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Travel Writing

Most recently, Karen's travel writing has appeared in the National Geographic book Journeys of a Lifetime: 500 of the World's Greatest Trips, as well as the following magazines and Internet travel publications: Scouting, Gorp.com, Away.com, Texas Journey, New Mexico Journey, Alabama Journey, Westways, Vox Hamptons, France Guide, ExploreEpic.com, and others. For more, see the list at the right. For my adventure and outdoors writing, please visit HikerWriter.com. Or, please enjoy some of my favorite stories, reprinted below.

Islands_for_web.jpgOn first glance, Chumbe Island doesn’t look like the kind of place you’d make a special effort to get to. Only about a half mile long and 200 yards wide, this forested dot of fossilized coral rock sits in the channel that separates the island of Zanzibar from mainland Tanzania. For most of its history Chumbe has been ignored: The only visitors have been fishermen, the only human inhabitants a lighthouse keeper. But sometimes the appeal lies beneath the surface, or as in this case, beneath the sea. Look underwater at Chumbe (pronounced CHUM-bay) Island, and you might feel like you’ve wandered into The Wizard of Oz precisely at the moment when the world turns from black-and-white to color...

...from "Guardian of the Reef," published by Islands Magazine. Read more.

Ng_for_website.jpgI’m looking at an action comic strip from the 11th century depicting a flotilla sailing across a sea to war. My eyes wander the 72 frames embroidered on a piece of linen 231 feet long and 20 inches high, each one illustrating part of the story: A promise, a betrayal, a battle for a kingdom. I’m in Bayeux, a town in Normandy and the linen is the Bayeux Tapestry, one of the most important relics from medieval Europe. If you have a mental picture of a Norman town, Bayeux would be it: half-timbered houses, cobbled streets, and a cathedral that seems too big for a population of 1,500 souls. (Unlike many towns here, Bayeux was not bombed in World War II.) The hotel I'm in completes the picture: The three-star Lion d'Or dates to the 18th century...

...from "A Town of Two Tales," published by National Geographic Traveler. Read more.

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The GR-5 enters Wallonie near the city of Maastricht. This is an internal border, so of course, there's no customs station on the bridge across the canal; nonetheless, it has the feel of an international frontier. On one side of the border, Flemish is spoken; on the other, French; the change is sudden, complete, and clear. Later, at a bar, I fall into conversation with a local citizen. "What," I wonder, "happens when the neighbor on one side of the border is Flemish and the neighbor next door on the other side of the border is French." "They wouldn't talk to each other," he assures me.

...from "A Toast to Belgium," published by TravelClassics.com. Read more.

T_and_l_cover_f.jpg"Leo ni..." asks Mr. Farouk. "Leo ni jumapili," we recite. Today is Monday. Day, date, year, place: Slowly, laboriously, we assemble words and numbers to place ourselves in the space-time continuum: We are on the continent of Africa in the current millennium. When we get it right, Mr. Farouk beams, the laugh lines around his eyes creasing upwards to his fez. My husband and I are enrolled in a one-month course at Zanzibar's Institute for Swahili and Foreign Languages...Dan, a historian, is learning Swahili because he plans to visit remote archaeological sites where people are unlikely to speak English. I'm tagging along because I like the idea of saying I speak Swahili. We've been told it's an easy language.

...from "Witch Doctors, Rambutans, and What News of Waking Up?" published by Virtuoso's Travel+Life. Read more.