Things will return to normal, but for now, our duty is to do the least amount of traveling in order to make the world safer for everyone to travel. I think my neighbor -- who just installed an outdoor television on his deck and a pool in his backyard --...

The freedom I felt having no idea where I would sleep was incredible. I distinctly remember stepping off a bus, looking a motorcycle taxi driver in the eyes and telling him I needed a hotel. He brought me to a place, and I’ll admit that the American in me briefly...

Kimbola, the driver, would have been a dead ringer for Mike Tyson, if Tyson weighed 140 lbs. He donned a stoic look as he shook my hand and walked me over to my seat, right in the front in what they call the “death seat”. He stopped to buy some...

The orphanage didn’t need my help. I didn’t wow anyone with my soccer skills or save any lives that day. What they needed was my financial aid. For a split second I felt used, maybe even angry. But I quickly became okay with it. It was naive of me to...

The best ones are those that make us stop: stop rushing, stop worrying, stop trying to find the best experience, because the best meals just happen spontaneously. A charming meal eaten outside in Rome is charming because that meal comes with a show, and that show is life. It is...

The average round trip flight from New York to London generates about 986 kg (2,173.76 lbs.) of CO2 per passenger; almost as much as some people use in an entire year. As an avid traveler, it forces me to face a truth that I had frequently hidden from: that despite...

In the minds of many, death looms over the Amazon like plague-infested Europe in the Middle Ages. But while drinking from a branch that spewed forth clean water, to me the Amazon was a place of mercy, of life, of survival. Today though, the Amazon is indeed a place cursed...

I had never seen an African elephant in the wild like this. He was not put here for a show and I was not protected by a safari truck. The grass through which he walked was the same grass I felt on my calves. The bugs the bird ate off...

One Saturday a student came to visit me where I was staying…. It was strange that this boy… who seemed the stereotype of an adolescent boy, was the son of essentially, a terrorist. He explained that one day he would grow up and take over his father’s legacy with an...

Ignorance about geography, distances, and geopolitics creates serious misconceptions about foreign countries. I’ve been in a few countries that were experiencing major violence while I was there, and while the threat of danger was real, it was clear that it seemed a lot worse from a distance, from home in...