A uniformed policeman with slick, coiffed hair combed straight up in the Iraqi style came into the waiting room and said, “Anna! Please come.” He held a sheaf of papers in front of him and I could see they included our visa applications. I jumped out of my chair and hurried to the front of the room. “Karen! Ina!” he continued. We gathered in front of him. “We need original,” he said. I didn’t understand at first. Original? Original what? Karen got it first. “Hotel reservation?” she asked. He nodded. Karen messaged Haidar, our guide, who was waiting for us outside the Basra airport. I wondered what would have happened if we didn’t have Haidar. How could we possibly get an original copy of our hotel reservation if we couldn’t get out of the airport? We sat back down to wait the half hour Haidar said it would take for…
Breakfast in the basement of our Mazar i Sharif guesthouse felt like a celebratory reunion. I hugged Robyn and Matt, whom I hadn’t seen in over a year,…
March 11, 2020, Las Vegas, Nevada I bumped elbows with my colleague Cliff Dickinson and we laughed. It was the fourth or fifth time someone had bumped elbows…
March 15, 2002 I saw Bob fishtailing in front of me. I had no idea why; there didn’t appear to be anything in front of us. He’d been…
“Since this is our first night for the whole group to be together, let’s go around the table,” our Inertia trip leader TK said. “Let’s each tell about…how…
I expected the Yemeni border to be scarier. Even the Oman border, where two of my travelmates were abruptly interrogated about why they had Afghanistan stamps in their…
In September of 2018, I traveled to Tasmania to volunteer with Wombat Rescue Tasmania, a group working to combat mange. The following article was written about one small…
I arrived at the Way Inn after nine hours of flying, seven hours on a bus and a 40-minute taxi ride. The setting was magnificent; at 12,000 feet,…
The kitchen of the Medicine Buddha Monastery was like everything else in Bhutan: simple, traditional, immaculate, but with occasional and startling touches of the contemporary. The wood stove…
December, 2001 I arrived on the South Island of New Zealand almost a month ago, flying into Christchurch from Australia via Auckland. My first stop was the mountainous…
February, 2002 Namaste! Put this one aside for a rainy weekend, folks, because India was a deeply affecting experience for me and I have a lot to say…
January, 2002 Greetings from Africa! The Africa story starts with the six-day ordeal it took to get here. I had planned a three-day stop in Singapore on my…
March, 2002 Greetings from Thailand! My Thailand visit began on February 26th when I arrived in Bangkok to meet my friend Bob, who was flying in from Colorado…
February, 2002 Greetings from Bhutan! I had originally intended to cover Bhutan as part of my Nepal newsletter, but this place is too special not to have its…
I am dubbing this newsletter the Annapurna Travelogue, in honor of my new nickname. No, I did not give this nickname to myself; I was given it by…