In an effort to bring you some new voices on Ottsworld, here is a guest post from Shelley and Lars. I ‘met’ Shelley when she sent me a message on social media and mentioned that they were stuck in South Africa during the pandemic and ended up having a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I asked her to […]
We had been driving for about 4 hours when we turned off the bumpy road onto the flat expanse of the Sahara Desert in Morocco. You could see for miles. There were no roads, just a few tire tracks and a bunch of signs sticking in the sand advertising various hotels that were nowhere to […]
I picked up the thin, nearly translucent shaving from the ground. It looked like a shaving of a fingernail. I examined it closely. I slowly did a rough calculation in my head. This little, tiny rhino horn shaving, no bigger than a dime, is probably worth $150. It’s hard to wrap your head around it […]
I was on my knees, trying to get as low as I could possibly go and still remain safely in the vehicle. Every time one of the lions turned and looked at me right in the eyes, my heart skipped a beat. It’s an eerie feeling when you lock eyes with a lion. I put […]
The safari jeep pulled away and we were all just standing there. On the ground. With no transportation. My heart raced. I quickly realized I had a whole different perspective doing a walking safari. I suddenly felt what it was like to be an animal living in this tall grass – wondering what predator was […]
“This is Zululand, not Disneyland. You can’t book animals to show up,” our safari guide Christian reminded us. Granted, he had sort of taunted us because on the first game drive we went on he asked what we hoped to see; we said giraffes and he delivered about 40 giraffes to our view in front […]
The sun dips down in the sky disappearing into the Atlantic Ocean. I seldom have watched a sunset so intently; waiting, waiting, waiting for that last little sliver to disappear. So much rested on that last sliver. My gaze moved from the sliver of sun to the restaurant around me. Families and couples sat at […]
“No need to cry – the mountain isn’t going anywhere – you can try again.” That statement made by my Kilimanjaro guide, Douglas, has stuck with me for 17 years. In a way, it’s actually haunted me. I started my career break and eventual life of nomadic travel writer 17 years ago when I flew […]
I’ve been talking and writing a lot about career breaks lately, which has coincidently got me thinking about the original career break I took in 2006. When I left my job and flew to Africa to climb Kilimanjaro, I had high hopes of summiting and starting off my year of travels on a successful note. […]
Just like churches dominate the European landscape, Mosques take the honor in the Middle East. During my travels in the Middle East this winter I had the chance to visit a few and photograph some of them. I was rarely let inside the mosques to do photography, but when I was it was a special […]
