It feels like we’re driving to the edge of the world where the water falls off. Infinity is just ahead. To the right are mountains that arc up from the basement of time. On the left, a dry lakebed now glassed with salt. This is the driest state in the country, not so surprising, but it is also the most mountainous, with some 300 ranges. If you look at a satellite photo of earth at night one of the brightest pixels is Las Vegas in southern Nevada. But, if you […]

The post Far and Away, Flat Out, The West’s Best Road Trip appeared first on Dave's Travel Corner.

The covering has the disconcerting effect of obnubilating as well as illuminating the woman behind it. Shrouded in black niqab and ankle-length abaya, she floats towards me. Behind, her friends are firing salvos of cell-phone photos, as though we foreigners are exotic beasts in a zoo. She stops, and through her veil, in perfect English, asks, “Where are you from?” “California.” “What city?” “Los Angeles.” “What part?” “Venice Beach. Your English is very good. Where did you learn it? “From American movies. I watch them on my computer at home.” […]

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“Placed on this planet since yesterday, and only for a day, we can only hope to glimpse the knowledge that we will probably never attain.” -Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, 1796 Dateline: Mount Pilates, Switzerland I’ve penned a few books that have been placed in the category of “wilderness travel.” But perhaps the first to stock this shelf was the eighteenth-century mountaineer Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, who wrote in his opus, Voyages dans les Alpes, that the chamois hunters of the Alps experienced a certain delight in their dangerous profession: “It is these […]

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When our rafts were bitten by crocodiles or hippos, complications ensued we hadn’t imagined. We were in Ethiopia making a series of first descents down big rivers that fall off the Abyssinian Plateau: The Omo, Baro, Blue Nile, and the Awash. We called our little expedition Sobek, after the ancient Egyptian crocodile god, hoping the homage would ensure safe passage. But, another challenge reared its head, one unanticipated. When we entered the country, we discovered the customs authorities wanted us to either pay an outrageous duty (150 percent of the […]

The post “It’s Djiboutiful!”(And the Hottest New Destination) appeared first on Dave's Travel Corner.

When word got out I was thinking of taking a group to Burma this November, I received this email: Dear Mr. Bangs: I strongly advise you to drop travel to Burma. The treatment of the Rohingy minority is so appalling that I feel that no one should be visiting that country… This is not the first cease and desist-style communication I’ve received about travel to a destination whose politics are at odds with our own. When I received a permit to take a first group of Americans to The People’s […]

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This is a story about brilliant branding. It’s about Ireland, but it begins in Chile. In the early 90s one had to head to the far south of South America to sample the tasty, thick, snow-white fillets of a large, deep-water cod called the Patagonian toothfish . No eatery in the U.S. wanted to serve a fish with that name. But when marketers came up with the alluring but meaningless name, “Chilean sea bass,” the fish was on its way to fame and glory and millions of eager mouths. It’s […]

The post Most Scenic Drive in the World? Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way! appeared first on Dave's Travel Corner.

When I was a high-school student in Bethesda, Maryland, and beginning to think about college, my parents sat me down and set a parameter: they would only allow a school within 1000 miles of our home, with the idea that I would be more likely to visit over holidays if within that range. My elder sister had already picked a school, Knox College, in Galesburg, Illinois, and now it was my turn. I pulled out a map, cut a string keyed to 1000 miles, and swept the radius. Boston and […]

The post Illinois Improbable: A Story of Upending Expectations appeared first on Dave's Travel Corner.

My father, usually a quiet man, burst through the door and hustled the family in front of the television set. He said we were on the verge of something terrible and we needed to see and understand. It was October 22, 1962. My father, a career officer at the C.I.A., seemed distressed with things he knew that others did not. We then watched in horror as John Kennedy described the Russian missiles west of Havana, capable of reaching our home in Bethesda, and the ordering of a quarantine that would […]

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One of these claims to be “The Most Interesting Blogger in the World” I was surprised when I picked up a copy USAToday and saw an item that cited me as “The first travel blogger.” I doubt it, though I was early to the game, not long after Al Gore invented the Internet. In 1993 the term “blogger” didn’t exist, so what I was posting was a real-time serialized account of my travels. If that qualifies, then perhaps the first travel blogger was Henry Morton Stanley, who sent dispatches back […]

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Like many who have survived into adulthood, I wince when I look back and recall some of the youthful antics I partook under the name of fun. Like a lad who graduates from cheap flavored whiskey to fine wine, I today prefer my fun with a dash of panache, a subtle aroma, and a delightfully delicate nose. So, of course, it is a treat to discover Bermuda, the place that practically invented proper fun, and which now embodies it. The demure 21-square-mile British dependency 650 miles off the North Carolina […]

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In the eager pool of morning light there rises The Rock. It is perhaps the most iconic symbol of the implacable indifferences of inhospitable landscapes, its dimensions timeless, unsummarized. And I want to climb it. There is something in the Western mindset that arouses a near irresistible urge to climb a peak. We look up, we admire, and if possible, we act. It may be related to a primal impulse to conquer a headland, to be king of the hill, surveying all below. And so we tread upwards, by sandal, […]

The post The Art of Not Doing: The Red Centre, Northern Territory, Australia appeared first on Dave's Travel Corner.

The Mad Hatter: “Have I gone mad?” Alice Kingsley: “I’m afraid so. You’re entirely bonkers. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are.” The Mad Hatter: “There is a place. Like no place on Earth. A land full of wonder, mystery, and danger! Some say to survive it you need to be as mad as a hatter. Which luckily I am.” This seems crazy. In the stern of a Mark V Zodiac on the Arctic Sea I’m slipping into a dry suit, fitting into flippers, and adjusting […]

The post Trolling Humans for Whales, and Other Divine Madness from the North Country appeared first on Dave's Travel Corner.

“There is an elephant holocaust going on in Africa today,” says Paul Maritz, the last gentleman adventurer. “Up to this point elephant counts have been done by error-prone Mark 1 Eyeballs, and nobody believes the numbers. You really can’t motivate people to take needed drastic actions unless they are convinced you have the facts. And so we need to get the facts.” Rhodesia born Paul and his brother David have created a flying machine they think can do the job: the BushCat, a lightweight, low- and slow-winged vehicle, designed for […]

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In the evolution of a place there is sometimes a waymark between free-spirited childhood and the discreet somberness of maturity. But what if the in-between actually signifies the third point of a classic Hegelian dialectical triangle? A rough and rowdy cowboy town at one point, an overly-wrought sophisticated metropolis at the other, and the third being some subtly unstated “third way” that draws on the contradictory nature of the first two states to create a superior third? Jackson Hole may be that mythical intersection, deftly incorporating elements of the small […]

The post The Fabled Montropolis is Found: Jackson Hole appeared first on Dave's Travel Corner.

“Never interrupt someone doing something you said couldn’t be done.” -Amelia Earhart Check out the video at the end to solve the mystery.” A couple years ago while visiting Belfast I took a Titanic walking tour, run by a charismatic chap, Colin Cobb. He took me to the edge of the 880 foot-long Thompson Graving Dock, where RMS Titanic was hauled to check and clean its hull and fit the propellers. It was the last place she sat on dry ground. Standing on the edge of this naked 44-foot deep […]

The post Where is Amelia Earhart’s Plane? Colin Cobb Knows… appeared first on Dave's Travel Corner.