The Backpacking Boomers

We feel like contestants on the Amazing Race as we run through the train station in Takayama trying to find the platform for our train....

It’s said Lord Brahma created Pushkar’s sacred lake by dropping a lotus flower into the middle of India’s Thar desert not long after the...

Looking for the road less travelled? Then ditch the rolling suitcase and sideline the expedition pack. Unless you’re in the personal...

The cow has discerning taste. Ignoring a selection of colourful scarves, carved trinkets and jewelry, it homes in on a bag of potato...

Relax, don't hold on so tight, my camel handler advises me. Easier said than done. I’m white-knuckled and stiff as a board; gravity is...

Indescribable is rarely a genuine descriptor; unless you’re taking about India’s most holy of cities—Varanasi. Nothing matches the...

My husband has been scrolling through websites for what seems like hours, searching for the right tour company to make our dream a...

I'm halfway through my trek and completely out of breath when I see it for the first time—The Tiger's Nest. Clinging to a cliff side 800...

I’m wearing every last bit of clothing I packed, and yet, the dampness seeps through, chilling me to the bone. But the Wings of Tatev...

Hulking, rusting ships, part of a former fishing fleet, lie incongruously in their desert graveyard. We're in Moynaq, Uzbekistan, once a...

The friendly baker next door shouts ¡Hola, amigos! as we leave our apartment each day. Four weeks into our stay in Centro Havana, we feel...

Jostling for space, we peer through the window of a grocery store in Havana, Cuba. Seeing large containers of water we join the growing...

It doesn’t sink in until we see that our fellow travellers are wearing Tyvek suits, gloves, masks and face shields—we have waited too...

Azerbaijan’s Baku International Bus Terminal, a massive multi-complex packed with stores, is more labyrinth than transit hub. The ticket...

It's 7am, and we're waiting outside the Toro Toro National Park offices in a town of the same name. There are more guides than tourists...

My heart is racing. It's day two of our trip and already I've lost two daughters and a son-in-law. When planning our trip to Tunisia, I...

Baku is lush, verdant, green — and surrounded by desert. Home to 4 million people and a forest of giant trees set amid manicured lawns,...

It's festival time and the small Indian town of Deshnok in Rajasthan, India is awash in colour as pilgrims, dressed in their finest saris...

Our oldest daughter, Shannon, is skeptical as she scans tour agency reviews. “This one is a no-go,” she says. “The driver got drunk,...

Monsoon rains beat on our roof and flood the streets of Rurrenabaque, a tiny town considered to be the gateway to Bolivia’s rain forest....