Caitlin Condon

Travel in Ethiopia is rarely easy, but it can be wonderfully rewarding for those who persist. Two-day bus rides lead to villages with relics of early Christendom; all-night vigils culminate in rapturous sacramental reenactments; vertical cliffs hide rock churches that date back more than a thousand years. Everything feels biblical in Ethiopia, from the dust and the hills to the Old Testament legends—and the fleas. My god, the fleas. 

Ethiopians claim some of the world's oldest forms of Christianity and Judaism, in addition to the planet's fourth-holiest Muslim city and a slew of native tribes whose customs have changed little throughout centuries. Ancient rituals are alive and thriving here. Fact becomes soft around the edges, melded with faith. Ethiopia's stories are epic in the truest sense of the word, unbelievable until you stand in their birthplace and feel that seed of infinite possibility that seems to take root all over this unknown country. 

And their coffee is downright unbeatable. 

The first time I visited Nepal was in January of 2010. Nepalese citizens were embroiled in civil unrest as the country muddled its way through a peace process to end the war between Maoist rebels and government forces. Protests dogged the streets, and government-ordered strikes routinely shut down shops, offices, roads. The anger was palpable. Tourists—who never seem to fully disappear from Nepal, regardless of political or geographical upheaval—were afraid to leave major cities, in case a mandatory strike stranded them in areas without access to airports or amenities. It was an uneasy time to visit. 

I returned to Nepal in 2016, at the end of a year of travel. Tourists were back in droves, overflowing guesthouses and trailheads, despite lingering damage both structural and social from the devastating 2015 earthquake. This time, I couldn't have cared less about seeing Durbar Square or sunrise at Sarangkot. I had come for one reason, and one reason only: to trek the Annapurna Circuit by myself—one last solo mountain pilgrimage before I re-entered the realm of Western civilization. It was everything I'd hoped for, and plenty I hadn't known to imagine. 

Nepal always feels like it's on the cusp of something. Perhaps it's simply because there's no place on Earth that brings out our own longing for adventure, for the unknown, more than this scrappy band of Himalayan hospitality. 

Kenya! It deserves the exclamation point. So much of this vibrant, passionate, complicated place is punctuated by joy, by sincerity and warmth and serious kickass-ery. I arrived in Kenya in February 2016 intending to stay a few days. Instead, I stayed almost six weeks and fell hard for the colors, the gospel music, the hustle and flow, the white sand, the church-bound men and women decked out in their Sunday finery as they piled ten deep into rusty matatus, because hey—that's just how it goes, and we might as well sing while we're waiting for this ride to get moving. 

I made a friend on a little island off the northern coast, found the most pristine beach I've ever seen in the South, photographed every damn lone tree in the Maasai Mara, and climbed the country's highest mountain. I kept meaning to leave, but how can you leave a place that feels like home?  

India defies summary. Her beauty, her squalor, her sheer seething mass of humanity and soil and history—is undeniable. I've spent more time on the subcontinent than anywhere else in the world I haven't lived. For every lovely photo, there are a hundred scenes of fetid chaos not framed. For every back-alley deceit, a thousand little kindnesses take place. In India, the picturesque goes hand-in-hand with the putrid, the divine with the depraved. It's a microcosm of human experience.

I'm never ready for India, no matter how many times I return. I doubt that will ever change. 

Guatemala is full of contrasts. Crumbling colonial facades hide modern nightclubs where Antigua's well-heeled set dances until dawn; erupting volcanoes play a nightly soundtrack for sleepy lakeside towns; tales of political turmoil, ongoing violence, and endemic corruption belie the deep hospitality and resolute kindness of people who put a high premium on civility. 

For a small country, there's a lot going on in Guatemala. Travelers can easily fill up a few weeks scaling active volcanoes, trekking highland hill paths, and wandering through Mayan ruins. It's just as easy to spend your days sipping killer local coffee and watching the light move over gracefully decaying churches that look out onto cobblestone squares. 

What I liked best about the country wasn't the stunning azure sky or even the feeling of crawling out of a highland temazcal with my skin seared clean after a long day of hiking. My favorite part was the tradition of greeting: Guatemalans say buenos dias and buenas tardes to every person they meet, without fail, whether stranger or friend. When they walk into a crowded restaurant, they greet the room and receive murmured salutations in return. They hold their heads high; they look you in the eye and nod as they offer the words. It feels like a gift—because it is. 

Madagascar: Red Island, nation of ample coastline and mysterious, writhing interiors. There are lemurs, yes. There are also hissing cockroaches and bulbous trees and strange creatures of all sorts. There's a pirate graveyard falling into the sea, bit by bit, from a cliff on a tiny island three hours east of the mainland. There are old slave routes. There is crushing poverty. There are rice fields, sapphire mines, national parks. There are cyclones, and very few roads.

I spent a month on the island in June 2016 bushwhacking my way through national parks, following whales near Île Sainte-Marie, and jumping at insect invasions. At nearly the size of Texas (and with approximately 11,000% less infrastructure), a month is barely enough to scratch Madagascar's surface. That said, if consuming heroic amounts of local beverages can be considered a metric for civic engagement, my travel companion and I would undoubtedly have been made honorary citizens. 

I lived in South Korea from the beginning of 2009 to mid-2010. As travel goes, the Republic of Korea isn't high up on lists of popular destinations for backpackers, budget travelers, or photographers. It should be.  

I visited the Philippines in the summer of 2009 while on a break from teaching in South Korea. It's easy to forget—or perhaps more accurately, to never realize—how vast this island nation is. Late summer is typhoon season in the Philippines (which explains why there were so many travel deals!), and roads were washed out all over the country, making transit difficult. I touched down in Manila on a stormy August night and immediately took off for Palawan, a long rope of land rising out of the Sulu Sea just above Malaysian Borneo. Tropical sun was routinely interrupted by downpours, but the few beach-goers on the island stubbornly refused to be dissuaded. If you see Palawan's beaches, you'll understand. 

Afterward, I made my way back to Manila to start a northbound journey on the main island of Luzon. I hiked (translation: slid) through muddy jungle hills to see hanging coffins in Sagada, befriended a tuk-tuk driver in Kalinga Province during a deafening thunderstorm, and rode chicken buses through the saw-toothed Cordillera to see rice terraces in Banaue. 

Where other places can be painted with adjectives, Uganda is in its green heart a verb. It teems, it crawls, it bursts. It grows. From its seminal river to its capital, Uganda is young and alive and always moving, constantly changing fortunes and minds. Dictatorship and the Catholic Church are stalwarts, but this doesn't mean that their subjects are still—quite the contrary. Ugandans both urban and rural are vocal and insistent about their opinions, deeply invested in the future of their country. Travelers would be hard-pressed to find a place full of people more eager to discuss the shifting world, the shape of things to come, and the nature of our place in it all. 

A ferry brought me over Thailand's southern border to Malaysia in the spring of 2010. I landed on Langkawi and was happily surprised to find everything I'd been hoping for and hadn't quite found on Thailand's party-packed islands: pristine beaches lapped by crystal-clear water, long stretches of sand unbroken by glass or dive boats, street food carts serving families instead of tourist packs.

After a blissed-out week on Langkawi, I went south to Penang's cultural melting pot, the cool of the Cameron Highlands, and finally Kuala Lumpur's sleek cityscape, where the only way of escaping the heat was to duck into a giant air-conditioned mall. 

2010: After a long two months of temple trekking and 36-hour bus rides across Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, I spent a languid few weeks exploring the islands of Ko Tao, Ko Phangnan, and Ko Lanta. Every Thai sunset was the most radiant sunset I had ever seen. 

Island seascapes here are capricious. Storms roll over spits of land so quickly that beachgoers run for cover, abandoning their beer and coconuts on the drenched sand. I learned this lesson well the first time I was caught on the shore, camera in tow, during a squall on Ko Lanta. A thatched hut offered enough shelter to photograph the storm's retreat out over the Andaman Sea.

I called Massachusetts home for five years. In that time, I discovered that this small state has more than its fair share of scenery: wild western mountains, sun-bleached sand dunes, miles of rocky seascape, bogs and dense forests, and little pocket towns bursting with history and colonial architecture. Massachusetts landscapes take you from untamed to bucolic to bustling, often within the space of a single day.

I love this state. It feels more like home than anywhere else I've ever lived.

I lived in Southern California for five years. The weather was too monotonous for me, but the rocky beaches and canyons made for endless natural sustenance. When that fog rolls in, the whole state is a dreamland. Change is instantaneous, and magical. 

Maine's skies are abundant, dynamic, treacherous; while hiking in Acadia National Park one Memorial Day weekend years ago, I was fortunate that the storms passed over Cadillac Mountain's South Ridge Trail and settled far enough away to keep me dry but still offer an impressive spectacle. 

The weather was less cooperative three months later when I made the nine-hour trek from Boston to one of Baxter State Park's northernmost campgrounds. Storms kept me me from summiting any peaks while I was there, but the woods in northern Maine remained photogenically lovely, dark, and deep. 

Photography from around New York State