Interview with Jordan’s Zikra Initiative Founder

How did the Zikra Initiative start? When Zikra was launched it was a charity drive, I had learned about  a “dusty community” discriminated against because of their skin color. They had been taken advantage of by loan sharks and now couldn’t pay the loans back.  So their land was taken away. This community doesn’t have high positions in government. We donated mainly household items and camp food at first. After awhile it started feeling awkward, it created a giver/receiver relationship, as if we the givers were the heroes. In ...

A Really Big Fish Tale

By Sharon Spence Lieb At pink dawn, frigate birds arch their wings over a turquoise Caribbean. Off Cancun, Mexico, we hop into a tiny fishing boat with guides from Solo Buceo Dive Adventures. They usually lead intrepid divers to explore the 420-mile Mayan Reef, the northern hemisphere’s largest coral reef. But today, we’re hoping to encounter whale sharks. “Ready for a whale shark party?” asks our enthusiastic guide, Martha Aguilar. “The ocean’s a buffet of fish eggs and plankton, their favorite food. Keep your eyes open.” Adventure is not a theme park, ...

The Mexican Temazcal: An Experience in a Maya Sweat Lodge

This article was first published by our friends at thetravelword, who have agreed to its republication here. View the original article on their blog. By Heather Rath Sweat is pouring from my pores. I am saturated with my own perspiration. My hair is wet and stringy. My breathing is laboured because of burning lungs and I am thankful we are in total blackness since I am struggling to sit upright. My instinct is to lie down in the fetal position on the floor where the air may be cooler, not so fire-hot. The steady beat of the drum ...

Volunteer Tourism in Egypt

I recently traveled to Egypt with Dr. Kristin Lamoureux of The George Washington University to examine the potential for volunteer tourism in Cairo and Aswan and offer strategic recommendations for its development.  Our trip was sponsored by the Cultural Programs office of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.  We participated in a series of volunteer tourism workshops, consultations and media outreach events acrross the country from November 2-4, 2010.  The goal of the program was to energize people in government, the non-profit and private sector about how they might directly implement the concept of volunteer tourism in Egypt. The benefits to a ...

Panama’s Earth Train & OARS: Kayaking and Leadership Training

The field operations of Earth Train, an international youth leadership organization, are located in Panama in the Mamoní Valley Preserve. The preserve is a remarkable area in the center of the Americas on a land bridge teeming with biodiversity and where the separation between the two great oceans is at its narrowest. It is a crucial battle ground for the protection and smart use of rainforests for future generations. “It’s more than just ecotourism,” remarks founder Nathan Gray, “Earth Train hopes to build ...

Dance to the Beat of Mongolian Bling

Ask any youth from the Western hemisphere to name their favorite hip hop artists and they will probably rattle off a few names that come to mind. Ask their parents and grandparents and you would likely be met with a blank stare. Younger generations have come to assume that this culture gulf is wide and incapable of being bridged.  Nasanbat, a 52 year old Mongolian woman, however, can name the first hip hop song that became popular in Mongolia, a few of the bands and artists around town, and is probably ...

Tortoise Blog

I crawl out of my sleeping bag and into the bright white moonlight.  It’s 3.30am, and I am in my knit hat and down jacket in the southern California desert.  I made my coffee last night on the tailgate of my truck with a Coleman stove and a Melitta drip cup so I could silently eat breakfast and slip out of the campground.  I drive 20 miles down a dirt road to the edge of the Joshua Tree National Park Wilderness Area, where our surveys for desert ...

Hiking the Northern Albanian Alps

Welcome to Albania - in South Eastern Europe, bordering the Adriatic sea, and only recently open to the world.  Albania has a peculiar history: while courted by the Yugoslavs’ and Soviets during the Cold War, the isolationist government under Enver Hoxha implemented a homegrown form of repressive communism. The country lingered in relative obscurity after the fall of Communism in 1992. It wasn’t until a giant Ponzi scheme involving many high-ups in the government bankrupted the entire country and led to a brief ...

A Flat Tire in Laos

A faint hissing noise from one of our scooters startled us an hour before sundown: a flat tire. My two friends and I were standing in the jungle somewhere along a 120 km stretch between the towns of Attapeu and Thang Beng on the Bolaven Plateau in Laos. Where exactly – we weren’t sure! Referred to in our map mysteriously as “Road of Unconfirmed Status”, the road had turned into an isolated, narrow singletrail of compacted mud only an hour out of town that morning. Snake-like it wound ...

A Guide to Eating in Mongolia

This is the first in a series of posts from Deepali Patel, a native of Washington D.C. and Fulbright Fellow working in Mongolia.  This week, her guide to eating in Mongolia. Read more on her blog Mongolia is a country of superlatives.  Lowest population density, coldest capital, most cars per capita…and also most livestock per capita, at about 15 to 1. Couple that last stat with a cold, dry climate, and it is no wonder that the consumption of ...

Kiel’s Experience with The Holy Land Trust

On a short 10 day trip to Israel and the surrounding areas, I was fortunate enough to come across The Holy Land Trust.  This organization specializes into trips into the West Bank, offering immersion tours into the culture therein.  Due to my time restrictions, I was only able travel with them for one night into Bethlehem on Christmas Eve. Our contact and guide, Tamer, was most helpful and arranged for our entry into The West Bank from Jerusalem and also for us to ...

Rock Climbing in Sardinia

The polished whites, grays, and oranges of limestone cliffs are enough to bring rock climbers from around the world to an area—but add the brilliant azure waters of the Mediterranean Sea, as well as climbing routes of every difficulty, and you have a rock climbers paradise.   The Italian island of Sardinia, closer to north Africa than Italy but just a short flight from Rome, maintains a cheerful character of independence amid a harsh history of conquest. Fly from Rome or Munich to the capital city of ...

Interview with Katie Brow – Girl On the Rocks

Professional rock climber Katie Brown has been stunning the world with her climbing prowess since she won her first international competition in France at age 14, then took the World Championships at age 18. After an intense youth in competition, Katie took time off to attend school, then found her love of climbing again as she entered her twenties. Since then, she's been diligently working at design school, studying yoga, and traveling the world.  Katie's life has always included a lot of travel. Growing up in ...

Tania Interviews David from Farther Foundation

It's a safe bet that most people reading this can't imagine their lives without travel - it is an experience that changes us in ways we never knew possible-- and now would never give up. As David Weindling of Farther Foundation says, "Travel is singular in its ability to inspire students to learn, serve, grow, seek opportunities and never settle for anything less than what they deserve." Farther Foundation, inspired by the Oakpark-River Forest Community Foundation, awards merit-based scholarships to inner city, low-income high school students.  The scholarships allow students to travel abroad or domestically with a program of ...

Interview with Shelley Williams of Powderhorn Ranch

Read below how Shelley and her husband Greg moved from the Detroit Police Force to quiet Colorado to run a ranch in the Rocky Mountains. 1.     How did you and Greg come to acquire the ranch? It’s been about 10 years, we were looking to retire but not really retire, we moved from Detroit where we worked within the police force. This was definitely a big lifestyle change. 2.     How has it changed your daily life? We feel as though we have a better quality of life,  we get the ...

Long Way Home – Tire Houses in Guatelmala

Long Way Home is a Non Profit organization whose mission is to break the cycle of poverty by creating educational opportunities, cultivating civic interaction and encouraging healthy lifestyles. We work side by side with the community of San Juan Comalapa in the Highlands of Guatemala to implement sustainable development projects.  Construction is underway on our largest project yet – a public and vocational school for over 500 students utilizing rammed-earth tires, pounded earth-bags and dirt and trash filled plastic bottles.  In addition to providing a much need elementary and ...

Glacier Climbing, Kayaking and Hiking in Alaska

If you're looking to get a taste of Alaska on limited time and budget, experience it with some great day trips.  Head just two hours north of Anchorage along the Chugach Mountains and do a morning hike through the wild maze of the Matanuska Glacier.  Intimidating at first when you hear to watch out for crevasses or that the glacier moves a foot a day, but once you're into the playground of ice and hear the rushing water just inches below your feet you'll be sure to ...

Hiking in Mt. Cook National Park, New Zealand

Aotearoa, the Maori word for New Zealand, means "Land of the Long White Cloud." There wasn't a cloud in the sky, though, the day we ascended the ridge to the Mueller Hut in Aoraki/Mt. Cook National Park. The shadow of the ridge in the late afternoon was welcome between stretches of sun-baked boulders on the formidable and rocky slope. We came that morning from Christchurch, only our second day in New Zealand, driving over expansive dry valleys and by turquoise lakes to suddenly see ...

He Got his Job Thanks to Off the Radar!

Who doesn't love a success story?  When we received this note from a reader we had to publish it: "When I graduated from George Washington University with a Masters degree in Sustainable Destination Management last year I faced the daunting task of finding a job in an industry particularly hard hit by the worst economic crisis since WWII.  Brief flirtations with job opportunities in Tanzania and Mali were ultimately unfulfilling and led me down a road I was not convinced I wanted to follow.  With patience running low I fell upon a headline ...

What can you do as a visitor to the coast?

Julian Caldecott  says, "The most important thing is to remember where you are.  The coast is special, and especially vulnerable.  Every road and hotel room replaced part of its ecology, and every carload of visitors affects what is left, by making sewage and litter, by eating drinking and walking the dog, and by spending money at holiday rates.  These all have local impacts and can affect local livelihoods dramatically.  The solutions that local people are trying to reach deserve support.  Every tourist is a bundle of global experience, just as every ...

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