Mark & Jen's 'Around the World' Travel & Photography Blog

When you walk, you experience life at the pace of a Turkish tortoise. Without a bus, without a boat, without a car, or without a plane, the world slows down—and you cannot help but slow down with it.
When you walk, you see the fuzzy buds on the spring tree, the tiniest flower that grows out [...]

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There are so many ways to see a country — maybe wedged against a few locals on the not-so-express bus, maybe through the ruins of civilizations long since passed, maybe through the eyes of the cheery-eyed shopkeeper at the baklava shop (or the “Turkish Naturel Organic Viagra Market”), maybe through a barber that surprises you [...]

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The Israelites wandered in the Sinai desert for forty years after escaping from their slavery in Egypt; we chose the four day option.
For four days, Mark and I wandered through the sands and canyons and mountains of the Sinai wilderness. The nighttime stars in the clear and cool desert air were absolutely brilliant. The land [...]

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We spend one jet-lagged day in Dar es Salaam before taking the local bus to Lushoto, nestled snuggly in the Usambara Mountains. We diligently study our Swahili greetings along the way and learn, much to our own chagrin and ignorance, that The Lion King’s “Hakuna Matata (no worries)” is in fact Swahili. [...]

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As difficult a decision as it was, we decide to forgo the popular trekking of northern Vietnam in favor of going a little “off-the-beaten-track” in northern Laos. Thus we make our way to Muang Sing, a town of a few thousand people tucked in the north-west corner bordering Myanmar and China. We had [...]

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