Growing up in the high desert of New Mexico, I always craved to be by the ocean. I was completely jealous of my cousins in California and Kauai. What was so great about the desert? It wasn’t until I left that I understood the beauty that the desert holds, and the powerful effect it has on you.

When Matador said Queensland Tourism was looking for a filmmaker to explore the Outback, I was immediately interested. The Outback seemed to me the ultimate desert, with larger-than-life floods and breathtaking sunsets. I couldn’t wait to get lost in that landscape. I felt I could almost imagine it, but I also knew I had no idea what I was in for.

After a week traveling around Channel Country, we landed in the town of Birdsville, which is in the southwestern-most corner of Queensland. Birdsville is famous for the horse races that happen once a year, but I wanted to know more about this place than what an annual event could tell me. While in Windorah, I was told by some new friends who own the Western Star Hotel to seek out Don Rowlands, an Aboriginal Elder and park ranger of Munga-Thirri National Park, formerly known as Simpson Desert National Park. Munga-Thirri is the largest national park in Queensland.

Don is well known in the area, and finding him in the small town only took a short conversation with the friendly owners of the Birdsville Bakery. Don’s love for the Outback is apparent when you meet him, and his pride in his work as a ranger shows. He was kind enough to let me interview him about the area, despite the short notice. During the interview, I started to get the feeling that there just wasn’t enough time in one interview to explain it all — the history, the people, the spirit of the Outback. As we reached midday and the flies started to make themselves known, I turned my questions towards what the Outback meant to Don. What came of that conversation inspired this short.

I hope to spend more time in the Queensland Outback one day, because a place like that takes time to absorb and appreciate.

Photo: CollegeDegrees360

I AM what people might refer to as a “workaholic.” I am also a freelancer. I enjoy the feeling of completion that comes with clearing my work queue. I’m a devout list-crosser; there is nothing better for me than compiling a to-do list and ticking the items off one-by-one.

Do I particularly like writing copy for real estate courses and IT websites? Hell no, but I like finishing things, and finishing things means doing things, constantly, while looking for more work to add to my list of things to do, thus perpetuating a cycle of unachievable completion.

Sisyphus did (does?) something like this, and had this cycle named after him. He’d be a great freelancer.

Confession: People shouldn’t be jealous of me.

A friend of mine recently expressed some jealousy in regard to my freelancing schedule. “It’s not fair,” she lamented. “You get to wake up whenever you feel like it and take days off whenever you want.”

What my friend didn’t see was someone who is never really not working, who has chosen to forgo the simple joy of an empty weekend with nothing better to do than simply be. I can’t sit around the house watching TV all day, fueled on a steady intake of corn-based snack foods — I have successfully conditioned myself to eschew non-productivity. It makes me anxious, much the way work probably makes lazier people anxious.

Confession: I binge on productivity.

During one of my more desolate freelance work famines, I went on a semi-crazed binge of completing skill certifications on Elance in hopes of bolstering my profile. These are essentially arbitrary 40-question quizzes on things like the Chicago Manual of Style, SEO, UK English mastery, web design, financial prudence, etc., and are designed to show prospective clients things you are good at.

Rather than going to the movies with my fiancée on her days off, as I should have done, I would spend hours a day poring over these quizzes and applying for freelancing jobs I would never get, propelled by some disturbing, inexplicable compulsion to do something “productive.”

Confession: Family doesn’t always come first.

Once, a good client came to me with an urgent editing job while I was with my extended family in Amish country in Pennsylvania. The nearest computer with internet (dialup) was miles away, so I had him email it to me. I edited an entire document in the body of an email on my phone while I pretended to participate in discussion with my seldom-seen family as they rocked away on a swing, watching kittens play-fight in the grass.

You try ignoring your grandma and play-fighting kittens while you edit a construction contract.

Confession: I’m addicted to over-delivering.

One night I took on a client who had a short but urgent job. He didn’t like my drafts, so we cancelled the contract. Agitated more by the audacity of someone knocking my work than by the wasted effort, I proceeded to engage him in an email discussion. I advised this veteran marketing exec about his approaches to the content, offered criticism, and generally shot the shit about marketing. My rice pasta turned to mush in the kitchen as I pushed dinner back by “just one more email.”

He used half of my work and all of my advice. I didn’t get paid.

If I get a freelancing job with a three-day deadline, I have to assume something might prevent me from working two of those days, or that if I work quickly I’ll impress the client into working with me again. I once took a multi-day job, had friends ask me to go sledding, and turned them down to finish the work that day. I could have been fucking sledding, but I chose to work, then didn’t have anything to do the next day when no one was sledding.

Confession: I’ve made stupid mistakes.

My back went out a few months ago and I had to employ a broomstick as a staff just to walk around my apartment. I looked like a 20-something urbanite Gandalf.

I forced myself to pound out an entire website of content in a single day, even though it made me yelp just to move enough to scratch my leg. That freelance work is still pending payment, as the web developer dropped out, but God only knows how it actually turned out. Similarly, I was in such a hurry to finish another client’s ad copy early that I misspelled the company name (I’ve done this several times).

Confession: I’ve alienated myself from people.

When you’re freelancing from home, people tell you how “awesome” it must be to only work whenever you feel like working. For me, the problem is I always feel like working.

While visiting my fiancée’s family this spring, I locked myself in her little brother’s room to edit articles, then stayed up until 3am writing new ones when everyone was asleep. When we went with friends to see a concert in Phoenix, at dinner I typed emails on my phone while they ate dim sum, then stood quietly between songs thinking about the freelance work that was waiting for me on my laptop at our hostel. The night before moving 2,000 miles away from my family last year, every time my awesome nephew with spina bifida would ask me how much longer until I could play with him, I would say “a few more minutes” into my computer screen until it was his bedtime. That client never paid me.

I have worked daily for weeks straight. I have worked on Thanksgiving. I have worked during a creative writing conference. I have worked impromptu emergency jobs while already drunk. I have worked on vacation in New Orleans. I am technically on vacation as I write these words. I have three other open freelancing jobs I will think about when I finish writing this. Ad nauseum.

I’m never really 100% “in” any moment, but that’s a cost of having a career I enjoy.

IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN the #travelstoke Queensland tumblr yet, just take a second to scroll through and see how stoked it makes you to travel!

Thank you for all of your submissions; the contest was a huge success with over a thousand entries via tumblr, instagram, and twitter. Selection was difficult, but in the end we were won over with the visual storytelling and style of Matt Raimondo, a filmmaker, designer, and traveler based in Brisbane.

Among his entries was a video called “Single Fin,” a simple but beautifully shot and edited piece showing a group of friends and their local surf competition — the ironically titled “Grom Invitational.”

Through this short music video, Matt is able to evoke not only a sense of place and culture, but the nuances of relationship and stoke in this tight group of people.

Matt’s other videos included high-action edits of rafting on the Nile and a short adventure film, On Kili.

As the winner of the competition, Matt will go on a week-long journalistic mission in Queensland, Australia, creating his own itinerary for adventures and exploration. Congratulations.

This post is sponsored by G Adventures, who run trips to the locations described below.

We can’t all be Charles Veley, “the world’s most traveled man,” but for travelers planning their next journey, G Adventures is ready to help. Based on the core values of “Love, lead, embrace, create, and do,” G Adventures provides trips for all kinds of of travelers. Whether you’re seeking adventure experiences, wanting to travel as a family, looking to do some voluntourism, or to dive deeper into the culture of a place, G Adventures has a tour for where you want to go.

If you don’t have time to travel, check out their latest campaign, the G Project. One world-changing initiative will receive $25,000 to help make it a reality.

1

Asia - Exploring nature and culture in China

The Chengdu region of China is home to the world's largest population of Giant Pandas. Panda reserves in and around Chengdu focus on protecting the bear’s natural habitat and researching their behavior (best job ever?). Certain reserves allow volunteers to interact with and care for these endangered species. Elsewhere in China, Beijing has some of the country's most important cultural landmarks. Principal among them is the Forbidden City, built during the Ming Dynasty and now home to the Palace Museum. Xi’an, located between Beijing and Chengdu, has the Terra Cotta Warriors archaeological site. This necropolis was originally built for Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, and is thought to have contained over 4,000 life-size soldiers and other figures sculpted out of terracotta.
Photo: Chi King

2

North America - Biking the wine valleys of Northern California

Almost half of the wineries in the United States are located in California, and many of those are in the valleys north of San Francisco. Wine tasting and winery tours are a drunkenly entertaining way to learn how grapes become wine, but the process involves more than crushing and fermenting grapes. One needs to see the agriculture that goes into America’s wine making, and touch the grapes on the vine, to really appreciate the drink. Work off that hangover by cycling along the winding roads of Napa and Sonoma.
Photo: needoptic

3

South America - Volunteering in the Peruvian Amazon

The Peruvian Amazon is only home to 5% of Peru’s human population, but about 5,500 plant species and 760 animal species unique to Peru live here. Animal rehabilitation centers protect sections of this diverse ecosystem, and trained conservationists help create a safe place for wounded and sick animals. The goal of these reserves is to release healthy animals back into the jungle and teach visitors about the importance of the Amazon. Many encourage volunteers to become involved in the care and preservation of the Peruvian Amazon, giving them a firsthand understanding of the region's ecological diversity.
Photo: cavallotkd

Intermission

A Negative Narrative

Playing around in Austria

Extreme crossdressing, and other fun Flickr Groups

4

Africa - Summitting and safariing in Tanzania

At 19,341 feet, Kilimanjaro is the tallest mountain in Africa. It takes a minimum of six to eight days to reach the summit, during which climbers contend with not only changes in altitude, but changes in climate as well (snowstorms occur close to Kilimanjaro's peak). But reaching the top via one of six routes is a serious achievement, and offers the chance to see both Tanzania and Kenya from above. Serengeti National Park is a five-hour drive, or short flight, from Kilimanjaro airport and is home to some of Tanzania’s biggest animals, including lions, cheetahs, leopards, elephants, and rhinos. The park has safari lodges and campsites, and tour operators organize excursions throughout the park.
Photo: Tambako the Jaguar

5

Australia - Transitioning from Outback to tropics by train

Riding the Ghan makes for a three-day transcontinental train journey over the plains, deserts, and mountains of central Australia. The route starts either near the beaches of Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, or north in Darwin. In between, travelers get a sense of the continent's changing environment as they trundle to Alice Springs, from which a six-hour drive will bring them to Uluru (Ayers Rock). Near the top of the Northern Territory, travelers can stop at Katherine and spend a day at nearby Nitmiluk National Park, a tropical counterpoint to the arid Outback.
Photo: huskyte77

6

Europe - Touring the cultural centers of Central and Eastern Europe

Paris and Rome are beautiful, but there's more to Europe than taking the elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower and eating gelato at the Colosseum. Eastern Europe is home to castles, cathedrals, world-famous symphonies, modern art museums, and great beer, wine, and pastries. The cities of Berlin, Warsaw, Krakow, Prague, and Budapest are important cultural centers with citywide art and architecture dating back to the Renaissance. Charles Bridge in Prague has been standing since the 12th century, and Vienna’s city center is home to both Habsburg architecture and modern design.
Photo: Dimitry B

7

Antarctica - Setting foot on the 7th continent

Private tour groups have been visiting Antarctica since 1969. Today there are lots of choices among operators sending ships, planes, and helicopters to Antarctica between November and March (the summer season). Many trips start in Southern Argentina, and ship-bound journeys include on-board lectures and access to experts on the ecology of the Antarctic during the cruise. Passengers can kayak around icebergs, or spend a day watching penguins, seals, and whales off the coast.
Photo: Christopher.Michel

WHAT DO YOU LOOK FOR IN A TRAVEL STORY, and how do you achieve it?

These are the kinds of questions that Josh Johnson and I, along with industry-leading filmmakers, photographers, and writers, as well as notable wanderers-in-residence from the G Adventures community, will be addressing on Twitter on June 19th at noon EST.

We look forward to an in-depth discussion on:

• advice for beginning travel writers, bloggers, and visual storytellers
• how being a storyteller affects your experience as a traveler
• tech innovations for digital storytelling
• different disciplines, from longform to audio postcards, and where travel storytelling is heading in the future

We’ll be asking several questions, and look forward to your answers (as well as questions). This is your opportunity to directly engage Matador editorial and our extended community.

To participate, please begin checking the hashtag #gadvmatu at noon EST on June 19th. You can also follow Josh and me @joshywashington and @dahveed_miller. Look forward to chatting.

IN AN EFFORT to make flying trays less painful than throwing them Frisbee-style at customers, London-based YO! Sushi just started testing a hovering tray, which is powered by a multi-rotor’d drone and delivers their menu items to customers via the controls of a remote-control-programmed iPad…and can presumably also drop Elroy Jetson off at Little Dipper Academy.

It’s called the iTray, and — provided you can snatch your food off it — could revolutionize the miso soup-conveyance industry. And this isn’t the place’s first foray into mechanized serving methods, either — they’ve also got a robotic drink-serving busser and were the first restaurant in the UK to use conveyor belts to bring sushi to diners.

Things are looking more and more like the year 2062 every day! Provided you’re a piece of sashimi. Check it out in action here:

This post was written by Adam Lapetina and originally appeared under the title Talk about flying fish! A London resto is delivering sushi via a hovering drone at Thrillist, a Matador syndication partner.

Photo: Narith5

My father and I couldn’t be more different. He’s conservative and traditional, while I’m a creative “free spirit.” He introduces himself to everyone, and I’m more reserved. I yearn for faraway places, and he’s a homebody.

We share a certain stubbornness, which is what kept me from listening to his advice for so many years. In your teens, your father seems like someone whom you can’t relate to, who’s trying to cramp your style and social life. In your 20s, you start to understand where he’s coming from.

Some might call him a redneck, but I call him Dad. And his Southernisms / words of wisdom are always lingering in the back of my mind when I’m on the road — whether I choose to heed them or not.

1. “If you’re gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough.”

Think that last tequila shot is a good idea? Or drunk Skype-ing an ex? Or inhaling a late-night kebab from a dodgy stand? Or getting busy with a hostel employee? You definitely won’t think so in the morning. You might be in pain, but you’ve made your bed. Be responsible for your own decisions and don’t complain.

After I stupidly decided to go on an all-night binge in Munich, even though I knew I had to take a train early in the morning to Innsbruck, my dad’s words haunted me. All I wanted to do was crawl into bed and die, but I put myself in the situation. It was time to drink some Gatorade, eat some crackers, and suck it up for the train ride ahead.

2. “I’m not here to make friends every day.”

We all want to be liked, but sometimes you have to make the tough decisions that don’t make people happy. This is particularly true if you’re anyone’s boss or manager. You have to be the one who gets stuff done, not the guy who tells people what they want to hear.

It’s also true when you’re a solo traveler. Following along with a group of fellow travelers can be nice, but not if you’re missing out on what you really want to do.

During my year-long working holiday in Australia, I made friends early in a solo trip and ended up traveling with them for a month. It was nice to have a group, but I wasn’t doing what I enjoyed, like going to museums and seeing the sights, because they wanted to stay out all night and party. In the end, I decided to part ways in favor of the things I was fired up on, like touring the XXXX Brewery in Brisbane, and taking a scuba diving course in Cairns.

3. “It’s the right thing to do.”

There are some things we do not because we particularly want to, but out of duty. This includes going to family members’ funerals, helping people move, driving people to the airport, and sending flowers to a sick friend. It’s a quality that others will admire in you and that sets you apart. (At the same time, don’t be a pushover.)

If you see a fellow traveler who’s obviously lost or needs help, it’s important to look out for members of your tribe. Help them carry a bag or offer directions. We all need some good travel karma at some point. After a 15+ hour overnight bus to Toronto recently, a lovely Canadian couple gave me directions and their contact info, offering that I could call if I needed anything.

4. “Just because he’s nice doesn’t mean you need to date him.”

It’s taken me 24 years to understand this one. In my family, we use this statement to explain our emotions about nice guys we don’t have “the feeling” for. It’s easy to lead someone on because you like their personality, even though you aren’t attracted to them. We’ve also adapted this phrase to say, “Just because you love him doesn’t mean he’s the one.” Being in love with someone right now may not mean you’re going to spend your life together.

I got into the ultimate travel trap — falling for someone I met abroad. I had these grand visions of our vacation romance turning into something serious. And while it did for a while, it went on far longer than it needed to because I didn’t listen to my father’s advice.

5. “You can’t fix stupid.”

This one’s along the same lines of “bless your heart,” a very Southern, borderline condescending way of saying you’re not too smart. And while people can fix a lot of things about themselves, a lack of brains isn’t one of them.

There’s always going to be that person you meet on your travels who doesn’t listen. If a sign says “don’t press the red button,” they’ll be the first to press it. If the zookeeper tells you not to pet the baby seals, they’ll be the first to get their arm bitten off. One guy on my first European tour got so drunk on New Year’s Eve in Paris that he woke up outside the Louvre without his wallet or passport. See #1.

S377A of Singapore’s Penal Code states that:

Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or abets the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years.

Gary and Kenneth, a Singaporean gay couple together for 15 years, filed a constitutional challenge against Section 377A, which criminalises sex between gay men. On 9 April 2013, the High Court ruled against the couple and upheld the anti-gay law. Now, they are filing an appeal.

Gary and Kenneth have taken a brave step forward, and as a result have raised more than double the amount they were trying to raise to support their appeal, for a grand total of over $107,000. Anything on top of what they need to cover their legal expenses will be donated to the LGBTQ community.

Check out their story on IndieGoGo, and consider lending them your support — financial or otherwise.

Photo: martinak15

Wallace Stegner crept up on me, his name slipped into my hands at a dinner party. Perhaps it was a voracious appetite for new literature, or the vaguely familiar sound of his name, or the way my heart skipped a beat when the man next to me mentioned him, his blue eyes keenly fixed on mine with such an acute expression of wisdom and kindness that the moment was burned into my mind.

I don’t remember why exactly I went to the Berkeley Public Library and checked out every book available by Wallace Stegner. I just know that I did.

Curled up in an apartment devoid of furniture, I devoured All the Little Live Things, sped through a collection of essays, lay awake for hours listening to Angle of Repose on audio, and then there was Crossing to Safety. As the rain drummed down on my roof, sliding down the window panes, dripping in through the broken sliding glass door, I read by candlelight till my eyes stumbled over the sentence, “Anyone who reads…is to some extent a citizen of the world, and I had been a hungry reader all my life.”

The words entered my head like lightning splintering across billowing grey clouds, thunder reverberating against my skull. And then they lingered there. Those words, that line, became tangled in my ribcage, echoing a sentiment I had always been unable to articulate. At the age of 17, I threw a backpack and a box of books into the back of an old Chrysler LeBaron and spent the summer living in the Sierra Nevada. At the age of 19, I boarded a plane for Alaska. At 22, I moved to Germany and then to the West Bank and then to Switzerland and then France and then Israel.

There are so many reasons to which I could attribute my wanderlust. An insatiable curiosity, a love of adventure, a nomadic childhood, a restless spirit. But it wasn’t until I stumbled across Wallace Stegner’s words that I understood how deeply intertwined my love of books is with my love of the world.

Because it was not traveling that inspired my love of the world and the need to experience it. That inspiration, that love, pressed itself against my malleable heart the moment I learned to read. The same qualities that have made me a voracious reader have made me a natural traveler. The ability to lose yourself in another world, the empathy of something so wholly opposite of what you are, the desire to slip into another’s life and let their thoughts leave deep impressions. Ten years elapsed from the time I read Jack London to the time I set foot in Alaska, but the desire to press my fingers deep into the tundra, to hear the wolves howl, to feel the days stretch forward with too little light or too little darkness crept into my heart the moment I read about it.

The adventures of my adulthood started with a childhood full of books and stories, full of corners and tree limbs where a girl could escape for a few hours and transport herself to Japan, Victorian England, Damascus, the bow of a storm-tossed boat, or the edge of an isolated island. When I look back on my childhood, the memories of my favorite books are so wrapped up in my own experiences that it’s difficult to distinguish between the two.

I can see John Thornton and Buck as vividly as the teachers and friends that comprised my childhood, so many times did I imagine myself leaning over a dogsled, watching the muscles of the dogs bunching up under their heavy coats as we struggled forward into the biting ice of an Alaskan winter and the call of the wild.

When I first traveled, it was to set foot in the places that had become beloved to me through books. I longed to experience Jerusalem and Jakarta because I had already learned to love them. Growing up, I dreamt of Alaska, slept with novels under my pillow, memorized statistics, learned the vocabulary of a musher, held my imaginings close until I touched the tundra, knelt down alongside the glaciers, and let my thoughts rest on all of the novels and authors that had brought me there.

To find my own stories, I had to learn to see places through the words of others. I felt France through Victor Hugo, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Gustave Flaubert. In Germany, I reached for Hesse and Goethe. When I visited the UK, I only wanted to see where James Herriot had lived as a country vet, feel the disappointment and transformation of Elizabeth Bennet, recite Shakespeare’s glorified Saint Crispin’s Day speech and the life and battles of Henry V.

In Israel, pressed against the beige West Jerusalem stones, watching the market swirl around me and feeling S. Yizhar’s tumbling prose cascading over my thoughts, I felt the familiar disorienting sway of his works. Like jumping into the waves, lost in the lull of the ocean with only the vaguest notion of which way to swim. Once you learn to see a place through the lives of others, there is no going back.

There is no greater vulnerability than handing your heart over to another person, no greater vulnerability than placing yourself in a new world and temporarily submerging yourself in another’s perspective. There is no greater vehicle for travel than imagination, nothing so profound as the ability to connect.

I don’t have the words for how these authors shaped me, how they transformed a hunger for literature into a voracious appetite for life. Edward Abbey, Willa Cather, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Jack London shaped me and cultivated the instinct that Stegner articulated. You don’t have to leave home to be a citizen of the world. A ravenous appetite for new perspectives is all that’s required because it is not the act of traveling that shapes a traveler. It’s the insatiable curiosity, it’s the hunger.

Reading allows us to authentically experience things we can’t even begin to imagine. Those childhood stories are our first exercise in relatability, cultivating the natural curiosity and strengthening our humanity — that profoundly unique ability to imagine things we’ve never experienced. Sometimes when dusk falls, shadows slipping across the walls of my apartment, I feel an inexplicable nostalgia, a faint sadness at the impossibility of being able to see or experience all the things this world has to offer.

But curled up with Stegner’s words, I realized that reading assuages this sadness. Surrounded by my books, a thousand lifetimes are within my grasp.

Literature is our world’s collective experiences and reading — that blessed communication — enables us to connect ourselves across time and space. What was it like to be a Kyoto geisha at the turn of the century? What does it feel like to stand on the top of the world’s most dangerous mountain? To live in the Congo under Belgian rule? To be a missionary, an empress, a eunuch in the Forbidden City? What lies at the bottom of the ocean and what does it feel like to be shipwrecked? Literature allows us to experience things as they were and imagine things as they could be. It is the documentation of humanity and the cultivation of possibility.

When I am restless, listless, dull, and feeling boxed in, I run my fingers over the spines of my favorite books. When I can’t jump on a plane and expose my heart to new places, I climb a tree, breathe in the dusty sweet smell of a library book and when I come down, nothing is ever the same. When I am broken down and despairing over some inconsequential thing, I reach through the pages and find a kindred spirit, another hungry reader, one more citizen of the world.

That liberation bursts into the shadows of my mind, erupting like a field of red poppies in the Italian countryside, a field I had imagined a hundred times before I ever actually saw it. It’s liberating to know that when I get stuck, there is an immediate refuge. That I can be a citizen of the world, not just as it is, but as it was and as it will be.