Travel
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13 stunning natural phenomena
From the famous northern lights to the lesser known sea of stars, we share elusive natural phenomena from across the globe As Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken made history this week as the first astronauts to launch to orbit on a private spaceship, the world took pause to watch. Given the turmoil of our times, one observer quipped, ‘Congratulations to the Astronauts that left Earth today. Good choice.’ The off-the-cuff comment was amusing, but also surprisingly poignant for it reminded us of the damage being wreaked by humans – not only on each other but the planet itself. Seeing the curvature of the Earth reminded us of the extraordinary natural phenomena that exist right here at home. Below, we share the best of them. 1. Aurora Borealis The Aurora Borealis, more commonly known as the northern...
12 best hikes in the Yorkshire Dales National Park
The best hikes in the Yorkshire Dales National Park criss-cross one of England’s finest beauty spots In the 18 months since our move to the market town of Richmond in North Yorkshire, we’ve spent much of our free time exploring the national park that sits on our doorstep. Whether discovering the best views or climbing the highest mountains, we’ve fallen utterly in love with the landscape of the Dales. Covering 2,179km2 of countryside, the Yorkshire Dales National Park is home to one of England’s quintessential outdoor landscapes. The park’s glacial valleys are defined by a unique terrain of high heather moorland, rolling hills and dramatic waterfalls, intersected with miles of dry stone walls and delightful villages. With miles of well-established trails, the Dales are best ...
10 things park rangers wish you knew
From grizzly bears to bugbears, five park rangers share the vagaries of their unique job There’s no doubt that nature is flourishing under lockdown. There are heartening stories of the Himalayas emerging from Indian smog, moles in the UK being seen above ground and deer wandering the streets of Japan. Sadly, these phenomena will likely end not too long after lockdown, as humans return to business as usual. In an effort to remind readers – and ourselves – to re-engage with nature as responsibly as possible when we’re allowed to return, we asked five park rangers to share some things they wish we knew. The rangers are based in the US (and remain unnamed for the sake of discretion), but nearly all their points are applicable worldwide. We hate it when you disrespect the park...
International borders: 10 remarkable frontiers
From mountains to libraries, we take a look at some of the most extraordinary international borders to be found across the globe Over the last few years, we’ve seen an impressive collection of new websites, blogs and social media accounts dedicated to ‘travel porn’. They’re filled with big, sweeping images of fairytale lands and precarious precipices. Sometimes, like this incredible piece on architectural density in Hong Kong, they’ll depict urban decay or stifling poverty – always gilded by the photographer’s lens. At Atlas & Boots, we always wanted to strike the right balance between travel porn and more in-depth content; the type that provided some previously unknown knowledge or insight. We’re using the current downtime to update some old content and came across this post about unu...
10 Famous Beatles Locations You Can Visit
On Location is a new series that brings to life the places you know from songs, album covers, and music history. Consider it a blur between travel guide and liner notes to your favorite albums. The Beatles: you’ve heard the songs, seen the footage, and heard about the places. What you may not have done yet, though, is step into their world. The Midas touch of the Fab Four has turned everyday locations from London to Liverpool — such as a crosswalk, an office building, a local street, and a pub — into some of the most iconic locations in music history. To see these locations in person for the first time is like finally being in the same place as a partner with whom you’re in a long-distance relationship: they’re always there, but to be able to actually see them adds an almost indescri...
The Rebel Saint of South Sudan
After 30 years of service in Sudan, often defying her superiors’ orders, a remarkable Indian nun is forced to ask herself whether she’s made any difference at all. Ground Zero in the City of Wau Sister Gracy sits on the edge of her seat as she guides her Landcruiser through the back roads of Wau, South Sudan. She knows every dusty path by heart. At five feet tall, she barely clears the steering wheel. She smiles as she peers over the dash, keeps a rosary hanging from the rearview, and has a habit of grinding the gears when she’s distracted, as she is now. The 60-year-old nun has one hand on the wheel while the other points out the demolished huts that pass by, burned down and bombed out. Furniture, grain sacks, family photos, remnants of looting litter the roads. We keep an eye out for mil...
Edoardo Chavarin: Beautiful Mexicanity
This week on The Trip podcast: Tijuana design legend Edoardo Chavarin on growing up with one foot on each side of the border wall, how to brand Mexico, and why Tijuana is having a creative revolution. It is deceptively simple. Exchange your dollars, walk a couple hundred yards, get your passport stamped, keep walking, wave off the taxistas and hustlers, sit on a plastic chair and order an al pastor torta, a sandwich so heavy with meat and mayonnaise and jalapeños that it can only mean one thing: you’re in Mexico, just past the San Ysidro Port of Entry, one of the busiest border crossings in the world. Easy. It’s also incredibly complicated. I happen to have been born in the land of the blue passport, not the green, and to have walked from north to south, not the other way around. So I cann...
Ruffo Ibarra: Reclaiming the Soil
This week on The Trip podcast: Chef Ruffo Ibarra on leading a new era of Tijuana culinary excellence, electric flowers, and mind-bending chilis. The word milpa means different things depending on what part of the Americas you’re in, but at its root it’s an agricultural system, a simple and sustainable combination of the Three Sisters: corn, beans, and squash. The beans climb the corn stalks while the squash shades the ground. Pure pre-Columbian harmony. Good for total nutrition, good for reclaiming poor soil. And it’s a helluva metaphor for what’s happening now with the food scene in Baja California. There’s been a lot of poor soil in Tijuana over the years. Even before those years when it was some kind of border Fallujah, one of the most dangerous cities on earth, it was a spotty destinat...
Jorge Nieto: Cartels and Culture
This week on The Trip podcast: Journalist Jorge Nieto on covering Tijuana’s good and bad days, losing friends to violence, and what happens when you accidentally get the wrong beer for members of the Sinaloa cartel. Ah, the sound of a dozen hellhounds slavering for a taste of sweet gringo flesh. This is actually part of my perennial Mexico soundtrack, from the south or north, whenever the omnipresent guard dogs catch that scent of vanilla or sulphur or whatever the hell Caucasian men smell like when they’re wandering around looking for an address they cannot find. This particular bit of the Baskervilles was on the Otay Mesa, a plateau that spans the border from Tijuana to San Diego. There’s an absurdly wide view looking down across the sprawl of Tijuana from up here. And people like the ne...
Gera Gámez: Stuck on the wrong side of the wall
This week on The Trip podcast, deportee Gera Gámez on surviving L.A. gangland violence, jail and deportation, and adjusting to his new reality in Tijuana. I got a WhatsApp voice message in Tijuana from a journalist named Jesús Aguilar. He’s one of a special breed of police-scanner-hawks, independent reporters of the people, who zoom from crime scene to crime scene, take pictures of the carnage, tell what they can about what happened, and post it on their social channels. Every Mexican city seems to have a handful of these—in Tijuana it’s people like Jesús and Margarito 4-4, and they can have huge followings, partly for the lurid fascination, partly for the sense that this is the most honest reporting people can get on dishonest system. In this message he left me, Jesús is telling me that h...
An Elegy for Karachi’s Empress Market
The dismantling of Karachi’s markets and informal shops isn’t just robbing the city of its soul. It threatens the survival of the very people that make it a city. A group of women in faded patterned saris sits by the side of a road, some shaded by umbrellas, with bags of dried nuts in front of them—almonds, pistachios, cashews. The image would rack up a lot of Instagram likes, if it weren’t for the devastating landscape—mounds of sand, steamrolled expanses, clouds of dust, debris, and the stark sight of a building smack in the middle. Or that these women aren’t sitting on a pavement, protected and secure in their work. They’re on the side of the road, an easy target for harassment, being pushed out from the only place they’ve ever worked, where their fathers worked, and where their childre...
Panca: A Muralist in the Age of the Wall
This week on The Trip podcast: Smoking out with Panca, Tijuana’s border-crossing muralist. Ah, those are some sounds from the last day of Tijuana, one last taco with chef Ruffo Ibarra, and then one last ballad from a street singer. The taco was a beef stew masterpiece from Tacos Fito, where the taquero slings the stew across his outstretched arms, from the ladle in his right hand to the taco in his left. The wall, it can’t stop music, it can’t stop drugs or guns, and it certainly can’t stop art. So on my last day, I went back over the border, to San Diego, where I met up with Tijuana-based artist Paola Villaseñor, better known as Panca. Panca’s next show is at Bread & Salt in San Diego on February 8. I feel like you’ve seen her work, or at least, if you have seen it, you remember...
