Almost everyone who's planning a round-the-world or other long-term trip comes upon one part of the process that serves as their stumbling block. For some, they're paralyzed by the different options for multi-stop tickets and can't figure out which one suits them best. For others, settling on just one itinerary and knowing they'll skip some...

East Jerusalem It was one of those blow-in-the-solarplexis travel moments. I had just been robbed, and among the loss were interviews and notes from Tibet, a camera, and more than $1300 in cash. This happened in Kathmandu, Nepal in 2004, and I remember keenly the anguish I felt, almost as if someone had ripped a...

Bangkok, Thailand Most of us have tongues, and we keep them for the duration of our lives. There are exceptions to this, unfortunately, including the 300 individuals in Cairo who had their tongues cut out by Sultan Baybars al-Jashankir about 700 years ago (he didn't like their political humor). But the average reader of this...

One of the traditional hallmarks of vagabonding is the idea that you'd arrive in a new destination having done the minimum required when it comes to advance planning. Maybe you've got a place to sleep for the first night, maybe you know a few things in that city or country that you definitely want to...

One of the time-honored traditions of expat life in Asia is bashing other foreigners. Familiarity can breed contempt, and it is amazing how you run into the same kinds of people over and over again. Sarah Grooms playfully took aim at these expat stereotypes in The Faster Times : The 11 foreigners you meet in...

Cairo, Egypt Most of us travel with eyes capable of absorbing the scenes around us. Part of why we travel is to see. We travel to see the incredible landscape of the planet -- the sunrise at Mount Everest, perhaps, which leaves you in awe, or, lower to the ground, the simple peacock standing in...

Communication technology is getting better all the time, but how about their human users? They may still lag behind the times, as globalization brings people closer, while they can't speak to each other in a common language. Matt Gross, writer of the NY Times Frugal Traveler Blog, set out to find a way to improve...

Cairo, Egypt The train rattling down the track as you lay awake in a sleeper car; the call to prayer sounding from a mosque as tropical birds outside your window also welcome the dawn; your name, so uneventfully and mono-syllabically said back home, suddenly turned into a two-syllable masterpiece by a cheerful lady at Lake...

You can leave a place, but it doesn't leave you. Quickly, at least. Maybe you'll bring back a few jolly pounds from samosas and sweetshops. You'll have some of the country under your fingernails and clogged in your pores. Its exhaust will take a few days to clear from your lungs so your boogers might...

There are far more entertaining and sexy subjects when it comes to long-term travel than what it takes to stay healthy on the road, but there are also few things that can screw up a RTW trip more than getting sick when you're far away from home. This isn't to say that there isn't going...

"Privacy" is a novel concept in Asia, where questions about salary, marital status, and race aren't taboo. Novelist Vanessa Hua faced this sort of casual interrogation on a taxi ride in China: The fare to Yangshuo . Although she's ethnically Chinese, she still felt out of place in China. This piece resonated for me on...

Ko Phangan, Thailand Seldom is there just one reason why a person travels, a point Colin Thubron eloquently makes in the opening pages of his Shadow of the Silk Road : Sometimes a journey arises out of hope and instinct, the heady conviction, as your finger travels along the map: Yes, here and here…and here....

The most drastic steps an expat can make is to give up citizenship and take up permanent residency abroad. With tax season just behind us, the media has picked up on the expat connection. This Time magazine article says that growing numbers of Americans are crossing that point of no return: U.S. expat taxes drive...

Bangkok, Thailand It is 8:00 p.m. in Cairo and I've just crawled out of bed to tend to this blog. I have a fever and am feeling pretty darn miserable. My creativity feels stunted and, given that all I want to do right now is lay back down with the blanket pulled over me, I...

The RTW trip lasted about two years and three days. It started in Pokhara, Nepal, and ended while traversing a pile of ceramic teacup shards this morning in Mirzapur, India. My left sandal has called it quits. In the moment before I accepted its passing, the sandal's life flashed before my eyes. A life of...

Becca and Nate in Surin, Thailand. Photo: Becca Becca and Nate are the writers of the hi & thank you blog , for which they were recognized as a 2010 Lonely Planet Featured Blogger. In the post Reflecting: The Cost of Travel , Becca paints a vivid financial and spiritual portrait of their trip through...

Somewhere in Egypt The Patriarch of Constantinople may have spent some time at Al-Kharga Oasis , but I had to give it a miss. And I really, really hated to do that. Nestorius (c.386-c.451), to simplify a complex issue, was the loser in one of the great theological controversies in Christian history, and so he...

When you're planning a RTW trip it's easy to look at all of those places you'll be going as exotic, exciting, and far away (in more ways than one) from your current life. But sometimes when you actually get there, you find that it's a bit more like life at home than you were hoping...

It would appear that I have inadvertently started a series that might be titled, " things experienced on the way to or from Afar launch parties. " Conveniently, they seem to be held on Wednesday evenings which coincides nicely with having a midnight Thursday column deadline. Tonight's event was held at the Cantina Bar in...

Varanasi -- The leg of the stool started to buckle underneath him, and I warned my friend of the imminent collapse. "No worries," he said, "I have a feel for the balance of Indian things." The balance of Indian things? He was right -- there's a lot of precariousness here. Yet I hadn't realized that...