As everyone in our group came to know (and probably got tired of hearing!), I was a student of Ottoman history in a former lifetime. The second part of our journey - to Jeddah and the Hijaz - was an opportunity for me to walk the walk of the Arabian Peninsula's Ottoman past. And with the end of the Hajj just a few days before our arrival, I got to experience the aftershocks of the most important of Islam's communal rites. An Ottomanist's dream! *** Landing in Jeddah's airport, I realized right away that we were in a very different Saudi [View Full Entry]

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The lobster, I swear, was staring me down (despite its missing head), daring me to take one more bite, just one more. But so was the stuffed crab, the oysters, the prawns the size of my head, the calamari, the various forms of fish…the whole crowd of seafood sitting in front of me. But how could I eat anymore? The entire day, our first full one in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, had been defined by exuberant hospitality, which invariably meant being plied with more food and drink than possibly could be consumed. Fragrant, cardamom-laced green coffee; stuffed dates; sweets of [View Full Entry]

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So here I am in Houston. It's surprisingly - and miserably - cold and damp. But I am excited, because this is just the starting point for yet another crazy travel adventure. So where am I going now, you ask? Tomorrow I am heading to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with a group of 24 other teachers from across the country; we are taking part in a two-week study tour funded by Saudi Aramco. And we have been collected in Houston for a pre-departure orientation at Aramco's North American headquarters. I hope I haven't sold my soul! But "The Kingdom" has [View Full Entry]

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I am not sure why such landscapes - barren, windswept plains, sometimes guarded by sweeps of mountains, all various shades of browns, golds, and muted greens; endless sky above - make my heart swell so. It's not like I grew up in such an environment. But I felt the tug in the steppes of Mongolia and I felt it this time in the Peruvian altiplano. Of course, these types of places are tough, difficult on human inhabitants. Actually, very like Mongolia, while the high plain is hauntingly beautiful, the few towns eeking an existence out of the hardscrabble environment are astoundingly [View Full Entry]

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Peel away all the tchotchky souvenir shops, all the tour agencies, all the backpacker restaurants (many, oddly, attempting to entice an Israeli clientele), the massage parlors, and all the other trappings of a tourist trap, and Cuzco reveals itself as an utterly fascinating case study in colonial domination. The current city is literally built on the ruins of the original Qosqo, the imperial capital of the Inkas. (History nerd alert: it is a misnomer, actually, to call the people of the empire as a whole "inkas" - the term Inka really only applies to the kings. The Inka Empire, as we [View Full Entry]

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He seemed unfazed by our canoe rounding one of the early bends of the Manu River. I am sure he had seen us before we spotted him. After taking a long, bored look at our gawking faces, he simply stretched, yawned, and then languidly rose to his feet to disappear into the jungle. A jaguar! And we had just begun our adventure in Peru's Amazonian headwaters... With almost no turn around time, a subset of six from our Inka Trail group set forth on a very different adventure, an excursion into the Manu National Park in the Peruvian Amazon. Our legs [View Full Entry]

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The porters whispered a gracious "buenos dias" into our tent flap and offered us our choice of hot poison: coffee or coca tea. A bowl of hot water to wash our faces soon materialized, as well. Our final day on the Camino Inka (or Inka Trail). The other trekking groups had left hours earlier, sometime around 3am, to catch a sunrise that would never be considering the morning clouds. We were waking at the more sensible hour of 6 am, and would get to experience the mysteries of Intipata, a cascade of Inkan terraces wreathed in fog, all to ourselves before [View Full Entry]

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Day 1: Cuy and Me There was no hiding what it was. The little, splayed feet; the white incisors; even remnants of the whiskers. It was staring me down over the accompanying papas fritas. Yes, I was going to be eating a cuy. A guinea pig to norteamericanos. I tried not to think of my living toupée of a childhood pet, Pepper. But I am in Peru, so I had to try it...and, you know, it wasn't too bad. (And no, it didn't taste like chicken...) *** Of all the points on my itinerary, Arequipa was perhaps the greatest unknown to [View Full Entry]

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I am not sure when I first became aware of them, but I was drawn to mysteries as a kid. I wanted to know why the moai on Easter Island had been carved and placed high on their platforms. I wanted to understand the pyramids. Why build such hulking structures in the desert? I also wanted to figure out the Nazca Lines, those mysterious geometric and zoomorphic figures strewn in the parched landscape of southern Peru. Why create these images that can only be seen from high above the earth? How did they make them in the first place? Well, I [View Full Entry]

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Day 1: Shortly after we pulled away from the airport, into chaotic, screeching traffic, the city went black. The streets snarled with no guiding lights, cars began zooming down the wrong side of the road to bypass the mess. Daredevils on bikes or foot wove shadowly between the honking vehicles. I felt like I had landed in Cairo or Delhi. But no: Welcome to Lima! I am beginning to think Ecuador was a gentle introduction to South America... Despite the heart-thumping introduction to Peru, Lima has beguiled me. I am not sure why it is sniffed at on most itineraries, seen [View Full Entry]

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