Stories
Personal travel stories and narratives
StoriesGive Gothenburg the Weekend: Rain, Ferries, and a Cinnamon Bun the Size of a Dinner Plate
Gothenburg is the easy city to skip on a Sweden trip — the cheaper flight, the throwaway two days before Stockholm. Skip the skip. A rainy arrival, a giant cinnamon bun in Haga, a ferry to a car-free island, and the slowest, best weekend on Sweden's west coast are waiting for you.
StoriesThe Morning I Stood Alone in Sanmachi Suji: A Takayama Story
At 6:30 AM, Japan's best-preserved Edo street belongs to the shopkeepers, the river, and one confused foreigner with a camera.
StoriesA Week in Bukhara: Silk Road Diary from Uzbekistan's Holiest City
Day 1: I sat in a plaza where traders rested camels 600 years ago. The tea tastes the same. The chess games probably do too.
StoriesThree Days in Musandam: My Trip to Oman's Most Remote Peninsula
I drove across the UAE border, slept on a dhow in a fjord, nearly got carsick climbing a 2,000-meter mountain, and watched 40 dolphins race my boat. Here's what happened.
StoriesThe Night the Ocean Glowed: A Story from Isla Holbox
I came to a car-free island for whale sharks. The whale sharks were gone for the season. What I found instead — bioluminescent plankton lighting up the shallows at midnight — was better.
StoriesA Day in Casablanca: From Ocean Minaret to Art Deco Boulevards
Follow the light across Casablanca — from the Hassan II Mosque rising out of the Atlantic surf to the faded Deco grandeur of Boulevard Mohammed V and a piano playing 'As Time Goes By'.
Stories5 Days in Jiufen: A Solo Traveler's Honest Journal
I came for the Spirited Away photos. I stayed because the rain, the tea, and the empty morning streets made me forget I was supposed to leave on day three.
StoriesThe Night I Got Lost in Chandni Chowk and Found the Real Delhi
I took a wrong turn near Paranthe Wali Gali and ended up in a spice warehouse from the 1700s. Three hours later, I'd eaten five meals and couldn't find my way out. It was perfect.
StoriesThe Sound of Silence: Three Days on the Bazaruto Archipelago
A dhow sail at sunset, a dugong sighting at Two Mile Reef, and the kind of silence that makes you realize how loud your normal life is.
StoriesPast the Glass Towers: How Bahrain Unfolds From Skyline to Sea in One Long Day
Bahrain's first hour is all mirrored towers and eight-lane highways. Give the island one unhurried day and it peels back four thousand years — Dilmun forts, pearl-diving lanes, and a single tree alone in the desert.
Stories7 Days at the End of the World: A Patagonia Travel Journal
From the thunderous crack of Perito Moreno calving to the sunrise over Fitz Roy that made me cry in public — an honest week in Patagonia.
StoriesThree Perfect Days in Varkala: A Day-by-Day Plan
A no-wasted-rickshaw plan for three days in Varkala — cliff sunsets, sunrise yoga, the holy Papanasam beach, an Ayurvedic afternoon, and the Kappil backwaters, with real prices throughout.