Tag

road wisdom

What’s Your Personal Landscape?

W

Just got back from my first trip to Las Vegas. Yeah, it’s weird eh? I’ve been to Mongolia but never Vegas. Am I the only one to go there and not set foot in a Casino, club or The Strip? What the heck did I get up to? On the outskirts of Sin City, among the red rocks and the ghosts of broken dreams, I filmed a couple programs for my health and fitness website. I also put together this...

In Conversation with Desert Explorer Tom Sheppard

I

Tom Sheppard’s 40 years of overlanding experience make him one of the world’s foremost experts on desert travel. Among the highlights, he’s tackled six solo Sahara expeditions since 2001, and he led the first coast to coast crossing of the Sahara from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, which won him an award from the Royal Geographical Society. Sheppard’s gift for writing about...

Rangoon 2: Attacked in the Night

R

As I wrote in the prior blog, I still don’t know how I found the “guesthouse” where we spent that first night in Rangoon. At first it seemed like a great value. But in the end we got more than we bargained for… It was a small place owned by Indian traders, on the second floor of a decrepit colonial building lost down a forgettable side street. We had to trudge up a dark...

Burmese Days

B

  Of all the places I traveled in Southeast Asia, I liked Burma the best. It was by far the most traditional country in the region. It was free of Thailand’s 7-11’s, paved roads and fast food. Free of Vietnam’s scams. And it lacked that uncomfortable undercurrent of violence and broken psyches that seemed to blight Cambodia. Burmese people were quiet and kind. Old men in the...

Cruising Through the Bu

C

    I’m just back from a couple weeks in LA, hanging with some of my magazine friends. Cruising through Malibu, walks on Santa Monica beach, shopping in Beverly Hills, and lunch on Sunset Blvd. Ahh, LA, you’ve got it all: a warm breeze, a coastline kissed by waves, fast cars and beautiful girls, and vast stretches of desert just over the next hill. That’s a place I could spend a...

Show Your Faces If You Dare

S

Clive J. from the UK asked: What do you know as a result of travel the rest of us don’t? I think the most important lessons are things we forget in the day to day, not things we don’t know. When you’re cut off out there on the road, the everyday frivolity of life at home – office politics, the rat race, “noble” ambitions, catching every episode of some stupid...

History In Your Glass

H

I received a lot of emails about my previous blog installment on the Pan American Clipper and the golden age of air travel. Many of you would have liked a taste of that bygone age — so I’m going to give you one. A little bit of history, right here in your glass… A lot of drinking goes on in the air these days, but it’s become nothing more than a way to knock yourself out...

Baybee Don’t Fence Me In!

B

I read an excellent book about Mongolia a couple weeks ago by Jasper Becker, called “Mongolia: Travels in the Untamed Land.” Becker was a Western journalist based in Beijing, and one of the first to cross the border from China when Mongolian communism fell apart in 1991. The book covers many aspects of Mongolia, from obscure bits of history to the observations of other earlier...

Beneath the Sun and Stars

B

I’m just back from a short job in Glynco, GA, followed by a few days of filming in Florida. It was a steamy week of early morning / late afternoon shoots and midday business meetings on the beach. We were scorched by the sands, gouged by the shells, plagued by mosquitos and swarmed by biting ants. And that was just the first day… But I’ve returned to my desk and I’m ready...

Memory Breeds Paper Dreams

M

Jenny from Sydney, Australia asked: How did you become interested in writing? I wonder sometimes what came first, the stories or the intention to write them? I think, in a sense, I’ve always lived posthumously. Even when I really got myself into trouble as a kid, part of me knew that the incident I was caught up in would make a great story and that I had to go through with it. I was always...

NEWSLETTER

Sign up for my entertaining email newsletter


Recent Posts

Archives