It’s a dreary Sunday afternoon and the clouds hang low over East Oakland, a neighbourhood that feels worn almost to the bone. Faded Queen Anne homes lean over the street with peeling paint and boarded windows. Weeds poke out of every pavement crevice, and chained guard dogs bark from behind rusted cross-hatched fences. Cars with cardboard “FOR SALE” signs seem frozen in time, and prostitutes line up down the street, approached by black SUVs with tinted windows. Tucked between

Standing on the beachfront of the Salton Sea, the horizon vanishes. The sky fades into the water so perfectly the boundary between them dissolves. As hard as I squint, there is no clear line, just a hazy expanse where sky and sea become one, its edges only discernible by barren mountains with precipices as sharp as razor edges. Bombay Beach feels like a mirage. And in a way, that’s exactly what it is. We tried to build paradise in the desert, and Mother Nature turned it into

The Eastern European village house can tell a strange story. In parts of rural Romania, the biggest houses are not always the fullest. You notice them soon enough once the road leaves Bucharest behind. A lane of modest homes gives way to one with a taller roof, heavier gates, an extra floor that seems slightly too ambitious for the road it sits on. Some are immaculate. Others look almost finished, as if waiting for one more season of earnings. At first glance, they suggest pr

On Viti Levu, it is easy to begin with the utopian version of Fiji. The coast near Nadi gives you exactly what you thought you were coming for: palm trees, sandy lagoons and water so still it seems to behave itself. It is beautiful. It is also a very controlled kind of beauty. That is why Viti Levu is such a good place to write this story from. The island gives you the familiar Fiji first, if you want it. I did some snorkelling before spending more time around Suva, and it wa

It does not take long in Sarajevo to notice that coffee occupies a larger place in the day than it does in Britain. People sit over it for long stretches without appearing to be in any hurry to finish. The drink itself matters, certainly, but what seems to matter more is the space built around it. After a few days in the city, and after enough afternoons spent in cafés off the main routes as well as in the centre, I began to think that Bosnian coffee was worth paying attentio

An eager Mormon welcome by Bishop Wynn and Elder Parker. Costa Mesa, CA, 01/2026 For most, Genesis is a story about creation. Elder Parker thinks of it as a story about beginnings that don’t yet make sense. “Sometimes, the beginning is unclear,” he enthusiastically tells his Sunday School class that morning. “Before light, before order, there’s a lot of confusion.” It is the first Sunday School of the year at Costa Mesa Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which Parke

Witches Market, La Paz La Paz does not really do gentle introductions. It arrives all at once. Altitude in the lungs. Minibuses barking routes. Women in bowler hats moving with the kind of balance and speed that makes everyone else look theatrical. And tucked into the city’s steep, crowded arteries is one of its most photographed and most misunderstood places: the Witches’ Market. The Witches’ Market is a good example of a place vulnerable to lazy reporting. It is one of the

In Bamako, it is possible to forget, briefly, what Mali has become in headlines. The country today is shaped by a single, stubborn idea: we will not be managed from elsewhere . You hear it in official language about sovereignty and dignity. You feel it in the country’s sharp turn away from French influence, the closing of political space, and the re-wiring of alliances across the Sahel. It shows up in small, daily signals, not just geopolitics. French is still the language o

Yangon, July 2024 In July 2024, Myanmar felt compressed. Not geographically, but politically. Beyond Yangon, leaving the city required prior approval and an escort. The distance between places was measured in permissions, not miles, and restrictions could shift by township without warning. I felt imprisoned inside of Yangon. By November 2025, the pressure had shifted. The country felt markedly different. Not free, but movement beyond Yangon no longer required an escort, openi

Xiang Fei: a femme de fatale who has become the genesis story of Xinjiang as a prefecture region of China. Portrait of Xiang Fei Kashgar, China, a popular tourist attraction, is 香妃墓 Xiang Fei Mu- a mausoleum of the first Uyghur concubine to China. My Uyghur tour guide informed me in her perfectly punctuated Mandarin. That is based on a popular Chinese legend, a Muslim, Uyghur concubine named Ipharhan wooed the emperor 2,700 miles away in Beijing, with her sweet-smelling fra

Globally, pigeons, like politics can be derisive. Labelled as an urban pest or rats of the sky the poor fellas are usually given a bad rep. Or, at best, they are a traditional delicacy. Processing my dissent away from the Gen Z focus on short-term gratification; in pigeon I found not love in a hopeless place, as Rihanna says, but solace. Uyghur men buying pigeons at a bazaar in Kashgar. Kashgar, China, is an ancient city embedded in the history of the Silk Road- pigeons are

Coron Islands- a sunny paradise with a World War 2 wreck, stunning limestone cliffs and fresh/ salt water lakes. Every year it attracts lovebirds, scuba divers, gappy's. Equipped with GoPros, diving equipment, and snorkels. Tourism is the main industry for the locals. The local economy relies on agriculture, fisheries, and the cash crops of rice, corn, and coconut. The Tagbanwa tribe, stand out. Tagbanwa tribe member working at her convenience store. Research suggests that

In Xinjiang, where life is cheap but love is costly, queer Uyghurs navigate between tradition and expression, finding resilience in borrowed language and stolen moments of authenticity. Photograph of a cigarette statue on the way to Tianshan Mountains. Uyghur culture is traditional. Infused with Silk Road heritage, Islamic influences and arranged marriages, the culture is distinct. Social responsibility and kinship ties are important. Initially, my Uyghur friends agreed to ta

In the early 1990s, as the Soviet Union collapsed, 2 million ethnic Russians left Kazakhstan for the newly formed Russian Federation. Yet three decades later, Russian influence remains deeply ingrained in the country’s language and institutions. Russian is still more widely spoken than Kazakh in urban centres, and Russian Orthodox churches in every city centre would make you think you are in Russia. This lingering presence is not just cultural - it is political. Since Russia’

On a first visit to Skid Row, chaos is the easiest thing to see. Tents crowd the sidewalks, music spills into the street, people move in every direction at once. But for the residents here, the chaos has a rhythm. A colourfully-dressed Native American man balances his phone in the basket of a well-loved bike, cycling off to the next street corner, already knowing who he’ll find there. A group of trans women burn an old tyre for a makeshift fire, quietly talking about how they