The Best Travel Stories from World Hum

Best Travel Stories: Which stories do book editors think are the best travel stories from World Hum? These World Hum essays have appeared in "The Best American Travel Writing," "Best Women's Travel Writing" and "Best Travel Writing" anthologies.

03.12.09 | 12:39 PM ET

We think all of the travel stories we publish qualify as the internet’s best travel stories, but we’ll concede we just might be biased.

The stories listed below were judged the best travel stories by others, namely Jason Wilson and the guest editors of Houghton Mifflin’s annual The Best American Travel Writing anthology, and the editors of Travelers’ Tales’ annual The Best Travel Writing and “The Best Women’s Travel Writing” anthologies. Herewith, their take on World Hum’s best travel stories:

Our Own Apocalypse Now
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2012
Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Women’s Travel Writing Volume 8
From a football stadium in Seattle to a sweaty nightclub in Saigon, Haley Sweetland Edwards wrestles with the f*cked up magic of war

Bad ‘Carma’
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2012
David Farley wanted to drive only occasionally during his stay in Italy. So why did something always go wrong?

Greek Paradise, Lost
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2012
In the Aegean isles, Dan Saltzstein went in search of a mysterious cave. He found it—and a dose of danger.

A Pilgrimage to Vailima
Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Women’s Travel Writing Volume 8
An hour into her quest to visit Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa, Catherine Watson ran out of water and lost the trail. What would persistence bring?

The Roads Between Us: A Journey Across Africa
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2011
In a five-part series, Frank Bures explores the meaning of travel when arrival is not guaranteed

A Pilgrimage to SkyMall
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2011
Can a trip to its headquarters make for documentary art, or just a closer look at solar-powered mole repellers? Bill Donahue journeys into the soul of SkyMall.

Lover’s Moon
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2011
Pico Iyer on the power of travel to make a forgettable Glenn Frey song last forever

The Sexual Lives of Sri Lankans
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2011
After a month of catcalls and groping, Hannah Tennant-Moore wonders what she’s doing alone with a masseur

Victory at the Louvre
Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Travel Writing 2011
Erin Byrne never let her mask slip, until a headless, armless Greek statue taught her a lesson she couldn’t ignore

Jersey Girl
Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2011
Abbie Kozolchyk finds herself on an unlikely quest to buy soccer jerseys from Bolivia to Bhutan

Missing Paris
Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2011
Nancy Kline grieves for a city that no longer belongs to her

On the Perils of Travel Writing
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2010
David Farley broke into the New York Times with a story about an eccentric Italian village. When he returned, he feared being chased out by torch-bearing villagers.

Where no Travel Writer has Gone Before
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2010
In a five-part series, Rolf Potts joins Trekkies aboard a “Star Trek” theme cruise to Bermuda

Cycling India’s Wildest Highway
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2010
In a five-part series, Jeffrey Tayler pedals more than 1,000 miles along the Grand Trunk Road

Face-off on the Congo
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2010
Jeffrey Tayler was cooking lunch along the Congo River when armed men approached, making demands. Enter the Big Man.

Living Among Incompatibles
Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Travel Writing 2010
Why Japan has the best mind Pico Iyer has encountered in a lifetime of traveling

The Heat Seeker
Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010
Alison Stein Wellner likes her food hot and spicy. To find out how hot and spicy, she searched the world for heat.

To Italy, for Family
Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010
After unearthing her great-grandmother’s bridal gown, Valerie Conners traveled to Puglia to grasp the story of its origins. She found much more.

Wanderlust
Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010
Some struggle to separate love and lust. Elisabeth Eaves has had a harder time distinguishing love from wanderlust.

Feasting in Lyon
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2009
Jeffrey Tayler feared he would never feel as intoxicated with the sense of discovery as he once did. But something clicked when he set foot in France’s third-largest city.

My Senegalese Cousin, the Rice-Loving Pig
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2009
When the woman selling peanuts at a Samba Dia market learned the Senegalese name adopted by Katie Krueger, negotiations took an insulting turn

Six Degrees of Vietnam
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2009
Julia Ross went to Vietnam seeking relaxation and a place to recover from a breakup. She found a whole lot more.

On the Occasional Importance of a Ceiling Fan
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2009
Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Travel Writing 2009
Emily Stone knew well the kind of moment she was experiencing in Puerto Rico: the guy, the Cuba libres, the accelerated intimacy. It was perfectly safe, she told herself, as long as she knew when to get out.

Requiem for a Little Red Ship
Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2009
Abbie Kozolchyk never understood why anyone referred to ships as though they were women. Then, long before it sank in Antarctica, she met the Explorer.

Tosi and Me
Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2009
During her summer in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, Alexis Wolff bought a pet chicken. It purred. It baaked. And when it left her, she discovered something about happiness.

Hope and Squalor at Chungking Mansion
The Best American Travel Writing 2008
Karl Taro Greenfeld explores Hong Kong’s notorious black-market bazaar and budget accommodations, and one possible over-populated, multi-ethnic future for us all

Where the Roads Diverged
Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2009
The Best American Travel Writing 2008
After searching all her life, Catherine Watson felt she’d found home on Easter Island. Then she heard a whisper in her ear: Be careful what you wish for.

The Woman in the Keffiyeh
The Best American Travel Writing 2008
In southernmost Turkey, women are known as the forbidden ones. So when a beautiful local invited Jeffrey Tayler for a ride on her horse-drawn cart and unmasked herself, he tried not to look. But he failed.

The Lost World of Nigeria
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2008
The Eredo once formed a boundary between the real and spirit worlds, and could easily contain Manhattan. Frank Bures goes in search of one of the planet’s forgotten architectural wonders.

The Gospel According to Michael
Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2008
Disappearing native culture. Vanishing tradition. Abbie Kozolchyk was appalled by the impact of missionaries in Papua New Guinea. But not for long.

A Brief and Awkward Tour of the End of the Earth
The Best American Travel Writing 2007
Jason Anthony was working as a U.S. Antarctic Program fuels operator when he was called to remote Vostok Station. It was a trip he would lie to take.

Lust in Translation
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2007
When the phone rang in his hotel room in Xian, China, Jim Benning expected to face a frustrating language barrier. He never could have imagined a woman with a sultry voice cooing at the other end.

The Places We Find Ourselves
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2007
Her official title was faculty sponsor. But in the confusion of post-Katrina New Orleans, Kristin Van Tassel realized the slippery nature of the roles we all play.

Unlocking Beirut
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2007
When Catherine Watson left Lebanon’s capital city in the 1960s, she carried home the key to her former apartment. Forty years later, she returned with her prized souvenir and found it could still open doors.

Smackdown in Tijuana
Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Travel Writing 2007
The teeming border city has a bad reputation. But in a rickety arena on a Friday night, Jim Benning discovers the forces of good still have a chance against the forces of evil, at least in swan-diving, chair-slamming lucha libre Mexican wrestling.

The Joy of Steam
The Best American Travel Writing 2006
Tony Perrottet went for a simple scrub down at the oldest bath house in Istanbul and discovered a link to the ancient Roman Empire

The Art of Writing a Travel Story About Walking Across Andorra
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2006
He traversed an entire nation in a long weekend. Now Rolf Potts shows how you can impress members of the opposite sex and write a textbook-perfect travel article in eight easy steps.

Derelicts in the Sinai
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2006
Israeli fighter planes flew over his kibbutz and suicide bombers blew up buses on the lines he traveled, but Porter Shreve still felt untouchable. Then he found himself aboard an ill-fated tour bus rolling through the Egyptian desert.

Girl Power in the Land of the Maharajas
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2006
Terry Ward took heat from her American friends when she strayed from convention to travel the world. In an Indian guesthouse, she learned that some struggles are universal.

A Million Years of Memory
Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Travel Writing 2006
In the Galapagos, Bill Belleville immerses himself in an environment that’s part dream, part cradle of evolution

The Burden of War
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2005
Wendy Knight went to Sudan in search of compelling war stories. Then her own personal battle began.

Signs of Confusion
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2005
Bad translations abound. In a Thai restaurant, Rolf Potts struggles to make sense of them.

Test Day
The Best American Travel Writing 2004
Frank Bures administers an English exam to his students in Tanzania, where life is hard and giving up isn’t an option

Sandbags in the Archipelago
The Best American Travel Writing 2004
On a remote South Pacific island, Heather Eliot meets a man and explores the fine line between fantasy and reality.

Morning, Not Smart
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2004
She coped with the slamming car doors and the fumes from the gas station next door. But Thai pop gave Katherine LeRoy a hot heart.

Power Trip
The Best American Travel Writing 2003
Grab your 3-D glasses! Pin that name tag to your jacket! Now get on the bus with American art student Emily Maloney for a class excursion to a Japanese nuclear plant. 

War Zones for Idiots
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2003
The “World Series of Journalism” had begun in Afghanistan, and Tom Bissell didn’t have to qualify to play. He just had to show up.

Innocence Abroad
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2003
When the Taiwanese police hauled him in, Drew Forsyth experienced one of a traveler’s worst nightmares: He went to jail for a crime he didn’t commit. 

Islam’s Bloody Celebration
Notable selection, The Best American Travel Writing 2002
At the Muslim Feast of the Sacrifice in Jordan, Rolf Potts unearths the quirky, intimate face of an Islamic world you won’t find on the evening news