AFAR celebrates the best in travel writing and photography every month, while The Moth has quickly emerged as the most exciting forum for oral storytelling with its podcasts. The new AFAR Travel Tales event series brings those two worlds together, with people sharing their first-person accounts of some of the trips that changed their perspectives on the world and themselves.
We asked the participants in the first two AFAR Travel Tales to share their thoughts on travel, storytelling, and the connections between the two.
Emma John: The first time I traveled solo, I immediately started have the richest, most extraordinary encounters of my life. I’ve learned, since then, that you are never alone when you travel, and that being open to the random, the unscheduled, and the unexpected is the best way in to a place.
Al Letson: Travel stories are a journey. The best aren’t just about the external travel but the internal trek that the traveler is on.
Abbas Mousa: Most people in the United States have never traveled outside North America and so there are people they never meet and places they have never been to. I’m sure they appreciate listening to travel stories because they don’t only enjoy the story but they also learn something about other people and the place of where the story is set.
Peggy Orenstein: I’m pretty non-stop when I travel. My husband and daughter would tell you that I have a tendency to want to do everything and be moving every single minute. Because I fret: what if I never get to come back? And what if I don’t do the one thing that would be the best experience ever? That’s probably not great, to be honest.
Listen to the first-person accounts of life-changing travel experiences from these storytellers and others in a travel podcast series by The Moth at afar.com/traveltales.
