited Saudi Arabia before their ...
- The Yacht Week Greece Day 1 – The Hostess with the Alimos-tess July 15, 20232 days in Rhodes and then 2 days in Meteora, I think it’s time to say that we’re ready for the main reason why 40 of us are here. A trip 22 months in the making: The Yacht Week Greece. Since Sidian had to leave early to catch an afternoon flight out to a wedding in Mykonos, ...
This Is A Crisis. – Moments where I/someone/something failed at life and it wasn’t really that funny (at least at the time).
- La Gran Canaria In The Coalmine November 29, 2023The plan was to get up at 8:30am, pick up our rental car parked on the street to drive to the airport by 9:15am, and board our 10:45am flight from Tenerife North Airport to La Palmas, Gran Canaria. However, in true adventure monsoon fashion everything went wrong at the same time…and somehow getting resolved just as ...
- Humbling Homs September 23, 2023This morning after breakfast and another quick workout at Hotel Laurus in Aleppo, we drove back south towards Homs at 9am. Along the highway towards Homs we stopped for local pistachios back at Hama. While our family dinner 2 nights ago was in the new city of Homs, today we drove to observe the badly destroyed old city ...
- Damascus Anything About Syria! September 19, 2023It has been a trip 12 years in the making and probably the last casualty of COVID-19 that I’m finally making up for. And as should be expected by now I’m a man of my word when it comes to travel promises: I followed through on Wales and Svalbard when both got moved twice because ...
“No Serendipity, No Story!” (WTF Moments) – The most wonderful moments in travel are the coincidences we discover with other people.
- Dance to the Rethymno of the Night July 24, 2023On our 3rd day in Crete, we packed up our things and drove out east to Rethymno, a charming resort city between Chania and Heraklion. Like many other cities on Crete, Rethymno was founded by the Minoans and was then occupied by the Romans, the Venetians and the Ottoman Empires. And just as it was back ...
- Walking With a S’Ouaga-dougou February 7, 2023This morning at 8am we left our hotel at Niorida and made an early trip back to Ouagadougou by first stopping at Laongo Granite Park. Here, over 2000 sculptures carved into stone greet visitors, while also expressing the history, culture, spiritual practices and basic raw creativity of local Burkinabe and international artists. After nearly an hour here being ...
- Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch … to Manchester June 2, 2022Waking up in Caernarforn, we spent the morning exploring the castle grounds where the investiture of the Prince of Wales took place in 1911 and again in 1969 for Prince Charles. After an hour here we then drove out for a detour to *inhale* … Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, the world’s second longest town name) after Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu in New Zealand). Name ...
Way Way Off The Beaten Path – Totally out of the box travel experiences; you won’t find these experiences in any guidebooks.
- Let’s Go-lan, Far, and To New Heights Together September 25, 2023After saying our goodbyes yesterday to Francois and this morning to Rajani and Chris this morning, all of whom had to leave much earlier for their scheduled flights, we took a detour drive west to the Golan Heights before we’d make our own flights back home from Beirut later in the evening. About 20 minutes into ...
- Humbling Homs September 23, 2023This morning after breakfast and another quick workout at Hotel Laurus in Aleppo, we drove back south towards Homs at 9am. Along the highway towards Homs we stopped for local pistachios back at Hama. While our family dinner 2 nights ago was in the new city of Homs, today we drove to observe the badly destroyed old city ...
- Mogadishu, Somalia: Witness to Reconstruction & Renaissance May 27, 2023The Battle of Mogadishu took place nearly more than 30 years ago in 1993 and its subsequent depiction in the film Black Hawk Down has remained a fixture of my childhood since high school. I still remember the night when we went to watch the film with my fellow high school freshmen and some of ...
A Funny Thing Happened On The Way Around The World. . . . – Some stories simply can’t be categorized.
- The Sweet Is Never As Sweet Without The Massawa May 22, 2023We’re skipping ahead from Somaliland to Massawa today, but if you want to read about how we got into Asmara yesterday from Somaliland: read here. After arriving a day later than planned in Asmara from Somaliland and Addis Ababa we quickly had lunch in the capital and immediately drove out in the afternoon for a 120km journey to ...
- Love In The Time Of COVID-19: The Flu Shot September 15, 2020TLDR PSA (look how serious I am); Get the flu shot. While getting the shot may not entirely prevent you from catching flu, it’ll still dramatically decrease your chances of accidentally infecting or killing others (like grandma), or ironically dying from flu yourself. Before COVID-19, patients with flu symptoms would overwhelm ERs every year, all infecting one ...
- Knock-Knock-Nakh-chivan On Heaven’s Door: 2 Days In Nakhchivan August 29, 2018It’s time to shift monsooning back into higher gears — today we’re visiting Nakhchivan! A landlocked exclave separated from Azerbaijan by Armenia (or as some say, physically located within Armenia), but an otherwise autonomous region under the control of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Nakhchivan is similar to exclaves like Alaska (thanks Alan Sedgwick!) and on a level less ...
