Fall 2025
Read articles from this print issue of Afar Magazine.
When I was 11, my family of five traveled to northern Thailand for several weeks. We hiked through jungles and up steep mountains by foot, building rafts from bamboo with our two local guides when we needed to move downriver. It was the first trip I can remember where I felt pushed outside my physical and mental comfort zones—but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was challenging, thrilling, complicated. Though I didn’t know the meaning of the word then, it was epic.
In the decades since that Thailand trip, I’ve sought out this particular algorithm of exhilaration, and epic trips now feature as some of my favorite travel memories. Recently, I’ve snorkeled Oman’s dizzyingly beautiful Daymaniyat Islands, hiked 62 miles of the Stockholm Archipelago Trail, helped restore paths and taken long treks in Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park, and swum alongside gentle, bus-size whale sharks in Western Australia’s Ningaloo Reef.
In this issue, our third devoted to epic trips, Afar’s food-obsessed director of podcasts, Aislyn Greene, eats and drinks and shops along France’s roughly 385-mile Vallée de la Gastronomie; contributing writer Ryan Knighton, who is blind, journeys to Peru to scale Machu Picchu and to explore the Amazon on his first group tour; photographer Kari Medig skis the uncrowded Balkans; and contributing writer Chris Colin travels to Botswana for a perspective-shifting family safari that includes biking.
And as we continue celebrating the 250th birthday of the United States—an ambitious 18-month editorial
initiative running across Afar’s print, digital, audio, email, and social media platforms—we spotlight adventures closer to home, from Wyoming to Maryland. All epic trips, and all so very much fun.
Where to next?
Yours in good travel,
Katherine LaGrave
Executive Editor
