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Want to get beyond your misconceptions of long-vilified, suddenly mourned, ever-important China? Then go.
Before the rains, before the winds, before the tens of thousands of missing and dead, Patrick Symmes sneaked into Myanmar's secret capital, where the military rules from a sun-baked plain, guided by the forecasts of astrologers. A report from the last flight out of a shuttered nation, where, even hours before Cyclone Nargis hit, nobody had a clue.
Your town got you down? We’ve got your escape plan. These 20 stars of America’s 21st-century Renaissance are riding a wave of civic reinvention and fresh ideas.
Presenting our foolproof recipes for the perfect long, hot weekend: six classic road-trip itineraries, the country's best pit stops, and a lot of Willie Nelson. Just pick your route and roll.
The polls are closed and we’re off to the All Good festival this weekend to test our gear (and maybe have a little fun while we’re at it). The winners of the gear poll are:TENT: Big Agnes Pine Island 4SLEEPING BAG: REI Travel Sack…
The craziest way to spread the gospel about North Dakota's enormous, untapped wind power? Kite-ski the bastard.
“Agonizingly vivid” is a fair description of Storm Over Everest, yet another rehashing of the 1996 disaster, by climber/documentarian David Breashears. Premiering May 13 on PBS’s Frontline, the two-hour film combines interviews with survivors, including guide Neal Beidleman and climber Beck Weathers (but noticeably no Jon Krakauer) with footage gathered…
Life in Chile’s Atacama Desert is hot, dry, and tough. That is, unless you’re lying poolside at Tierra Atacama, the latest luxury hotel to open in the unlikely tourist boomtown of San Pedro. Just blocks down the street from Explora’s iconic Hotel de Larache, 32-room Tierra Atacama is run by…
Leave San Francisco behind on a three-day, 30-mile trek that starts just beyond the Golden Gate Bridge
Pasquale Scaturro never wanted to be a glorified “tour-bus” driver. For him, leading expeditions, like rafting Ethiopia’s Omo River, is a glorious hobby. He picks a spot on the globe, invites his friends, dons his 19th-century-explorer hat, and relishes being the man in change.
Their fathers were titans. Their family defined conservation in the West. Now, with two Senate seats up for grabs, cousins Mark and Tom Udall have the chance to bring green leadership to Washington when it's needed most. Can the boys man up the way their dads did a generation ago?
Here's our problem with safaris: They're billed as authentic, up-close-and-personal wildlife experiences, but by Land Rover–bound definition, some are as canned as any Club Med junket. Closer to the real thing is Kiba Point, a brand-new luxury safari lodge in the heart of Tanzania's Selous Game Reserve. Selous is the…
The Super Bowl is without fail the most anticlimactic sporting event of the year. If you have tickets to the 2008 game, this February 3 in Glendale, Arizona, raise the stakes by arriving a week or two early. Park yourself 15 miles from the University of Phoenix Stadium at Sanctuary…
From an eco-friendly lodge near the Great Barrier Reef to a luxe guesthouse on a working sheep ranch, Australia's new outback hideaways are energizing travel in the land Down Under
On January 17, Hollywood hotshots and thousands of movie fans will invade the Wasatch Front for 11 days of movies and partying at the Sundance Film Festival. Get your cinematic thrills, then ditch the glitz and experience the real star: Park City’s adventure playground.
Welcome to the new Bolivia, where former coca grower Evo Morales has made the leaf a symbol of his two-year-old government. Now everybody's growing it, everybody's chewing it, and the war on drugs has taken a very strange turn.
Need something (or somebody) flown around Africa without a lot of questions? Can you pay with bricks of cash? Then you want old-school bush pilot Tim Roman, a man with Kurtzian ambitions, a deft touch on jungle runways, and a place on every smart dictator’s speed dial.
Nine Caribbean playgrounds heavy on the sports—and dead serious about kicking back
On a cosmic night of baseball Randy Wayne White joins the armada in San Francisco's McCovey Cove to fish for Barry Bond's record-breaking home-run ball
New York City-based writer Patrick Symmes and Irish photographer Seamus Murphy scoured the Far East in search of the legendary city of Shambhala for the October 2007 feature story “The Kingdom of the Lotus.” Here, listen to a podcast interview with Symmes and see Murphy’s photo outtakes from the assignment.
Escape from New York (and nine other big cities) with these 40 fast adventures
In his September Out of Bounds column, "The Italian Job" columnist Eric Hansen tries to convince us that he did not waste our money on a trip to Italy, where, as near as we can tell, he just downed Chianti and gelato. Hansen reads his story, talks in a podcast interview, and shares his photos here.
Resort towns no more—move here before the masses do.
As you may have heard, they ski in Iran. As you may not have heard, the terrain is pretty sweet, there are dudes bouncing on the chairlifts, and The hills are alive with happy women in flowing robes. Can we make peace with this place Immediately?
Go farther faster, stay out all day, and don't carry a thing (except your credit card) on these five perfect, three-day hiking and biking adventures
Take one desert island, insert one strapping lad, and see how long he survives. That's the recipe for our half-starved, sunburnt castaway, who lived to tell the tale.
For the August 2007 feature story, “Powder Keg” we sent Josh Dean and Alex Tehrani to lay some tracks at the highest ski area in Iran. Here, flip through some of Tehrani’s outtakes from their epic, see more images from his previous assignment for Outside, and read an interview with the…
Sometimes one culture just isn’t enough. Steeping yourself in the South of France is great, but drop in to an Asian-themed resort on a French island and you’ll leave feeling like a true global denizen. Here are three hotels that import their home country’s ethos. Banyan Tree…
Try summiting one of Southeast Alaska’s 16,000-foot peaks and you’ll run into a few potholesliterally. Thousands of pits (or moulins), up to 300 feet deep, scar 3.2 million glaciated acres of WrangellSt. Elias National Park and Preserve, and more and more visitors are trading in a summit bid to rappel…
Discover the pleasure and pain of pro-caliber climbs with these U.S. mountain monsters
A Playboy bunny, massage tents, martinis, bootleg movies, high altitude golf. As correspondent Kevin Fedarko reports in the July 2007 feature story, "High Times" the scene at Everest Base Camp ain't what you'd expect. Here, listen to an audio version of the story and hear an interview with Fedarko.
Colorado River guide Michael Ghiglieri publishes irresistible books about the weird, wicked things that kill people in national parks. With a bestselling Grand Canyon necrology behind him and a new one on Yosemite coming out this spring, he talks to KEVIN FEDARKO about accidents, suicides, and murders—and why forensic gawking can actually
At some point after puberty and before mortgage payments, that summer ritual our parents used to make us do became something we couldn't do without. And the rules have changed. Cars are faster, highways are better, and there's cool stuff—really cool stuff that doesn't involve buffets or Dollywood—just about everywhere. Stop sitting on those vacation d
In the June 2007 feature story The Boomtown, the Gringo, the Girl, and Her Murder” Tony DSouza reports on the murder trial of American ex-pat Eric Volz in Nicaragua. On March 26, 2007, after months of research and nearly two weeks of attempting to get access to Volz, Supreme Court…
In the June 2007 feature story "The Boomtown, the Gringo, the Girl, and Her Murder" Tony D'Souza reports on the trial of American Eric Volz in Nicaragua. Listen to D'Souza discuss the investigation in our podcast interview, see more of Jason Florio's photos of San Juan del Sur, and, coming soon, read a transcript of his two-hour prison talk
When a local beauty turned up dead in Nicaragua's San Juan del Sur, the dream of paradise became a nightmare for one expat American surfer. He got 30 years and, predictably, a media melee ensued. But Tony D'Souza was on the scene from day one. This is the story you haven't heard.
Are you in love with your home? We’re scouring the country to find the best places to live, work, and play for our annual Best Towns issue, and we want you to contribute. Tell us why we should pack up and move to your place by emailing us at…
In the unlikeliest of places, in the waters off JFK airport in New York, IAN FRAZIER lands a few big fish with Captain Frank, a guide who matches his passion striper for striper and knows why fishing is connected to everything
In one of the cruelest marches in World War II, a battalion of American soldiers trekked through nearly impassable jungle in Papua New Guinea to battle the Japanese. Six decades later, JAMES CAMPBELL attempts to repeat the journey, and discovers a deadly trail, ravenous leeches, and a rare look into one of the last remote places on earth.
Helicopter rescues on the summit of Everest may soon be reality. And the pilot won't be anywhere in sight.
Theres something sublime about a dip in a natural swimming hole, be it a lazy oxbow in a cool river, a hillside nook fed by a subterranean hot-spring, or a limestone bowl bored out by a 40-foot waterfall. The swimming hole is the perfect outdoor experience,” says Pancho Doll, author…
In the May 2007 Outside feature story "Chasing Ghosts," writer James Campbell follows in the footsteps of American soldiers who trekked 130 miles through Papua New Guinea during World War II. Here, watch a trailer for the film, The Ghost Mountain Boys and see Philipp Engelhorn's photo outtakes from the trip.
It’s not like we needed another reason to love Moab. But we’ve got one: Utah’s red-rock mecca for adventure sports is pursuing one of the most ambitious green-energy policies of any town in the West. The movement is led by mayor and 35-year resident Dave Sakrison, 61, who was elected…
Alan Dershowitz, meet Steven Donziger. On behalf of 30,000 inhabitants of Ecuador's remote Oriente region, this New York lawyer is putting it to Big Oil. But will his multi-billion-dollar lawsuit establish a global precedent—or is he just looking for a scapegoat for one of the nastiest messes on earth?
Our reconnaissance of French Polynesia turns up the South Pacific's freshest adventures
Welcome to the tropical Philippine island of Jolo, where life is like a Corona ad—coconut trees, white-sand beaches, bathtub-warm seas. Except those guys in the water are U.S. Green Berets, and those kids on dirt bikes are jihadists known for kidnapping Western tourists. Even stranger? On this front, at least, America seems to be winning.
Listen to an interview with John Falk, author of February’s “This is the War on Terror. Wish You Were Here!” and see Antonin Kratochvil's photo outtakes from the story here.
Get ready for the new age of adventure on the world's wildest continent. Whether it's the Ugandan National Kayak Team leading raft trips on the raging White Nile or entrepreneurial young guides building stylish bush camps with an eye toward helping local communities, a fresh generation is redefining travel in…
Four years ago, the president of Gabon announced the creation of an unprecedented 13 new national parks. Ready for a visit? On a grueling first descent down the Djidji River, ROB BUCHANAN checks in on the world's most ambitious conservation plan and discovers a pristine wilderness unmatched in its magic—and a country not quite ready fo
Forget après ski. Three January film festivals are redefining post-powder entertainment. Head to Park City, Utah, or Nevada City, California, for the winter’s coolest mountain town film festivals, where you can play outside by day and catch top film premieres by night.
When freeskier Kit DesLauriers dropped in at 29,035 feet on Mount Everest in October, she became the first person to ski off the Seven Summits. Kit, her husband, Rob, and photographer Jimmy Chin also became the first Americans to ski from the top of the world's tallest mountain.
That's what many Africans are calling Thomas Cholmondeley, the scion of Kenya's most famous white family who killed two black men on his vast Rift Valley ranch in the space of a year. But was it stone-cold murder or self-defense? Against a backdrop of rising racial tensions and brutal violence, JOSHUA HAMMER reports on the trial that could shatter the
November 15, 2006 In Outside‘s December issue, Joshua Hammer reports on the murder trial of Kenyan aristocrat Thomas Cholmondeley (“The Kenyan Cowboy,” page 158), who has been accused of killing Robert Njoya, a black poacher found trespassing on his 50,000-acre Soysambu Ranch in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley on May…
A fateful trek into nature's tangled labyrinth
A California forest ranger meets his fate in the forest.
The Bermuda Triangle isn't the only place you might witness the unexplained.
Who can resist a good mystery, the kind that leaves you both rattled and baffled? Certainly not us. So it's with sinister pleasure that we bring you 13 tales of unrighteous deeds, inexplicable vanishings, supernatural weirdness, and the stuff that nightmares are made of.
When he landed a rare permit to hunt bison deep in the Alaskan wilderness, our fearless forager thought he'd be living out a childhood dream. Wild buffalo, hungry grizzlies, nearly fatal hypothermia—what more could a grown man ask for?
There's only one best ski town for nighttime fun, and it's Aspen