“Let’s Get Lost,” Medium Rebecca Flint Marx reflects on the great American road trip and the desire to get lost—happily, it’s still quite possible. —Davina Baum “Jeffrey Deaver on Bathrooms Around the World,” The Wall Street Journal I arrived in New York City today, checked into my hotel, and had an alarming experience when I used the toilet in my bathroom. The toilet seat felt like it was on...Read more >

This week, we’re taking a look at the more traditional side of travel videos—those that are geared entirely toward informing the viewer about off-the-beaten-path travel experiences, as well as how to replicate those experiences yourself. First, Travel with Kate takes us fishing in Tunisia. Next, AFAR local expert Joshua Berman brings us along on his journey to Caracol, for the end of the Maya...Read more >

Being an expat in any city isn’t always smooth sailing. But we would move to Belgium just because Alison Cornford-Matheson is there to make life easy. Her website, CheeseWeb.eu, doesn’t just cover dairy (though there’s plenty of good dairy to be had). It’s a full-fledged resource for expats living in Belgium. But you don’t have to be an expat in Belgium to benefit from her expertise! Her...Read more >

NAME: Kahokule‘a “Hoku” Haiku AGE: 37 OCCUPATION: Educator, volunteer coordinator, and hiking guide at Waimea Valley, a park and cultural center devoted to preserving native Hawaiian traditions and lands. NEIGHBORHOOD: North Shore, Oahu, Hawaii The North Shore is the cultural heart of the island of Oahu. If you cut the region in half from north to south, Waimea Valley would be at the center....Read more >

“Out in the Great Alone,” Grantland Mirroring the format of the New York Times’ multimedia masterpiece “Snow Fall,” this epic narrative by Brian Phillips unravels the story of Alaska’s daunting Iditarod Trail Dog Sled Race. Phillips, who says of himself, “I hate snow, do not play winter sports, keep the thermostat at 65 on a good day, and haven’t logged out of Spotify since 2011. I’m not even a...Read more >

In this age of electronic communication, snail mail falls by the wayside—along with the sometimes outrageous, colorful, and iconic stamps that mark the letters as postage paid. Postage stamps embody history, geography, science, culture, and charity. From royal personages to pop icons, stamps celebrate people, places, myths, legends, arts, transportation, and the natural world. As William Butler...Read more >

On a luxurious journey from Singapore to Bangkok, Chris Colin lifts the veil on the magic of rail travel. We had crossed from Singapore into Malaysia, but to all aboard, this was one land, the country of heat. It was thick, permanent heat, the furnace blast. Everything was somehow about the heat: the acrid smell of hot steel in motion, the sheen of warm grease on old gravel, the simple thrill...Read more >

In a plaza by the Brandenburg Gate, near the center of Berlin, lies a field of gray concrete slabs, each about eight feet long and three feet wide, some as little as eight inches high, others reaching just over 15 feet. The space between them forms a grid where visitors wander in somber remembrance, for this is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. On a gray, cold July day in 2005,...Read more >

AFAR chooses a destination at random—by literally spinning a globe—and sends writer John T. Edge on a spontaneous journey to Kazakhstan. Our horses are lean and healthy,” Orinbasar Kuatov said when I told him that the first bite I took in his town, earlier in the day, was kazy, a sausage made by stuffing a deboned horse rib into a garlic-smeared horse intestine. “What fat they have is just...Read more >