October 2007 Archive
Viator Travel Blog
Viator's staff are dedicated and passionate travellers. On the Viator Blog, they share their experiences as they take in new sights and sounds across the world.
Hope and Healing: An Interview with Mark and Peggy Shrime
One of the most popular trends in modern travel is voluntourism. One part travel, one part volunteering, voluntourism offers travellers a way to delve deeper into a place while also making it possible to support the local community in some small (or large) way.
Mark and Peggy's trip is a perfect example of voluntourism. A pair of physicians from New York City, they are on a one-year trip around the world, combining their love for travel with their desire to offer their medical skills as volunteers. After 6 months of roaming the globe, they will spend another 6 months in Sierra Leone, where they will volunteer with Mercy Ships, a charity providing free specialised health care to the Sierra Leoneans.
Girl Solo in Arabia
A modern-day traveller takes on the task of replicating an epic journey in the Middle East, journeyed over 7 centuries ago by a famous Moroccan scholar. (Interview with Carolyn McIntyre)
Everything Everywhere
Everything Everywhere tells the adventures of Gary’s multi-year round the world trip through the Pacific, Australia, Southeast Asia and beyond. (Interview with Gary Arndt)
Off and On the Beaten Track: An Interview with Gary Arndt
Since launching back in September, TravelBlogs has regularly added new blogs to our collection of the best narrative travel blogs out there. As a result, the people featured on TB are all over the place, whether they be attending weddings in Mexico (Sloan & Amy), getting married in Bali (Travel Betty), or cycling from Portugal to France (Wade).
The latest addition is Gary Arndt, who is on a multi-year, Round the World trip. He has just completed several months of island-hopping around the Pacific Ocean, including some very off-the-beaten track destinations.
In the Footsteps of Ibn Battuta: An Interview with Carolyn McIntyre
Carolyn McIntyre's goal is quite simple: to travel throughout the Arab world in the footsteps of Ibn Battuta, an explorer who travelled throughout the Islamic world in the 14th century. What makes her mission so remarkable is the fact that she's doing it as an independent female traveller. In a day and age when the Middle East and wider Islamic world is looked upon with great suspicion by many in the Western world, Carolyn is proving that travel in the Middle East is not only possible, but also deeply rewarding.
The Daily Transit
A thoughtful, sharply written blog by a young writer with extensive travel experience in South Korea, the USA and Beijing, currently living in Wisconsin. (Interview with Ben Hancock)
The Daily Transit
Many passionate travellers remember their first time on the road with fondness.
Whether it's the immersion in a foreign culture or language, the chance to step out on your own, or simply the enlightenment that comes with experiencing a place you're unfamiliar with, that first trip is a profound moment in the lives of travellers.
For Ben Hancock, that first trip came a few years ago, when he headed off to Seoul, South Korea, to study for a year. This initial plunge was enough to inspire him with a deep passion for travelling. Whether he's on the road or not, he uses his blog, The Daily Transit, to share his reflection, essays, poetry and narratives on daily journeys.
Danger, Work and Pickled Eel…
Would you travel to Iraq? What about Uganda? Darfur?
If perchance you said yes to one of the above, you might be what is called a "danger tourist": someone who travels to dangerous places for the sake of extreme adventure.
Pickled Eel is a pretty near match for the danger tourist label, but for him, travelling to dangerous places is a part of his job. Recently, he travelled throughout the Middle East, including several weeks in Baghdad.
Ubertramp
Nathan Richards is the charming host of Ubertramp. He is currently on the road in Morocco. (Interview with Nathan Richards )
