Top Stories
Stories in Wander that you’ll love, handpicked by our team.
A telegram to Little Me
I acquired a magical souvenir; it was a realisation. By taking an impulsive trip to Thailand, I awarded myself the chance to have it. You are our own gift shop. You choose the opening times, you choose the stock. They are the very nature of wisdom, realisations. One could say we collect them and form a magnificent portfolio entitled Experience. And that's why we do the majority of things we do. But travelling is the act most generous in the offering of experience, the gift shop with the best stock. We go on the hunt for experiences, daring ourselves to be stimulated in new ways, by new flavours. To sweat, swim or shiver in the waters of new challenges. To hear new sounds, learn novel outlooks, and relish as hinges creak with unknown doors opening in our hearts and minds. This realisation and the flourishing effect it had upon me made Thailand my best trip yet. All this realisation consisted of was merely a stripped back epiphany of why we do these things. See new places, take new risks, seek refreshing distractions from all that we're tired of being familiar with.
Konrad KrampPublished about 5 hours ago in WanderA Weekend in Buxton
All my life, I’ve been English in an emotional, mental, and social way, but never a physical one until the Spring of 2022 when all my Anglophile dreams came true. I was finally able to visit my soul country, meet my wonderful online friends in person, and confirm my belief that it was where I belonged.
Emily AlbersPublished about 6 hours ago in WanderTouching the Sky
Back in 2020 (yes, THAT 2020), I took my very first steps towards becoming an international traveler. I was 25 years old, and up to this point, the furthest I'd ever traveled alone from my home state of New Jersey without my family was to West Virginia.
Emily Marie ConcannonPublished 2 days ago in WanderGay your life must be
“My Dad’s got itchy feet” I would say. I don’t know where I first heard this phrase, but I parroted it often as a child, a vague but sufficient explanation for the fragmented answers I offered to “where did you….” questions. The assumption was that we were a military family. When I went to Sixth Form College and completed the full two years without moving, I set a personal record for time spent at any one educational institution. But we were not a military family. We were a family governed by a restless soul, for better and worse, and now, well into my adulthood, I am the restless governor of a home loving family.
Hannah MoorePublished 8 days ago in WanderStanding Still
There are very few moments in life where time truly stands still. When your breath is taken from your chest and your body hangs weightless in that moment. Just long enough for it to stay with you from that day onwards. Deep in the red sands of the Australian Outback, I found that moment and clung to it forever.
Kevin McLaughlinPublished 5 days ago in WanderCan You Drive a Ford Fiesta Through a Desert?
I’m flying down the B1 highway from Windhoek to Keetmanshoop with a map and a boot full of camping gear. I’m excited for the first stop of my Namibian road trip: the Quiver Tree Forest. I spot the sign and turn onto the C17, off the tarmac and onto the gravel. I’ll be there soon; it’s only ten miles or so. I am unprepared for what comes next. The car slides and slips across the road. I am not fully in control anymore. I slow to a crawl. The car judders and shudders, the noise deafening, the vibrations rattling the teeth in my skull. It takes me around an hour to drive the ten miles. I arrive at the campsite relieved to be in one piece, even if it feels like all my bones have been shaken slightly out of place. I will later learn that this is what happens when the gravel road becomes “corrugated”, and that the roads authority goes round once a week to “grade” them. Seems I arrived about 6 days after the grader had last been round.
Jenifer NimPublished 6 days ago in WanderSitting in DNA Soup
I am sitting in “DNA soup”- actually, a Jacuzzi at the Melia Hotel in Nassau, Bahamas. It might as well be a soup though, from the amount of people sitting in it. I’d wager that if you were to take a ladle from that hot tub and send it to a DNA testing facility, you’d have genetics from every corner of the planet.
Kelley SteadPublished 11 days ago in WanderThe Great Maine Lighthouse Tour
Two Months Out I have the train ticket. The time off approved. My friend Phil is getting married in a place called Bangor, Maine.
Stephen A. RoddewigPublished 12 days ago in WanderA Gneiss View
It was a bright day in early March, the sun was shining and a substantial fall of fresh snow lay pristine under an arching blue sky. I stepped off the train at Lairg, midway along the branch line that winds its way from Inverness to Wick in the far north of Scotland and wondered whether the postbus would be in the station car park or somewhere between where I stood and Lochinver, lodged up to its headlights in snow.
The Meeting
READ "PART I" HERE: My third adventure outside the United States was to Putian, China (the second was with a college friend to London for Spring Break—a unique choice that I'll write about later). It wasn't exactly a study abroad opportunity, but I was still in college, and a philosophy professor recommended the experience to me. She knew I was interested in Eastern philosophy, focusing on Daoism, and thought a trip to a Buddhist temple in China might be up my alley. She was right.
A Siberian Story: Tag, You’re It
Snow shimmers in -24 degrees. Trees that usually wear their forest green coats are dusted by frost, looming tall and piercing the pastel coloured sky like sentinels for a citadel of silence. Finland is made of frozen moments, standing so still in between breaths of icy air. It’s serene. It’s like a dream. It’s the most enchanting thing I’ve ever seen.
Inshallah
Istanbul is a city bristling with life, a place where past and present, sacred and profane, intertwine under the watchful gaze of the Sultan Ahmet Mosque. As I explore this crossroads of cultures with Maya, my nine-year-old niece and the daughter of my late brother-in-law Frank, and my wife Nadia, Frank's sister, I find myself on a journey not just through Istanbul's history, but also into the depths of my own beliefs. Staying with Maya and her mother Elvan, my sister-in-law, I begin to see the city anew through their eyes, and to understand why James Baldwin said it "revived" him.
Geoffrey PhilpPublished 14 days ago in Wander