Travel as
a form of
inspiration

Somewhere between here and there

I have been travelling for as long as I can remember, and writing about it almost as long. These are not hotel reviews or itineraries. They are personal essays from someone who has lived in multiple countries, who returns to the same places year after year because a single visit is never enough to understand anything, and who believes that the most honest travel writing includes what went wrong, what was uncomfortable, and what the guidebook did not prepare you for.

For seventeen years I had a travel companion for much of this: Mr. Coco, my little Shihpoo and bestie with very strong opinions about which hotel beds were acceptable and a talent for making friends in every country we visited. He traveled with me across more of the world than most humans do in a lifetime.

For Coco  ·  17 years of adventures

Beirut  ·  Always returning

I lived in Phnom Penh for six months in 2007 and have returned to Cambodia at least once a year ever since. I went to Sri Lanka and got sick and spent most of the trip asleep and still loved it. I arrived in Mongolia expecting to be moved by the landscape and was not prepared for how completely different I expected the adventure to be. I went to India for a friend's wedding and ended up on a scooter between Siolim and Calangute in Goa discovering boutiques I still think about. I came to Kenya not for the Masai Mara but for kitesurfing and bush babies at sundown, and befriended a very tipsy Maasai warrior on a matatu whose relationship with his spear remains unclear to me.

The best travel writing comes from genuine curiosity rather than expertise. I am not a travel journalist in the traditional sense. I am someone who has been fortunate enough to move through the world with an open schedule and an open mind, who has friends and contacts in unusual places, and who cares deeply about the cultures, artists, communities and landscapes she encounters. Some of these essays grew out of interviews. Some grew out of personal relationships with places I keep returning to. Some grew out of a single moment, like the light on the cliff face at Deia at seven in the afternoon, or the silence of the Mongolian steppe at dawn, that demanded to be written down.

Mongolia  ·  Bayan-Olgiy

I write about the uncomfortable things too. The sex tourism I witnessed in Mombasa. The poverty that sits so close to the ancient temples of Angkor. The Heart of Darkness in Phnom Penh, not the club. The vodka epidemic in Ulaanbaatar. Leaving these things out would be dishonest and it does not help the reader who arrives expecting something other than what is actually there.

I am also the person who went to a Red Bull surf competition in Sri Lanka and spent most of it passed out ill in a beautiful bed-and-breakfast where the host speared fresh octopus for lunch. Who posed for a photograph with a Mongolian wrestler in traditional costume between the gers. Who fell asleep across airport chairs between connections more times than I can count. Travel at this frequency is not exactly glamorous. That is part of why it is worth writing about honestly.

Phnom Penh  ·  Aziza's Place

The essays in this section cover more than twenty years of travel across Asia, Africa, the Mediterranean, the Americas and Europe, although I have spent my whole life pretty much a nomad. Some are recent. Some are from the archive, revisited with fresh eyes. All of them are written from direct personal experience, with specific sources, local contacts, and the kind of detail that only comes from actually having been there. The restaurant where the five-star chef eats on his day off. The market that is worth visiting only on Fridays. The shaman who works in the afternoon and accepts cigarettes as an offering. The stepwell that most visitors walk past. The things you only find when someone who loves a place tells you where to look.

Coco, the ultimate travel companion, who loved airports, did not live to see these all published. But he was in the room, or in the taxi, or asleep on the hotel bed, for more of them than I can count. This section is dedicated for him too.