GoMad Nomad Travel

By Beau Miller “It’s governed by a council/ All good souls and wise./ They’ve only $5 for armaments/ And the rest for cakes and pies.” -Pete Seeger, “Andorra” As your attorney, I advise you to rent a fuel-efficient automobile and drive at top speed to Andorra, but before you start packing the trunk with ether, [...]

I did not expect to see so much street art in Portugal. Especially in Porto, I was impressed with the sheer volume of exciting, creative, and intellectual graffiti. Granted, much of it is stenciling, either Bansky or Bansky inspired, but still, it’s fun to look at and sometimes thought provoking. For four days, I walked [...]

By Jett Thomason I recently had my first month-long work trip to Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi. The trip represented a number of firsts. First time to Africa. First time to be jetting around for quick site visits rather than long-term job assignments. And first time to be representing the US government in the field with [...]

My alarm clock goes off at five. It’s been about four hours since I fell asleep. I’ve woken up to go to the early-morning festivities for a neighborhood circumcision ceremony which is locally and collectively referred to as one of several Uzbek “weddings”. I have been a Peace Corps Volunteer in a small provincial town in Uzbekistan for more than a year now. The people of my town are exceedingly friendly and known to be the most festive in the country. If there’s a wedding to go to, it will be a neighbor of mine pouring the vodka and cracking jokes for the table.

I know I shouldn’t complain about business travel to Africa. It’s always a rewarding experience. But it’s also an exhausting one. For nearly three weeks I had been waking up at 6, cleaning out my work emails, and leaving the hotel by 7. We would be on the road all day seeing projects. With the sun long set, I would return to my hotel room, eat an overpriced and usually mediocre hotel meal, and crash. So when I suddenly found myself with a free afternoon in Burundi, I was thrilled.

My mother crossed the border of the United States for the first time in her life two years ago. It was to visit me during one of my off-season excursions. When I owned the cafe on Chokoloskee Island in Florida, I often traveled in the summer months

Stephen Bugno has been writing about travel ever since his mother made him keep a travel journal at the age of 9 on a family vacation to the southwestern United States. Since then his travels have taken him to four continents and his writing has been published in more than ten online and print publications [...]

Usually the camino follows dirt roads, but at times I suffer the unforgiving impact of the pavement. Occasionally my way narrows into single-track, and I savor those moments. Wildflowers saturate the Andalucían spring. The waves of orange, yellow, and red make me smile when the pain in my feet demands otherwise.

Odessa has a severely Victorian character about it; the lampposts, sidewalks and infrastructure are something out of 1812 Hyde Park. The train station and opera house are Crimean War-era. The parks are green and manicured. This place is fancy, European, cosmopolitan and cultivated.

Ramadan is entering its final week and the holy day of Eid is beginning. The people here in Kandahar are much more observant of the traditions of Islam than anywhere else I’ve been. The fast is a true one, no drinking of water, eating of food, or smoking is allowed during the daylight hours. People go to work, but every thing tends to trickle off into just a drizzle of activity by late afternoon. However, like any generalization the individual experience is much more different.

They told me the gunfire only rings out at night. But this morning, after sunrise, I woke up to loud clashes across town in the Al Ein refugee camp and the upheaval continued until 11am. Then we checked the internet for the story: Ma’an News reported that one Israeli soldier and an 18-year-old Palestinian youth were killed.

I had been trying to see the interesting sites that get neglected when you actually live in a historical place. My most recent touristy visit was to a minaret in the nearby town of Shiforkan…

Gilbert Carlson takes us on an overland trip through the Balkans, hitching his way into the cars and homes of the generous people of Kosovo.

Stephen Bugno searches for the real America on his trip through the heart of the country on The City of New Orleans train

Peace Corps volunteer Jett Thomason who gets ill while serving in Uzbekistan and depends on his host mom for a home remedy…