Category: Sabbatical Series

• Got any regrets? Burn ’em!

  Not a bad bonfire Dust storms rage across an apocalyptic landscape filled with brightly painted bodies writhing to the pulsing rhythm of electro beats highlighted by intricately orchestrated laser light patterns and roaring belches from a dozen military-grade flame throwers. Sound like a good place to seek enlightenment? Maybe not, but Burning Man is the…

• Less and longer: a few words of wisdom on traveling right

  So you’ve saved and budgeted for your trip and now it’s finally time to plan your itinerary. Six months of travel time stretches out before you like a magic carpet. So many opportunities to explore exotic locales! So much time to explore all those places on your bucket list! Ahh, your bucket list… How many…

• Gourmet desert camping in Nevada

  Desert camping isn’t for everyone. Conditions can be harsh, especially for peak heat times in the middle of summer. Without natural sources of water and shade, dehydration and sun poisoning could easily happen. Extreme self-reliance is the best way to survive and lack of preparation could have devastating consequences. A very fancy desert (Dubai) Good…

• Mango sticky rice in a climbers’ paradise

  Approaching Tonsai “For the stone from the top for geologists, the knowledge of the limits of endurance for the doctors, but above all for the spirit of adventure to keep alive the soul of man.” —George Mallory, British mountaineer  We were really tired of spending Ramadan in Muslim countries. It turned into a real hassle…

• Unstoppable appetites in our 48 hour stay on the Little Red Dot

  Isn’t it amazing that there’s such a place on earth that’s only about 270 square miles in size (yes, this includes all the reclaimed land), can’t really grow much of anything because the whole island is a rock, is home to about 5 million people and has more than 3,000 restaurants? That’s approximately 11 restaurants…

• On an island on a lake in a volcano on an island

  Coffee, volcanoes, civil war, orangutans, epic surfing and the epicenter of the 2004 tsunami make Sumatra a well-known island in Indonesia. However, it is not very popular with tourists (yet) probably because of the lack of infrastructure and fear of something going down in Banda Aceh where most of the violence occurred several years ago.…

• Tropical intrigue

  Hard at work in paradise Our first mistake was to fly from Colombo to Maldives on the first Friday of Ramadan. Maldivians take their religion seriously and not only is there no food for sale anywhere during the day but no ferries run between the islands either. For a country made up of thousands of tiny…

• High on Ceylon tea

  It was hard to leave Arugam Bay. The warm ocean water, the chill surfer vibe, excellent food at Ram’s and delicious breakfasts at Happy Panda kept us there for as long as we could push it. Eventually though, we knew we needed to start heading inland because we had spent nearly three weeks on Sri…

• Bus rides through mine fields

  Enjoying coconuts on the train We chugged out of Colombo on one of Sri Lanka’s British colonial era trains. The track wound its way North through bright green rice paddies and coconut plantations. The leg space was generous as Asian transportation options go. We were serenaded by vocal toddlers and lulled into semi-consciousness by the…

• 22 hours in Dubai, 16 hours of eating like maniacs

  A one hour long urban hike to Terminal 1 at 2 AM (don’t ask) and an incredibly uncomfortable “nap” at the arrivals hall at the Dubai Airport until 6 AM was a very rough welcome to the city. We were cranky. We were tired. We were not so excited about being in Dubai for 22…