Travel Writing Library

A year ago I visited the Afar tribe in Ethiopia. My local guide, Firew, took me into a small, dim reed hut, where inside I could make out a baby lying on a stick and goatskin bed...

The sense of time is easy to be neglected. Meanwhile, it’s the one aspect of reality that people can’t abandon completely. We count the length of life and become older and older out of hand...

“So what’s so special about Pak Beng that we have to spend a night there then, genius?”

For within each of us lies a tale, some tell of fairies and headless horsemen and others scream of injustice and oppression.

A stream was the last thing we had been looking for in the middle of the Gobi Desert. Expected or not, there it was, and our mini-van was stuck right in the middle of it...

As we exit the minibus, a heavily Cuban-accented voice says, “You go. Down step.”

My first impressions of Kathmandu were nothing to write home about. Scenes of suicidal drivers hysterically tooting loud horns, buffalos crossing the road and open sewars reeking of stale urine did very little to...

“Francis,” I whispered across the hillside. At least I think I whispered.

The Summer of 2000 was not a good one for Memorable Travel Encounters. At least not pleasant ones, at least not at my airline, where the pilots and management locked horns in a labor dispute that made a mockery...

Our taxi pulls up in a narrow, dimly lit street next to a decrepit concrete building covered in graffiti – our destination. We step out onto the urine-streaked road and take in our surroundings...