Unpacked by Afar | Travel Smarter, More Responsibly

Indigenous tourism is growing, but it’s not always easy to tell which tours are owned and led by the communities they showcase. In this episode, Afar senior editor Jen Choi sits down with Kate Nelson, the Tlingit writer behind “Traveling Turtle Island: 14 Epic Indigenous-Led Experiences Across North America,” from Afar’s Fall 2026 Epic Trips issue. The package includes trekking to a Maya city in Chiapas, jet boat cruising through the deepest river gorge in North America, and foraging for a chef-prepared meal.

Choi explains why she commissioned the story in the year of America’s 250th anniversary, a milestone that is complicated for many Native communities. Nelson shares how she came to write about Native topics, why she sees her role as a liaison between Native communities and media outlets, and why Indigenous tourism stories need to be told through a Native lens.

The conversation digs into how the team chose the experiences. They focused on Native-owned outfitters rather than Native-inspired ones, and Nelson shares her tips for vetting operators, including a practice she calls “brownwashing.” They also discuss the challenges of reporting in Mexico, where many Indigenous-run experiences book through WhatsApp or Facebook, and why experiences in places like Oklahoma and the Southwest deserve a closer look.

THIS WEEK’S GUEST

Kate Nelson is an Alaska Native Tlingit tribal member based in Minneapolis. She wrote “Traveling Turtle Island” for Afar and is co-author, with Chef Sean Sherman, of the cookbook Turtle Island: Foods and Traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of North America. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic, Vanity Fair, and other publications.

CHAPTERS

00:00:00 Introduction 00:04:30 Who Tells Native Stories 00:09:30 Spotting "Brownwashing" 00:14:40 Beyond the Southwest 00:20:40 Open Mind, Open Heart 00:25:00 Rethinking America 250

LINKS & RESOURCES

•

Follow Kate Nelson's work

•

Read Turtle Island: Foods and Traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of North America

•

American Indigenous Tourism Association (formerly AIANTA)—a guide to Native-owned tours that Kate recommends for vetting operators

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the fourth and final episode of a four-part Unpacked series on Dubai travel, this time focused on Dubai culture. People love to say the city is all shopping malls and construction cranes, so guest host Nicola Chilton sets out to prove that wrong with two guests who are keeping its heritage alive in very different ways.

First, Nicola talks with Dr. Azra Khamissa, a Canadian-South African chiropractor, designer, and henna artist who moved to Dubai in 2001. Azra explains why henna matters at weddings, Eid, and Ramadan, and how it led her to research and practice heritage crafts: talli, a hand-woven trim of silver and gold thread that can take weeks to months to make for one dress, and al sadu, the loom weaving used for tents and camel bags. She also shares how Talli Circle, her community workshop series with Dubai Culture, began after hundreds of younger Emirati women told her they wanted to learn, and where to go to experience Dubai culture as a visitor.

In the second half, Nicola is joined by Butheina Kazim, the Emirati founder of Cinema Akil, the region’s first independent art house cinema, in Alserkal Avenue. Butheina traces its path from a nomadic pop-up to its current iteration, explains why she thinks of Dubai’s audience as a “five-hour flight radius” of cultures, and describes building a majlis-style cinema with seats salvaged from a demolished Bur Dubai theater.

Missed the series? Start with Nicola’s story in episode one, then hear about hospitality in episode two and food in episode three. Every episode is filmed in the same Dubai studio, so you can watch as well as listen on YouTube.

THIS WEEK’S GUESTS

Dr. Azra Khamissa is a chiropractor, designer, and the artist behind Azra Henna. Raised in Canada and South Africa, she has lived in Dubai since 2001 and now researches and teaches traditional Emirati crafts, including through Talli Circle.

Butheina Kazim is the Emirati founder of Cinema Akil, the region’s first independent art house cinema, which opened in Alserkal Avenue in 2018. Cinema Akil hosts festivals including Reel Palestine and Arab Cinema Week, and a second screen operates at 25hours Hotel.

PLAN YOUR OWN DUBAI TRIP

Start with these Afar travel guides to Dubai culture and travel experiences: how to spend four days in Dubai, according to locals and a local’s guide to thrift, vintage, and antiques shops.

Where to go and what to see from this episode:

• Cinema Akil — Butheina’s art house cinema, with a second screen at 25hours Hotel Dubai One Central.
• Alserkal Avenue — the Al Quoz arts district both guests recommend.
• Al Shindagha Museum — Azra’s first stop for craft heritage, along Dubai Creek.
• Sikka Art & Design Platform — Azra’s favorite, held at Al Shindagha in the cooler months.
• Hattaand the Hajar Mountains — a mountain exclave about an hour from the city.
• Al Mamzar Beach — Azra’s underrated pick for a nature fix, inside a public park.

CHAPTERS

00:00:00 Welcome to Dubai Culture 00:03:00 Henna, Talli, and Al Sadu 00:12:50 Hatta, Shindagha, and Al Mamzar 00:19:30 Inside Cinema Akil 00:24:50 Alserkal Avenue and the Majlis 00:35:20 Lead With Curiosity

STAY CONNECTED

Be sure to subscribe to the show and sign up for our podcast newsletter, Behind the Mic, where we share upcoming news and behind-the-scenes details of each episode.

And explore our second podcast, Travel Tales, which celebrates first-person narratives about the way travel changes us, and View From Afar, where we spotlight the people and ideas shaping the future of travel.

Unpacked by Afar is part of Airwave Media’s podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com if you would like to advertise on our podcast.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to episode three of a four-part Unpacked series on Dubai travel, this time focused on Dubai food: how a city long known for celebrity chefs and global concepts has grown a homegrown food scene with a flavor all its own.

Guest host Nicola Chilton first sits down with Kathy Johnston, Chief Chocolate Officer of Mirzam, the Dubai-born, bean-to-bar chocolate company celebrating its 10th birthday. Johnston explains how Mirzam ties its recipes to the region’s spice-trade history, from a maps and monsters collection inspired by the tall tales traders told on Dubai Creek to a mango bar built around the monsoon trade with India and an Emirati range featuring halwa and aseeda. She also talks about sourcing more ingredients locally as farming grows in the UAE, and shares her own picks for where to eat in Dubai.

In the second half, Nicola talks with Mohammad Orfali, the chef behind Orfali Bros Bistro, which opened in 2021 and holds a Michelin star. Orfali, who grew up in Aleppo, Syria, and moved to Dubai in 2006, walks through the pandemic-era opening, how a too-fancy burger became a local favorite, why he calls his cooking “Dubai cuisine,” and how locally grown produce is changing the way chefs cook, a useful listen for anyone planning a food and travel trip to the city.

One more episode is still to come, on Dubai’s culture and creative community, and every episode is filmed in the same Dubai studio, so you can watch as well as listen on YouTube.

THIS WEEK'S GUESTS

Kathy Johnston is Chief Chocolate Officer of Mirzam, a bean-to-bar chocolate maker founded in 2016, with a factory, café, and boutique in Al Quoz, Dubai.

Mohammad Orfali is the chef and co-owner of Orfali Bros, Three Bros, and Manao. Born in Aleppo, Syria, and based in Dubai since 2006, he opened Orfali Bros Bistro in 2021 with his two brothers. It holds a Michelin star and ranks No. 1 on the Middle East & North Africa’s 50 Best Restaurants list, according to World’s 50 Best.

PLAN YOUR OWN DUBAI TRIP

Start with these Afar resources on Dubai food and what to do: a guide to the city’s evolving food scene and how to spend four days in Dubai, according to locals.

Where to eat, what to try, and Dubai food worth seeking out from this episode:

•

Mirzam Chocolate Makers — Kathy Johnston’s factory, café, and boutique in Al Quoz. Try the date and fennel bar, a thin dark chocolate shell filled with locally grown dates and fennel seeds, or the best-selling Emirati range, with bars inspired by traditional desserts.

•

Halwa — a hot, spiced Emirati dessert traditionally made in enormous copper bowls, which Johnston calls “a hot mochi jelly with all of the spices and nuts in the kitchen that you could find.”

•

Orfali Bros Bistro — Mohammad Orfali’s Michelin-starred neighborhood bistro, open since 2021 and built on what he calls “freedom of cooking.”

•

Middle Child — Johnston’s pick for cozy, produce-driven food from a chef who grew up in Lebanon.

•

Khadak — Johnston’s pick for South Indian food from two chefs who work with local farms and chefs.

•

CHAPTERS

00:00:00 Welcome to Dubai Food 00:05:00 Mangoes, Monsoons, and Honey 00:08:00 Insider Picks and Emirati Sweets 00:14:30 Orfali Bros Opens Its Doors 00:21:00 Freedom of Cooking 00:25:30 Fresh Produce and What’s Next

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a new ongoing series, Afar is asking a deceptively simple question: What does a UNESCO World Heritage designation actually do? This episode starts in North Queensland, Australia, home to two UNESCO sites that sit side by side: the Great Barrier Reef and the Wet Tropics, which includes the Daintree Rainforest.

First, host Aislyn Greene talks with Dr. Eric Fisher, a marine biologist and Biology Manager at GBR Biology, about why Great Barrier Reef snorkeling remains the most direct way to connect with a reef system that’s home to more than 600 kinds of coral, six of the world’s seven sea turtle species, and more than 1,500 species of fish.

Fisher explains how a 1960s-70s campaign to stop oil mining on the reef led to the 1975 Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act and, eventually, the reef’s 1981 UNESCO inscription—and why the reef has spent over a decade at the center of debate over whether it should be listed as “endangered” due to climate change, coral bleaching, and crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks.

Fisher also opens up about building GBR Biology, the team of marine biologists and First Nations culture guides who lead guided Great Barrier Reef snorkeling tours for the tourism company Experience Co. (which also owns Reef Magic), and why he believes every traveler should experience the reef in person—ideally more than once, since it changes by the tide, the season, and even the hour.

Then the episode heads inland to the Daintree Rainforest, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1988 as part of the Wet Tropics of Queensland.

Juan Walker, owner and head guide of Walkabout Cultural Adventures, discusses growing up on Kuku Yalanji country, teaching Kuku Yalanji language in local schools, and what the Queensland government’s 2021 handback of more than 160,000 hectares to the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people has—and hasn’t—meant for his community’s access to traditional land.

THIS WEEK’S GUESTS

Dr. Eric Fisher is Biology Manager atGBR Biology, a division of Experience Co. that leads guided Great Barrier Reef snorkeling tours out of Cairns and Port Douglas. A fish ecologist by training, Fisher built GBR Biology’s team of marine biologists and First Nations culture guides after years leading snorkel programs for Reef Magic.

Juan Walker is the owner and head guide of Walkabout Cultural Adventures, which he founded in 2008. Born in Mossman, Queensland, Walker is Kuku Yalanji on his father’s side and Torres Strait Islander on his mother’s side, and teaches Kuku Yalanji language at a local school.

CHAPTERS

00:00:00 Welcome to the Great Barrier Reef 00:03:15 Oil Plans and World Heritage 00:05:45 Endangered or Not? 00:09:05 Guided Snorkel Tours With Eric 00:15:55 Daintree on Kuku Yalanji Country 00:20:40 Is It Really Land Back?

LINKS & RESOURCES

Explore Afar's coverage of North Queensland

• Meet the Indigenous Women Who Are Saving Australia’s Great Barrier Reef
• Podcast: Riding Higher, Down Under
• The Great Barrier Reef’s Great Big Complicated Story

• Fewer Travelers Visit This Part of the Great Barrier Reef. They’re Missing Out.

Travel with Juan and Eric

•

GBR Biology—guided Great Barrier Reef snorkeling and reef conservation tours led by Dr. Eric Fisher’s team

•

Walkabout Cultural Adventures—Juan Walker’s Kuku Yalanji cultural tours in the Daintree

•

Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority—background on reef management and conservation

•

UNESCO World Heritage List: Great Barrier Reef

•

UNESCO World Heritage List: Wet Tropics of Queensland

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to episode two of a four-part Unpacked series on Dubai travel, this time focused on Dubai hospitality: how a city with more than 800 hotels and 150,000 rooms built a world-class hotel scene on one of the Arabian Peninsula’s oldest traditions: the welcome.

Guest host Nicola Chilton starts in the desert with Philippe Zuber, CEO of Kerzner International, who oversees eight Dubai hotels, including two Atlantis resorts and three One&Only resorts. Zuber shares his “secret spot” for first-time visitors, the calm kind of desert rather than dune bashing, and explains how the mix of desert, skyline, and sea shapes the travel experiences he recommends. He also talks about the role hotels play in the city’s social life and what it’s like to work alongside colleagues from 200 nationalities.

Then Nicola sits down with Mohammed Kazim, a Dubai-born cultural entrepreneur, who traces Dubai hospitality culture back to Al Wasl, the “connecting point” where trade routes met, and to a three-day welcome code that obliged hosts to shelter and feed any guest without asking questions. It’s why Arabic coffee and dates are still the first thing you’re offered, and why standards at Dubai’s hotels run so high, plus his travel tips for first-time visitors.

Two more episodes, on food and culture, are coming next, and every episode is filmed in the same Dubai studio, so you can watch as well as listen on YouTube. (Listen to the first episode here.)

This week's guests

Philippe Zuber is CEO of Kerzner International, which operates eight hotels in Dubai—including two Atlantis resorts and three One&Only properties—plus 23 more worldwide and 12 in development.

Mohammed Kazim is a Dubai-born cultural entrepreneur and co-founder of Tamashee, a brand reviving traditional Arabian Peninsula sandals through contemporary design, and of Tamashee Experience, a cultural travel business that takes visitors to tribal communities across the region.

Plan your own Dubai trip

First, begin with these essential Afar resources, including thebest hotels to book (and why hotels areso much more than a place to stay), aguide to the evolving food scene, andhow to spend four days in Dubai, according to locals.

Where to stay, what to do, and what to eat from this episode

•

Atlantis The Royal—Kerzner's ocean-themed integrated resort, home to a culinary lineup that includes Carbone, Milos, and a breakfast spot ranked among the world's best.

•

One&Only One Za'abeel—Kerzner's newest urban resort, paired with CYRO, its wellness and longevity concept, for sweeping views of Burj Khalifa.

•

Bab Al Shams—one of Dubai's oldest desert resorts, about an hour from the city, where visitors are welcomed with Arabic coffee and can try camel rides, horseback riding, and a divine hammam.

•

Burj Khalifa—the world's tallest building, best experienced in person according to Zuber: "You come to Dubai for that."

•

The Palm Jumeirah—the world's first handmade island, best viewed from Nobu at Atlantis, The Palm.

•

Satwa—a lived-in, unpolished neighborhood just behind Downtown Dubai where Zuber says you'll find the "real energy" of the city's 200 nationalities living and working side by side.

•

Arabic coffee and dates—the traditional greeting rooted in the Arabian Peninsula's hospitality code, served from a dallah, the long-spouted coffee pot pictured on the one-dirham coin.

•

Tamashee—Mohammed Kazim's brand of contemporary Arabian Peninsula sandals, and Tamashee Experience, his tribal-immersion travel business.

•

Dubai Creek—where, according to Kazim, the roots of Dubai hospitality culture and the city's modern diversity first took shape.

Chapters

00:00:00 Welcome to Dubai Hospitality 00:02:00 Desert, Skyline, and Sea 00:09:00 Al Wasl's Three-Day Code 00:14:30 Coffee, Dates, and the Dallah 00:17:00 How Hotels Raised the Bar 00:19:00 Tamashee and the Creek

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to episode one of a four-part Unpacked series on Dubai travel: the history, the ambition, and the glamorous, multicultural city it's become today.

In this episode, host Aislyn Greene and the Dubai-based travel writer Nicola Chilton set the stage: They walk through how a fishing village and pearling outpost became one of the fastest-changing cities on Earth—and what it's actually like on the ground today.

Halfway through, Aislyn hands the mic to Nicola—who will host the remaining three episodes—for a conversation with her longtime friend, Sahar Parham Al Awadhi, an Emirati chef born and raised in Dubai.

They take a deeper dive into the city's history along Dubai Creek: the abra boats, the spice trade, and the neighborhoods where "old Dubai" is still very present.

Together, they set up the rest of this Dubai series: three more episodes on the city's architecture, food, and culture, all filmed in the same studio, so you can watch as well as listen on YouTube.

This week's guests

Nicola Chilton is a UK-born travel writer who has lived in Dubai for more than a decade and will be hosting the rest of this series.

Sahar Parham Al Awadhi is an Emirati chef, the first Emirati chef at the Jumeirah Burj Al Arab, and the founder of Abra, a new restaurant inside Dubai’s Etihad Museum.

Plan your own Dubai trip

First, begin with these essential Afar resources, including the best hotels to book (and why hotels are so much more than a place to stay), a guide to the evolving food scene, and how to spend four days in Dubai, according to locals.

Where to stay, what to do, and what to eat from this episode

• Jumeirah Beach — base yourself here for easy access to Dubai’s best hotels, restaurants, and free public beaches.
• Jumeirah Marsa Al Arab — opened just over a year ago, directly across from the iconic Burj Al Arab.
• Al Maha, a Luxury Collection Desert Resort— about an hour from the coast, inside the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve, where gazelles and Arabian oryx wander past your private plunge pool.
• Dubai Creek — hop an abra, the little wooden boats that cross between Bur Dubai and Deira, for about 30 cents.
• Al Fahidi historical neighborhood and Al Shindagha Museum— Bur Dubai’s restored old neighborhoods, now galleries, cafés, and museum houses.
• Karak tea — Dubai’s ubiquitous, inexpensive spiced milk tea, best bought roadside from a canteen window.
• Abra — Sahar Parham Al Awadhi’s new restaurant inside the Etihad Museum⁠, built around “new Emirati cuisine.”
• XVA Hotel— a boutique stay inside a heritage house near Dubai Creek, with its own gallery and café.
• Arabian Boutique Hotel— another heritage-building stay near the water, home to Arabian Fish House.
• One&Only One Za’abeel — for skyline views from one of Dubai’s newest towers.
• Hatta— a mountainous exclave about 90 minutes from the city, popular with residents for hiking, mountain biking, and kayaking.

Chapters

00:00:00 Welcome to Dubai 00:03:00 From Bangkok to Eleven Years In 00:06:00 After the Spring Unrest 00:08:00 Beaches, Desert Camps, and Mountains 00:14:00 Enter Sahar Parham Al Awadhi 00:19:00 Reviving Emirati Cuisine

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

Afar contributing writer Emma John road-trips the Great Victorian Bathing Trail, uncovering the best spa towns in Victoria, Australia—from thermal springs on the coast to century-old bathhouses inland.

A traditional spa vacation was never Emma John's thing—she needs to be on the move to relax. So when she set out to explore Victoria Australia spas along the newly opened Great Victorian Bathing Trail, she brought her road trip instincts with her: 250 miles of driving, looping from Melbourne down to the Mornington Peninsula, across Port Phillip Bay by ferry, and back up through the best spa towns in Victoria, Australia—Hepburn Springs and Daylesford.

On this episode of Unpacked, host Katherine LaGrave talks with Emma about what she learned when a self-described spa skeptic spent a week soaking, swimming, and drinking mineral water across the state with Australia's highest concentration of natural springs.

THIS WEEK'S GUEST

Emma John is a contributing writer to Afar based in London. For her story on the Great Victorian Bathing Trail, she looped through Victoria's most notable bathing destinations—geothermal spas, sea pools, mineral springs, and lakes—timing her trip around a six-week cricket series between Australia and England. What began as a well-earned reward after weeks of demanding sports coverage turned into a deeper reckoning with what wellness travel actually means.

IN THIS EPISODE

•

Why Victoria, Australia, has the country's highest concentration of natural mineral springs, and how the Great Victorian Bathing Trail links geothermal spas, sea pools, and lakes across the state

•

Alba Thermal Springs & Spa on the Mornington Peninsula, where automatic doors and unfamiliar bathing etiquette left Emma completely disoriented—and how she started letting go of the need to get it "right"

•

Hepburn Springs and Daylesford, the twin towns at the heart of Victoria's spa country, home to 80 percent of Australia's mineral water and the 1895 Hepburn Bathhouse & Spa—Australia's oldest

•

Drinking straight from the source: the sulfurous Soda, Locarno, and Sulphur Springs pumps scattered through Hepburn's town park, and why locals still fill their bottles there every week

•

A 45-minute private mineral bath that changed Emma's mind about "forced relaxation"—and the moment she realized her real obstacle wasn't the spa, but her own instinct to rush

•

The layered history beneath the trail: a walk with guide Rob Hyatt of the Koorie Heritage Trust, who explains how the Yarra River's true name is Birrarung, and how Lake Daylesford's creation displaced the Dja Dja Wurrung people from land and water they'd relied on for generations

•

Why Emma's top recommendation for skeptics isn't a spa at all: the Searoad Ferry between the Mornington and Bellarine Peninsulas, where a pod of wild dolphins showed up uninvited

•

Dinner at Kadota, a Japanese restaurant in Daylesford run by chef Aaron Schembri and his wife Risa Kadota, plus an unplanned stop in the town of Trentham that Emma's still thinking about

CHAPTER MARKERS

00:00:00 Introduction: A Road Trip Built Around Water

00:04:00 Hepburn Springs: Australia's Oldest Bathhouse

00:08:00 The freedom of road trips and letting go

00:10:30 The history of these Australian waters

00:17:00 The Searoad Ferry and an Unexpected Pod of Dolphins

00:19:00 Drinking the Springs in Hepburn's Town Park

00:22:00 Kadota, Daylesford, and an Unplanned Stop in Trentham

00:23:30 How Emma's Idea of Wellness Changed

LINKS & RESOURCES

Emma John's Afar story: An Australian Road Trip Built Around Swimming, Soaking, and Sauna

Alba Thermal Springs & Spa

Hepburn Bathhouse & Spa

Lon Retreat & Spa

Koorie Heritage Trust

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

Travel journalist Kathryn Romeyn shares how to find Thailand off the beaten path—from Nan Province night markets to Khao Sok's rainforest—plus the best time to visit Thailand if you want fewer crowds and lower prices.

This week on Unpacked, host Aislyn Greene explores Thailand off the beaten path with journalist Kathryn Romeyn, who's covered Southeast Asia since 2014 and calls Bali, Indonesia home. Kathryn returned to Thailand again and again since her first real trip in 2018, and wrote Afar's guide to seeing the country differently.

In this episode, part of Unpacked's Off the Tourist Trail series, she and Aislyn dig into Bangkok's overlooked neighborhoods, the north's least-visited provinces, and—critically—the best time to visit Thailand if you want to skip both the crowds and the price surge of high season.

THIS WEEK'S GUEST

Kathryn Romeyn is a Bali-based travel journalist who has covered Southeast Asia since 2014. After spending years visiting nearly every other country in the region—Myanmar, Cambodia, Malaysia, Vietnam—she finally gave Thailand a real chance starting in 2018, and has been chasing its lesser-known corners ever since.

IN THIS EPISODE

•

Why finding Thailand off the beaten path means letting go of five-star expectations—and how a $50-a-night, family-run guesthouse can outshine a luxury resort

•

The best time to visit Thailand: why the shoulder seasons (roughly March–July and October–November) beat the crowded, expensive December–January peak, and why to avoid the hot, rainy August–September stretch

•

Inside Nan Province, in Thailand's mountainous north near Laos—road-tripping through opium-turned-coffee country, staying in teak bungalows, and meeting a local guide from the Karen community

•

Local flavors worth seeking out: sai oua northern-style sausage, chicken wings crusted in makhwaen (a wild jungle pepper related to Sichuan pepper), and the tamarind crunchy shrimp at Thanyamundra that Kathryn can't stop thinking about

•

A nightly ritual in Nan: communal floor dinners at bamboo khantoke tables between two illuminated temples, complete with live folk music and unmatched trash-sorting discipline

•

Why Koh Yao Noi—a small island with one gas station and one doctor—offers an escape from the group-boat crowds hitting Phuket's more famous islands

•

Skipping the standard Phuket–Krabi–Chiang Mai loop for Khaosok National Park where limestone karsts rise out of Cheow Lan Lake and langurs swing through the jungle canopy

•

Why hiring a private guide or outfitter (like Smiling Albino or Red Savannah)—rather than a big-group tour—unlocks the kind of moments you can't find with an internet search

CHAPTERS

00:00:00 Rethinking Thailand's Reputation 00:02:00 A Freelancer's First Real Trip 00:07:00 Getting Lost in Bangkok on Purpose 00:11:00 Island Escapes and the Road to Nan 00:16:00 Guesthouses Over Five-Star Hotels 00:21:00 Night Markets and Local Food Secrets

LINKS & RESOURCES

• Kathryn Romeyn's AFAR story: How to See Thailand's Wonders Without Feeling Like a Tourist
• Thanyamundra Organic Resort
• Nan Seasons Boutique Resort
• Cape Kudu Hotel
• Koh Yao Noi
• Smiling Albino
• Red Savannah

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

The spices in your cabinet are probably five to seven years old—and that's not an accident.

On this episode of Unpacked, host Aislyn Greene sits down with Sana Javeri Kadri, founder of Diaspora Spice Co., who spent nine years dismantling a 500-year-old system and replacing it with something radically different: direct relationships with regenerative spice farming partners across India and Sri Lanka. What starts as a question about how old the spices in your cabinet really are unfolds into a conversation about colonialism, cultural erasure, and what it actually takes to trace a turmeric root back to the family who grew it.

THIS WEEK'S GUEST

Sana Javeri Kadri founded Diaspora Spice Co. in 2017 at age 23, after discovering that the global spice trade—largely unchanged since European colonization took hold roughly 500 years ago—left farmers earning almost nothing while spices sat in warehouses for five to seven years before reaching store shelves.

Sana built the company around regenerative spice farming partnerships, working directly with 140 farmers across India and Sri Lanka to source turmeric, cardamom, cinnamon, black pepper, and more, paying farm partners an average of 4x commodity price. Sana splits time between Mumbai and the Bay Area and is the author of The Diaspora Spice Co. Cookbook, a book five years in the making and built entirely around the farm families behind the spices.

IN THIS EPISODE

•

How Sana Javeri Kadri traced the spice trade's roots back 4,000 years—and how colonization, not commerce, is what broke it roughly 500 years ago

•

Why regenerative spice farming partnerships let Diaspora Spice Co. pay farmers well above commodity price, and what that income jump has meant for farming families year over year

•

The 14-month search for pesticide-free cardamom, and what it actually takes to find a handful of true regenerative spice farming partners out of dozens of samples collected

•

Inside Eko Land's cinnamon and clove processing facility in Kandy, Sri Lanka, where quality control means tasting bark from individual trees—and why true cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum) is almost impossible to find in the US

•

What 9 years of relationship-building with Pragati Turmeric farm partner Prabhu Kasereni has looked like, from a 23-year-old showing up unannounced to writing a cookbook credited entirely to the farmers themselves

CHAPTERS

00:00:00 The Age of Your Spice Cabinet 00:03:00 The 500-Year-Old Trade Problem 00:10:00 Building Diaspora and Regenerative Farming 00:18:00 The Search for Cardamom and Pepper 00:26:00 Pragati Turmeric in Andhra Pradesh 00:34:00 Cinnamon and Cloves in Kandy 00:42:00 Nine Years, One Family's Story 00:48:00 The Cookbook and What Comes Next

INKS & RESOURCES

Diaspora Co.

The Diaspora Spice Co. Cookbook

Pragati Turmeric

Guntur Sannam Chilli

Stay connected

Be sure to subscribe to the show and sign up for our podcast newsletter, Behind the Mic, where we share upcoming news and behind-the-scenes details of each episode.

And explore our second podcast, Travel Tales, which celebrates first-person narratives about the way travel changes us, and View From Afar, where we spotlight the people and ideas shaping the future of travel.

Unpacked by Afar is part of Airwave Media's podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com if you would like to advertise on our podcast.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

An African safari doesn't have to mean a traffic jam. On this episode of Unpacked, host Aislyn Greene travels to Tanzania's southern circuit—visiting two parks most first-time safari-ers never consider—and discovers what happens when you trade the famous Great Migration crossing for a dry riverbed with not another human being in sight.

To get there, she consulted Elizabeth Gordon, co-founder of Extraordinary Journeys, who helped reframe what an African safari could be. What followed was eight days in Ruaha National Park and Nyerere National Park: a walking safari with a guide who reads the wind with a pouch of ash, a river full of hippos and crocodiles that Aislyn took to calling "danger soup," and a fly camp on a lake where a ranger stayed up all night speaking hippo so she didn't have to.

Come back next week for a bonus episode about what happens when a lion leaves the park—and meets a herd of cattle.

THIS WEEK'S GUESTS

Elizabeth Gordon is the co-founder ofExtraordinary Journeys, a bespoke travel company designing African safari itineraries—and trips throughout South America and Asia—for travelers who want more than the standard route. Born in Kenya to a mother who joined the Peace Corps, earned her pilot's license, and built a house on a game park outside Nairobi, Elizabeth grew up between Kenya and France, studied in Beijing, and managed safari camps in Namibia before launching the company with her mother.

Pay Mbaryo is a walking guide and naturalist with Nomad Tanzania in Ruaha National Park. A farmer's son who grew up in the Gorongosa district, he has spent 15 years in the bush and navigates unmarked wilderness using what he calls a natural GPS. In a decade of guiding, he has never once had to use his rifle.

Gerald is a guide with Nomad Tanzaniain Nyerere National Park, in his fourth year on the Rufiji River. He can identify a hippo's path out of the water by sight and smell—and he was the one who handed Aislyn a hippo skull to explain exactly why you don't want to be in that path.

IN THIS EPISODE

•

Why Tanzania's Southern Circuit—specifically Ruaha National Park and Nyerere National Park—offers a better African safari experience for first-time visitors than the Great Migration crossing: fewer people, better guides, and wildlife that doesn't know you're there

•

What a walking safari in Ruaha actually feels like: reading the wind with a pouch of ash, approaching a mother elephant and her calf without being detected, learning to make a toothbrush from a tree, and discovering the Small Five

•

How Pay spent 15 years learning that birds, buffalo, and elephants are all sharing information with one another—and why walking safari means becoming part of that conversation rather than watching it from a Jeep

•

The Rufiji River at Nyerere: a wide, curving expanse of "danger soup"—filled with hippos and crocodiles—and what an afternoon on the water teaches you about the elephant as a keystone species

•

What fly camping looks like when Nomad's team digs a bathroom into the sand, rigs a hot shower, serves gin and tonics under the stars, and a ranger stays up all night so you can fall asleep to the sound of the hippo brass band

CHAPTER MARKERS

00:00:00 Introduction: African Safari, But Different

00:04:00 Why the Southern Circuit

00:08:00 Arriving in Ruaha

00:12:00 Walking Safari With Pay

00:20:00 The Small Five and the Keystone Species

00:26:00 Nyerere and the Rufiji River

00:33:00 Danger Soup: Life on the Water

00:38:00 Fly Camping With Hippos

LINKS & RESOURCES

• Extraordinary Journeys
• Nomad Tanzania
• Nomad Kigelia Camp, Ruaha
• Nomad Sand Rivers Camp, Nyerere
• Ruaha National Park, Tanzania
• Nyerere National Park, Tanzania
• View From Afar—Great Migration episode

Stay connected

Be sure to subscribe to the show and sign up for our podcast newsletter, Behind the Mic, where we share upcoming news and behind-the-scenes details of each episode.

And explore our second podcast, Travel Tales, which celebrates first-person narratives about the way travel changes us, and View From Afar, where we spotlight the people and ideas shaping the future of travel.

Unpacked by Afar is part of Airwave Media's podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com if you would like to advertise on our podcast.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

By the end of this century, half of the world's 7,000 languages could be gone. On this episode of Unpacked, host Aislyn Greene hands the mic to travel writer Lucy Kehoe for a conversation about saving language with journalist Sophia Smith Galer, author of the new book How to Kill a Language.

For Sophia, saving language is personal: her Italian grandmother spoke Emilian, one of Italy's Indigenous tongues, and it's quietly slipping away. To understand what we lose when a language dies, Sophia traveled from the mountains of Oman to the hills of California, seeking out endangered languages and the communities fighting—or grieving—for them.

She and Lucy get into why these languages matter to every traveler, how language and landscape are woven together, and what it means to travel thoughtfully to a place whose language is at risk—beyond learning a few phrases. It's a conversation about treating language as part of the culture we come to experience, and about meeting it with curiosity and respect rather than as something quaint.

THIS WEEK'S GUESTS

Sophia Smith Galer is an award-winning journalist and author whose new book, How to Kill a Language, traces the forces—colonialism, globalization, migration, and war—pushing thousands of the world's languages toward extinction. Multilingual in English, Spanish, Italian, and Arabic, she reported it across California, Oman, Ghana, Ecuador, Italy, and Greece, meeting speakers of critically endangered languages in person to capture not only their words but their connection to a place.

Lucy Kehoe is a London-based journalist who covers travel, food, and the environment, with a particular interest in how people relate to landscape and place.

IN THIS EPISODE

•

The statistic that stopped us cold: by 2100, up to half of the world's 7,000 languages could vanish, and the rate of loss is expected to triple over the next 40 years

•

Why a language is far more than a way to order coffee—Sophia's case that it holds the past, present, and future of a people connected to a place, from Oman's Jibbali (with distinct words for animal versus human shelter) to a California tribe down to 12 adult speakers

•

What it really asks of travelers: not memorizing phrases, but bringing respect and dignity to an endangered language, and asking who profits from "language tourism" and whether speaker communities are truly part of it

•

Where to find language on the road—Planet Word in Washington, D.C., the Armenian alphabet monument outside Yerevan, a Ukrainian language tour in Kyiv, and Oman's frankincense heritage experience

•

The range of feelings Sophia found among speakers themselves—pride, determination, and quiet resignation—and why she believes the fate of each endangered language belongs to its own community to decide

00:00:00 A Grandmother's Vanishing Tongue

00:04:00 Why Endangered Languages Matters

00:06:00 Words Shaped by Place

00:10:00 Tourism Done Respectfully

00:16:00 California's Last Speakers

00:24:00 Ladino, Museums, and Hope

LINKS & RESOURCES

•

How to Kill a Language by Sophia Smith Galer — buy on Bookshop

•

Sophia Smith Galer's website

•

Lucy Kehoe's website

•

Planet Word, the language museum in Washington, D.C.

•

Armenian Alphabet Monument, outside Yerevan

•

Museum of the Frankincense Land, Oman

Stay connected

Be sure to subscribe to the show and sign up for our podcast newsletter, Behind the Mic, where we share upcoming news and behind-the-scenes details of each episode.

And explore our second podcast, Travel Tales, which celebrates first-person narratives about the way travel changes us, and View From Afar, where we spotlight the people and ideas shaping the future of travel.

Unpacked by Afar is part of Airwave Media's podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com if you would like to advertise on our podcast.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

This kind of Japan travel doesn't show up in guidebooks. In January 2024, a major earthquake struck the Noto Peninsula, lifting the seabed 15 feet into the air and exposing an ocean floor that locals walked across—harvesting octopus and abalone—to get home.

This week on Unpacked, Five Questions, host and Afar executive editor Katherine LaGrave is joined by Afar contributing writer Ryan Knighton, who recently wrote a feature about traveling along the peninsula. Ryan, who is blind, visited Noto two years after the earthquake on a slow walking tour, drawn by the parallels between this remote coastal peninsula and his own earthquake-prone home on Vancouver Island.

What he found was a place not broken, but mid-repair—and a Japanese art form that made sense of everything.

THIS WEEK’S GUEST

Ryan Knighton is an author and Afar contributing writing whose stories consistently find the textures, flavors, and human stories that sighted travelers walk past. A former English teacher in South Korea, he brings a slow, sensory approach to Japan travel and beyond—listening to sushi chefs talk about their knives, walking earthquake fracture lines with his feet, and finding the people who hold a place together.

IN THIS EPISODE

•

What blind travel in Japan actually looks like: why guides, sushi chefs, and strangers become the mediators of a place, and what it feels like to walk an earthquake fracture line with your feet instead of seeing it with your eyes

•

Why Ryan chose the Noto Peninsula for his Japan travel debut: a remote, earthquake-prone coastal community with striking geographic parallels to his own home—and a story of post-disaster recovery he felt compelled to witness in person

•

The food that made the trip: Tokyo-style sushi whose origins trace directly to a 1923 earthquake, Japanese barracuda, Noto sea salt gelato at 10 a.m. in a parking lot, and a tuna described by his wife as looking like a ruby

•

The scene that didn't make the final cut: a couple walking home after the earthquake on a newly exposed seabed—15 feet of ocean floor lifted overnight, scattered with octopus and abalone, with kids too excited about sea creatures to be scared

•

How kintsugi—the Japanese art of repairing broken objects with gold—became the metaphor that unlocked the entire story, and why it took a gold leaf factory on day one to understand what Noto was actually about

LINKS & RESOURCES

• Ryan's Afar story on Noto, Japan
• Walk Japan
• Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture
• Somamichi Restaurant
• 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake — background

CHAPTER MARKERS

00:00:00 Introduction

00:02:00 Japan Travel on Foot and Without Sight

00:05:00 The Ethics of Disaster Tourism

00:07:00 Food as Craft, Craft as Place

00:10:00 The Scene That Didn't Make the Cut

00:12:00 Walking the Fracture Line

00:14:00 Mr. Squid and the Spirit of Noto

00:16:00 Kintsugi as Metaphor

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the past several decades, writer and editor Lavinia Spalding has championed women's travel writing. She's helmed seven editions of the Best Women's Travel Writing—the celebrated Traveler's Tales anthology—including the latest, released on June 9th.

Over the years, she's read hundreds of submissions a year from women around the world and distilled them into one essential collection. So host Aislyn Greene sits down with Lavinia to talk about what two decades of editing these stories has taught her about how women explore the world, and why amplifying those voices matters more than ever right now.

THIS WEEK’S GUEST

Lavinia Spalding is the author of Writing Away: A Creative Guide to Awakening the Journal-Keeping Traveler , seven-time series editor of The Best Women’s Travel Writing, and co-author of With a Measure of Grace, This Immeasurable Place, and two editions of theFrommer’s EasyGuide to New Orleans. She has been teaching for more than 30 years and leads writing workshops online and around the world. She lives with her family in New Orleans. Watch her TEDx talk here, and subscribe to her Substack newsletter for updates and essays.

IN THIS EPISODE

•

How Lavinia shapes each volume of Best Women's Travel Writing like a playlist—balancing place, tone, voice, and the ratio of dark to light—and why this year's theme might be best described as "flashes of insight that arise from connection"

•

The essay that has never left her: Sandra Gail Lambert's pre-dawn solo kayak trip through the Florida Everglades, written from a wheelchair, with stakes so high that every preparation detail becomes profound

•

What two decades of reading women's travel writing has taught Lavinia: never underestimate a woman, and women who write about travel tend to be actively seeking transformation, not just sights

•

How the legacy of male-dominated adventure travel writing—conquest narratives, man-versus-place drama—may have conditioned women to fear solo travel, and what it looks like as that changes

•

Why a women's travel writing anthology still matters in 2026: to amplify voices of autonomy and adventure at a moment when women's rights and freedom of movement are under pressure

CHAPTERS

00:00:00 Young, Fearless, and Filled With Wonder
00:03:00 How a Volume Comes Together
00:07:00 The Traveler She Was, the Traveler She Is
00:10:00 Building the Playlist
00:14:00 The Stories That Live Inside Her
00:19:00 Never Underestimate a Woman
00:23:00 Who Gets to Be an Adventurer
00:28:00 Why It Matters Now

LINKS & RESOURCES

• Best Women's Travel Writing, Volume 13—Bookshop.org
• Traveler's Tales
• Lavinia'swebsite
• Lavinia'sWriting AwaySubstack
• Lavinia's essay for Afar and Aislyn's essay for Afar
• West With the Night by Beryl Markham

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

Buffalo, New York might be the greatest architecture city you've never heard of. In the fourth and final episode of our Unpacked by Afar series, we explore how this Rust Belt city became one of the richest showcases of American architecture anywhere in the country.

Host Aislyn Greene tours Buffalo with Ed Howard, a docent and guide with Explore Buffalo. Ed shares that Buffalo was one of the wealthiest cities in America and drew the biggest names in architecture to build here. Stand on a single downtown corner and you can see work by the architects behind the Flatiron Building, the Twin Towers, and the first true skyscraper.

Buffalo is also one of only two American cities with major works by the "holy trinity" of American architecture, Louis Sullivan, H.H. Richardson, and Frank Lloyd Wright, whose Martin House is here. Then come the surprises: the industrial grain elevators that inspired modernist masters, and the Frederick Law Olmsted park system that led the man who designed Central Park to call Buffalo the best-planned city in the country.

It's a story of boom, near-ruin, and hard-won revival, a city that nearly lost its treasures and fought to save them. This is cultural travel at its most rewarding, a piece of American travel culture hiding in plain sight. If great architecture is a reason you travel, Buffalo belongs near the top of your list of American travel destinations.

Meet this week's guest

• Ed Howard, docent and tour guide at Explore Buffalo

Chapters

00:00 — A Secret Architecture City

03:32 — Five Masters, One Corner

06:40 — The Holy Trinity

11:05 — Saving the Landmarks

17:00 — Grain and Grass

Where to go to explore Buffalo's architecture

• Explore Buffalo — Walking, bus, and boat tours led by local guides; the single best way to take in the city's architecture.
• Frank Lloyd Wright's Martin House — Wright's Prairie-style masterpiece, fully restored, and one of his finest residential works.
• The Guaranty Building — Louis Sullivan's 1896 skyscraper, once nearly demolished, now restored to its original glory.
• Richardson Olmsted Campus — H.H. Richardson's monumental former hospital; part is now a hotel, and Explore Buffalo runs hard-hat tours of the unrestored wings.
• Buffalo Central Terminal — The grand 1929 Art Deco train station, mid-restoration.
• Silo City and Duende — The towering grain elevators that awed modernist architects, with a bar tucked right among them.
• Delaware Park and the Olmsted parkways — The green system that earned Buffalo its "best-planned city" title.
• Go deeper at http://buffaloah.com, a database of hundreds of Buffalo buildings, and plan your trip with our Buffalo travel guide.

This is the fourth and final episode of our Buffalo series. New here? Go back for Buffalo's food scene, its neighborhoods, and its Black history. And follow Unpacked, a travel podcast from Afar, for more unique travel experiences around the world.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

For 185 years, some of the most important chapters of American history have unfolded on a few blocks of Buffalo's East Side. In the third episode of our four-part Unpacked by Afar series, we walk the Michigan Street African American Heritage Corridor, the beating heart of Buffalo Black history, with the man who has made preserving it his life's work.

Executive director Terry Alford grew up on these streets and is now leading their revival. He guides host Aislyn Greene through 185 years of Buffalo Black history: a church that was one of the last stops on the Underground Railroad, the home where the Niagara Movement was born, the club where jazz greats jammed until dawn because they weren't allowed to sleep in the hotels they had just played, and the radio station that became the megaphone of the Civil Rights movement.

Then he shares how urban renewal nearly erased it all, and how he is fighting to bring it back, guided by the Ghanaian principle of Sankofa: move forward, but never forget where you came from.

This is cultural travel at its most moving, a piece of American travel culture far too few people know. It is also one of the most powerful travel stories we have told, and a lesson in responsible travel: how to visit a place and honor the people whose stories made it. If Buffalo Black history is not yet on your list of American travel destinations, this episode, and this corridor, will change that.

Meet this week's guest

• Terry Alford, executive director of the Michigan Street African American Heritage Corridor Commission

Chapters

• 00:00 Buffalo's Black History
• 04:19 Underground Railroad to Jazz
• 10:02 Loss and Revival
• 13:42 A Vision for 2030

Where to go to explore Buffalo's Black history

• Michigan Street African American Heritage Corridor — Start at the visitor center and tour the anchor sites, all just steps apart.
• Michigan Street Baptist Church — Built in 1845, one of the last stops on the Underground Railroad, with a newly restored interior.
• Nash House Museum — The preserved home of Rev. J. Edward Nash and Frances Nash, plus the Frances Nash community garden and Tuesday farmers market.
• The Colored Musicians Club & Jazz Museum — The only continuously running, all-Black-owned club in the U.S., with Sunday night jam sessions and a jazz museum.
• WUFO Black Radio History Collective — The historic voice of Buffalo's Civil Rights movement.
• The Freedom Wall — The AKG's 28-portrait mural of Black Civil Rights figures, at the corridor's northern entrance.
• Read more in Afar's guide to Buffalo's Black history along the Michigan Street corridor, and plan your trip with our Buffalo travel guide.

This is episode three of a four-part series. Next week, we explore Buffalo's astonishing architecture, one of the best-kept design secrets in America.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the final stop on our five-part audio guide to Asheville, North Carolina, and we’re heading for the trees. In this episode of Unpacked by Afar, host Aislyn Greene laces up for Asheville hiking, and discovers why the oldest mountains on Earth are also some of the most beloved.

On a tour with Hike Bike Kayak Asheville that takes Aislyn and guide David into the Pisgah National Forest, Aislyn learns that Asheville hiking means far more than a simple walk in the woods. These are among the oldest mountains in the world, cloaked in one of the most biodiverse forests in North America, home to thousands of plant species and waterfalls around nearly every bend. David leads her to quiet swimming holes and points out plants that grow nowhere else on Earth.

She stands beneath Looking Glass Falls and hears how a single valley packs in world-class rock climbing, fly fishing on the Davidson River, and a 60-foot natural water slide called Sliding Rock.

Zoom out, and the scale is staggering. The Great Smoky Mountains and the Blue Ridge Parkway are among the most visited places in the entire national park system, and Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi, rises just up the road. It helps explain why so many people who come here for Asheville hiking end up never wanting to leave, and why the outdoors are one of America’s great travel destinations. It’s a landscape you can dip into for a single afternoon or disappear into for a week.

It all adds up to a rich piece of cultural travel and a fitting finale to our guide: a reminder that in Asheville, the wild is never far away. Whether you want a gentle waterfall stroll or a hard climb to a summit view, the trailheads are closer than you think, and the payoff is some of the most beautiful country in the eastern United States. Consider it your guide to where to go and what to know.

Unpacked by Afar is a travel podcast that unpacks one destination at a time. That’s the end of our Asheville audio guide, so catch up on the whole series in the feed.

CHAPTERS

00:00:00 Older Than the Atlantic 00:02:30 Meeting My Guide 00:06:30 The Blue Ridge Parkway 00:11:00 Looking Glass Falls 00:13:15 Wildflowers and Orchids 00:16:15 Behind Moore Cove

GUESTS | David Teafatiller of Hike Bike Kayak Asheville, our hiking guide

PLACES WE VISITED

• Pisgah National Forest
• Looking Glass Falls
• Sliding Rock
• Davidson River
• Blue Ridge Parkway
• Great Smoky Mountains National Park
• Mount Mitchell State Park

MORE FROM AFAR

• Asheville Travel Guide
• 10 Travel Itineraries for Exploring Asheville Your Way (includes an outdoor itinerary)

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the fourth stop on our five-part audio guide to Asheville, North Carolina, and it may be the tastiest one yet. In this episode of Unpacked by Afar, host Aislyn Greene digs into Asheville food, and the surprising reason this mountain city punches so far above its weight at the table.

Aislyn joins a walking food tour with Sita of Eating Asheville, eating her way through a town where farm to table isn’t a slogan but a fact of geography. Along the way she:

• Discovers that Asheville food can be a real relief for anyone with dietary restrictions at the celiac-run kitchen of Strada Italiano
• Hears the moving, Helene-shaped story behind Mehfil from its owner, Raj
• Tastes mountain-grown rice at the farm-to-table cornerstone Table with chef Catherine Smedley
• Forages Appalachian flavors at Luminosa
• And finishes with a former science teacher turned chocolatier, Melissa Quinn, at Asheville Chocolate.

It’s a scene built on tight relationships between kitchens and the farms a few ridges away, where the rice on your plate might have been grown just up the road, and where a devastating hurricane the year before only deepened the sense that these restaurants belong to their community.

But great Asheville food is also a question of who gets to make it, and whose history gets remembered. In a segment on the region’s Black foodways, Aislyn talks with two of the city’s most celebrated chefs, Ashleigh Shanti of Good Hot Fish and Rakim Gaines of Capella on 9, about Affrilachian cooking, representation behind the stove, and the stories layered into every plate. Their conversation is a reminder that a food town’s story has to include the people history has too often left off the menu.

It all adds up to a rich piece of cultural travel and a portrait of one of the best small food towns in the country. Whatever you come hungry for, consider this your guide to where to go and what to know.

Unpacked by Afar is a travel podcast that unpacks one destination at a time, with a real love of food and travel. This Asheville audio guide has one more episode to go, so look for it in the feed.

CHAPTERS

00:00 A Real Food Town 03:00 Strada's Gluten-Free Surprise 05:00 Mehfil and Raj's Story 09:45 Table's Mountain Rice 12:40 Foraging at Luminosa 18:15 Cooking on The Block 23:15 Dessert With Melissa Quinn 26:00 Come Hungry

GUESTS

• Sita, operations manager and tour guide, Eating Asheville Walking Food Tours
• Raj, owner, Mehfil Indian Restaurant
• Catherine Smedley, chef de cuisine, Table
• Chef Sean McMullen of Luminosa
• Melissa Quinn, head chocolatier and owner, Asheville Chocolate
• Ashleigh Shanti, chef and owner, Good Hot Fish
• Rakim Gaines, executive chef, Capella on 9

PLACES WE VISITED

• Strada Italiano
• Mehfil Indian Restaurant
• Table
• Luminosa (in the Flatiron Building)
• Asheville Chocolate
• Good Hot Fish
• Capella on 9

MORE FROM AFAR

• Asheville Travel Guide
• A Local Chef’s 2-Day Travel Guide to Asheville
• Immerse Yourself in Asheville’s Culturally Diverse Experiences

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the third stop on our five-part audio guide to Asheville, North Carolina, and it takes us just outside the city to the small mountain town of Black Mountain, North Carolina. In this episode of Unpacked by Afar, host Aislyn Greene goes looking for the creative soul of the region, and finds it everywhere: in the galleries, in the glass studios, and above all in the music scene.

• Aislyn starts with breakfast at Cousins Cuban Cafe, then walks a town so small you can cross it in a few minutes, passing murals of Black Mountain’s famous daughter, the late Roberta Flack.
• She also traces the ghost of Black Mountain College, the radical, short-lived arts school just outside town that helped shape modern American art before it closed and all but disappeared.
• She plays with fire at the North Carolina Glass Center alongside executive director Candace Riley and glassblower Mark DeShields, learning how the quartz buried in these mountains helped turn the region into a glass capital.
• Over dinner at Hell or High Water, chef Eric Morris explains how Appalachian food ways, and a hurricane, gave the restaurant its name.
• But the heart of the episode is music. At a listening room called White Horse, Aislyn meets managing director Zach Hinkle, who traces the surprising, and nearly lost, blues and gospel roots of Asheville music, and explains why this corner of the Blue Ridge has always pulled creative people in. The episode ends inside a benefit concert, where the whole community turns out to keep a beloved venue alive.

It all adds up to a rich piece of cultural travel: the story of why a tiny mountain town became one of the most quietly influential creative places in America, one of the South’s most surprising travel destinations, and why the Asheville music scene still draws people to these hills. Consider it your guide to where to go and what to know.

Unpacked by Afar is a travel podcast that unpacks one destination at a time. This Asheville audio guide continues, so look for the rest of the series waiting in the feed.

CHAPTERS

(00:00) Welcome to Black Mountain

(01:30) Breakfast at Cousins Cuban and a walk through town

(04:00) Playing with fire at the North Carolina Glass Center

(06:30) The quartz that made a glass capital

(11:00) Dinner at Hell or High Water

(13:30) A restaurant named for the storm

(17:00) Inside the White Horse listening room

(19:00) The nearly lost blues of these mountains

(22:00) A benefit concert, and why the music survives

(27:00) The creative soul of Black Mountain

GUESTS

• Candace Reilly, executive director, North Carolina Glass Center
• Mark DeShields, glassblower, North Carolina Glass Center
• Eric Morris, executive chef, Hell or High Water (Foothills Local Meats)
• Zach Hinkle, managing director, White Horse Black Mountain
• Featured musicians at the White Horse benefit: Robin Bullock, Bill Maddox, Dr. Bill Bares, Peggy Ratusz, and Chris Rosser

PLACES WE VISITED

• Cousins Cuban Cafe
• North Carolina Glass Center
• Hell or High Water
• Trillium Table
• White Horse Black Mountain (performing at the Monte Vista Hotel during renovations)
• Stay: Peri Social House

MORE FROM AFAR

• Asheville Travel Guide
• 10 Travel Itineraries for Exploring Asheville Your Way⁠ (including a music itinerary led by Virtuous)

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the second stop on our five-part audio guide to Asheville, North Carolina, and it reaches back a lot further than you might expect. In this episode of Unpacked by Afar, host Aislyn Greene unpacks the long, strange story of Asheville wellness, and why doctors have been sending patients to these mountains for more than a century and a half.

To understand where Asheville wellness began, Aislyn talks with David Freedman, an infectious disease physician and travel medicine expert who retired to the city. He explains the era of climatotherapy, when clean mountain air and a just-right altitude were prescribed for the respiratory illnesses of the Industrial Revolution, and for the deadliest disease of the 19th century, tuberculosis. It’s a history written into the architecture itself, from buildings angled toward the prevailing wind to the once-ubiquitous sleeping porch, and even into the phrase “health resort,” which Asheville helped invent.

Then Aislyn brings the story to the present, where Asheville wellness has grown into one of the most diverse scenes in the country. She heads into the Asheville Salt Cave and Spa, surrounded by 30 tons of ancient Himalayan salt, and hears from owner Jodie Appel about the surprising family story that started it all. She also sits in on a sound bath with sound therapist Kristin Hillegas, and gathers the full, wonderfully weird range of what you can try here, from hydrotherapy and aura photography to a practitioner known as the Breath Nurse.

It all adds up to a rich piece of cultural travel and a portrait of a place locals call the Happy City. Whatever draws you to these mountains, it’s a reminder that the best travel experiences often start with simply feeling better, and that knowing where to go can be its own kind of medicine.

Unpacked by Afar is a travel podcast that unpacks one destination at a time. This Asheville audio guide continues across three more episodes, so look for the rest of the series waiting in the feed.

GUESTS

• David O. Freedman, infectious disease physician and travel medicine expert, Asheville
• Jodi Appel, owner, Asheville Salt Cave and Spa
• Kristin Hillegas, sound therapist, who runs Serenity Sound Healing of Asheville and leads sound baths at the Center for Spiritual Living Asheville
• Tebbé Davis, guide and storyteller, Asheville By Foot walking tours(returning from episode 1)

PLACES WE VISITED

• Asheville Salt Cave and Spa
• Center for Spiritual Living Asheville
• Serenity Sound Healing of Asheville
• The Spa at Omni Grove Park Inn

CHAPTERS

(00:00) A century-old prescription: go to the mountains

(01:40) A sound bath to begin

(02:10) Meet David Freedman and the science of climatotherapy

(03:40) Fresh air, altitude, and the architecture of breathing

(07:50) Tuberculosis and the “Robber of Youth”

(09:20) John Dickson’s “cure” and the birth of the “health resort”

(11:10) From sanitariums to a modern wellness scene

(11:20) Inside the Asheville Salt Cave

(13:00) Jodi Appell on salt, her father, and opening the spa

(17:00) A sound bath, up close

(19:00) Why Asheville calls itself the “Happy City”

(20:45) People still come here to feel better

MORE FROM AFAR

• Asheville Travel Guide
• 10 Travel Itineraries for Exploring Asheville Your Way (includes a restorative, wellness-minded itinerary)

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the first stop on our five-part audio guide to Asheville, North Carolina. And where better to start than at the beginning? In this episode of Unpacked by Afar, host Aislyn Greene sets out on foot to trace Asheville history from the ground up, and to answer a simple question: How did a remote, hard-to-reach valley in the Blue Ridge Mountains become one of the most creative small cities in America?

Aislyn’s first guide reveals the deep Asheville history hiding in plain sight downtown. There are the ancient mountains and rivers, the Cherokee crossroads that predated the city by thousands of years, the rowdy cattle-drive era that gave the town its early reputation, and the arrival of the railroad in 1880, which brought the Vanderbilts, the Groves, and the money that built landmarks like the Grove Arcade.

From there, Aislyn drives out to the Biltmore Estate, America’s largest privately owned home, to meet Chase Pickering, a fifth-generation member of the Vanderbilt family. He shares what it was like to grow up on the estate, and why stewardship and sustainability still shape the property today.

But no honest telling of Asheville history is complete without the Black community that helped build the city, including Biltmore itself. Aislyn rides through the historically Black neighborhoods of Eagle Street and Burton Street with DeWayne Barton of Hood Huggers, meets community elder Clifford Cotton, grandson of the pioneering entrepreneur E.W. Pearson, and hears a song from Asheville artist Virtuous.

It all adds up to a rich piece of cultural travel and the story of how Asheville became Asheville: a place ringed by mountains where people have both passed through and put down deep roots. Consider this your starting point for planning Asheville travel, and your first look at one of the South’s most distinctive travel destinations. It’s also your reminder that the best trips start with knowing where to go and why a place is the way it is.

Unpacked by Afar is a travel podcast that unpacks one destination at a time. This Asheville audio guide continues across four more episodes, so look for the rest of the series waiting in the feed.

GUESTS

• Tebbé Davis, guide and storyteller, Asheville By Foot walking tours
• Chase Pickering, Vice President of Guest Experience at the Biltmore Estate, and fifth-generation Vanderbilt family member
• DeWayne Barton, founder, Hood Huggers
• Clifford Cotton, community elder and grandson of E.W. Pearson, Burton Street Community Center
• Virtuous, songwriter and performing artist

PLACES WE VISITED//WHERE WE STAYED

• Grove Arcade
• Biltmore Estate
• Eagle Street
• Basilica of Saint Lawrence
• Burton Street Community Center
• Peace Gardens & Market
• Stay: AutoCamp Asheville, Airstream lodging on the river
• Stay: The Windsor Boutique Hotel, apartment style lodging downtown

CHAPTERS

(00:00) Welcome to Asheville

(01:05) The oldest mountains in the world

(02:40) A Cherokee crossroads and the “Las Vegas” of the 1800s

(05:00) Inside the Grove Arcade

(10:40) The Vanderbilts and the Biltmore Estate

(12:10) Chase Pickering on five generations at Biltmore

(17:50) The Black community that built Asheville

(19:00) Riding with Hood Huggers through Burton Street

(21:40) E.W. Pearson’s legacy and the Royal Giants

(24:40) The Peace Gardens Sculpture Park

(27:15) How Asheville became Asheville

MORE FROM AFAR

• Asheville Travel Guide
• Immerse Yourself in Asheville’s Culturally Diverse Experiences
• 10 Travel Itineraries for Exploring Asheville Your Way (including a music itinerary led by Virtuous)

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices