Contributor Bio:

Editor’s Note: Trips Unscripted is dedicated to helping ordinary independent travelers have the type of experiences they might normally only see on National Geographic. Never think those kinds of adventures are out of your reach! Robert’s story will convince you that all you need is the initiative to do the research and the guts to take the first step.

Robert McSherry and his partner in crime, Maria Foulds, have traveled all over the world, but trekking on their own through the Baliem Valley in West Papua, Indonesia still stands out as one of their wildest adventures — and certainly one of the most remote.

The pair took 5 flights — departing from Borneo, not Los Angeles — to arrive in Wamena, the largest town in the valley.

“We had been living in Brunei back in 2015 and were looking for a new destination to explore. We had done our homework on the region and decided to take a closer look at the easternmost part of Indonesia. We were on Google Maps trying to see if we could find the names of any cities or towns in the region and eventually stumbled upon Jayapura. Once we did even more research, we found out about the tribes of the Baliem Valley. After a lot of planning, we were finally able to make the dream a reality.”

Their original plan was to hike through the surrounding highlands with a local guide and porter, but, despite all their research prior to arrival, happened to land on a Sunday when everything was closed.

“We found ourselves without a guide, a porter, a proper map, food and water. We both agreed that in the interest of time and adventure, the best way was to just do the multi-day trek ourselves! We bought some noodle cups and about 6 bottles of water, stuffed them in our backpacks, bargained a ride to the edge of town.” Their haphazard journey was off to a tremendous start.

“The best directions we had was a photo of an old hand-drawn map. As soon as we started, we started coming across obstacles: river crossings, steep uphill hikes, and, of course, running out of water. We passed locals who greeted us with smiles (and always with handshakes). Simple and warm meals inclusive of rice and sweet potatoes were prepared for us in the villages where we spent the nights and we spent afternoons running around and playing with children in the villages.”

The highlight of the couple’s experience was arriving in the beautiful village of Ibiroma, nestled high in the mountains with beautiful panoramic views of the valley. They were greeted warmly by several of the older men and children and were given a basic ‘Honai’ to sleep in for the night, prepared with a tarp on the ground, blankets, and a mosquito net. The next morning we were guided out of the village following more handshakes and smiles.

“The downward trail towards Tungma was only as wide as our feet with nothing but the side of the mountain underneath us. After several hours of slips and trips down a steep decline, we reached the village. We headed towards what appeared to be one of the most serene airstrips in the world, tucked in the lush green valley. From there, we made our journey back to Wamena and enjoyed the views of various villages along the way.”  

Robert says the whole experience reassured him of his belief that most human beings are good people.

“Despite their limited contact with the outside world, lack of modern technology, and all of the ‘luxuries’ that many of us can’t live without, the people in this region were very friendly and welcomed us with open arms into their homes.”

Information for other travelers 

Here’s a few recommendations for fellow travelers wanting to go to Wamena to trek through the Baliem Valley:

1.   The best time to visit is November through March as weather conditions are ideal for trekking.
2.   Bring enough cash prior to your arrival. There are no banks, ATMs, or Money Exchange houses in Wamena.
3.   Pack insect repellant and a mosquito net.
4.   You can book your flights to/from Wamena upon your arrival to Jayapura (Cash only!)
5.   There’s no electricity in the villages, so bring extra batteries/external chargers for your electronics.
6.   Adults tend to ask for cigarettes or candy (for the children) when you take photos with them.
7.   Bring your sense of adventure, appreciation for the local traditions, and, most importantly, your smiles.

The post Self-Guided Trekking in West Papua, Indonesia appeared first on Trips Unscripted.

Contributor bio:

Editor’s note: Maria first went to Mozambique in 2011 and has been back every year since on trips ranging from two weeks or six months. She’s gone solo and with friends, even bringing her husband and two small children along during her most recent visits (who says you can’t travel with kids?). She once spent six month volunteering at Ilha de Mozambique, working with small entrepreneurs in the field of microfinance. She’s driven the entire length of the country from the border of Tanzania to the border of South Africa and has hitchhiked from Beira until Maputo (stopping in Inhassoro, Vilanculos, Bazaruto, Inhambane, Praia do Tofo, Xai-xai, Bilene, and many other beaches and small villages). Here’s what she has to say about traveling off the beaten path in Mozambique.

“If you want to do something, you will figure out a way to do it. Everything else is excuses.”

“There are two ways of traveling in Africa,” starts Maria. “Either you take some risks and have an African experience, or you hop from five-star hotel to five-star hotel without getting to know the people and the wonders of the continent. I’ve always taken risks and never regretted it.”

“To me, Mozambique has the kindest people in the world — and the best beaches,” she continues. “In Bazaruto, for example, the shores are mostly deserted, there’s green vegetation everywhere, and we eat freshly-caught fish from simple grills in the sand. I travel in the traditional local taxis called chapas with more than 20 people inside a Toyota Hyace, being extra careful not the step on the chickens on the floor. I carry my babies in fabric and feed them real maiz porridge, going to sleep when the sun sets and rising when the light appears again. I walk to the market with bare feet and bargain for my purchases in Mozambican Portuguese.”

“It’s the best country in the world if you have the courage to travel deeply and slowly. The beauty of Mozambique resides in the smallest details: the sunset, the people, the colors, the rare feeling that you have time for everything.”

“In one of my favorite adventures, I grabbed five friends and spend two and a half weeks hitchhiking 1200 kilometers from Beira to Maputo (but on those roads it takes forever to get somewhere. It once took me 17 hours to travel 500 kilometers). We found rides by talking to people and asking, not just stopping cars on the road. We always spoke to people who had been where we were going before, and then once we were already there, we would talk to more people and understand how adventurous we could actually be. I never felt unsafe. I think it’s easy to see if people are dangerous or not just by the way the look at you.”

Did anything ever go wrong?

“Once I was robbed, and my camera and wallet were stolen, but it wasn’t done in a violent way. My things just suddenly disappeared. I also lost one of our car doors while driving,” she says casually, “and have spent plenty of hours searching for places we never found (although people would always tell us, no matter how far we were, that “yes yes, it’s close by, just 30 minutes”). There was the time I had to ask for a truck to tow us when our car stopped in the middle of nowhere at 7pm and it was really dark and we had nowhere to go. So nothing really went “wrong”, but there were always peculiar events that made the whole journey more exciting (later on, of course, not while those things were happening).

When asked what recommendations she’d give to other travelers wanting to do a similar kind of travel, she smiles. “Just go and enjoy. Enjoy the differences and learn from them. The best thing to do is to just listen to the people who live in that place. Most of the time, everything you hear from people who have not actually been there comes from fear and a lack of knowledge. If you want to do something, you will figure out a way to do it. Everything else is excuses.”

The post Wandering, Driving, and Hitchhiking through Mozambique appeared first on Trips Unscripted.

My favorite journey in Laos was the time I spent off-roading through the breathtaking villages around Nong Khiaw with a French couple I met in Vang Vieng.

To begin with, Nong Khiaw has to be the most beautiful place in Southeast Asia — a rustic town nestled at the foot of limestone mountains on the banks of the Ou River. Most travelers stick to walking or biking around the town center and down to the Pha Tok caves, but few think to venture up into the mountains or down the dirt roads leading through precious villages along the river. Maud, Alex, and I rented scooters from the only tiny outfitter in town and sped off up the limestone mountain and into a serious adventure.

Villages near Nong Khiaw

The gang getting ready to take off from Nong Khiaw

This was not an easy road to navigate after the rain that came later…

The journey wasn’t without complications. It had been raining the past few days in Nong Khiaw and the dirt roads leading through the riverside villages had turned to thick mud and the terrain was anything but flat. Only a bunch of idiots would try to drive city scooters down steep muddy hills, but idiots we were. The only thing scarier than going down slippery mud slopes on a Vespa was going back up once we realized chances were good of getting stuck in remote Laotian countryside with the sun going down and nowhere to sleep.

Not a great place to drive an automatic city scooter

Up in the mountains, we stopped in hill tribe villages that seemed bewildered by foreign visitors. One afternoon I popped a tire and we had to wait for someone to pass word up to the next village to bring the regional mechanic down to us. Other days it started pouring so hard we couldn’t see the road, so we pulled over and had noodle soup in random homes and played with all the children that came running to see the stranded falang. As popular as Nong Khiaw is, we were shocked that places just 40 or 50 kilometers away seemed to receive no curious travelers.

And so Laos taught me a lesson about adventuring that I now bring with me everywhere: Sometimes you don’t have to go really far to get off the beaten path. Get on a bike or a bus or a scooter or walk 20, 40, 60 kilometers out of any tourist destination and you’ll probably find places that less curious travelers never thought to visit because they weren’t mentioned in their guidebooks.

Information for other travelers

Fellow travellers, keep in mind that scooters in Laos are more expensive and harder to rent than in other Southeast Asian countries. Expect to pay around $15/day and leave your passport as a deposit on the bike. I used to be nervous about leaving my passport, but it’s such standard practice that as long as the bike shop was reputable and the owners seemed nice, I stopped worrying about it and never had any issues doing it all over Laos and Burma. (Thailand is another story — I would never leave my passport with a bike agency in touristic locations in Thailand!)

There are a few rental agencies in Vientiane that allow for one-way trips, making a Vientiane to Luang Prabang or Luang Namtha journey possible. If I went back this is definitely what I’d do so I could travel the entire north of the country by motorbike and not have to worry about making roundtrips. Check out Remote Asia for some options, or ask around in Vientiane (your best starting point for big bike trips).

Other tips that saved my ass out there: Download maps.me while you’re still connected to the internet. It’s an offline map that you can use anywhere, with or without a phone signal. Pack a poncho to cover yourself and your bag if you’re traveling during the rainy season. Wear long pants and long sleeves to help protect your skin in case of an accident. Drive slow and ALWAYS wear a helmet. If you spend any prolonged time on a scooter or motorbike, you probably will have an accident, but if you’re going a safe speed and are wearing a helmet, you’ll be able to walk away relatively unharmed.

The post Motorbiking Through Laos appeared first on Trips Unscripted.

Contributor Bio:

Editor’s Note: I met Maud while traveling through Laos in September 2015, where we spent a few weeks hitchhiking and traveling by motorbike. Maud captivated me with her story as well as her beautiful spirit. She wasn’t just backpacking like so many other travelers — she was fired up about the mission that was taking her throughout the world for 24 months to raise money for charity, create short films, and grow her passion for running. She is one of the key people who inspired me to start Trips Unscripted in order to promote this kind of slow, purposeful, and highly explorative way of experiencing new destinations.

Q: Tell us more about your incredible journey.

A:  I did a round-the-world trip while running marathons from January 2015 to January 2017 — one of my biggest dreams! I ran 20 races (marathons, half-marathons, and trails) in countries like Vietnam, New Zealand, India, South Africa, and Madagascar. I also interviewed more than 100 women so I could create a movie about women and running to help understand the similarities and differences between them. I chose to study female athletes because they receive less attention in the media than men do. In fact, 90% of sport media coverage is dedicated to male athletes. I want to put the spotlight on women and their athletic achievements.

Q: You’re amazing. Why did you decide to travel this way?

I actually only started running four years ago, but I’m completely crazy about it now. It all began when I decided I wanted to have a regular sports activity, so I registered for my first race in 2013: a half-marathon. For my athletic experience, it was really challenging. I ended it in 2 hours and 30 minutes. But thanks to this first competition, I had a strong sense of accomplishment and was very proud of myself. Since then, I have started to regularly run and participate in all kinds of races: 10km, obstacle races, 15km, etc. I even did the Paris marathon in 2014, ending it in 4 hours and 41 minutes after months of training.

In 2013, I did a big trek, which helped me to reflect on myself and what I really wanted to accomplish in my life. I began to see that running helped me stay in good shape both physically and mentally. Was I the only one who thought about running like that? I read that 54% of Europeans run to stay in good shape, but do runners from Africa, Asia, Oceania, or from South America think the same way, especially women? I needed to discover it!

Q: You supported a charity the entire time you were away. What did you raise money for and how?

A: I ran for a charity called “La Fondation Motrice,” which supports people with cerebral palsy and their relatives. During my travels, I talked to everyone about this disease and generated both money and awareness for research on cerebral palsy. I collected 10 euros for each kilometer I ran, which amounted to 10,000 euros in two years!

Q: How many countries did you visit?

A: I went to 33 countries in 2 years.

Q: What advice would you have for other people wanting to do something similar?

A: If I did it, anyone can. If you really want to travel the world, you can do it. Trust yourself, you are capable of amazing things. Plan a little bit in advance, save some money, and don’t listen to the people who will try to discourage you — just buy one ticket and go!

The post Meet the Woman Who Ran Marathons on Every Continent While Traveling for 2 Years Through 33 Countries appeared first on Trips Unscripted.

Contributor Bio: Spencer Brisson is a 27-year-old musician, animator, and experimental life artist from North Carolina, currently residing in Brooklyn, New York. Follow Spencer over on Instagram @spynthesizer.  

Editor’s Note: Meet Spencer Brisson, who did one of the most badass trips I’ve come across yet, traveling by local transport across Mauritania and the Western Sahara and spending two months vagabonding in Senegal.

I’m letting Spencer tell you the full story in his own words, so brace yourself for being really impressed by his instinct for meaningful, explorative, and off-the-beaten-path travel as he stays with locals in remote Senegalese villages and fearlessly hops in taxis to cross the Sahara desert in Mauritania.

There’s a TL;DR version at the bottom with a short Q&A, but his extended version is hilarious, surprising, and gives you the real inside look at how an epic adventure like this naturally unfolds on the road. Enjoy!

An overview of Spencer’s journey from Morocco to Senegal

This adventure was my first solo trip — as well as my first time out of the United States. Growing up, my parents took me Pennsylvania once, Florida twice, and Tennessee a couple times. I flew on a commercial airline for the first time when I was 22, to see my (ex) girlfriend in Boston.

After college, I moved from Granite Quarry, North Carolina to New York City. I worked full time for about two years, but felt like my life was under someone else’s control. I was living with two friends in a one bedroom apartment in Williamsburg. When that situation came to an end, I sold most of what I owned and told work I was going to travel for a month. (I was technically a freelancer so they didn’t mind.)

I got a passport. I booked a one-way flight and planned to see popular destinations in Europe: Iceland, London, Copenhagen, Berlin, Barcelona, Seville. I walked around the cities, saw the sights, and partied with other travelers in hostels. After a month of traveling like this, I felt something was missing from the experience. I wasn’t having any deep interaction with locals and the culture still felt pretty similar to America (in my opinion). Instead of returning home, I decided to venture down into Morocco.

After a 45-minute ferry from Spain and few nights in Tangier, I went east to the mountain town called Chefchaouen, an area known for it’s hash production. On top of a hostel at sunset, listening to the call to prayer reverberate off mountain, an Austrian with dreadlocks told me about the overland trip to Senegal he had just taken. This seemed like the experience I was seeking. He wrote down the names of a few places to stay on the way as well as a few places to avoid.

I held onto the note, unsure if I would actually venture that far into Africa, but the idea stuck with me.

On the way south to Marrakech, I stopped in Rabat and Casablanca. On a whim, I visited the Mauritanian embassy and applied for a visa, which I received the next day. I spent a day searching Casablanca and Rabat for a yellow fever vaccinations, speaking in sign language and terrible French, and preparing 20 copies of my travel details, passport and visa. I was advised this would save me from having to get out of the car at the many military checkpoints throughout the Western Sahara.

I took a bus to Agadir. From there, I hopped a short flight to Dakhla, a little oasis by the water influenced by Mauritanian, Berber, and Moroccan culture, yet at least a 12 hour drive from anywhere else slightly populated. In Dakhla, I found a flyer advertising shared taxi rides to Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, 800 kilometers away.

At 6am the next day, I jumped into a car with a few others in flowing Mauritanian robes. Speaking no Arabic, this was to be a fun car ride. Atonal singing came in out of reception on the radio for hours and hours as we drove down a traffic-less two lane highway wedged between the ocean and the Sahara desert. We came upon a military convoy parked in the middle of the highway. Soldiers in the backs of trucks with AK47’s, covered in robes and head wraps. We passed at full speed on the shoulder of the road.

Getting passport copies ready for overland transit through the Western Sahara and Mauritania

Passing through the Western Sahara territory

I learned that the Western Sahara is technically a disputed territory under a 20-year ceasefire. At one point in time, Mauritania and Mali fought Morocco for it. (I’m not sure why because there’s nothing there.) It’s neither Mauritania nor Morocco, but Moroccan military presence currently controls it. There is a 5 kilometer strip in between the territory and Morocco. The area is land mined and there is no road. It’s all rock and sand. My greatest fear was being somehow refused entry into Mauritania and getting stuck in that 5 km strip forever.  

The no man’s land was surreal. Abandoned cars were cast about, completely stripped to the bone, some jutting out of the sand in strange angles. There were piles of old televisions. Figures walked in the distance, one man carrying an old television. A group of Mauritanian men stopped our car. A dark figure leaned over my window and stared at me, smiling. I had no clue what they were discussing with our driver, but they soon let us go.  

More of the Western Sahara

On the way into Mauritania

After a brief interrogation, we made it into Mauritania. Mauritania was still mostly desert, with patches of palm trees and camels. We passed spaced out villages made of plywood walls and tin roofs. When we finally stopped to pray, I was starving. The driver took me to a spot to lay down and I began to nod off. I woke up to the sound of a crackling fire. Around the corner, there were two huge beef ribs cooking and we all sat on the ground taking turns cutting off pieces of meat and passing the knife. When my turn came, I burnt my hand trying to cut the beef and everyone had a good laugh. After that, I lost knife privileges and everyone would just toss me a piece of meat after they cut their own. We sopt up the juices with bread afterwards. The driver refused to let me pay.

The capital city of Nouakchott barely had paved roads. I was stunned by the amount of physically ill people living on the street. I spent a night there and then found a shared taxi to the border of Senegal. There was one man, an English teacher, in the taxi when I arrived. He told me, “This is a very nice taxi. They always have a sit for everyone.” I said, “You mean a “seat” for everyone.” “Ahh seat, he replied. “Synonym for chair, yes?” A little while later, a car full of young people stopped beside us and we then squeezed 7 people into a Mercedes with 5 seats. I spent the next 5 hours sharing the passenger seat with my new 200-pound English teacher friend. I tried to take a picture of us riding this way but he refused, saying it would make his wife jealous.

Approaching Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania

Nouakchott, Mauritania

Nouakchott, Mauritania

Nouakchott, Mauritania

At the border, we took a long canoe-like boat across the river into Senegal and then another shared taxi to St. Louis. I stopped a young Senegalese guy about my age to ask him for the time. His name was Cherif and he immediately invited me to stay with his family. For the next week, I joined his life: playing soccer, visiting the city, and meeting his friends. When asked how I could repay him for the hospitality, he asked me to buy him and his mom a toothbrush and toothpaste.  

Cherif had a friend named Kouyote Issa, one of the most amazing people I have ever met. His door was always unlocked, his food always shared, he spent most of his time in a program he ran for street children. Through Issa, I met an American named Andrew, who helped Cheriff get an internship in video editing in Dakar. Cherif and I then traveled to the capital together to stay with his aunt and meet Andrew.

Crossing the border into Senegal by boat

St. Louis, Senegal

Life with Cherif

Life with Cherif

Dakar, Senegal

Life with Cherif

Later, at Andrew’s suggestion, I went to Kedougou, a 12-hour bus ride away in the far corner of Senegal beside Mali and Guinea, and met Jake, a Peace Corps volunteer out there.  

One of the more memorable things was when Jake took me on a 25 km bike ride out to his village — but my bike broke down in the first mile.  A stranger with a motorcycle rescued me and took me, my bike, and his groceries up a mountain to the village where Jake lives… 2 hours before Jake would arrive. Which left me in a West African village, unable to speak the native language whatsoever, hours before the arrival of my new friend. Luckily Jake called the chief and he came and took me in. We took turns pointing at things and saying them in our languages until Jake arrived.

I spend a few nights sleeping in a hut on the ground, eating food grown on the same land I was sleeping on, and enjoying the night sky with no lights or electricity in any direction for miles. Jake would translate and tell me about the customs and village drama.  In retrospect, I wish I would have spent weeks out there. Instead, I returned to Kedougou and a girl I met on the bus ride there, Fadimata, invited me to Tambacounda, a small city another 4 hours away. I stayed for two weeks with her family, a family of one dad, three wives, and twelve children. I joined Fadimata’s band as a bassist and we played two or three shows, sometimes with crowds of up to 100 people.  

Biking with Jake to the Peace Corps village

Jake’s village in Senegal

It was right around New Year’s Eve, which I spent  on the beach in the south with a language teacher I met at the general store, when I received a call from work (now four months absent when I originally told them I’d be gone for a month or two). They wanted me to do some visual effects for a TV show starting in a week.  

New York wanted me back, and I was also going broke. I had spent about $5,000 on the first part of the trip that I described in a few sentences above, and $500 on the duration of the trip this story was about. Lured back by the opportunity to make more money and plot future adventures, I hopped a flight from sticky, 100 degree Dakar back to the freezing winter in New York.

TL;DR Version:

This was the first time I ever left the United States. I flew to Iceland, London, Copenhagen, Berlin, Barcelona and Sevilla in about a month, booking all those flights for something like $500 in advance and staying with friends and in hostels. I grew bored by the backpacker scene (and the money I was spending) and switched to overland travel mode, going by bus to Portugal, then bus and ferry to Morocco, where I spent a month before developing an appetite for more adventure.   

After meeting a traveler in Morocco who had done something similar, I decided to travel by local taxi across the disputed Western Sahara territory from Dakhla to Nouakchott, Mauritania, then shared a taxi to Senegal where I moved into the bedroom of a local guy my age and traveled with him to Dakar to stay with his aunt. I later took a bus to Kedougou in the southeast corner of the country by Mali and Guinea, and rode a bike to a remote village with a random Peace Corps volunteer. I stayed there in a hut with no electricity and ate everything grown from the ground for a few nights.  

After that, I spent two weeks in Tambacounda, living in a polygamist household (1 husband and 4 wives) with a girl I met on another bus ride. I joined a band and played shows. Then I went to the Casamance region to celebrate new years with a local language teacher I met at a corner store and ran into Peace Corps friends from the village 12 hours away. Randomly, work called and asked if I wanted to create motion graphics for a cool new show, this luring me back to New York after 4 months on the road and one hectic adventure.

Spencer doing what he does best, making local friends!

Q&A with Spencer:

Q: That was insane. Did anything go really wrong along the way?

A: In Senegal, someone got mad at me for taking a picture. They tried to get money from me and i refused. A huge dude took my glasses from my face and my iPhone, demanding money. Luckily a crowd had formed around us and they pulled us apart and took my belongings from the man and gave them back to me. 

Q: Any really standout moment?

A: Riding down footpaths, stream beds, and speeding through villages on the back of a motorcycle driven by a 14-year old boy who didn’t speak my language, making a deal with a chief whom I also didn’t share a language with, who then added an 11-year old boy to the back of our motorcycle to be our guide to a local rock formation. Then all of us flipping the motorcycle on a grassy hill and laughing about it. We got lost in 6-foot tall grass and never made it there. But we did make it back!

Q: How and why did you decide to pursue this particular experience?

A: At first, I had all my flights planned, but I realized traveling was way more fun when I just made it all up as I went. I decided to go further into Africa when I met a traveler in Morocco who had been to Senegal. His story of how the Senegalese took him in really inspired me, so I got the visas and a yellow fever vaccination in Morocco and decided to give it a go.

Q: What resources did you use  to help you plan your journey or at least figure out that it was possible?

A: Mostly advice from other travelers that I met in person, as well as some online travel forums.

Q: What’s the biggest thing you learned from this experience?

A: Everything will be alright.

Q: Do you have any recommendations for travelers wanting to do this or something similar?

A: It’s easier to trust people who don’t approach you, people who don’t want anything other than your company. Learn what you can from other travelers along the way. And most importantly: DO IT!!

The post Overlanding Through West Africa from Morocco to Senegal appeared first on Trips Unscripted.

It took us three days to travel 230 kilometers. We got rides in the back of pickup trucks, piled in with everything from manure to oranges, in covered wagons, and my favorite, an 18-wheeler bound for the Thai border who fit all three of us in the cab. Clinging to the edge of the pickup truck beds and peering out as we wound our way up the sides of mountains and through hill tribe villages was sometimes phenomenal; other times it would start raining and we would shiver uncontrollably in frigid high-altitude air and scramble futilely to keep our backpacks dry.

Sometimes drivers would stay with us at their destination until we found another ride, explaining everything in Lao to the next driver and passing us over like ordinary cargo. Other times we’d get dumped off on the side of the road in a village with almost no through traffic and we’d sit for hours in the rain while the rare passing vehicle squinted at our signs and kept driving, leaving us in hopeless tears. In one such village, we finally found one open shop selling everything from cigarettes to dried fish and enlisted the help of the owners to write the name of the nearest town in Lao on a cardboard sign. They found the concept of hitchhiking endlessly amusing and their laughter and good energy seemed to help us convince another pickup to throw us onboard.

It was something about fully surrendering to the country and its people that made me fall in love with Laos — and with hitchhiking as a method of travel. I’ve discovered that when you put yourself at the mercy of the inhabitants of a place, you see its truest colors. I learned more about Laotian culture in three long days on the (side of) the road than I had in the previous three weeks of traveling solo by motorbike or bus. Hitchhiking took me into people’s cars, homes, and beautiful places I otherwise never would have visited had I been in charge. Now I find when I navigate a country on my own terms, it’s a more distanced experience than traveling with the people themselves, letting their destinations change mine.

I’ve since hitchhiked wherever in the world seemed safe and feasible (Thailand, India, Taiwan, and Nepal so far), putting myself at the mercy of the inhabitants of these places and taking a journey and letting my path through a new place wander and wind instead of blaze along from one predetermined experience to another.

Information for other travelers

Hitchhiking in Laos was extremely safe, but we were following some best practices for this type of adventure. Here’s my recommendations for safe ways to introduce hitchhiking into your travel plans:

• Don’t hitchhike alone. I’ve done it before in Taiwan, but only because I speak fluent Chinese and new exactly where I was going — and Taiwan is just absurdly safe. Having just one other buddy is ideal so you don’t have to wait long for bigger vehicles where you all can fit (although I did hitchhike with 4 guys in Burma and we did just fine!).
• Download maps.me before you leave (it’s an offline maps software). Take a look at the route you want to travel and drop pins on major towns or villages where you may want to spend the night. This also helps in identifying a few names to ask cars that stop.
• Never travel by night. We always stopped by late afternoon once we got to a village where there was a guesthouse (and there almost always is).
• Ask for rides in incremental distances. If we said we wanted to go to Luang Nam Tha from where we were, no one would have stopped. But we picked a town 20km away and another one 50km away and tried asking for rides to one of those, which was a much more feasible ask than for 150 or 200km.
• Be clear that you aren’t paying. In some places, like Laos, people don’t really get the concept of hitchhiking sometimes. Towards the Chinese border, we were relieved to be picked up by a couple Chinese people who get the idea of “da che” (plus I speak Mandarin, so they loved us!). Say something like, “You can take us there? Really? Thank you! We don’t have any money though, is that okay?”
• Have a sign in the local language (obviously). Learning to write in Lao script was hard for us, so we asked some locals to help.
• Bring a poncho or something to cover your backpack with. In Laos, the majority of our rides were in the backs of pickup trucks that had room for us along with their cargo. It was also the rainy season and we got rained on several times. I wasn’t prepared and my stuff got soaked!
• Bring snacks to share. It can be a long ride sometimes and if there’s a language barrier, having some food to share can help break the ice. We had oranges and chocolates with us and always shared with the driver and fellow passengers, too.
• You’ll have to do some walking. Because most people in these types of places don’t understand the concept is hitchhiking, if they see you in the city center asking for a ride to a town an hour away, they will most likely bring you to the bus station! Walk to the outskirts of town and then start waving down cars. If they see you really need a ride, your chances go way up.

And that’s it! Once I got introduced this method of travel, I make it a point to do it in every country I go to. I love the interactions I get to have with the locals (both the ones who drive you and the ones who cheer you on from the sidelines) and the small places I only get to see because I’m being dumped out of the car as a local trucker pulls into his farm. This method of exploring a country also forces me to slow down. I can’t have a deadline for getting somewhere because I never know how long it’ll take. Nothing helps me embrace the journey more than a good, painfully long, difficult, tiring, frustrating, and positively thrilling trip by hitching.

The post Hitchhiking Through the Most Beautiful Country in Asia appeared first on Trips Unscripted.

Panorama views of 4,000+ temples

By all means, go! But don’t stop at Bagan.

However, these places all lie firmly on the government-curated beaten path. One way or another, it’s been designed for your eyes. And so most travelers make their two-week round of these four commonly visited areas and then scratch their heads about what to do with the rest of their month-long visa. The government carefully monitors what foreign eyes and can see, marking off wide swaths of land where social unrest and civil war still unfold.

I wanted to spend my time in Burma differently and soon discovered that venturing even a few miles off the beaten path in this country turned into an incredible adventure. I spent two weeks motorbiking through the remote outskirts of Yangon, hitchhiking from Bagan to Mandalay, and attending an obscure local festival in central Shan state.

With 14 days left on my visa, I hatched a plan to travel by local ferry boat on the Irrawaddy River from Mandalay to Myitkyina, the northernmost city accessible to foreign visitors, stopping off along the river and spending a few nights in scarcely-visited villages. A German guy I’d been traveling with since Bagan agreed to join me (English-speaking company I’d later become extremely grateful for).

Meet Lenny, my travel companion for this leg of the journey

Commander of the ship

For more than a week straight, we sat squished in with locals wrapped in thick colorful blankets, giant crates of vegetables, chickens who clucked around freely at our feet, and children who spontaneously sat in our laps. We napped on hard metal benches, thankful to have each other as pillows and warmth. Whenever we approached villages along the shore to drop off passengers, young women with baskets of prepackaged meals on their heads would splash out to the boat before it even docked, while others with boats filled with fruit and fish rowed past them. The two groups would swarm the boat of hungry passengers, climb in over the sides, and stand on our seats yelling their offerings over our heads in Burmese. We’d buy rice and miscellaneous curries soaked in stinky fish oil and smile gratefully to them as they giggled and passed us the tiny overflowing containers.

It’s cold on the boat, so locals come prepared.

What the ferry boats look like.

All squished in!

The banks of the Irrawaddy River.

A sight we became used to after 3 days straight on a boat with no one but Burmese people traveling between villages along the river. Smile and say cheese!

About to dock in a village to pick up more passengers. Look at all the women ready to come sell us fish curry!

I think they caught sight of Lenny…

Women on canoes pull up to the boat to sell their snacks to hungry passengers.

A man departing the main ferry with his live cargo

Many days we’d be on the boat from 6am-6pm, so we’d catch sunset onboard.

Once we discovered we could sit on top of the boat, we rarely sat on the metal benches downstairs again.

Making friends with the captain and one guy who sort of spoke English.

Tired from the long hours on the boat, we spent a few days in each major village along the river. This is in Katha.

A woman at a temple ceremony in Katha.

Hearing loud, festive music, we walked into a temple and the women immediately dragged me onto the dance floor! We stayed for awhile, eating oranges and passing around bottles of whiskey. To this day I have no idea what they were celebrating.

Happy to be on land in Bhamo, drinking our favorite sweetened milk tea drink.

Although we never knew how or when we’d arrive, the one thing we did know was our final destination: Myitkyina. Normally Myitkyina can be reached by boat directly from Bhamo, but at the time of our journey, there was some instability in the region and boats weren’t running. To our dismay, we had to take a boat all the way back (a one-day journey!) to Katha and then either take a boat back to Mandalay or find another way up north.

Luckily, the guesthouse owner in Katha was happy to see us again and told us about a train that left at 5am from a town about an hour away from Katha the next day. It would take us to Myitkyina in a speedy 16 hours. We arranged for a tuk-tuk to pick us up at 3:30am and drive us to that town, where we’d hope to buy a ticket on the train and make it to our final destination by evening.

We had underestimated how arduous of a journey just getting to the train station would be. Our tuk-tuk didn’t have any lights and the road to town wasn’t paved, so it was a terrifying, bumpy, and freezing cold leg of the journey. We arrived when it was still dark and passengers had built their own fires outside the station. Getting the ticket was also a feat of patience, but it only cost us about $2 (for both of us!), so at least we were financially rewarded by all the aggravation (no one spoke English, there was no ticket office, and it took a lot of searching to find the one person who worked there, who happened to be curling up by the fire, too).

The train station of the town we don’t know the name of because we can’t read Burmese.

Passengers staying warm before the 5am train. I’ve never been to a train station anywhere in the world where people were building fires.

The $2 ticket that would take us the remaining 16 hours to our destination.

On the train. Burmese trains have very bad tracks, so the rides are incredibly bumping. It’s impossible to sleep and even harder to eat!

Just kidding, the locals sleep just fine, their bodies shaking up and down the entire way.

Passing through villages in Kachin state.

After all the hassle of training up to Myitkyina, what we didn’t expect was to arrive and not have any way of getting out of there! Our plan was to stay for 3-4 days and then head back to Mandalay — but that turned out to be a Sisyphean task.

We spent several days asking around and came to the conclusion that bus would be the fastest and most comfortable way to get back to Mandalay, but no one could confirm if foreigners were allowed on local buses in this region. With much difficulty, we managed to score tickets from one agency only to have someone from that bus company show up at our guesthouse a few hours later saying, “So sorry, you actually aren’t allowed on our bus” while gently ripping up our tickets and giving us our money back.

Later that evening, we sat anxiously in a travel agency run out of somebody’s living room, realizing the only option left was to fly to Yangon on a disreputable government airline for $200 a seat. I reluctantly dug out my few precious US dollars, which were inspected, promptly ironed on an ironing board, and driven off, along with my passport, on a motorbike. By the time the owner’s teenage daughter got back from the airport with the handwritten plane tickets, I was ready to leave on whatever vessel would take me. (Lenny didn’t have $200 and was forced to take the train back to Mandalay and then bus from there to meet me in Yangon. Poor thing!)

The travel agent literally ironing my US dollars for the plane ticket.

Information for other travelers

The exact route we took was Mandalay to Katha, Katha to Bhamo, then we backtracked from Bhamo back to Katha because there was no way to reach Myitkyina from Bhamo by boat as a foreigner at the time, and then we took the train from somewhere near Katha up to Myitkyina.

It was a constant guessing game about where we could and couldn’t travel, but luckily the boat drivers (some of whom knew a bit of English, others only spoke Burmese but we got the idea) would tell us where we could or couldn’t disembark and even helped us find guesthouses when we arrived in villages in the middle of the night.

Although these areas are not frequently visited, there’s still basic infrastructure for travelers, both local Burmese making these multi-day trips and adventuresome foreigners who find their way up the river. Tickets for the boat can be purchased with some difficulty the day before your journey and locals (but not their livestock) actually respect the assigned seating system onboard. Not all guesthouses have government permission to host foreigners, so expect to be turned down occasionally and do be respectful of the owner’s position. We were turned down a few times, but always found at least one place that would take foreigners.

Good things to bring for the journey: Plenty of snacks! They certainly sell a lot of things, but it’s mostly stinky fish curry and we grew tired of it after a couple days. We had a few blankets, including one to put on the bench underneath us as a cushion, making the ride much more comfortable. And we had a lock to keep our backpacks secured to a pole on the boat so we could wander around freely without worrying about our things, although I think they would have been perfectly fine unsecured given the easy-going nature of rural Burmese. Books and things to entertain yourself for a few days are very handy, too. The views are spectacular but you will tire of looking at the water!

All in all, it’s one of my favorite journeys I did in Asia, so if you have the time, patience, and knowledge about how to do this trip, I’m confident you’ll absolutely love being this far off the beaten path in one of the most spectacular countries in the world.

That scenery!

One of my favorite adventures, hands-down!

The post Two Weeks Traveling By Local Ferry and Train in Northern Burma appeared first on Trips Unscripted.

One Saturday afternoon, we boarded a tiny wooden boat with our guide and glided through our first glimpse of Makoko’s main thoroughfare: tens of thousands of wooden homes built on stilts over the water and busy residents rowing their own boats stacked with fish, produce, textiles, and many children who waved at us enthusiastically.

The chief has the best view in the village, a house built two stories high that looked over the smoky waters and hundreds of gliding boats below. We learned about the over two hundred year history of this fishing village and the government’s many attempts to burn it down or otherwise force its habitants out. To state officials, it’s a terrible eyesore, an uncomfortable contradiction as they work to turn Lagos into one of Africa’s premier business destinations (and it already is).

Yet Makoko floats on defiantly within eyesight of the city’s prominent Third Mainland Bridge.

After thanking the chief for allowing us to visit, we were taken by his own boat driver into the village’s waterways and given the grand tour. Only then were we able to discreetly take photographs — the residents saw us with the chief’s guide and knew we were approved visitors.

People were busy going about their business, even small children rowing boats through the canals. Some stilt houses appear to be bars with chalkboards hanging outside, listing the times of football games.

We were also taken to the village’s famous floating school. We hop aboard and the children tell us about their classes. From the school, we see Lagos in the distance, it’s residents probably not giving much passing thought to the other Lagotians living on the water, fighting poverty and discrimination while their city booms in the heart of the African business world.

Information for other travelers 

For other travelers bound for Nigeria, it’s definitely possible to visit Makoko — ask around once you’re in Lagos. It looks like our guy, Noah Shamede, has also given tours to a couple other Nigerian bloggers I found writing about Makoko, so maybe he’s the only one doing it after all.

In general, Nigeria is a very off-the-beaten path destination, but generally safer to visit than media attention might make it seem. Check your government’s recommendations before visiting and learn about how to apply for a tourist visa to Nigeria beforehand. I was there for work for several months back in 2013 and one of the perks of working as a professional in Lagos was having a driver, something most expats in Nigeria have and something that definitely kept us extra safe.

While I don’t think measures like that are necessary to have an enjoyable stay in Lagos, that does give you the sense of how most foreigners (since there aren’t many tourists that come for a casual visit) get around and the kinds of precautions they take. Remember, when visiting off-the-beaten-path locations that may be less used to foreign faces, information is your friend. Read up on the destination and try to find people in your network who may know locals or expats living in that place. Armed with information from people who know the situation on the ground, you can rest assured you’re hearing the most accurate assessment of security for visitors.

A word of warning about photography: In my experience, Nigerians were extremely sensitive to the presence of cameras. I almost never took photos in Lagos unless I asked permission from every individual who would appear in the shot (a difficult task in one of the world’s most populated cities). Just be extra respectful when raising your camera while you’re on a visit to Nigeria.

The post An Inside Look at a Floating Village in Lagos, Nigeria appeared first on Trips Unscripted.

If the anticipation of arrival eclipses the journey itself and a demanding itinerary exhausts us until the anticipation of departure sets in — where’s the meaning in that?

Slow travel is a mindset that requires us to redefine our relationship to time, to see it as plentiful rather than scarce. It requires us to take a deep breath and say, “I have the time” or, more powerfully, “I will make the time.” It’s not about how far we go, how fast we arrive, and how much we see, but about the depth of our adventures, the warmth of our relationships, and our closeness to the world itself.

Slow travel rebukes one of the greatest epidemics facing our generation today: the fear of missing out. It’s about chucking the Lonely Planet into the garbage, hopping a train to the place we’ve never heard of, and staying put.

For instance, I’ve been to Taiwan twice, but I still haven’t been to the top of the famous Taipei 101 building. Each time, I was more interested in staying with locals, hitchhiking up the coast, sleeping in temples, and taking boats to islands with no names. I experienced Taiwan on my own terms, unafraid to respond with an unapologetic “no” when other foreigners asked me if I had visited this temple or that mountain. No, and I am not afraid that I missed out.

If we’re not careful, travel can become an ordinary consumer good, a game of keeping up with our neighbors and prioritizing hit-and-run visits to trendy places that yield impressive profile pictures. I know people who have traveled 36 hours across the world to spend a week in Australia, just to tick off another continent. To them, travel is a status symbol, not a by-product of genuine love and curiosity.

Travel should be savored like a long, five-course meal accompanied by fine red wine, eaten on a terrace at sunset with a few close friends. Travel can provide us a window into what lurks beneath the surface of a place. Hit-and-run tourism simply confirms what we think we know and teaches us what we knew we were already going to learn. We may stand in front of a famous monument and marvel how its “even more beautiful than the pictures,” but we lose out on learning what we couldn’t have predicted.

Slow travel is about introducing an element of delightful uncertainty into our journeys. If we fly in and out of Beijing and have 7 days to see the sites, there is a pretty safe range of what we can expect to see and experience. If we fly into Beijing and give ourselves 3 weeks to motorbike down to Shanghai, we gain access to a kingdom of sweet serendipity that belongs exclusively to our hearts and memories. This is the kind of adventure that leaves a fingerprint on us for the rest of our lives, enriched with colorful stories that were not packaged for mass consumption. This is when the magic happens.

Travelers have choices to make. We can spend a week bouncing from Barcelona to Granada to Madrid, or we can spend a week couchsurfing in Segovia, hiking through nearby villages in the mornings, taking Spanish lessons in the afternoons, and cooking with our hosts in the evenings. My guess is we will learn more about Spain in that week than a whirlwind tour of the “must-sees.”

We can spend two weeks a year on warp-speed vacations, or we can save our money, quit our jobs, and spend months — even years — slow traveling. I once met a guy who walked 1,000 kilometers from Mozambique to the Wild Coast of South Africa, stopping to volunteer at various eco-lodges along the way. That trip alone took him two years. Then there was the girl who spent 12 months driving from Switzerland to West Africa and then stayed on to live in Burkina Faso. When I asked what she was doing there, she shrugged and smiled fondly, “Just being.”

The usual tourist who parachutes into a country for 10 days winds up observing how people live their lives in other parts of the world; slow travelers stop observing from a distance (both a physical and cultural distance) and become part of the landscape. They develop relationships, learn the language, engage in the community, and speak intelligently about the place after they return home. They shop in the local markets, drive the backroads, and put down their cameras in favor of conversation. They linger, guilt-free, because they have no checklist.

Slow travelers know that life back home moves fast and traveling slowly allows them to calibrate themselves to the pace of a new place and culture. They experience long meals with the Italians, partying until dawn with the Brazilians, and sipping coffee on lazy Sundays with the Ethiopians.

For slow travelers, it’s amazing to see the pyramids, but it’s more amazing to spend a couple months living in a tiny apartment in the back alleys of Cairo, studying Arabic, and smoking shisha with a new group of friends. Slow travelers don’t hostel-hop across South America; they choose to volunteer in the Amazon. They don’t “do” Southeast Asia in 6 weeks; they spend those 6 weeks off the radar in outer Mongolia.

Slow travel is a mindset, one we can employ at home in our own countries, even in our own cities. We can spend Sunday exploring a new park, eating a lazy lunch at a small cafe we’ve never tried, or wandering into new art gallery to chat with the owner. We can practice smiling more easily, speaking readily with strangers, and going somewhere on bicycle instead of car. Fundamentally, it’s about doing even ordinary things with a purposeful energy. It’s about enthusiastically seeking out new things and new people. It’s about appreciation, openness, and engagement.

It’s about slowing down the pace of life so that we are not just gaining more experiences, but gaining more value in each experience. Slow travel reinvigorates us and elevates our level of curiosity about our communities — at home and throughout the world. 

The post What is the Trips Unscripted Travel Mindset All About? appeared first on Trips Unscripted.

We’ve all read the hackneyed “tips for better travel photos” articles (yeah yeah, find the light, rule of thirds, etc.), so I’m going to just share three key things I do to document my own travels that you might not have heard elsewhere. I’ll also share a collection of favorite photos from my travels in order to walk you through a little bit about what makes them interesting and how to apply those lessons to your own photos.

A quick note on equipment: I’m currently traveling with a Canon Rebel T4i DSLR with 18-200mm and 50mm lenses, a Go Pro 4 on a long selfie stick, and an iPhone 7. I also use the Photos app on my Macbook to edit (but not over-edit) my photos.

However, I don’t think equipment makes as much of a difference as your commitment to taking lots of photos and taking them intentionally with attention to the detail of what you’re experiencing. I find photography actually helps me be more present in my travels by helping me pay closer attention to what little moments of life live in the spaces I visit, as well as the sources of what’s making an impression on me when I’m passing through.

Here’s my top 3 quick tips for you to help you best capture the essence of your next travel experience.

1. Separate out your photography and exploration time.

Because I’m normally traveling pretty slow, I always spend the first few days in a new place going out and taking photos like crazy while everything’s fresh and I have that obsessive, knawing urge to capture everything I see. Then, I do something most travelers don’t think to do: I leave my camera at home. I go out and explore everything without a barrier between me and my surroundings.

This method allows me to take better pictures because when I’m in “capturing mode” I can be fully intentional about it, not trying to stand and admire the marketplace and buy mangoes and take photos — I can just go through and focus on taking pictures. Then the next day I’ll come back and buy mangoes and chickens and stop for tea and chat with shopkeepers have no other objective except going to the market. For me, this is the best method of enjoying my travels and being intenseley present in every moment while still reserving time for documenting what I see.

I highly recommend paying attention to your first impressions of a place, because the things that immediately draw you in and fascinate you about a place are going to be the same things that draw the audience into your photo. On a related note, you also want to make sure you wait long enough. That’s why you’re giving yourself dedicated photography time. So if you’re in an amazing spot but you’re not getting any good photos, you can just wait longer. Sit down on a sidewalk with your camera in your lap and observe. Then use your lens to slowly capture the details, textures, and interactions in that little nook of the world.

2. Talk to the camera.

I was once hitchhiking through Laos with a French girl who had the habit of, whenever something exciting happened, pulling out her Go Pro+selfie stick and taking a video of herself talking to the camera. In 30 seconds, she’d explain what was going on and swing the camera around to capture the scene. What a brilliant idea! I went out and got a Go Pro in the next major city I came to and started doing the same. It showed me the value of 1) taking more video, 2) taking short clips that will hold your audience’s attention, and 3) narrating the story, which provides more vivid memories when you look back on those files years later.

On iPhone, I also love the “One Second Every Day” app and iMovie makes splicing short video clips together easy and practical.

3. Think about emotion and conditions.

Some photos get to be artistic, others get to be honest. These are the photos that aren’t in the perfect light with the best composition, but they capture the essence of what you were experiencing at that moment. The mud on your feet from hiking in the rain in Thailand, the blurry photo off the back of a motrocycle in India, the photo where you’re looking off in another direction but the expression on your faces captures the sheer delight — or frustration — of standing in the middle of Beijing night market. Some of my favorite travel photos convey pure emotion.

When I talk about emotion, I also mean searching for the emotion in a wide scene of human landscape, like a wild Ethiopian marketplace or a crowded temple ceremony in India. You can take a photo that shows what’s going on, but if it’s not sending the audience to a specific moment in that place, it’s not a great photo. Meet someone’s eyes, ask for their portrait, capture a story within a frame. Think about what you and the people around you are feeling and find a way to share that in two dimensions.

Of course, you also want to follow all those hackneyed tips I mocked at the start of this article: pay attention to lighting, use the rule of thirds for balance, check the foreground and background of photos to make sure a banana tree isn’t stiking out of your subject’s head, get close, ask permission for the best portraits, capture details and expressions, move around and try different angles, and, again, take LOTS of photos (and video).

Here are some examples from my own portfolio and what I think makes each of them great. 

Timket festival action shot, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – Can’t you just feel the emotion and excitement and the movement in this photo? One of the first things that struck me about Ethiopia was all the men and women wearing their light white cotton garments on church days and festivals. It’s a striking contrast to the brown and green landscape and stands out on their gorgeous mocha skin tones — and I think this photo captures that well.

On the road in southern Ethiopia – Another example of a shot that captures the emotions and conditions of not just a place, but a journey.

Getting a flat tire in central Mongolia – The conditions of road-tripping across the world’s largest and most remote landlocked country. This shot also speaks to the importance of trying different angles.

Running into a traffic jam in Ethiopia – I could make a ten-foot tall collage of all the photos I have where I just stuck my lens out the passenger window at whatever ridiculous thing was happening at the moment. These aren’t the most well-composed shots, but they’re honest and still very interesting.

Egyptian gas station – Don’t forget to capture what would be mundane at home, like a gas station, but wildly interesting in rural Egypt. Think of all the fascinating photographs you could take at a Japanese supermarket, a Russian laundrymat (with all the machines in Russian!), or a Burmese internet cafe.

Saying hello in Laos – A shot that captures why it’s so fun to get right in the middle of the action! Sometimes I lose all sense of good judgement and give kids my camera, too. They take some great photos!

Delivering bread in a Cairo marketplace – This is why it’s so valuable to separate out photography and deeply present exploration of a place. If I had been too focused on buying tea or fresh fruit, I might have missed this guy balancing his morning delivery on his head, or not had the time to take the 25 shots that resulted in this particular image. Got to love his shirt, too, right?

Women in the Dorze market, Ethiopia – I love photographing markets, but I always try to look for smaller moments or individuals to pull out of the chaos, shots that both capture the greater marketplace but also where someone seems to be telling me something. I think this photo does something else really well: it has a clear focal point. Your eyes should never search a good photo for what it’s supposed to be seeing. Good photos direct the audience right to the person or thing they are capturing.

Guyanese man on the streets of Georgetown – Now a word on portraits. For starters, I almost always ask for permission. Sometimes with my huge lens I can steal an  “in the moment” shot of someone up close, but those photos aren’t half as good as when I stop, speak to the subject, and ask for them if it’s okay to photograph them. Audiences can also sense the distance between the subject and the photographer anyway, and closer is simply more vibrant, more interesting. (This shot could have been improved by checking the background for the woman behind him, or changing the angle.) Here’s a selection of portraits…

Hamer man in Omo Valley, Ethiopia – Watch the difference between this photo and the one below. Both are portraits, but see how getting closer and changing the angle makes a difference.

Hamer man in Omo Valley, Ethiopia – See his eyes?! See how the angle tells a story here? The angle above does, too, but it’s a different story. Playing with things like this in your photos creates variety and produces stronger shots.

Portrait of a shopkeeper in Swaziland – Her smile was just contagious, and telling her that made her more open to having it captured.

“Sadhu Baba” in Varanasi, India – Gave this guy the equivalent of 50 cents for a portrait. Sometimes the local people who are used to being photographed in oft-visited locations ask for money. If I want the shot, I’m happy to oblige.

Women in Tamil Nadu – Other times, locals in less-visited places would see my camera dangling from my neck and ask for their portrait. These women collapsed into fits of giggles during their “photo shoot.”

Curious woman in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia – Can’t you sense the distance? I’m standing pretty far away from this woman with my zoom on full, but the amazing part were her eyes still watching me from afar. Shots like this can be beautiful, but I don’t like them as much as when I get up close and interact with the subject first.

Boy in Merkato, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – Patience again. Waiting for that moment of emotion on my surroundings, and I found it in this bored shopkeeper on a hot Ethiopian afternoon. This image captures both the conditions of the marketplace and the emotions of the people there, for better or worse.

Woman doing laundry in Merkato, Ethiopia – Not a perfectly composed shot, but you can feel the action and emotion here, a sharp contrast to the photo above.

Colors in Zanzibar – The colors and expressions of these three children in Stone Town, Zanzibar, Tanzania, captured my attention immediately. Remember first impressions? The colors of Zanzibar struck me immediately and will strike the audience of this photo, as well.

The post What Makes a Great Travel Photo — With Examples appeared first on Trips Unscripted.