humanity
If nothing else, travel opens your eyes to the colorful quilt that is humankind.
A Fall Vignette in East Clear Creek
Across the water from the squeaking red boats, there is a bank of reeds rustling in the wind. It doesn't take much to move them—just a little breath, a small breeze. They show no discernible difference from the colors of summer, and their green bodies dance in a uniform swaying motion. Above them, the striated rock stands silent guard. The pain that sandstone has had to endure is obvious: weathering, cobbled blocks, where cuts dash back and forth along their faces. The sun comes out every few moments, poking its face from behind a puffy cloud and going away again. When airplanes fly overhead, the firmament sounds muffled and toned-down, about to sleep. Fall has arrived at East Clear Creek.
By Sarahmarie Specht-Bird5 years ago in Wander
The Golden Temple of Amritsar Then and Now
Part of me is optimistic about the state of the Golden Temple. Not to be overly revisionist or reductionist in my opinion on the place, I like to remind myself that politics, ideology, and the like have always been at work in the world of the Harimandir Sahib. Problems apparent now are probably just a trade-off for problems of the past. But there is one thing that I cannot shake: the brash lack of care for our material heritage as seen in the conservation or otherwise of the buildings and art in and around Darbar Sahib.
By manan yadav 5 years ago in Wander
Remote Work by Travelling Changed Me a Lot, and I Love It
I started in July last year. My first stop was Zaporizhia in Ukraine. Don't think that I chose this city for its history, nature, or entertainment life. My wife's family lives there. Let's say that we went for a visit, but we can still consider it the beginning of everything.
By Selçuk Sevindik5 years ago in Wander
The Shame of Feeling Traveller’s Guilt for the First Time
Intro Up until this point, I’d only ever gone on holiday in Europe. Culturally different to the UK, yes, of course, but never in ways that made me seriously question my set of morals and ethics regarding traveling.
By Sh*t Happens - Lost Girl Travel5 years ago in Wander
You Never Forget Your First Phone Tap. Top Story - September 2021.
Nobody ever prepares you for the first time you're put under surveillance. I was six. Sure, I'm a young protagonist for a coming-of-age story. But what happened to my me and family in Romania, winter 1990/91, just months after the fall of the Communist revolution, defined exactly who I am today, 30 years later.
By Charlie Brown5 years ago in Wander
The Smallest Kindness Redeems
It had been a long day already. A drive that Google maps had said would take six hours in total was already at hour six and we were barely half way to our destination. We had left the geothermal pools of the calcium carbonate mountain Pamukkale in Turkey that morning and I was very irritated. The afternoon before we had a fairly disturbing hotel experience which was scary enough to cause us to leave the hotel immediately after check in and to not return for checkout. The place we found as a replacement was only slightly better and I felt discriminated against and uneasy there as well. Overall the past day and a half had been full of mini-frustrations, mostly due to my own ignorance of the Turkish language. A lack of quality sleep was aggravating the situation badly. I was in a foul mood and was lashing out at even the smallest of perceived injustices. In truth nothing bad had happened, we were never in even the slightest of jeopardy, and nobody had said or done anything of real significance in any way negative to us since we had entered the country two days prior. However, to me it felt as if the whole country was against me. I was being targeted as an American and treated poorly as a result.
By Everyday Junglist5 years ago in Wander
Reverse Culture Shock and Re-learning the Meaning of Home. Top Story - September 2021.
Reverse Culture Shock I remember the first time I came home from long-term traveling and living abroad. Even after two years away, I wasn’t ready to go home. I remember feeling intense sadness on our way to Bangkok airport. It wasn’t easy to tear myself away from this beautiful, colourful and vibrant country.
By Sh*t Happens - Lost Girl Travel5 years ago in Wander
My first few years in Canada
I am 44 years old and I think I have lived a very good life so far. I was fortunate to live in a few countries and my last 26 years in Canada have been very nice. However, the first two or three years in Canada were difficult. For me, those years were my coming of age years.
By Anshuman Kumar5 years ago in Wander
Diary of a Misanthrope. Top Story - September 2021.
The first time I really questioned my species was underwater. With a nasty cut seeping red blotches into a blue expanse I could feel my heart pumping, my body reacting to all that self-preservation hyped by film, television, and literature. While Homo aquaticus has never been, and isn’t yet a thing, the wilds of underwater have this capacity to make you remember some ancestral sense of vulnerability. It is, after all, not an environment suited to the spongy bags in our chest. But it is a wondrous place, and when afforded the moment to reflect on this, underwater salts the eyes into tears. Tears of both joy and mourning.
By Jason Sheehan5 years ago in Wander
Summer Memories from 2013
In 2013, I took a trip from my place at Fort Myers Beach, Florida to spend the summer in Brattleboro, Vermont. I would stay a couple of months with my sister Pat and her husband Conrad. They were about to open a B&B called The One Cat. Pat had spent many many years in England, and she and Conrad, got a good deal on the house, after deciding to return to the USA; it was a good chance to catch up with each other. The idea was for me to get away from the high temperatures in a hot Florida, and spend some time in a more mountainous atmosphere where the summers were cooler. (WRONG) The summer of 2013 in Brattleboro, Vermont had a couple of weeks, when the temps, even at night, did not fall below 90 degrees.
By David X. Sheehan5 years ago in Wander
