Travel Writing - Sarah Handyside

The Road

The road life is often romanticized, and for good reason: it is a life of true adventure. It offers highs that reach into the stratosphere and lows that make you wish you were dead. There is very little in between. That’s what I love about it. I remember standing on the side of the highway in an Argentinian desert with my thumb out for two days, watching shiny new SUVs pass by one after the other until a man finally picked me up in a broken-down car with a rusted-out floor. I remember wondering if I'd get tossed in jail for riding trains across the Romania/Ukraine border without tickets. I remember running from water cannons with protesters during a Women’s Day march in Santiago, Chile.

For me, travel isn’t about luxury, comfort, or convenience. It’s about meeting the people who live their daily lives in the places I visit. I remember the Belizean guy who invited me into a hut surrounded by coconut trees and taught me to make tortillas while a thunderstorm raged outside. I remember painting murals with an artist in Illinois, picking apples with a farmer in Missouri, and trimming weed with marijuana growers in the Emerald Triangle.

My goal as a travel writer is not to skim the surface of the world but to plow deep into it. I write old-school, longform travelogues about my unending quest for the edges of civilization and the lessons I learn about people, cultures, and myself along the way.

My blog, Peripatetic Sarah, chronicles my adventures. Most recently, I took a train trip across the US and a cruise ship across the Atlantic, and I walked 160 miles of the Camino de Santiago in Spain.