International travel has been a significant feature of our professional lives since the first year of our marriage, over 40 years ago. As a humanities professor (Elizabeth) whose focus is the cultural expressions of diverse peoples and a travel photographer (Phil), we have been fortunate to enjoy experiences abroad at least once a year, sometimes more, seeking destinations around the globe that would offer primary material for our work. Studying, learning and documenting propelled us to the...

Some opportunities present themselves once in a lifetime. When the invitation arrived for me to visit my dear friend Hilal, whom I met years ago in Delhi, and his family in Srinagar, India, in November 2019, without blinking an eye, I jumped at the opportunity. 

Often referred to as “paradise on Earth,” Srinagar is the largest city of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, nestled below the snowcapped Himalayas in northwest India. A main attraction there is the...

My husband, Phil, and I are proud 30-plus-year ITN subscribers and ITN Quarto Mondo award recipients, having now been to well over one quarter of the world’s nations. While traveling, our primary interests are ancient cultures, architecture, art and religions, and we used to plan all our own trips, including arranging our own transportation.

Due to our advancing age, however, we’ve become fans of cruising as a means of accessing destinations of special interest to us. We...