Reflections on the Road

A traveling photographer's blog about the world around us, and within us.

Looking Across Asia From The Great Wall Of China

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Fifteen years ago today, I sat on the Great Wall of China and pondered the journey I was setting out upon — 61 weeks by land across Asia, from China to Turkey. To commemorate the anniversary, I post the following excerpt from my unpublished manuscript about the journey:   Sitting alone on the Great Wall […]

October 20, 1918: The Last Day Of Forrest Hayden’s Life

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It is hard to relate to things that happened a century ago, even though they very much shape our societies today. The present, not that which precedes our birth, presses against us and feels alive. For Forrest Hayden of Kentucky, whose grave is seen in the above photo, the year 1918 surely started out feeling […]

Visiting the John McCain monument in Hanoi, Vietnam

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The monument is easy to miss, and not only because it’s small. Tourist trails laid out by guidebooks are more likely to lead you to other places in Hanoi: around Hoan Kiem Lake, through the picturesque Old Quarter, or to the Temple of Literature. They’re less likely to lead you to John McCain. And understandably. […]

The Role Children Play In Connecting People

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A historian could talk for weeks about the Turkish city of Mardin, located in the country’s southeastern corner not far from the Tigris River. But in this post, I only want to say a word about one of its more recent inhabitants. Her name is Reyyan, and when we met in 2017, she was three […]

Thoughts On How To Use Ballistic Missiles

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In a more perfect world, more countries would have ballistic missiles, but they’d only use them to send meaningful messages written on biodegradable confetti paper to the population of other nations. So, for example, on Eid al-Adha, Saudi Arabia might fire one at Dearborn, Michigan with a bunch of messages that say things like, “May […]

The Most Pro-American Country In The World: Kosovo

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From 1998 to 1999, war raged in Kosovo, and 13,000 people, most of them ethnic Albanians, were killed. Thousands were raped, and well over a million displaced from their homes. In response, President Bill Clinton led the NATO airstrikes that targeted Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic’s military, bringing an end to the conflict. The above is a […]

Before Disembarking, They Gave Me Chicken, Bread, And Cheese

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Out the window, on the train traveling from Luxor to Cairo, civilization looked tired. Palm trees were brown with dust, and litter floated in canals. Crosses and crescents rose above neighborhoods of broken, mud-brick walls, and it was impossible not to think of the tension between Christianity and Islam here. Donkeys trod past machines in […]