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Every Friday is giveaway day. Comment to win! One day Allan Karl woke up to discover that he was unemployed and his marriage had ended in divorce. Allan looked at these forks in the road of his life as an opportunity to both follow a life-long dream and pursue his passions. After a successful Kickstarter…
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I used to read Travel & Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, and other travel magazines every month. This was old-school reading: there were actual magazines that came in the mail to my house each month.
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Last week, Roger Poulin completed a journey. He became the first recorded person who is both blind and deaf to hike the entire 2,180-mile Appalachian Trail.
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We didn’t buy it, but we did in fact rent it out. Today I was working on my quarterly taxes and smiled when I saw the charge for the Oregon Zoo from last year. Aside from my house, the zoo was the largest thing I’ve ever paid for—and the largest credit card charge by far.…
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Doha, the capital of Qatar, isn’t the kind of place you usually pop into without a task at hand. You might come on assignment for your company, or you could be transiting on Qatar Airways, or you might drop in because Qatar is a country and you’re on a mission to visit all of them.…
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Update: This post contains outdated offers and should only be used for reference. Click the following link for the most up-to-date offers on my favorite travel hacking cards. -cg — Last week I flew to one of my favorite countries. Ever since I first got stuck in Australia after being denied boarding for Nauru, it…
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left Norway and began a slow journey home via the Pacific. I'm writing these notes from a Cathay Pacific flight to Tokyo, where I'll transfer on to Los Angeles after staying one night.
After the end of the world in Oslo, a lot of people have been asking:
How does it feel to visit every country in the world?
How does it feel? It feels good. I'm the same person as I was last week, and I haven't been equipped with magical powers or instant sagacity—but it's fun to know that it all worked out.
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On a day like last Saturday, you might find yourself wrapping up a whirlwind series of events in a fun East Asian country. You might be feeling the effects of little sleep and the need to be extroverted as you present yourself in various new and unfamiliar events. Hosting a talk show on Buddhist TV, for example, or perhaps being pelted by questions in the form of paper airplanes at a less formal event for readers. It will all have been wonderful, no doubt, but you'll also be in need of a change ...
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The biggest challenge was the uncertainty. Stepping onto the transfer bus for Heathrow Airport's Terminal 1, I considered the journey thus far and the upcoming adventure that the next few days would hold. I was coming off two weeks in India with events and media every day. Then I flew to London after two other quick stops in Singapore and Hong Kong. After making it to London I camped out in Heathrow airport for a few hours—due to flight schedules there wasn't room for a day off where I could go to the city—and then I flew down to Lisbon and eventually Dakar, Senegal.
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Over the next few weeks, I'll be touring India and then traveling elsewhere in the world. While I'm away, we'll be publishing a new series of Questions and Attempted Answers (Q&AA) from readers. I'll share my answer, and you're invited to share an answer of your own as well.
Today's question comes from Carrie, who writes in from London.
Next summer I'll have the chance to travel for several weeks, but I don't know where to go. Aside from school trips to France and Belgium, I've never been out of the U.K. before. Where should I go?
Great question. Here's my attempted answer →
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On a crisp morning in November, you find yourself waking up in the center of the universe. You look out your window and see 5th Avenue and the New York Public Library.
You step out of bed and feel the impact of three hours' time change from the west coast. It's 4:30am back there, your body informs you. But you have a mission ahead of you, and you can't be late.
The previous evening you had ordered breakfast for delivery and hesitated over the selection. At first you were thinking french toast, but then you remembered that Gary Leff recommends the lemon poppyseed pancakes. You're not usually a fan of lemon poppyseed, but you decide to trust Gary and give it a try.
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I'm off to see the world again, heading out to West Africa via JFK, LHR, LIS, and DKR over the next couple of days. This time, I'm attempting to visit two challenging countries, Guinea Bissau and Sao Tome. After ten years of active travel, these are also my final countries in all of Africa. These countries are hard to visit. In addition to being difficult to limited flight schedules and far-away jumping-off points (Lisbon and Dakar), I don't have a visa for either country, something that both require prior to departure. Why am I going anyway, with a real chance that one or both of the visits could fail? Because I have no choice.
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Have you ever pulled up to a stoplight and waited ... and waited ... while there was no other traffic in sight?
Three minutes later, the light finally changes, and you pull away ... with no other traffic in sight?
A couple of years ago, this happened to me late at night while I was traveling in the midwest. I sat there and kept thinking: what a useless stoplight. What am I waiting for?
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Upon my arrival in Sana'a, the capital city of Yemen, it took a while to get underway. Immigration was uneventful and I had met the guy who would serve as my guide for the next three days, but we had a problem finding a working taxi to take us downtown. After putting my bag in the back of the first taxi, I went to sit down, but a heated argument was taking place between the guide and the driver. Finally it was determined that this driver was attempting to extort us, so I retrieved my bag and we walked further down the road, where cheaper taxis were available ...
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Brazzaville, the capital city of the Republic of Congo, has a spiffy new airport in the style of Paris or Madrid. Coming in on the RwandAir flight from Kigali, I'm shocked to see actual jet bridges where one can walk directly from the aircraft into the airport. Dozens of times I've landed in random African airports, deplaned the aircraft and been bused to the terminal, even if it's a short walk away and there are no other aircraft anywhere to be seen. As far as I can tell, the logic is, “Hey, we have these buses—we need to use them.”
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