Dani waited on a bench along the Bund, while I wandered a little farther down the river with my camera.
Across the Huangpu, Pudong’s towers glowed against the evening sky.
I’d set my tripod up and was adjusting the exposure when a woman stepped beside me.…
I turned to leave when Arbaaz stopped me again.
“Are you hungry? I can make you and your wife dinner.”
Dani answered first.
“No. But, thank you.”
Arbaaz paused.
“Well, you can always go next door for a snack.”
He pointed through the window to a glowing light coming from a neighboring house.…
“Wake up.”
“Hey. Wake up.”
Dani’s voice drifted into my sleep.
Then someone bumped my shoulder and I lurched awake.
The bus, which had been quiet for hours, now surged as people pushed toward the front windows.
I rubbed my eyes against the sun and looked out my window.…
The Jeep had duct tape holding it together. It rattled down the road as the Pakistani border gates rose in the distance.
Our driver parked in a dusty field alongside a hundred similar vehicles and promised to wait for our return.…
I waited at the edge of the bike lane outside Amsterdam Centraal with one foot on the pavement and one clipped over the pedal.
Bicycles streamed past without interruption.
Thousands of them.
They rode shoulder to shoulder, slipping between one another without slowing, signaling with a flick of the hand before merging into another current already moving just as fast.…
We’d arrived by bus an hour ago and watched the monstrous video. Footage of survivors; men who looked eighty, having been reduced to bone and cloth.
The captions said they were thirty.
As the credits rolled, a woman called from the back of the theater.…
The sticker on the window said “Nevsky,” but so did everything here. It was two in the morning, and we’d walked miles in the snow, trying to find our hotel.
A service entrance.
A bar.
An after-hours pharmacy.
A twenty-four-hour coffee shop.…
Our journey to the Yellow Mountains started at Shanghai East Rail Station—the same station we’d arrived at that morning.
Hundreds of travelers waited for the escalators, which crisscrossed between three levels of platforms.
Beside them, an empty stairway climbed toward the departures’ hall.…
Back in Jaipur, when we mentioned Agra, people didn’t argue about routes or hotels.
They argued about the Taj.
They began with the story, telling it like always.
“Shah Jahan built the Taj for his favorite wife, who died giving birth to their fourteenth child.…
The pilot’s voice came over the intercom, breaking the silence.
“Please put your seats and tray tables in their upright position and prepare for our descent. Welcome to Beijing.”
Twelve hours of sitting had left my back stiff and my eyes dry.…
Koon Homestay lay on a dead-end street stemming from the main road running between Agra Fort and the Taj Mahal.
We could hear Agra hustling a hundred yards in the distance, but that commotion didn’t reach us. None but those who lived here ventured into this neighborhood, and that made it off-limits to everyone else.…
The plaza in front of Mainz Cathedral stretched wide and car-free.
In front of it, our kids ran around the plaza—arms outstretched, scattering birds from statue to statue.
“Pigeon, pigeon, pigeon!”
“Bird!”
It didn’t matter that their words weren’t legible.
It didn’t matter that they made a scene.…
I sat at the bonfire on the beach right behind the hostel the next night listening to the crash of waves, and the buzz of insects when the crack of two gunshots pierced the calm night air.
A moment later, a man came running out of the inky darkness of the beach.…
Our guidebook called October “shoulder season.” Summer tourists had gone home. Winter tourists had not yet arrived.
The airport looked like a modern log cabin dropped beside the runway.
We stepped into the cold night air and climbed aboard the shuttle into Oslo.…
Corbin had been asking the same question every day since Bacharach.
“I want to go home.”
He said it on the Rhine. He said it during hikes, at breakfast, and before bed. Every plan and every event was met with suspicion.…
I left Dani sitting on a bench while I visited one of the vendors along the train station platforms.
I scanned the stalls, but all I found was water and a bunch of bananas.
The bananas sat on the counter, brown and soft.…
We sat in the back seat of a rickshaw with my brother and his school friends after school one day. Three squished across the bench seat in the back, and me in the front with the driver.
The day felt hot and sticky as we crawled through traffic, noise and daylight pouring through the open vehicle.…
Old Delhi pulled us apart.
The streets weren’t especially wide, but every inch belonged to someone. Rickshaws squeezed between bicycles. Pedestrians flowed around handcarts. Motorcycles nosed through impossible gaps. There wasn’t room for Dani and me to walk side by side.…
Twelve hours later, I landed at Heathrow.
The customs officer flipped through my passport.
“I need your return tickets, please.”
I nodded and reached for my backpack.
Months of planning had produced a small library of paperwork.
Printed reservations.
Train tickets.…
“I’m Rocky.”
Our boatman stood on the docks—barefoot, “London rodeo” T-shirt, palms like oars. Bright eyes peered over his graying beard, hinting at more youth than his worn body otherwise suggested.
“Rocky … from Assi Ghat.”
Dani looked at him.
“Hi.”…
At Queen Café, a split-level room served as both restaurant and home.
A single dining table occupied the lower level. It was heavy and oak, scarred from years of use, with bench seats running along its length.
Above it, connected by a ladder, sat the family’s living room.…
My suitcase rattled over the sidewalk, bumping against my heels as I dragged it toward 7-Eleven.
A pedestrian stepped aside.
Then another.
I looked down at the giant blue case.
“Hopefully, this is the last time.”
Two weeks of Japan were packed inside it: four smaller bags, clothes, and souvenirs, all crammed into the largest suitcase we could check on an airplane.…
As we turned to leave Akbar’s Tomb, our self-appointed guide cupped his hand before him, casting his eyes to the ground as a sign of respect, and uttering words under his breath.
We didn’t hear him at first, so we stepped closer.…
Rachel and Vanessa insisted Emily and I liked each other.
We insisted we didn’t.
So when we stepped off the bus on Rubén Darío Street in downtown San Salvador, they wandered into the crowd without us.
“See you two in an hour.”…
We began looking for the metro station entrance to take us to the airport when a young man approached us.
“Where are you going?”
His arms were shaking with visible agitation.
“To the airport.”
“Oh, that’s what I thought. Well, you can’t go to the airport here.”…
