AFAR

That’s the question we asked readers in AFAR’s Travel Happiness Survey, presented by the Aruba Tourism Authority. After reading more than 15,000 happy memories, we selected a handful to turn into illustrated videos. Here are a few highlights from eac

THIS FALL I’M bringing my family to New York with me on a business trip; in the winter we’ll spend a month in France while I’m on sabbatical; and next spring we’ll all head to Japan to visit friends. As a parent, I’m so privileged to be able to trave

Spas and golf courses? You bet. But that’s just the beginning of an unforgettable trip to Scottsdale. This bustling city in the Arizona desert serves up fascinating museums, natural beauty, delicious cuisine, and more—and it makes for an ideal travel

THE GOBI DESERT of southern Mongolia is a land of extreme temperatures and never-ending horizons. Its people are independent and self-sufficient. So are their horses. I hadn’t been horseback riding in years, and never on a Mongolian horse, but I was

Azamara “Country-Intensive Voyages” dock at multiple ports in one country, allowing passengers to get to know Israel, France, Croatia, and other Mediterranean lands intimately. Holland America Line Every HAL itinerary includes stops to gape at glacie

Shipwreck Lodge The 10 en suite cabins at this ecofriendly lodge in Namibia are designed to mimic wooden ships. Each guest room looks out on the Atlantic to the west and the Skeleton Coast National Park’s expansive dunes to the east. JW Marriott Scot

Shannon Stowell has sipped tea with locals in Kurdistan, floated in swimming holes in Brazil, and tracked tigers in India. And as CEO of the Adventure Travel Trade Association—an international network of tour operators, travel agents, tourism boards,

San Francisco International Airport (SFO) Travelers can reduce stress by meditating in the Berman Reflection Room or, if flights are delayed, communing with LiLou, the world’s first certified airport therapy pig. Delta Air Lines The Atlanta-based air

Don’t wait for the New Year to resolve to get more out of your trips: Make it happen now with Context Travel, an AFAR partner. The company’s guides—true experts in their fields (think architects and chefs)—will lead you on a journey through your dest

When Hurricane Maria blasted Puerto Rico in September 2017 with 155 mph winds and scouring rain, San Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto hunkered down with 1,000 refugees in the Roberto Clemente Coliseum sports arena. As days passed, she organized cots

The first time Kristine McDivitt Tompkins saw Patagonia, she felt like she had found her place. “I have a visceral connection to that landscape that is undeniable,” she says. “The wildness, vast open spaces, and wildlife lodged themselves in my heart

Rudi Schreiner and Kristin Karst spent their honeymoon on the 28-passenger Zambezi Queen, one of the most luxurious vessels to ply the scenic, hippo- and croc-filled waters of Botswana’s Chobe River. “We fell in love with it,” Karst recalls. They wer

Not long after he joined Alaska Airlines in 2004, Ben Minicucci, now its president and chief operating officer, stood with a cluster of fellow passengers at a baggage claim carousel. As the wait for their luggage stretched past 20 minutes, he listene

AFAR’s Travel Tales program is celebrating the inspirational power of transformative travel stories. We dug into the AFAR archives to curate a collection of our most boundless stories, then asked our contributing writers to share those stories live o

For this year’s Dream Trips issue, we went big. As big as the whole, wide world. We sought out the most over-the-top, once-in-a-lifetime journeys we could find on each continent and sent our editors out to experience them all. The good news is that e

AS I A DJUST my snorkeling mask and take in the jagged cliffs of dark red lava rock looming high above me on Santiago Island—a place Charles Darwin described as “altogether both picturesque and curious” during his 1835 visit to the Galápagos Islands—

A FEW YEARS ago, I was researching jungle trips when I came across a photo that looked to me like pure adventure. It showed a young woman in hiking boots and utility shorts standing in a shallow creek, surrounded by rain forest. Her hair was in a loo

I STEPPED INTO the dim foyer of Hiakai, the restaurant owned by Monique Fiso, one of New Zealand’s most buzzed about chefs, and took a moment to fix myself up. A day spent wandering “Windy Wellington” hadn’t done my hair any favors, and I was jet-lag

Some of the Park Hyatt New York’s luxurious specialty suites include unique amenities like: ● Partial views of Central Park or Carnegie Hall● 350 museum-quality pieces of curated artwork● Custom Yabu Pushelberg furnishings● Private terraces● Airport

IT HAPPENED IN the middle of the vast savanna of Kenya’s Maasai Mara. I was sitting on a portable stool in the shade of an acacia tree, eating breakfast with Nelson, my Maasai guide, and Peter, the safari director from Micato Safaris, who was traveli

THE DIN OF Venice’s Santa Lucia station surrounded me as I clung to a card with my cabin assignment: D8. Amid the faint aroma of espresso mixed with exhaust, I looked at the other passengers on the platform. A man in a trench coat chatted loudly to h

Bringing inspirational stories of wanderlust to life: That was the goal of our Travel Tales storytelling event series. Guests were treated to tales of life-changing trips from some of AFAR’s best writers and photographers, presented by the Marriott B

“LUNCH?” OUR GUIDE casually suggested. Normally I’m not one to decline food, but the locale, a fist of granite 8,000 feet in the sky, with vertiginous drops in every direction, had subdued my appetite. The helicopter that brought us here had barely d

IT WAS WHEN THE BLUE BOWL fell and broke that a desire to revisit Uzbekistan swept over me in a sudden tremor of remembered colors and patterns. The bowl, made from fragile, salty clay by the masters of Khorezm, a historic pottery center in western U

FOR MOST PEOPLE, Jordan conjures images of the Dead Sea or the colossal sandstone ruins of Petra. But not for me. I have absolutely no images and no ability to seek them out. In my mind’s eye, my flight to Amman was carrying me to a blank slate. As w

I started skiing at five years old. When my twin sisters turned five, they did too. The playtime that began in New Hampshire’s White Mountains gradually migrated west to slopes in Wyoming and California. As we moved into adulthood, we realized that i