by Charles and Nita Swartz, Las Cruces, NM

My wife, Nita, had always wanted to visit the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. We searched for tours of those countries but never found one that visited all of the places in which we were interested.

A mathematician friend of mine does joint work with a colleague at the at University of Tartu in Estonia, so I asked him if he knew of any travel agencies there. His friend recommended Hansa Travel in Tallinn, and what a...

by Jim Sill, Silverado, CA

My self-guided, 7-week summer journey to East Africa was a search for my origins. Since we each are the result of our personal and collective experiences, on this trip I wanted to live life as it is now and as it might have been 10,000 years ago on the continent where Homo sapiens originated.

My itinerary included places and activities that would uniquely weave the past into the present. There was Tofo, a ’60s time warp in southern Mozambique where I...

by Teresa O'Kane, San Jose, CA

In Koh Chang, Thailand, we met an 18-year-old Canadian girl who told my husband, Scott, and me about the Tiger Temple outside Kanchanaburi. “You can touch tigers!” she said.

So we took a ferry to a bus to a third-class train to a second-class bus, then a motorcycle with sidecar to Kanchanaburi. It only took two days to get there!

A laid-back start

The opportunities to touch tigers at the temple started in the afternoon when the...