Among the Believers
by Kit Habianic

(Spiritual Category winner in the 2009 WanderWomen Write travel writing contest)

In the heart of Damascus, encircled by drab government concrete and lanes of screaming traffic, lies an ancient city of a thousand wonders. Read more >>

Commiserating with Camels (Winner of the Wit & Wander Category in the Intrepid Travel Contest)
by Alexis Wolff

I’m in the Negev Desert, approaching a tent that must sleep hundreds. It’s enclosed on all sides by what look like thick woven blankets, and I see through an opening that the ground is lined with dozens of colorful patterned runners. Read more >>

Not My Father’s Karachi
by Maliha Masood

“There are no crooners left in Karachi.” I’m not sure if he means it literally. But then my father goes on to talk about the Binaca Hit Parade. It was a popular radio program in Pakistan when he was growing up. Read more >>

Matters of the Flesh
by Maliha Masood

On my first visit to the Louvre, I was transfixed not so much by the Mona Lisa, but by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s Turkish Bath, featuring a slew of nude damsels lounging in misty pools of steam and slippery marble floors. They were alluring, mysterious women, catering to the Orientalist inspired visions about the sensual East. Read more >>

Woman in the Dunes
by Maliha Masood

The jeep scaled up and down dunes, skidding in wide turns and crunching its tires on the squishy sand. I felt like a rubber ball bouncing inside a vacuum. Read more >>