Everything about travel - from city guides to original shows

A literary pilgrimage: In search of Janet Frame’s New Zealand

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IN THE WEEKS before I flew to New Zealand, I was having a hard time explaining the reason for my trip, which had nothing to do with backpacking, surfing, hobbits, or sheep.I was going to trace the life of one of my literary heroes, Janet Frame, who is perhaps New Zealand’s greatest writer. Her inspirational story was recounted first in her masterful autobiography, and then in the moving film adaptation An Angel at My Table by another extraordinary Kiwi artist, director Jane Campion.

On healthcare as an inalienable human right: One doctor’s story from Haiti

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You might be a 20th century slave owner — take this quiz to find out

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How to settle down without losing the traveler’s ‘joie de vivre’

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Notes from the night train

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Relentless pursuit of a dream: A conversation with an almost-Olympian

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Here’s the music people are rocking in Latin America

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Carlos Reyes has been blogging since he was 14. Exactly two years after his family migrated from Mexico to Phoenix, Arizona. There’s nothing coincidental about this — coming to America was an exercise in profound dislocation and loneliness. Blogging was his way forward.Club Fonograma, the music site he founded six years ago, has become a digital mecca for Latino hipsters, Anglo hispanophiles, and music lovers.

Watch these elephants rock out to piano jazz

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I DON’T KNOW how people think animals aren’t smart, or that they can’t ‘feel’ emotions — these elephants exude nothing less than sheer joy as pianist Paul Barton plays, “12 Bar Blues,” during a trip to the Elephantstay nature park in Thailand. Elephants have been documented while painting, dancing, even learning a new language, but I’ve never seen them jam out like this, bobbing their heads, swinging their tails, even smashing their trunk on the keys to play along.

Top 20 most expensive cities in the world to live…and why

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When trying to figure out where in the world to live — or visit — it can be helpful to consult a cost of living index like Expatistan. A collection of submitted data by residents and natives, it lists the costs for basic necessities in cities around the world, allowing you to get a good picture of roughly how much it might cost to live there.

Coversations with the great grandson of Gandhi

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I expected the great grandson of the Mahatma to be thin, to have the beginnings of the old man’s face of saintly collapse. But Tushar Gandhi, who greeted me at the door of his spare ground floor flat in Santa Cruz, near the Mumbai airport, had the beefy, bearded face of a football lineman. A face that looked eager to escape its name.

How interactive documentaries reveal layers of place

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When we travel to a new place, we take everything in. We observe, we taste, we smell, and we listen.As a native of West Virginia, and now resident of Boston, I always look forward to traveling back “home” to reconnect with the place. Those lush, tree-covered Appalachian Mountains embrace visitors as they travel the winding roads that lead to interesting places with unique histories and welcoming faces.

How much sex are people in your state having?

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THERE’S AN APP CALLED SPREADSHEETS that has been collecting data on how much you and your neighbors are banging. Seriously. One of the measures they track has been how long the average sex session is, and they’ve now compiled that information into a state-by-state graphic as to who has the longest sex and who has the shortest.