All in travel essay

Stay and Away

Stay and Away

B.J. Stolbov
cultural musings, Life Lessons, Off-the-beaten path destination, travel essay

Two young men, Juan and José sit, side-by-side, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, beside the road, watching the cars and the vans and the trucks and the buses going by.

Both are high school graduates, but no more than that; neither of their families could afford to send them to school anymore.

Juan lives on this side of the road. He helps around the house, helps to raise his younger brothers and sisters, and helps in his mother’s ukay-ukay (used clothing) store. Juan has not heard from his father for years.

Public Peeing in a Paris Park

Public Peeing in a Paris Park

Gai Reid
Personal essay, life, travel essay

Just below the brickwork of the fence line on one of the busiest streets in this enormous city, a fully-grown woman was squatting over the autumn leaves next to a tree that had no hope in hell of disguising her need to go. This was a manoeuvre I had performed myself many times, under the cover of the Australian bush.  Never once did I consider I would see it here in the epicenter of Paris.

One Night in Puno

One Night in Puno

Kate McCahill
Off-the-beaten path destination, Solo Travel, travel essay

by Kate McCahill

For six hours, the bus creeps south from Cusco towards Lake Titicaca, crossing arid, wintered plains and sprawling Peruvian cities littered with plastic bags in a hundred colors. It’s late afternoon before we reach marshland, and then we round a bend and here is the lake, ocean-blue and ocean-huge. The road tips down into Puno, a rippling, clay-colored city pinched into the shore. The woman beside me says that you can see Bolivia from here. 

The Sacrifice Pole Grab Festival

The Sacrifice Pole Grab Festival

Chris Pady
Art and Culture, exotic travel, Off-the-beaten path destination, travel essay

by Chris Pady

I balance perilously on my teammate's shoulders, wondering what to do next. The crowd below me grows impatient. I would love nothing more than to wipe the beads of nagging sweat scurrying down my face in mini rivers, but my hands are covered in greasy grime.  The cacophony of blaring music and people screaming is so loud that I can barely hear myself think. 

Solace on the Mountain

Renee King
adventure travel, Active Travel, Life Lessons, Nature, Personal essay, travel essay

by Renee King
 
The chatter of tourists surrounded me and invaded my ears.  I tried to block it out, but, truth be told, even my own travel companions were taking up space in my head.  I closed my eyes, took slow deliberate breaths, and cleared my mind.  When I opened my eyes,  a vast white valley spread itself out before me – inviting me to take in its pristine beauty.  Towering majestic mountains on either side bookended the sea of ice before me.  Awestruck and breathless,  I tried to comprehend that I was seeing was nature – raw, unforgiving, awesome for all my senses.   As I heard questions from either side of me, I was able to deflect that unwanted noise.  I breathed deeply and found something just for me on the Mer de Glace in Chamonix, France.

Mastering the Art of French Dining

Mastering the Art of French Dining

Dorty Nowak
Art and Culture, cultural immersion, Life Lessons, Personal essay, travel essay, Culinary Travel

by Dorty Nowak     After growing up in a family where dinner was eaten off trays in front of the TV, I wanted to create a gracious dining atmosphere in my own home. Lit candles and cloth napkins were the norm, and I combed Good Housekeeping for tips to better the ambience for my family and guests.  However, it wasn’t until I moved to Paris that I discovered how little I knew about what truly makes a pleasurable dining experience.

The Plague Comes Back To Life

Fyllis Hockman
Art and Culture, Historic Travel, travel essay

The year is 1645. The most virulent strain of the Bubonic Plague has immobilized Edinburgh, Scotland, claiming the lives of more than half the city’s population. The area hardest hit: Mary King’s Close on High Street, a busy thoroughfare and lively 17th century street of pubs, shops and residences. Cries of suffering have replaced the friendly chatter, and the stench of death, the pungent aroma of tea and scones.

The place, the time, the horror have been resurrected as one of Edinburgh's most unusual attractions. Archaeologically and historically accurate, the alleys you walk upon, the rooms you visit, the stories you hear are real. This is not a recreation; it is a resurrection of what already existed so many centuries ago. 

Beneath the City Chambers on Edinburgh’s famous Royal Mile, lies Mary King’s Close, a series of narrow, winding side streets with multi-level apartment houses looming on either side, which has been hidden for many years. In 1753, the houses at the top of the buildings were knocked down to make way for the then-new building. Parts of the lower sections were used as the foundation, leaving below a number of dark and mysterious underground alleyways steeped in mystery -- and misery. 

Would You Eat Your Lunch in a Cathedral?

Would You Eat Your Lunch in a Cathedral?

Elyn Aviva
Art and Culture, Historic Travel, Sacred Places, Spirituality, travel essay

Musing at Scorhill Stone Circle, England by Elyn Aviva

We trudged up the bleak hill, brown and barren. My husband, Gary, and I were hiking with a small group in desolate, wild Dartmoor National Park to a place we’d never been, following a faint path through the moor, a track barely visible in the water-logged, peaty soil. Our guide informed us that people can easily lose their way on the moors—experienced hikers, skilled in reading maps, disappear, their bodies found years later.

Photo By Herbythyme , CC BY-SA 4.0,

The World of Growing Things

B.J. Stolbov
Life Lessons, cultural musings, road trip, travel essay

When I was 11 years old, my father took my 15-year-old-sister and me on a cross-country car trip from Tamaqua, Pennsylvania to Seattle, Washington to San Diego, California, and back in 30 days. What I remember about the trip was my father saying, “Here we are at the Space Needle (or Disneyland or the Grand Canyon or wherever), you have 10 minutes, take some pictures, I’m going to the souvenir shop to buy some pennants.”  (For some reason, we got into collecting pennants that ended up on the walls of our basement.) My father drove 10,000 miles in 30 days, and I got to see the U.S.A. at 60 miles per hour. 

 

The Overnight Karaoke Bus From Hell

Tina Holgate
cultural immersion, travel essay

In the mid-90s, I was living and working as an ESL teacher at a private school in Kanazawa, Japan,  a couple of hours by train from my relatives living in Kobe. I liked to visit them at least once a month to get to know them and stave off homesickness. The train ticket usually cost about $150. Sometimes I took the bus to save money, even though it was a much longer trip.

 

One day, our office boy, Kazu (who also worked part-time for a travel agency) told me that he could get me a free ticket to Kobe that weekend. He was booking a chartered bus which had an empty seat. The only catch, he explained, was "Overnight bus. Maybe you be tired." I said sure, that would be fine, "I can sleep on the bus." He gave me a quizzical look and said, "Ahhh...no sleep." As a foreigner, I was by then used to getting quizzical looks from the locals, so I didn't comment or think much about his hesitation. 

When the weekend came, my boss and his wife offered to drive me to the bus station. "So, Kazu got you on the overnight bus. Have you ever taken overnight bus before? You might be too tired when you get there." I said that I had taken other overnight buses and I could always fall asleep. "Hm. I guess you won't sleep," my boss said. I assumed he figured it would be too uncomfortable, so again I said nothing.

They dropped me off and said, smirking, "Okaaaay...have a nice trip. Let me know how you sleep." In retrospect, I should have wondered why they were smirking.

Christmas in Kyoto

CM Tobias
Art and Culture, Foreign Language, Off-the-beaten path destination, cultural immersion, holiday tradtions, life, travel essay

Christmas in Kyoto did not sound promising but the flight was cheap. Having spent the last several Christmases huddled around the small wooden tables of the German Weihnachtsmarken, hands wrapped tightly around steaming ceramic mugs of glühwein, we expected Japan to be a bit of a disappointment in terms of holiday spirit.

There would be no Christmas markets selling roasted sausages or over-sized steins of altbier. There would be no outdoor festival tables to provide the inevitable camaraderie that accompanies the mass consumption of mulled wine in freezing temperatures. Communication would be near impossible as both my wife Lauren and I spoke very little Japanese and could not read kanji or katakana.  

Nonetheless, one evening as we approached the bottom of our second bottle of wine, we decided Kyoto would make for a fine introduction to Japanese culture, with the added bonus of seeing drunken Japanese “salary men” stumbling around in Santa hats.

Inside Jamaica’s Blue Mountains: A Stranger in their Midst

Inside Jamaica’s Blue Mountains: A Stranger in their Midst

Laura Albritton
Family Travel, Life Lessons, Off-the-beaten path destination, Personal essay, cultural immersion, travel essay

by Laura Albritton

The ancient Land Rover banged through another pothole as the rain poured onto the muddy, treacherous road. “We’re almost there,” my husband shouted encouragingly. I nodded, and clutched the door handle even tighter. Our little baby, carsick, had already thrown up twice. Driving from Kingston up 4000 feet into Jamaica’s Blue Mountains, with precipitous drops just steps away, frightened me into speechlessness. When the vehicle’s tires slipped at a hairpin turn, I silently begged God to keep us safe.

My Mission in Marseille

Atreyee Gupta
Life Lessons, Solo Travel, cultural musings, travel essay

by Atreyee Gupta

 

I felt like a decathlon athlete as I stepped off the train from Nice to Marseille. I had my most comfortable walking shoes on, a checklist of all the important sites to visit in my hand, and I was ready to tackle France’s second largest city. I looked around me. The port city was hectic with buses and cars whizzing past me and hundreds of people crowded onto the sidewalks. Still, I was primed to dive right in. I perused my inventory of important landmarks once more. I stretched my calf muscles, adjusted my backpack, and took a quick swig from my water bottle. I had eight hours to conquer Marseille and no time to waste.

View from ND de la Garde. Photo by marcovdz via flickr CCL.

According to guide books I had read, there were eight places I needed to visit in Marseille. I had them arranged in order from closest to farthest from my train depot: the old port, the fortress of Chateau d’If, the Cathedral de la Major, Saint Victor’s abbey, Notre Dame de la Garde, Borély Park, Palais Longchamp, and the Museum of Beaux Arts. I had a return ticket for the evening so whatever I didn’t finish would remain unseen, but I was convinced I could match the frenetic pace of this seaport and emerge a winner in my tourist marathon.  

I speed walked my way to the Old Port, where fishing boats and svelte yachts were crammed together like so many sardines in a watery can. I heard various shouts coming from the sellers as I passed the rickety ice tables packed with strange looking sea creatures, but I couldn’t stop until I saw the ferry boat for Chateau d’If: a famous prison and the subject of Alexander Dumas’ novel, The Count of Monte Cristo. The crowds were almost impassable on the island penitentiary, but they were no match for my fierce determination. I managed to squeeze my way past as I ran to see an empty cell, the communal cistern, and the rooftop view. Time was ticking and I had to catch the next ferry back so that I could head towards the Marseille Cathedral.

My Kind of Wasteland

Izaak Diggs
Lifestyle, Off-the-beaten path destination, Personal essay, cultural musings, life, travel essay

by Izaak Diggs

 

It would be easy to dismiss Barstow as a wasteland: You've got the heat in the summer and the poverty year round. Faded mobile homes and salvagers making monkey shapes as they strip valuable tiles off collapsing houses. To the casual glance it is just a place to fill your gas tank or grab a burger or use a restroom. Just another desert town, just another exit or two along the interstate to somewhere else. Why was I there? Was I following a genuine spark of inspiration or had I lost my mind? All I could do was wring my hands, question my sanity, and take more notes. 

Barstow has always been a hub. Starting in the nineteenth century it served long distance travelers and the mining towns in the region. The desert is a popular place for mines: Men digging holes in the ground, getting a little closer to Hell in the hope of cheating the Devil at poker and getting a monopoly on brimstone. Gamblers with chin beards and suspenders who directed other men into the dark recesses of the earth. They oversaw the creation of towns that thrived for awhile only to die and be reclaimed by the desert after.  Fortunes made and lost; a story told countless times in the history of mankind. The story of Barstow is nearly identical to scores of towns scattered like seeds throughout the Southwest.   

I went down to the desert with nearly every penny I had. I stood on a salt flat, waited for the wind to rise, and tossed all the bills in the air. They were carried in every direction; to fast food restaurants and cheap motels and gas stations. Like those men with chin beards and suspenders I gambled everything I had on a dream, on an idea.  I gambled it on the desert; I gambled it on all the little towns like Barstow and Lone Pine and Tuba, Arizona and Capitan, New Mexico. I rolled the dice that there was a story there lurking like a scorpion in a yucca.

Bride in the Attic

Maureen Magee
Off-the-beaten path destination, Personal essay, cultural immersion, life, travel essay

by Maureen Elizabeth Magee

Hamer woman, Ethiopia. Photo by Michael Lorentz/Safarious.com

We pull up the Land Cruiser next to a petite man walking along the road. He is wearing a sarong-type skirt; his hair is coiffed in mud and feathers. He is distinguished.

“It is Wolle!” cries Mageru as he gets out from behind the wheel. “He is the Chief of Chiefs for the Hamer people.”

They greet each other in the traditional way for Ethiopian men – clasping each other’s backs with the left hand, shaking right hands while butting right shoulders three times. Wolle’s head feathers stroked Mageru’s mustache.

In the Hamer language, Mageru introduces me as his wife. Wolle looks me over and absent-mindedly undoes and reties his sarong. He wears nothing underneath.

“We should invite him to camp with us,” suggests Mageru. “It is a long way back to his village.”

Wolle is happy to do that but insists on supplying dinner and so we swing the car off the road and bump our way across the scrubby, dry savannah. A landscape so formless, I cannot gauge how many miles we have travelled before reaching Wolle’s family enclave, a few cone-shaped huts made of sticks and grass and encircled by thorn bushes.

As I get out of the car, I am immediately surrounded by dozens of naked children and, standing back, shy semi-naked women. The women and I smile uncertainly – not knowing what is expected of us.

Meanwhile, under Wolle’s direction, Mageru and a few other men are playing chase with a small goat. The goat loses, and is manipulated safely - but not quietly - into the back of the Land Cruiser. He is wedged in tight and I pray that he will not pee, poo or upchuck on our gear.

It surely is the goat’s first car ride and it will definitely be his last. And by the time he bleats all the way back to our campsite, I am not feeling even a smidge remorseful. Our cook hustles him off (out of sight of my tender ferenj sensitivities) and disposes of him quickly; within a few hours he has become a tasty stew called figel wot. It is a pleasant camping evening; the men’s Amharic/Hamer murmurings around the fire are like soft ambient music to ears that don’t understand.

Caught in a Mudslide

Lori Marquardson
Off-the-beaten path destination, Religion, Solo Travel, adventure travel, life, travel essay

story and photos by Lori Marquardson

 

So many reasons for going to Ecuador, but being stuck on a bus full of local Evangelical Christians in a mudslide was not one of them. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow. 

I had been backpacking alone through Ecuador and, deciding that a few days exploring the Amazon jungle was in order, made arrangements to meet up with a small group in the dusty oil frontier town of Lago Agrio.  From there we would go to the Cuyabeno Nature Reserve for a few days of roughing it with iguanas, howler monkeys, piranhas and blue morpho butterflies. 

River reflections, Cuyabeno Nature Reserve, Ecuador.

A cool drizzle fell as I boarded the overnight bus in Quito. The driver’s personal touches of green fringe and dangling images of saints above the steering wheel couldn’t mask that the bus was more contraption than road-worthy vehicle. My fellow passengers were mostly short and dark, with a number of women wearing the typical Andean dress of black bowler hats, full skirts and rubber sandals while I, the obvious foreigner on board, sported beige zip-off pants and a purple windbreaker. We headed northeast, following the twisting mountainous roads leading out of the city, and despite the jolting motion, I drifted off.

At some point, I came to: the bus was not moving, no engine running, nada. I could see the driver had relaxed into what was definitely a non-driving position:  head tilted back, mouth agape, arms crossed over his chest, and legs spread-eagled. Strange, but having been in South America for quite some time, I had experienced unexplained delays before and generally they weren’t show-stoppers, so I tried to fall back asleep. Then came a huge rumble outside, followed immediately by murmuring voices inside.

“What the hell is that?”  I said to no one in particular and, being in the front row, I leaned over to the driver, and asked “¿Qué está pasando? “ 

“Hay un derrumbe.”  A landslide.  Hmmm, that did not sound good. 

Desert Revelations

Christopher Clark
Off-the-beaten path destination, Solo Travel, Uncensored Travel, adventure travel, life, travel essay

story and photos by Christopher Clark

 

As the bus eased through the gears, through the green corn fields and farther away from the small terminal in the town of Kitale, I tried to cast my mind back to the beginning, to figure out what it was that had drawn me to the wild and volatile Turkana region of Kenya in the first place. I guessed that the people I would meet once I got there might want to know. But the truth was that I still didn't really have an answer.

I could at least have said that it stemmed from books by long-dead explorers; and that I was looking for something very different; and that Turkana seemed a long way away from pretty much everything I had previously known. At 28 years old I had grown bored of and disillusioned with much of what I had previously experienced. Wasn't that enough reason? 

Either way, it was too late. I was on my way, heading north, already half way there. Soon the bus rose out of the the Rift Valley and gradually left the rich, thick vegetation behind as we entered a place of sparse open space and scorched earth.


The rumours about the poor quality of the dirt road to Turkana were by no means exaggerated. At times the bus seemed to defy physics, leaning precariously to the side, the ground suddenly almost within touching distance of the window. Many of whom I assumed were the more seasoned passengers whooped, laughed and slapped thighs as though it was all part of the fun. I held on to my armrests for dear life.

A few hours into our journey the bus passed a group of five or six men slouched on the sand with T-shirts covering most of their faces like balaclavas and AK-47s slung over their shoulders. As I stared out of the window at them, one of them saw me, stood up, lifted his gun aloft with one hand and waved at me vigorously with the other, and then they were gone.

We arrived at our destination, Lodwar, at a little before 11 p.m., roughly five hours late. Patience is a must for travelling in Kenya.

Floating on the Ocean

Floating on the Ocean

B.J. Stolbov
Insider's Guide, Life Lessons, Off-the-beaten path destination, Personal essay, cultural immersion, travel essay

by B.J. Stolbov

Pagudpud is not a promising name for a beach town.

Boracay – now that’s a great name for a beach town. Boracay is an island between the Tablas Strait and the Sibuyan Sea in the Visayan Islands of central Philippines.  This is the place where people, many foreigners, go when they want to go to a beach. Here are white sandy beaches and deep blue waters, planted coconut palms and scheduled ferries, harbors for sailboats and large yachts, expensive hotels and designer resorts, gourmet restaurants and fast-food joints, beautiful women in tiny bikinis and handsome shirtless men, hot sunny days and wild drunken nights, 24-hour bars and all-night discos, music, singing, laughing, fun, affairs, romance, sex, secrets, exciting evenings, and, maybe, a regret-filled morning. Boracay.

Boracay Beach at Dusk/ Flickr.com

Pagudpud sounds like one of those small, lost towns in northern New Jersey. Pagudpud is a small, lost town in northern Ilocos Norte.  It is the most northern town in the most northern province on the northern island of Luzon.  From Manila, it’s a 10 to 12 hour bus trip. But when Filipinos want to get away, they go to Pagudpud.

Pagudpud is a tranquil, isolated town nestled between the South China Sea and the Cordillera Mountains.  Protected by the mountains, few storms threaten up here. The weather is warm, but not hot. The ocean is clear, blue, and unpolluted. The fishermen, in their hand-built boats, are out early in the mornings, tending their nets.  Long-winged seabirds fly low over the water. Wavelets splash lightly on the shore. The beaches are pristine, unspoiled, and almost all white sand.  These beaches are some of the most beautiful in all of the Philippines.  

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