Travel Journal
From the back seat of our blacked out SUV, I feel separated from what I am seeing. An unwelcome voyeur, maybe. Still, I want to know the other sides of Egypt. The parts that keep it breathing. Navigating the narrow alleyways of these once abandoned buildings, we pass a partially opened doorway. Inside, a woman and child sort through a mountain of trash. Behind the woman, a rusted sink and a tattered mattress.
Read MoreI was living in Egypt, and I didn’t speak Arabic. So, I did what I always do. I relied on gestures to communicate. Sometimes, google translate. A hand wave here, a head nod there. Generally enough to get the message across. Life in Egypt was a lot like my life in South Italy. Beautiful, organized chaos.
Read MoreThe next day we hired a boat to sail us further west along the Sinai, toward Ras Muhammad. Once aboard, we realized we were last minute add-ons to a Russian tour group. This wasn't the epic voyage of free-spirited exploration I had imagined. We were pirate-boat party crashers.
Read MoreThey say people come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. You learn from each other, lean into one another. Sometimes you even decide to do life together. And everything is magical. Until it isn't. And things get hard.
Read MoreI had heard of this place before. A distant cousin to the chaos that was Cairo, related but nothing alike. The photos I had seen were of clear, blue waters and golden light stretching out over wild, open spaces.
Read MoreOur cab driver, Hani, looked like George Clooney. He lit a cigarette, asked for 25JD up front, and came to a stop on the side of the road before ushering us into an unmarked car. There was a lot of hand waving and what seemed like friendly arabic, some money changing and then he left us. Damn him, he left us.
Read MoreThe intricate design and high vaulted corridors of twisted rock had me convinced Petra was some sort of elaborate modern hoax. A fantasy world brought to fruition. It wasn’t until I had wandered the city streets myself that I began to process Petra as a reality; plainly panorama before me.
Read MoreFew places compare to the Canyonlands of Southeastern Utah. The sheer size and gravity of nature at its best. The innate sense of freedom; the euphoria of standing still amid a waste of wild air. Wadi Rum is one of those places.
Read MoreIt was cool enough to wear a sweater, and the sun was setting when we found a hilltop spot to sit and stare out at the Sea of Galilee, the Golan Heights and Yarmuk Gorge. The ruins of Umm Qais (Gadara) were at our back, Israel to the left and Syria to the right.
Read MoreI woke up on the seventeenth floor, suspended above a city beneath an overcast sky; misty roads winding through stacks on stacks of white stone structures. When you live for months at a time in a place void of rain, mist, and cloud; moody mornings are more like million dollar moments.
Read MoreIn Bahrain you drive on sidewalks and park where you like. You hear English so often you forget you're in the Middle East; you hire tailors to craft the designer stuff you see while sipping mango juice and paging though fashion magazines.
Read MoreAway from the ongoing project that is Manama, the landscape of the Middle Eastern land unraveled into ribbons of oil pipes and oceans of sand.
Read MoreI lived in the Middle East for just over six months, and still I only caught small glimpses of a world and culture I never imagined myself visiting, much less living.
Read MoreAfter three nights at the Grand Hyatt Muscat, we traded our suite for an SUV and drove from Muscat into the nether, sans GPS. The road was straight and went on forever, dotted with feral donkeys and curiously constrained camels.
Read MoreThe idea was not to linger in any one place, but to stay on the move, to drink in the never-ending panorama of the Muttrah Souq. Like most things, ideas are almost always good in theory; but they tend to wane in the most crucial of moments.
Read MoreThe sun was long gone as Justin and I sat on a pier looking out onto the Doha skyline. There were four or five fishermen to our left, and a couple dressed in thobe and burka to our right.
Read MoreA little bit about Bahrain, a tiny island in the middle of the Middle East, opposite the bridge to Saudi Arabia. I had landed in Bahrain six weeks earlier on a flight from Sri Lanka, at the height of summer, when temperatures hovered somewhere around 114.
Read MoreI returned yesterday from a whirlwind trip that was somewhat last minute - and fantastic. We flew across the Gulf to celebrate a friend's birthday in true Dubai style - complete with pink limo, champagne service and a dance floor on the 43rd floor somewhere downtown. In a word: extravagant.
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