October 2025 Newsletter Khadija and I plunged into new territory earlier this month by traveling to Mali and then to Guinea. West Africa has many countries and we are slowly but surely visiting them all to learn about their amazing cultures and histories. I’ve been thinking about traveling to Mali for two decades, starting back in the day when the Festival of the Desert was happening from 2001 to 2012. Finally, I made it, UN country #155 even though Khadija had been there previously while...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
September 2025 Newsletter Khadija and I have done something unusual, we haven't traveled internationally in the last two and half months. However, we made it to Chicago to see our daughter Ayan. She showed us many exciting places in the "City of Big Shoulders", including “The Bean” in Millennium Park, where people, green spaces and high-rise buildings reflect off its shiny surface. We’ve been to Chicago many times but it's been a while, last in 2006, the year The Bean was unveiled and not yet...
3 months ago • 4 min read
August 2025 Newsletter Khadija and I recently made an unforgettable visit to Papua New Guinea as part of a six-week trip where we circumnavigated the globe. Tribes in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea wear cultural heritage attire for ceremonies and festivals. These elaborate costumes often featured vibrant colors, body paint, headdresses, animal parts & traditional weaponry. The Enguwal Tribe performs for various events such as marriages, funerals, wars, births, and celebrations of good...
4 months ago • 3 min read
July 2025 Newsletter We were traveling from the end of May to the beginning of July and circumnavigated the world. This newsletter covers the first part in Central Asia. We did and saw so many interesting things and met so many local folks, the following is just a few of many highlights. Our first stop was the infrequently visited Fergana Valley in Uzbekistan to attend the annual NomadMania conference. NM is a terrific community and website which provides information and inspiration to all...
5 months ago • 4 min read
May 2025 Newsletter We’ve been home for a month to rest and do all those pesky things required by modern life such as filing a tax return, going to medical appointments and fixing up the house. During this time, I also researched the countries Khadija and I still have to visit to finish the 193 UN ones. I’ve been to 153 UN countries, the shaded ones in this map. I have 40 to go: 2 in Latin America, 4 in the Caribbean, 4 in Europe. 4 in Asia, 6 in Oceania and 20 in Africa. Khadija’s map looks...
7 months ago • 3 min read
April 2025 Newsletter Within a month, it’s amazing how you can delve into extremely different cultures. That was recently the case as I went to visit tribes in the world’s newest country, South Sudan. Then I visited, along with Khadija and our friends Nick and Monica, the enchanting country of Oman with a long history of maritime trading in the Indian Ocean and beyond. Both were new countries for me; now I've visited 153 of the 193 UN countries. South Sudan became a country in 2001 after 50...
8 months ago • 3 min read
March 2025 Newsletter After an extremely interesting but exhausting three weeks photographing at the Kumbh Mela festival in Prayagraj, India and touring a wide swath of Bangladesh, we had to, alas, start returning home. We had two flight connections in Mumbai and Frankfurt and which gave us an opportunity yo visit those regions. We spent a few days in Mumbai and enjoyably strolled on the Marine Drive Promenade by Back Bay, part of the Arabian Sea. We went before sunset when the light was...
9 months ago • 5 min read
February 2025 Newsletter For ten days, I attended the Kumbh Mela, widely regarded as the world's largest religious gathering, extending 45 days with well over 100 million Hindu pilgrims. Prayagraj (formerly Allahabad) hosts the Kumbh Mela every six years, so the next is in 2031. This year was extra special as it was the Maha (Great) Kumbh Mela which occurs every 144 years. For each Kumbh Mela, the city constructs a temporary city. This year it covered 15.5 sq miles / 40 sq kilometers, about...
10 months ago • 4 min read
January 2025 Newsletter Khadija and I visited six countries in November and December. The December newsletter recounted our experiences in Bhutan, Brunei and Bangkok. Here we are sharing the second half of the trip in Bali, Timor-Leste and Taiwan. BALI: Somehow, neither Khadija nor I had ever been to the geographically sweeping and highly populated country of Indonesia until now. We decided to go to Bali mainly because it had direct flights to Timor-Leste, our next destination. We were...
11 months ago • 5 min read