A Brief Sojourn in Bangladesh
By Michael McCarthy
On a recent trip to Asia I found myself needing to fly from Bangkok to Kathmandu. It soon became evident there were only two ways to get between these cities, either Thai International or Royal Nepal Air.
Nepal Reopens for Tourism
By Michael McCarthy
Boudinath Square bustles with pilgrims, mostly Tibetan refugees circumnavigating the world’s largest stupa, where prayer flags and pigeons fly gaily in the mild breeze. A handful of western tourists sip mint teas in neighborhood cafes in this northern neighborhood of Kathmandu. After many years of civil war, peace has finally returned to Nepal, and slowly tourists are trickling back to what was once of the world’s hottest travel destinations.
Zipping through Whistler on a Budget
By Michael McCarthy
The brain is a most curious creature. This tiny lump of gray matter in your skull combines intellect, ego and intuition all in one clever package, and when those three components are in sync good things are known to happen. But standing on the edge of a 1,600-foot free fall at Whistler’s Cougar Mountain zipline, when my ego said “go” and my intellect said “you paid all this dough,” my intuition countered: “You must be kidding!”
The Great White Lie
By Michael McCarthy
The bedside phone emits the soft hum of a wake up call. It’s five a.m. on a Saturday, way too early for most folks but rise n’ shine time for some guests at the upscale Tiburon Lodge. If you want to go swimming with Great White sharks, you can’t be caught napping.
The Guidebook Writer's Life
It’s the perfect writer’s cottage. You enter the back yard of an old Edwardian-era house in Berkeley via a latched gate in a white picket fence. The gate is to keep Gus, an aging yet hyperactive Catalonian sheep dog from escaping. Gus is getting too old to see well, so he barks a lot at visitors and gives them a warm tongue bath welcome.
The World's Most Traveled Man
“A more extreme form of psychological problem associated with traveling is dromomania, also known as vagabond neurosis. In the accepted listing of psychiatric problems in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the vagabond neurosis is classified with the impulse control disorders. Sufferers have an abnormal impulse to travel; they are prepared to spend beyond their means, sacrifice jobs, lovers and security in their lust for new experiences.”
- from the pages of the Travelers Century Club newsletter
Isabel Allende Interview
“I love this country in general and California in particular. Diversity fascinates me. All the races of the plant come here with their traditions and dreams. Everything new or important starts here or comes here. I like the awareness, the sense of future, the generosity of the people. The young and optimistic energy of California is so attractive. Also their sense of freedom; this is as far west as you can get.” – Isabel Allende
Chasing the Mountain Light
“How different my style of participatory photography is compared to that of an observer with a camera who is not part of the event being photographed. It is the difference between a landscape viewed as scenery from a highway turnout and a portrait of the Earth as a living, breathing being that will never look the same twice.”
Lunch at the Imperial Hotel
Like every other traveler in the world, I have eaten things I don’t care to remember. In times of hunger, I have put things in my mouth for which a small child would receive a spanking. Anyone who has ever drained a cup of Tibetan butter tea, made of year-old rancid butter and smelling like an old hockey bag, with hairs floating in it and a flavor of rank socks, knows what I mean.