This Paradise on Earth just Stole the Number 1 Spot on my Bucket List

These must be photoshopped, I thought, when I first laid my eyes on the waves of silky sand and perfect patterns of turquoise blue. Turns out, you should never underestimate the beauty planet Earth is capable of. No mirage in the desert, this is the Lençóis Maranhenses National Park in northeast Brazil, a name which so…

Tehran’s Desert Ghost Towers look like a Zombie Movie Waiting to Happen

They look as if they’ve risen out of the desert itself in some strange, dystopian world. There are no trees, no cars, no bus stops, no parks, no playgrounds, no people. Just the towers. In a barren landscape 50km outside of Iran’s capital city, the Mehra Mer project in Pardis has been “under construction” for many years…

The Secret NYC Gallery that brought Picasso & the Avant-garde to America

Did they ever tell you about the nice Jersey boy who brought Modern Art to America’s shores? It wasn’t a Rockefeller, or a Guggenheim – just a kid from Hoboken, New Jersey with an eye for talent. Behind the doors of a little 5th floor attic-level apartment on 291 Fifth Avenue, he displayed raunchy Rodins,…

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Greetings from Hicksville, California: Trailer Trash Chic & Ghostly Wild West Playtowns

I‘m writing this e-postcard to you from my little Pioneer trailer with 1950s cowboy curtains and I’m having the time of my life. Wish you were here! ↑ That’s me doing my best impression of trailer trash chic. Okay so I haven’t exactly traded in Paris for life in a trailer park, but we did book a room…

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The Most Exclusive US College that You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

What if I told you there was an elite college as exclusive as Harvard and as remote as the North Pole? That it consistently tops Harvard’s yield rate and evades suspicions of being a cult, that it requires its students to engage in 20 hours of manual labor per week and doesn’t let them leave…

A 1920s Road Trip through Death Valley

Exactly 92 years ago, a group of young friends took a road trip to Death Valley in 1926. The photo album, with detailed captions, a written record in the form of diary entries, ended up in the California archives for me to find all these years later. The identity of the diarist and the photographer are unknown.…

Meet the Nomadic Berber Rock Band Who Plays the Desert Blues

They’ve played at Glastonbury and Coachella and brought down the house at New Orleans’ legendary House of Blues. Bob Dylan, Coldplay and Carlos Santana are fans and in 2012, this nomadic group of Tuareg musicians from the Sahara Desert region of northern Mali went to Hollywood to pick up their first Grammy award for Best…

The Abandoned Secret Cinema of the Sinai Desert

As if the auditorium had risen from the sands of the Sinai itself, an abandoned cinema lies in waiting for an audience that never came. A movie-worthy mirage, you’d be easily forgiven for not trusting your eyes upon stumbling such a surreal sight in the heat of the dusty Egyptian desert. This extraordinary outdoor cinema was…

He Spent 20 Years in the Desert Carving a Village of Dolls

Welcome to Possum Trot, California. Human population: 2. Doll population: 80. For decades, its human residents were Calvin Black and his wife Ruby, who moved out to the Mojave Desert in 1953, bought some land off of Ghost town rd. (an actual road that still exists), and proclaimed it “Possum Trot.” Over the course of…

The Disappearing Small Town Shops of Karoo

I‘ve been discovering the Karoo through oil paintings on canvas today. The Karoo is a bit like South Africa’s answer to the Mojave. Both became deserts at the end of the last ice age, and from the looks of it, both would make great road trips. What I wouldn’t do to be in the passenger seat…