Brazil was my most recent obsession. From 2013 to 2016 I lived in Brazil for a combined period of about two years, traveling through much of the world’s fifth-largest country. I started in Rio de Janeiro, relocated to the Amazon hub of Manaus, then migrated south to Curitiba to cover Brazil’s presidential election, and traveled through Uruguay and Argentina, where I climbed the Western Hemisphere’s highest summit, Mt. Aconcagua. In the first half of 2015 I lived a few months in Florianopolis, traveled along the old Estrada Real, and hiked some epic hikes and climbed some great climbs. The second half of 2015 and 2016, I was mostly in Rio de Janeiro leading up to the Summer Olympics.
In-between trips to Brazil, I did a lot of trekking back in New England. In August 2015, I nearly killed my mother during a 60th birthday outing on Mt. Washington. The previous summer, I did the full one-day 23-mile Presidential Traverse, months after marking New Year’s Eve in the Pemigewasset Wilderness (and a month earlier I’d given myself a weekend on New York’s Mt. Marcy for my birthday). I was introduced to the White Mountains in January 2013 by my former newspaper editor Steve Fagin during a winter’s overnight at Carter Notch, which got me so enthusiastic about the area that soon afterward I nearly died during a winter excursion on Mt. Jefferson.
Also in 2013, I hiked the 100-km Maclehose Trail across Hong Kong.
In May 2011, I spent two weeks in Peru, visiting my longtime friend Nate in Lima, dune-boarding in Huacachina, pisco-tasting in Ica, and trekking alone up to Machu Picchu in the Andes. I’m years overdue for a blog post about that trip.
In August 2009, I made a four-month overland journey across Asia, starting in Beijing. At Tiananmen Square I exchanged dirty glances with line-cutting Chinese tourists so that I could see Mao’s pickled body. Rode a train to Shanghai and walked The Bund, and then, surviving on dried noodles and MSG-flavored peanuts, rode another train southwest to the cobblestone streets of Lijiang and Shangri-La, the dirt trails of Tiger Leaping Gorge, and finally to the soldier-lined streets of Lhasa and high altitude of Mount Everest Base Camp. By late September I had arrived in Kathmandu, then trekking west through the Annapurna range of Nepal’s Himalayas before heading south by bus into India. Starting in Varanasi, I trained west to Delhi and the nearby Taj Mahal before doing a roundabout through Rajasthan’s colorful cities and towering citadels. This included a painful three-day camel ride through the Thar Desert. From Mumbai, where I had a brief stint as a Bollywood actor, I flew up the Red Sea (bypassing Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran) and into Beirut. Hitchiked through Lebanon and ate my way through Syria. Took a taxi into Iraq in late November, and then another taxi north into Turkey for the last leg of this four-month Asian adventure.
In past years, more memorably… I pedaled a red bicycle across the continent of North America; got lost jogging in the suburbs of Kiev, Ukraine; hitchhiked from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, to the ancient Mayan ruins of Tikal in northern Guatemala; received scarring sunburns while attempting to surf the waves of Mexico’s Pacific coast; backpacked through the Balkans and spent the night in a park in Sarajevo; bussed around Cambodia, from the Wild West of Koh Kong to the contested northern border temple of Preah Vihear; and rode by train from the mountains of northern Vietnam to the sweltering marshes of the Mekong Delta.
