Travel Tales by AFAR

No plan. No luggage. Five weeks in India. Joe Diaz and Greg Sullivan, dreamed up Afar on a beach in Goa more than 15 years ago. In this candid episode from our sister podcast, Unpacked, they reflect on what they’ve learned by helping people travel deeper. From the spontaneous trips that honed the company’s values to how they’ve helped shape the travel industry, get an inside look into the transformative power of rallying around travel as a force for good. 

But, How Many Kitchen Tables Have You Visited? 

In this episode, discover:

How Afar helped pave the way for “experiential travel.” 

The origin and impact of Learning Afar, which gives students access to travel. 

How you can continue to shape travel as a force for good in the world.  

Going Home with a Rickshaw Driver. 

Don’t miss these memorable moments:

[2:03] It started without a plan—or luggage. 

[14:55] The first step: transformative travel education. 

[25:15] Spin the globe and other stories that have impacted them the most. 

[37:49] A trip to Cairo that led to a surgeon’s debut on The Daily Show.

    [45:15] A friendly debate on travel practices—from packing to plane rides.   

The Transformative Power of Teachers Turned Travelers. 

Greg Sullivan and Joe Diaz met in the classroom, so when they traveled to India and found a deeper way to travel, they had to share that with others. In this lighthearted conversation, they share the spontaneous travel stories that have impacted the industry and continue to sustain Afar 15 years later. 

In this episode you’ll learn how Afar went from an idea to a multi-faceted media company, how they’ve pivoted over time to hone their impact on the world and how you can travel in a more conscious and connected way. 

Resources

• Explore Afar’s 15-year anniversary hub of favorite stories, including:  

A Skeptic Visits the Holy Waters of Lourdes.

What It’s Like to Navigate Cairo’s Chaos as a Blind Traveler. 

• Read the transcript of this episode.

• Listen to the podcast episodes mentioned in this episode: 

A Blind Man’s Trip Will Change the Way You Go on Safari. 

A Blind Surfer Takes On Kauai’s Legendary Waves.

Be sure to subscribe to the show and to sign up for our podcast newsletter, Behind the Mic, where we share upcoming news and behind-the-scenes details of each episode. And explore our second podcast, Unpacked, which unpacks a tricky topic in travel each week.

Not only can you swim in the rivers of Bern and Basel— but thousands of locals regularly take the plunge. From a morning commute to a relaxing weekend escape, discover how rivers are at the heart of everyday Swiss life. In this episode of Travel Tales by Afar, Bonnie Tsui, author of Why We Swim, follows the currents of Switzerland's alpine rivers into the depths of history, culture and identity. 

How Rivers Reveal Years of Swiss Culture

In this episode you will learn: 

Behind Every Great Swiss City, There’s A River.

Don’t miss these transformative travel moments: 

[5:19] A legacy of guarding the rights of swimmers in Basel.

[8:14] Three distinct relationships with the Rhine.

[11:07] An insightful swim at Rheinbad Breite, a 125-year-old bathhouse. 

[12:54] What does climate change mean for the future of Alpine river swimming?

Swimming for a Slice of Life

Afar contributor, and author of Why We Swim, Bonnie Tsui has swimming in her DNA. Her parents met in a pool in Hong Kong, she worked as a lifeguard growing up in New York, and she often swims when she travels—she's the perfect person to explore Switzerland’s river swimming culture. 

In this episode you’ll learn how to enhance a trip to Switzerland by swimming its rivers, hear how locals see rivers as an important thread in the fabric of Swiss life and culture, and be inspired by the people who are working to protect the future of alpine river swimming. 

Resources

• Read the transcript of the episode

• Order Bonnie’s book Why We Swim

• Read more of Bonnie’s work on her website. 

• Pre-order Bonnie's latest book, On Muscle:The Stuff That Moves Us and Why it Matters. 

Be sure to subscribe to the show and to sign up for our podcast newsletter, Behind the Mic, where we share upcoming news and behind-the-scenes details of each episode. And explore our second podcast, Unpacked, which unpacks a tricky topic in travel each week.

Tom Turcich and his dog, Savannah, completed their world walk in 2022. On this week’s episode of Travel Tales, we hear their story.

We first talked with Tom and Savannah back in 2021, when they were in Kyrgyzstan, six years into their journey, which began in 2015. They had been held up by the pandemic, which was only one of many ordeals they faced on their circumnavigation. A year and a few thousand miles later, they were done and back home in New Jersey. And now, two years later, Tom has released his memoir, The World Walk: 7 Years. 28,000 Miles. 6 Continents. A Grand Meditation, One Step at a Time.

In his Travel Tale, Tom reads an excerpt from the book, a moment set in the Peruvian desert about a year and a half into his journey. At that time, he’d already been held up by knife point and chased by semi-feral dogs in South America. The novelty of his walk had worn off and as he shuffled through the desert, he started to lose sight of why he was attempting this journey. And then he encountered a special restaurant with a special individual, one that revealed that he was indeed on the right path. 

Tom and host Aislyn Greene also talk about what it was like to return to “real” life after seven years of walking, his relationship to walking now, and where he wants to go next.  

Copyright © 2024 Tom Turcich. Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Resources

Read the transcript of the episode.

Listen to the episode on YouTube on August 29th.

Buy Tom's book on Amazon and on Barnes & Nobles.

Follow Tom on Instagram. 

Read our feature on Tom and Savannah. 

Be sure to subscribe to the show and to sign up for our podcast newsletter, Behind the Mic, where we share upcoming news and behind-the-scenes details of each episode. And explore our second podcast, Unpacked, which unpacks one tricky topic in travel each week. 

Road trips are such funny things. They allow more room for whimsy and spontaneity. They can inspire frank conversation, sitting side by side with someone, looking out at endless stretches of highway. And they can be dull (all that endless highway) in a way that somehow opens your mind to other possibilities and maybe even other lives. 

That’s what happened for Charlie Sprinkman as he drove back and forth—and back again—across the United States. He was working a job that required constant travel, and as a queer person, he was always on the lookout for spaces that were both welcoming and queer owned. On their third trek across the States, he realized that if he was looking for these kinds of businesses, other LGBTQIA2S+ travelers would be too. So he founded Everywhere Is Queer, a map that helps those travelers find welcoming, queer-owned spaces around the world. 

In this week’s episode, Charlie shares their journey from a young, searching kid in Wisconsin to successful entrepreneur, and everything in between. And in the companion interview with Charlie on YouTube, he shares some of their favorite queer-owned places and businesses, where he wants to go from here, and how road-tripping helped them see that the country is really more alike than it seems. 

Resources

Read the transcript of the episode.

Listen to the episode on YouTube.

Explore the map or download the app (iOS) (Android).

Deesha Dyer never thought she’d wind up in the White House. As a kid growing up in Philadelphia, she desperately wanted to travel but it always felt out of reach. Until she landed a coveted internship in the Obama administration, working in the office that arranged all of the president’s travel. Over the next eight years, she would travel around the world with the President and First Lady—in style!—visiting embassies, hobnobbing with celebrities, and yes, traveling alone, much of which she’s chronicled in her new memoir, Undiplomatic.  

She also got a peek into the diplomatic world, where “I would never see any Black people in the U.S. embassies,” she told me. Until she worked in the White House, she had no idea that something like the U.S. Foreign Service existed. And that sparked an idea: To start a nonprofit that would help other Black girls access these opportunities. In 2014, she founded beGirl.World Global Scholars, a two-year program that culminates in a big international trip. In today’s episode, she takes us on that first journey. 

She and her cofounder, Marcella, took 10 girls to London and Paris, a two-week whirlwind that was delightful and stressful, learning a lot about what to do—and what not to do. Plus, in the companion interview on YouTube, Deesha shares all the behind-the-scenes details about traveling with the Obamas, what it’s like to fly on Air Force One, and the delightful challenge of transitioning back to “normal” travel after eight years of diplomatic luxuries. 

Resources

Read the transcript of the episode.

Listen to the episode on YouTube.

Order Deesha’s book, Undiplomatic. 

Learn more about, and support, beGirl.World.

Follow Deesha on her website and on Instagram.

Be sure to subscribe to the show and to sign up for our podcast newsletter, Behind the Mic, where we share upcoming news and behind-the-scenes details of each episode. And explore our second podcast, Unpacked, which unpacks one tricky topic in travel each week. 

Imagine this: You’re slowly driving through Etosha National Park, Namibia’s renowned conservation area. There are elephants and zebras and antelopes and lions all around you. In fact, you’ve been warned not to exit your car because of those very lions, which are pros at camouflaging themselves in the desert landscape. And then your car stalls—because you don’t really know how to drive it. 

That’s the situation that this week’s storyteller, Nicolle Galteland (also known as Nikki) faced on a year-long, round-the-world trip that included a week in Namibia. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Nikki is Afar’s podcast engineer, and in this episode she steps in front of the mic to tell her tale.

At age 23, Nikki applied for, and received, a special solo travel grant that allowed a certain number of undergrad and graduate students to travel around the world for a year, provided they did it totally on their own. Her itinerary included Tajikistan and Zambia, Thailand and Singapore, and getting around mostly involved planes or trains. But in Namibia she knew she wanted to do a road trip, and at the time the only cars available had a manual transmission. Which she didn’t know how to operate. But she’d always wanted to learn, so she recruited a few helpers, mapped out a course, and lurched off into the desert sunset. Hundreds of zebras, dozens of stalls, and one flat tire later, she found her way. 

And don’t miss our companion YouTube interview, where Nikki shares more about the grant, how this episode reinvigorated her love of wildlife—and gets on her soapbox about the ways that traveling solo as a woman can change your life. 

Resources

Read the transcript of the episode.

Listen to the companion Q&A on YouTube. 

Explore more of Nikki’s work on her website. 

Listen to Looters, the sci-fi/Western role-playing podcast that Nikki coproduces with her husband, Drew. 

Some of our favorite travel moments are the ones you’d never in a million years expect. These are where the best travel stories are born. And this week, Afar’s executive editor, Billie Cohen, has a very delicious, very serendipitous story for us. 

As you’ll hear in the episode, Billie was in Estonia (one of Afar’s picks for where to travel in 2024) for work. It was 9 p.m. and she was due to fly home the next day. But then her guide, Hanno, mentioned something about the country’s “open café days,” where Estonians across the south open their homes, cook food, and serve anyone who wanders in. Smart traveler that she is, Billie changed her flight home and joined Hanno in a very unique foodie road trip through the south. 

In our companion video for the episode, Billie shares some of the discoveries that didn’t fit into her story—including an encounter with an Estonian wedding hazing involving Santa Claus—and her travel superpower, talking to everyone. She also shares some of the favorite foods she ate, from freshly made onion rolls to a red currant cake baked by the grandmother of one of her new friends. So really our only tip for you this week is: Don’t listen to this one hungry. 

Resources

Read the transcript of the episode.

Listen to the episode on YouTube.  

Read about Billie's bog hike in Estonia.

Explore the Onion Route Buffet Day

Learn more about Tartu's European Capital of Culture 2024 (events).

Find more food festivals in Estonia.

Be sure to subscribe to the show and to sign up for our podcast newsletter, Behind the Mic, where we share upcoming news and behind-the-scenes details of each episode. And explore our second podcast, Unpacked, which unpacks one tricky topic in travel each week. 

When Afar editorial director Sarika Bansal was 22, she moved to Mumbai. As you’ll hear in her Travel Tale this week, she grew up in New York and visited India (where her parents were born) frequently. Yet the visits often felt cloistered. But many years later in Mumbai, she didn’t have to worry about meeting family expectations, and she was free to develop her own connection with the place. And therein lay the challenge. Because while she looked like everyone else, she didn’t have “the cultural competence to back it up.”

She persevered, however, and this “hidden outsider” status ended up deepening her experience in Mumbai and fundamentally altering the course of her career. (She shares more in our companion YouTube interview.) It’s a funny, sweet story that touches on the power of early travel to shape our lives and the importance of intentionally seeking out, and sticking with, travel that puts us outside our comfort zone.  

Resources

Be sure to subscribe to the show and to sign up for our podcast newsletter, Behind the Mic, where we share upcoming news and behind-the-scenes details of each episode. And explore our second podcast, Unpacked, which unpacks one tricky topic in travel each week. 

When it comes to relationships, often there’s the planner—and then there’s the go-with-the-flow-er. And today’s episode of Travel Tales by Afar is all about what happens when the planner hesitantly chucks the travel to-do list and lets serendipity lead the way. 

Beth Santos is the planner in this particular story. She’s the founder of Wanderful, an online women’s travel community that grew out of her solo travels as a young woman, and is an incredibly prolific and passionate entrepreneur and traveler. She hosts the 85 Percent podcast (named for the fact that women still make 85 percent of the travel decisions), is working on a docu series about influential women over the decades, and recently wrote a book, Wander Woman: How to Reclaim Your Space, Find Your Voice, and Travel the World, Solo, among many other things. 

She’s also married, with young children, and early on in her relationship with her husband, Marvin, it became clear that they had very different ideas about travel. Beth wanted a full itinerary that packed in all the sights. Marvin wanted a cocktail on the beach. And then on a trip to Greece, with a 24-hour layover in Istanbul, Marvin asked Beth a question that would change the trajectory of her travel life. 

Her story is sweet, funny, and such a good reminder of the power of the agenda-less trip. (Fire is also involved.)

Resources

Read the transcript of the episode.

Listen to the episode on YouTube.

Buy her book, Wander Woman. 

Listen to Beth’s podcast, 85 Percent.

Explore the Wanderful community. 

Be sure to subscribe to the show and to sign up for our podcast newsletter, Behind the Mic, where we share upcoming news and behind-the-scenes details of each episode. And explore our second podcast, Unpacked, which unpacks one tricky topic in travel each week. 

This week, we’re replaying one of our favorite Travel Tales episodes: Comedian and actress Michelle Buteau—and her best friend—fly to Paris to meet their supposed French boyfriends. Only things don’t exactly go to plan . . .

Michelle Buteau is a comedian and actress, known for her roles in Always Be My Maybe, The First Wives Club, Someone Great, Russian Doll, and Tales of the City. She is also the host of The Circle and has stand-up specials—including the award-winning Welcome to Buteaupia—on Netflix and Comedy Central. She is the cohost of the podcast Adulting, and the executive producer, writer, and star of Survival of the Thickest on Netflix. She lives in the Bronx with her husband and twins. She and her husband also run Van der Most Modern, a vintage furniture store in Brooklyn.

Resources

Be sure to subscribe to the show and to sign up for our podcast newsletter, Behind the Mic, where we share upcoming news and behind-the-scenes details of each episode. And explore our second podcast, Unpacked, which unpacks one tricky topic in travel each week.