You’re familiar with Purdue and Princeton. You know about Penn State and Pitt. But are you aware of Poupon U? It’s a small culinary institute in Middleton, six miles outside Madison, WI. You won’t find it on U.S. News & World Report’s Best College Rankings but, rest assured, all its students can cut the mustard. At the center of Poupon U sits the Mustard Museum, a repository of more than 6,300 different mustards.
North of the market town of Ubud, Bali’s tourist resorts and handicraft markets give way to small villages like Trunyan, pop. 300, that belong to a mountain people called the Bali Aga. Unlike Balinese Hindus elsewhere, the Bali Aga do not memorialize the dead with elaborate cremations. Instead, they place their deceased kinsmen beneath a large tree and let nature reclaim the bodies. In my imagination, Trunyan seemed both dreadful and exotic at the same time.
By David DeVoss We live in a disconnected age where colors define politics and words like “rural” and “urban” are used to describe who we are. For children of big city parents the estrangement can be particularly acute. Just ask a 10-year old where food comes from. Chances are he’ll look perplexed, then slowly recover…
Travelers on the Mayan Trail often visit Copán in Honduras, Chichén Itzá in Mexico’s Yucatan and Caracol in Belize. If you want to meet today’s Maya, however, head for Chichicastenango on market days.
By David DeVoss Covid-19. Shuttered bars and restaurants. Urban lockdowns. Mask fatigue. Curfews. Canceled holiday gatherings. Want to get away? Well, why not? There’s never been a better time to travel. Like anything, there are risks and benefits to global travel during a pandemic. There are bargains everywhere you look. Want to fly from New…
By David DeVoss When California architect Robert Steinberg opened an office in Shanghai twelve years ago, he felt as if he had arrived at the leading edge of the Chinese Century. Unlike America, where architects were being laid off and signature buildings scaled back, the biggest city in the world’s most populous country was developing…
By David DeVoss Politicians and public health officials tell us we’re all in this together and perhaps we were initially. But then they closed the bars. Next went theaters, churches and entertainment venues. Today, most restaurants are shuttered except for a table by the front door where customers retrieve take away orders. People still can…
By: David DeVoss “In the Arctic half-light of the canyon all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and sounds of the Big Blackfoot River, a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.” The moment I read…
Just south of Tajikistan and west of the highway running from Dushanbe down to Kabul sits the tidy Afghan city of Kishem. More than 60,000 people live in the Kishem Valley and once every week nearly all of them walk or ride donkeys into town for provisions. During warmer months sidewalks fill with vendors selling everything from fruit to nuts.
Afghanistan’s 35.5 million people live in a country about the size of Texas. It’s an arid and mountainous place filled with remote mountain valleys accessible only by foot or donkey.