UNESCO has called the Mogao Caves the “largest, most richly endowed and longest-used treasure house of Buddhist art” in the world. The caves are located outside Dunhuang, an oasis city in northwest China at the edge of the Gobi Desert in Gansu province. Filled with vivid murals and statues depicting Buddha and Buddhist paradise, as…
In the Swiss alpine village of Lauterbrunnen, the snow-capped peaks of Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau rise dramatically above the Lauterbrunnen Valley. And depending on the lunar cycle, the towering, jagged peaks can cradle a bright full moon, as they did during my summer visit. Mountains in Switzerland’s Jungfrau Region are reachable via hiking trails and…
Seven-year-old Goku Alexander stood on one leg, like a stork, raising his right knee to waist level. His gloved fists hovered just above his eyes as he peered intently at his taller opponent, a Thai boy named Pingkong. Anticipating one another’s every move, the pair began cautiously, trading light jabs. Then Pingkong, in blue trunks,…
On the eve of America’s 250th birthday, this country can sometimes feel like it is coming apart at the seams. Voices shout past each other to beg the question whether this grand experiment in democracy can hold. So, in the spirit of both escape and inquiry, I decided to step into a time machine and…
February 22 was a beautiful Sunday morning for our drive around Lake Patzcuaro in the Mexican state of Michoacán. But just as my three friends and I exited our rental car in Erongaricuaro, one of many artisan towns ringing the lake, we heard a loud boom just on the other side of a stone wall.…
You’ll probably eat miso on a trip to Japan, but what if you could also learn how to make the fermented soybean paste? What insight might you gain into wabi-sabi, the Japanese appreciation for the imperfection and impermanence of life, if you learned how to restore broken ceramics using a centuries-old technique called kintsugi? Not only do these experiences afford deep dives into Japanese culture, but they also provide personal connections to the history, techniques, and philosophy behind centuries of Japanese crafts and cuisine.
By Kerrick James America’s greatest writer, Samuel Clemens, who wrote under the pen name Mark Twain, grew up on the western shore of North America’s greatest river, the mighty Mississippi. Abraham Lincoln called it the Father of Waters. I prefer to think of this wide, muscular river as America’s Nile, since it drains 1,125 million…
By Christine Loomis Jason Younis y Delgado, fifth-generation tinsmith, sits at a table off the sunbaked plazuela of Casa San Ysidro in Corrales, New Mexico. The Casa is part of an historic adobe complex affiliated with the Albuquerque Museum. Surrounded by pieces of tin and rows of tools, he’s fabricating traditional tin works to sell…
By Heide Brandes The clerk at the tiny convenience store on Rua de Santa Maria in Madeira’s capital city of Funchal sized up the two American women browsing for bottled water. “Are you visiting? Have you had poncha yet?” Something in his enthusiasm demanded that honesty be abandoned. Even if you have tried poncha already,…
By Teresa Bergen The crowd of over 500 wellness and medical professionals from around the world pack the opulent new Mandarin Oriental in Downtown Dubai as Katherine Johnston, senior research fellow at the nonprofit Global Wellness Institute, takes the stage. She is calm and self-assured, the sort of person who seems trustworthy with reams of…