Who

To fully enjoy Japow, one should be at least an advanced intermediate, but expert skiers will get the most out of a trip like this. No previous backcountry experience is required, but an above-average fitness level is mandatory: think all day slog more so than Crossfit-type short interval.

Equipment

Alpine touring, Telemark or splitboard. Avalanche safety equipment including beacons, probe and shovel is mandatory. All of the above equipment is available for rent in Sapporo, Niseko or from your guide.

When to Go

They don’t call it Japanuary for nothing. The sweet spot for Japow is January 1 to February 15.

Where to Stay

If it’s your first time, you should probably base out of Hirafu, the main village of the Niseko United, which comprises four interconnected ski resorts: Grand Hirafu, Hanazono, Niseko Village and An’nupuri. Lodging options abound and your guide can help you to find the best fit for your budget and personal tastes. Last season, my guests stayed at Always Niseko, which is close to all the action and a good budget option. For those looking for a higher-end boutique hotel, check out Chalet Ivy or the Green Leaf.

Photography provided by Sushi Shin by Miyakawa, Niseko

Where to Eat

Hirafu offers everything from food trucks to fine dining.

Ichi Ichi Kitchen is a food truck located in the center of town with quick inexpensive offerings like takoyaki (octopus balls), okonomiyaki (savory pancakes) and other Japanese street foods.

Niseko Ramen Kazahana is known for its rich miso ramen with creamy, umami-laden broth and springy noodles. Don’t miss the “Niseko Black” ramen with squid ink.

Ebisutei is a small, intimate izakaya (pub) that serves traditional Japanese dishes, including yakitori (grilled chicken skewers), sashimi and tempura.

Sushi Shin by Miyakawa in the AYA Niseko hotel is perhaps the most prestigious and sought-after sushi experience in the area with a fixed menu that showcases the best of local Hokkaido seafood. The restaurant is sleek and minimalist, and you’ll eat at a counter made of hinoki (Japanese cypress) while the chef prepares the sushi right in front of you. Reservations are mandatory.

Backcountry Ski Guides

• Niseko Mountain Guides 
• Black Diamond Tours
• Synnott Mountain Guides

The post A Pocket Guide to Backcountry Skiing in Japan appeared first on Artful Living Magazine.

Photography provided by INKATERRA

No sooner had I hopped off into the wilderness than four beaming Quechua women, our porters for the trip and part of the Indigenous community that many consider the closest descendants of the Incas, greeted our small tour group. They quickly distribute water and the weight in their bags. They wear no-nonsense hiking boots complemented by embroidered azure blouses and the tall, jaunty felt hats that are ubiquitous in this region. Decked out in head-to-toe REI, I can’t help feeling simultaneously underdressed and underprepared. It’s a relief to have these experienced, confident women by my side as we brace ourselves to ascend nearly 2,000 feet to the legendary “Lost City of the Incas,” rediscovered by American archaeologist Hiram Bingham and native farmers in 1911.

Hiking the Inca Trail isn’t a trek you want to — or even can — do alone. Since 2001, the Peruvian government has required that anyone on the historic path, a route of pilgrimage to Machu Picchu used by the Inca (or Emperor) in the 15th century, be accompanied by a licensed guide to protect the heritage site from the unsafe and destructive effects of overcrowding.

Peru, Llama Trek, Local Woman with Llama

Only 500 permits are available per day. Among those, 300 go to the diligent porters and guides who haul heavy loads packed with water, oxygen tanks and other necessary supplies, helping travelers like me make our way along the winding, rocky path. Because of this, it’s not unusual for the coveted passes to sell out months in advance.

Until recently, only men were hired for the job; women traditionally weren’t considered fit for such brawny, masculine work in Peru’s patriarchal society. Now, that’s gradually changing thanks to initiatives like Abercrombie & Kent’s Inca Trail Women’s Project, which launched in 2021. This program provides professional training and jobs to Quechua women who often face limited economic opportunities in remote Andean villages. Other companies, such as Evolution Treks Peru and Mother Earth Treks, also offer adventures geared specifically toward female tourists.

Marisol Velasco Espinoza, an accomplished Abercrombie & Kent tour guide who led the first group for the Inca Trail Women’s Project, has broken barriers all her life. Guiding since 2011, she has completed the four-day Inca Trail 500 times and can speed through the one-day route in a mere two hours. For Espinoza, who celebrates the progress Peru is making in gender equality, the Inca Trail project feels personal.

“I finished my studies very young and thought that no one would trust me because of my appearance — young, small and female,” she says. “That’s why I tripled my effort; I wanted to prove to myself I could make it. I never liked the idea of someone being faster than me in my mountains. Guiding the women from the Village of the Flowers on their first trip to the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu was very important to me because I identify with them. This program helps reduce the machismo idea that only men have the right to work. It teaches everyone to raise awareness that there should be mutual respect between men and women.”

When I ask the Quechua porters — Cintia Amalia Chaucca Ramos, Elizabeth Ttito, Sonia Quispe Quispe and Emilda Ramos Sallo — what they most want travelers to take away from this experience, the answer is clear: that women are every bit as strong as men. But they also wish to share their community’s customs. “[I hope people will] learn about our traditional clothing, our Quechua language [and] our dances,” says Ramos.

Before the big climb, we do just that while exploring their homeland in the Sacred Valley’s Ccor Ccor District. Once the center of the Inca Empire, this fertile farmland remains a stronghold of Quechua culture.

Masterful weavers, the women demonstrate how their ancestors have used textiles like alpaca and vicuña wool (a rare and impossibly soft raw fiber far exceeding the price of cashmere) to create fine yet hardy clothing for centuries. Together, we enjoy a joyous warm-up hike accompanied by local musicians along the terraced hills, stopping for a surprise picnic of fruit and coca tea — an herbal remedy that’s popularly used for altitude sickness. Later, a local shaman reads our fortunes in the drink’s soggy leaves.

The next day, as I stumble up 200 steps at nearly 9,000 feet above sea level to reach Wiñayhuayna, a stunning archaeological site that’s only accessible for those who take the Inca Trail on the way to Machu Picchu, a porter grabs my hand, willing me to the top. We pause to admire the stone architecture, intact and hugging the mountain slopes after hundreds of years. Below, the Urubamba River ripples past, partially obscured by the cloud forest that settles over us at this high altitude. Along the way, the women tell me about medicinal plants and native birds. We peer intently at the sky for a glimpse of the Andean condor, a rare species and the largest bird of prey in the world.

I learn so much from the women leading us, and the long journey to Machu Picchu is definitely worth it. Peering at the citadel through the Sun Gate, or Inti Punku, at sunset is a privilege earned by those who walk in the footsteps of the Incas. Suddenly, I understand why Espinoza has embarked on this journey countless times.

“After so many years, I still enjoy walking,” she says. “I am happy believing that time has not passed. I know that it is not me who will decide to stop trekking the Inca Trail, but life will tell me when it’s time. In the meantime, if I can return, I will continue to take the opportunity and won’t let it go.”

Read this article as it appears in the magazine.

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For the past five days, I’d been leading a group of American and Canadian skiers on what I call the “Japow Backcountry Ski Safari.” During that time, we had conspicuously avoided ski areas and lifts, preferring instead to earn our turns far from the madding crowds with special “alpine touring” bindings and removable “skins” that allowed us to walk uphill using our skis like snowshoes. We had already climbed and skied down Shiribetsu three times that day and barely crossed another track. But it was getting late, too late probably for what I was contemplating: a final run down a side of the mountain I had never skied before.

Photography by Mattias Fredriksson

To the north, Yotei-zan (6,227 feet), which bears an uncanny resemblance to Mount Fuji, rose from the snow-covered plains that surrounded us. Its upper slopes, where we had skied earlier in the week, were bathed in alpenglow, and a tiny plume of wind-blown snow billowed from its summit. I could feel the nip of that cold north wind on my nose. To the west, a dark bank of clouds was rolling over the town of Niseko where I hoped to soon be soaking in the mineral-rich waters of a local hot spring with a cold beer in hand. Considering the late hour and our fatigue, I knew my old boss would have told us to play it safe and ski down the way we had come up on the south side. But that slope was riddled with tracks; whereas here, on the shady north side of the peak, the snow was still virgin and untouched.

I looked at Karl, a professor from a university in New England. Fifty-something, he was the oldest in the group but also the best skier of the lot. “What do you think?” I asked him. Karl looked up from buckling his boots, his eyes barely visible through his amber goggle lens. Then he reached out with his ski pole and clinked it against mine. “Let’s do this,” he said. This was all I needed to hear. I signaled for him and the others to follow and without further discussion, I dropped into a forest of old-growth silver birch blanketed in waist-deep, untracked powder.

Like my clients, I had come to Japan in search of its famous powder skiing. I’d been hearing for years that Hokkaido was home to the best snow in the world. Its quality is so exceptional that it even has its own name: Japow (a combination of Japan and powder). And so, in 2017, I finally went to see what all the hype was about. Over the course of more than 25 years working as a certified mountain guide, my work had led me all over the world, from the Tetons to the Alps, from Patagonia to the Arctic to the Himalayas, but I had never found snow like that which greeted me in Hokkaido. Not even close.

Photography by Joel Bard

The key to Japow is a warm ocean current known as the Tsushima that runs northward up the Sea of Japan. Vapors rising from these warm waters are picked up by cold westerlies blowing in from Siberia, which forms dense storm clouds. When all of this pent-up moisture runs into Hokkaido’s mountains, it’s released in the form of snow. Exact numbers for snowfall totals are hard to come by, but I’ve driven up mountain roads where I had to crane my neck to even see the top of the snowbanks. In Niseko, a mega ski resort that has been called the “Aspen of Japan,” they routinely record 50 feet of snow in winter. Where Vail, Colorado, or Whistler, Canada, might get a storm once a week, in Hokkaido it snows most days, and it’s rare to wake up in the morning without the mountains having had a refresh overnight. What this means for a skier is that virtually every day is a Japow day. And for people like me who live for skiing untracked snow, Hokkaido is quite simply the promised land.

Of course, Japan is a long way from North America. From most cities in the U.S., it’s two days of flying and tickets tend to average about $1,500 to $2,000. Add in 14 hours of jet lag from, say, Minnesota, and it’s easy to question if it’s really worth all the expense and hassle to travel halfway around the world just to ski. And truth be told, if it was just about the snow, one trip might be enough to check that box and take those bragging rights for the next time Japow comes up in the lift line. But, of course, the “Land of the Rising Sun” has so much more to offer than just stellar dendrites.

A visit to Japan will always be about immersing oneself in a spirit of collectivism and respect for one’s elders. In Nippon, as the Japanese call their country, social cohesion is valued above all else. Coming from a deeply divided country like the United States, I was taken by Japan’s emphasis on aesthetics, orderliness and extreme courtesy — all while maintaining a strict adhesion to ancient customs. Visiting there makes you feel like you’ve traveled back in time to a bygone era that has long since been lost in the West.

Photography by Syuzo Tsushima

Perhaps nowhere are these traditions and aesthetics more fully on display than in the ancient Japanese onsen (hot springs) tradition, which dates back to the sixth century when Buddhism introduced communal bathing as a way to promote purification and healing. Historically, most Japanese homes did not have private baths. Instead, each town had a central public bathhouse called a sento where townspeople would gather to soak together in geothermal waters. Today, life still revolves around the sento (a man-made public bath made with mineral-rich heated tap water) and onsen (a natural hot spring used for communal bathing). Each day, on our way home from our ski tours, we would stop at a different bath, where we’d partake in this ancient tradition. Most public baths are segregated by sex, and clothing is not allowed. After showering at small wash stands, we would move from one hot spring pool to the next, both inside and outside, all varying temperatures, while alternating between cold plunges and a sauna. Guests frequently comment about how effective these healing soaks are at washing away lactic acid in sore muscles, almost akin to the results of a long sports massage. Costs are small, typically $4 to $8 per person.

After all this, you’re going to be hungry, which leads to the very best part about travel in Japan: the cuisine. Besides sushi, sashimi and more types of noodles than I knew existed — beyond ramen, there was udon (thick wheat noodles), soba (buckwheat noodles) and somen (thin wheat noodles usually served cold). A typical dining experience in a resort town like Niseko might include tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlet), onigiri (rice balls), or takoyaki (octopus balls). My personal favorite is shabu-shabu, which features cuts of thinly sliced meat and vegetables that you cook yourself over a bubbling, broth-filled hot pot right at your table. In Japanese, shabu-shabu means “swish-swish,” which is the sound the meat makes when you drop it into the bubbling pot. Washed down with a cold Sapporo or Asahi “Dry” beer, or even better, with a tokkuria (ceramic vessel) of cold sake, there is simply nothing better in this world after a long day of skiing. Between all the energy you’ll be burning on the hill and the Japanese concept of “hara hachi bu,” a philosophy centered on mindful eating — 80% of satiation is the target — you’re likely to go home a fitter, more healthy version of yourself.

But no, I wasn’t thinking about any of this as I swooped down through that forest on Shiribetsu. The trees were tight at first, but after a few hundred feet they opened up, and as I gazed downslope through a haze of flying powder, I noticed that the day’s last beams of sunshine had lit the slope aglow, its surface scintillating as if strewn with a million tiny diamonds. My thighs burned, but a little voice inside my head whispered don’t stop now! A quick glance over my shoulder showed Karl, closely followed by the others, lacing a perfect figure eight in my track.

And that’s how the day ended, with the four of us floating down through that magical forest like feathers dancing on the invisible hands of the wind, the only sounds the swish-swish of our skis through the untracked snow and the cries of pure joy, heard by no one but us, that echoed across the mountainside — as we reveled in the best skiing on Earth.

Read this article as it appears in the magazine.

The post An Insider’s Guide to the Best Skiing On Earth appeared first on Artful Living Magazine.

Photography provided by John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

When Hemingway arrived in 1939, Ketchum was merely a crossroads, a mining town anchored by a handful of saloons moonlighting as casinos. He came with Martha Gellhorn while still married to his second wife, Pauline. They stayed at the Sun Valley Lodge, a mile north, where the owners of the country’s first destination ski resort offered celebrities like Hemingway free lodging in exchange for the publicity they brought. He worked on For Whom the Bell Tolls in the mornings, hunted in the afternoons with friends he quickly made among the locals and fell in love with the countryside, which reminded him of Spain.

He returned twice with Martha, whom he had eventually married, and after World War II with Mary Welsh Hemingway, his fourth wife. In 1959, Ernest and Mary bought a house in Ketchum on a hillside above the Big Wood River from Bob Topping, a playboy who, the story goes, built the concrete structure painted to look like a log cabin in the style of Sun Valley Lodge to spite its management for kicking him out. The house had very modern amenities for the times, such as a movie projector with a screen that dropped out of the living room ceiling, a television with a remote control, air conditioning and double Thermador ovens. Huge picture windows provided stunning views of the surrounding mountain ranges on three sides.

It was there, in the front foyer, that Hemingway shot himself on July 2, 1961.

Photography provided by Mary and Ernest Hemingway House and Preserve Collection. Photos used with permission from Hemingway, Ltd.

My first stop was the Casino, a windowless, working man’s bar with low wooden beam ceilings. Hemingway played the slots and drank at the Casino. “He used to sit in the corner there,” the bartender told me, confirmed by photos on the walls. The Casino’s antithesis across Main Street, Whiskey on Main (formerly Whiskey Jacques), is a cheerful bar and eatery with high ceilings and large windows. They used to say, “You go to Whiskey Jacques for a cocktail and a show; you go to the Casino for a shot and a fight.” Hemingway visited Whiskey on Main when it was the Alpine Restaurant for the “sizzlin’ steak” (inch-thick sirloins served with potatoes and coleslaw for $1.25).

Nowadays, Hemingway likely wouldn’t recognize Ketchum, which has grown to eight square blocks and become a collection of boutique shops, yoga studios, ski rental outlets and real estate offices. The building where Pete Lane’s General Store anchored the crossroads of Main Street and Sun Valley Road for decades now houses Enoteca, an upscale restaurant that serves duck confit with risotto and wood-fired pizzas in a long, narrow brick-walled space. Since Lane’s catered to the Basque shepherds who had populated the area after World War II — a sign painted on the back of the building still reads “Eat More Lamb – It’s Delicious.” — I ordered the lamb chops, which were, indeed, delicious: tender and cooked to perfection.

Though chic, brick sidewalks have replaced the town’s former wooden planks, Ketchum retains its casual Western roots. When I called the Sawtooth Club to ask if it had a dress code (I had only packed two pairs of jeans), the host laughed. The place is rustic, with wooden tables and a moose head above the entry, but it serves decent food (I tried the jambalaya). The Sawtooth trades on its Hemingway connection, marketing a Hunter Thompson quote (“He could sit in the Sawtooth Club and talk with men who felt the same way he did about life . . .”), yet when I asked the young waitress about Hemingway, all she knew about him was the photo hanging by the fireplace (depicting the author in Key West, not Ketchum).

Photography provided by The Community Library Center for Regional History Donald Snoddy and Ralph Burrell Collection Photos used with permission from Hemingway Ltd

Three of the Basque restaurants Hemingway frequented — the Rio Club, the Idaho Club and the Tram — are long gone, but his favorite restaurant in town, Christiania, remains, now called Michel’s Christiania. The stone A-frame with booth-to-ceiling windows looks up Bald Mountain, known to locals as “Baldy.” (When I skied it one morning, I was pleased to find a run named “Hemingway,” though he did not ski in Idaho.) An enormous chandelier hangs above tables draped in white cloth and lit with oil lamps. Here, Hemingway ate his last meal, a rare New York steak and, most likely, Châteauneuf-du-Pape. I sat at the same table, a corner booth in the back. In memory of Hemingway as a trout fisherman and because the waiter told me that the nearby Buhl River supplies 75% of the country’s trout, I ordered the trout à la meunière with couscous, green beans and baked tomato. It was excellent. So were the crêpes with locally foraged morel mushrooms in a sherry cream sauce. Over dinner, I pondered how Hemingway — sitting in that same booth — felt about what he planned to do the following day.

Sun Valley Lodge was overhauled a mile down the road in 2015. Hemingway’s room, No. 206 — he nicknamed it “Glamour House” — has moved to No. 228 and now features a bronze statue of the writer at his typewriter. The Ram restaurant, which Hemingway mentions in his short story “The Shot,” has retained its Austrian ambiance and recently featured a Hemingway Hasenpfeffer on its heritage menu. (Ironic because Hemingway shot hundreds of rabbits to relieve farmers of the pests but did not like to eat them.) Up the road, Trail Creek Cabin looks very much like it did when Hemingway partied there, tossing an olive into the mouth of his friend Gary Cooper on one occasion and passing New Year’s Eve with Ingrid Bergman on another.

Mary Hemingway willed the hillside house in Ketchum to the Nature Conservancy, and it is now managed by the Community Library, which has a vast Hemingway collection of books, letters and photos in its regional history center. The house has been restored to the way it was when Hemingway lived — and died — there. It is closed to the public but open to private tours. I spent more than two hours inside, reconstructing in my mind scenes of Hemingway watching the Friday night boxing matches with friends and the days he struggled with the manuscript published posthumously as A Moveable Feast.

Photo by Lloyd Arnold/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

It seems everyone in Ketchum has a story to tell about Hemingway. The retired gentleman eating lunch next to me at the Bigwood Bread Bakery & Cafe who had given tours of the Hemingway house told me with mischievous delight about the Playboy magazines he imagined Hemingway perused. (Doubtful. The magazines in the home have been added as props.) A librarian who grew up with Hemingway’s granddaughters told me in a conspiratorial whisper that the gun Hemingway used to shoot himself had been buried about 30 miles south of town. (Possible. I heard competing theories about the gun’s fate.)

The best stories came from a 70-year-old realtor named Jed Gray, whose parents had befriended the author. Hemingway often made his rounds of the town in the afternoon, stopping at the post office and drugstore before driving out to the Gray house, not far from the Sun Valley Lodge, for his daily walk. Jed often accompanied him along the remote dirt road by Ruud Mountain, where Sun Valley installed the nation’s first chair lift, and Hemingway went to watch the annual ski races in the spring before his death. Today, the chairlift no longer runs, and the paved road resembles a subdivision lined with houses.

One evening at the Gray house, when Jed was sick, the author read to him from The Old Man and the Sea. Another evening, they watched the television debut of A Farewell to Arms. During a commercial break, Hemingway decided it was time to teach the two Gray boys and another youth how to drink red wine from a bota. He encouraged them to hold the wineskin at arm’s length. “We all got wet,” Jed says.

Photography by Bettmann

At the Ketchum cemetery on the edge of town, Hemingway’s grave is marked by a flat granite slab beneath two large pine trees. Pilgrims leave bottles of whiskey, cans of beer and coins scattered across his gravestone. The day I visited, there was also a letter written by a fan along with a framed 5-by-7-inch shot of the view from Hemingway’s Cuba home.

On my way out of town, I wanted to see the Hemingway Memorial beside Trail Creek about a mile and a half up Sun Valley Road from the resort. I had trouble finding it so I stopped to ask directions from a woman walking three dogs. Celebrity sightings are not unusual in the area, where you might spot Clint Eastwood driving his battered pickup or Reese Witherspoon on a chairlift. Serendipitously, the woman turned out to be Mariel Hemingway, the author’s granddaughter. She pleasantly directed me to the site.

The memorial features a bronze bust of Hemingway; his gaze permanently fixed across the valley (now the seventh fairway of the Sun Valley Golf Course) toward the hills. It is inscribed with words he wrote for a Ketchum friend killed in a hunting accident that he may as well have written about himself: “Best of all he loved the fall/The leaves yellow on the cottonwoods/Leaves floating on the trout streams/And above the hills the high blue windless sky/Now he will be part of them forever.”

Read this article as it appears in the magazine.

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Photography provided by Ayana Villas Bali

Exercise makes me feel better physically, but nothing I try calms my brain, which pinballs from morning to night, catastrophizing the littlest indignities and making lists of all the ways I’m failing as a mother, wife, daughter and career woman. Some days, the self-reproach is so paralyzing that I can barely crawl out of bed. This explains how I ended up taking a vow of silence for 24 hours at Ayana Estate in Bali, Indonesia, some 10,000 miles from home.

I wasn’t trying to “find” myself at an Eat, Pray, Love retreat, per se, but I did time my visit to Nyepi, the Balinese Day of Silence. The holiday commemorating Isakawarsa, or the Hindu-Balinese New Year, fell on March 11 and 12 last year. Its solemnity is guided by four principles: Amati Geni (no fire or light), Amati Karya (no working), Amati Lelunganan (no traveling), and Amati Lelanguan (no revelry).

Photography provided by Ayana Komodo Waecicu Beach

Balinese Hindus take Nyepi seriously. The airport closes, bars and restaurants shutter and lights dim across the island. For 24 hours, locals reflect, meditate and reset — like a Ctrl-Alt-Del for the soul. It’s also a contrast in extremes. Nyepi is preceded by Pengerupukan Day, which sees locals parading through the streets with elaborate ogoh-ogoh, demonic effigies depicting mythological spirits, hoisted onto their shoulders. There are ritualistic cleansing ceremonies, hypnotic dance performances and a whole lot of drum banging. It culminates with celebrations in public squares across the island. Some Balinese walk for miles just to join the festivities, clanging pots and pans along the way. It’s the storm before the calm.

Getting from Minnesota to Bali takes two grueling days. Still, my landing at Ayana Estate is soft: My night butler, Fidi, has a dazzling smile, which he flashes like Vanna White as he shows off the bath he drew in anticipation of my late-night arrival. (The water is cold now, but I am nevertheless charmed by the frangipani petals floating on the surface.)

Photography provided by Saka Museum at Ayana Bali

I was drawn to Ayana for the unveiling of the Saka Museum, a new cultural center on site that offers an immersive introduction to Nyepi and other pillars of Balinese faith and heritage. The collection includes rare books, Tika calendars and 10 masterfully rendered ogoh-ogoh, including a 36-footer — the tallest in Bali.

The property has arranged an opening ceremony for the museum followed by an ogoh-ogoh parade on Pengerupukan Day. To prepare visitors for the experience, cultural archivist Marlowe Bandem reminds everyone what Nyepi forbids: fire, lights, entertainment, ogling ourselves in the mirror or leaving home (in this case, the resort grounds). Talking with friends and family is OK, but no gossip. Some priests and pilgrims also fast for the holiday, but that’s where I draw the line.

Photography provided by Saka Museum at Ayana Bali

“You must abandon your gadgets and Zoom and Google and resist the urge to work,” he says. “The best practice is to make time for yourself and listen to what the universe has to say. Silence is the mirror of the soul. Think about how the past year has been and how you want the coming year to be. Enjoy the serenity. For one day, one hour or 10 minutes — whatever you can do.”

The hotel’s Pengerupukan parade is not as chaotic as Denpasar’s packed streets but still exhilarating. By evening, however, I’m feeling anxious. Crushed with work and worried that tomorrow’s break from technology would put me even further behind, I dreaded being alone with my thoughts.

Nyepi starts promptly at 6 a.m. I set an alarm for 5:45 and check my email one last time before locking my laptop in the villa safe and putting my phone in airplane mode. Usually, I’d listen to music while getting ready, but Bandem’s words were still coursing through my head. I try to focus on the melodic chirping of the birds outside of my villa instead. They’re awfully loud; apparently, they didn’t get the memo about Nyepi.

Photography provided by Ayana Komodo Waecicu Beach

My first pursuit on this tech-free day is a sunrise yoga class. The instructor tells us to imagine we’re rocks in a stream, with water flowing all around us. “Don’t push against it — let it wash over you,” he says. This feels like a metaphor I’m meant to hear: We can’t control what happens to us, only how we react to it. Play the hand you’re dealt as best as you can.

I’m feeling so grounded after yoga that I reconsider fasting for a hot second, but one glance at the resort’s array of international breakfast options scuttles that impulse. As I tuck into a South Indian dosa and snake fruit, I think about my body’s relationship with food — how I want to indulge in it but mindfully. I also listen closely to the conversations unfolding around me in Chinese, Korean and Australian-accented English; they’re things I might not have noticed when I was absorbed in my phone.

After breakfast, I wrestle a pool noodle in an Aqua Pilates class, join an hour-long thalassotherapy session, wade from one bone-pummeling jet to the next in a series of seawater pools heated to varying temperatures and eat lunch with new friends from Jakarta and Sydney, discussing everything from politics to motherhood. The hardest part of the tech-free experiment is Zenning out during a sound bath meditation. Holding space for my thoughts without the distraction of holding a tree pose feels torturous. I try to focus on my breathing, but a woman near me is panting like a dog. How is she so … intentional? I wonder and listen to her breathing instead. Baby steps.

Photography provided by Ayana Villas Bali

Stargazing on the lanai of my villa that night, hours after Bali had gone black, my head felt more clear, and my heart felt less heavy than it had in months.

The following day, I switch my phone on at 6:01 a.m. and it quickly blows up with 284 unread emails. I text my husband: “I survived!” He replies with a laughing-crying emoji: “Don’t waste a minute getting back online.”

Did Nyepi solve my problems? Of course not. But turning off my phone, even for a trifling 24 hours, helped me power down enough to recharge.

Read this article as it appears in the magazine.

The post Finding Zen at Ayana Estate During the Balinese Celebration of Nyepi appeared first on Artful Living Magazine.

Photography provided by Up Norway

The two of us have come to Norway in pursuit of its immense natural beauty, from expansive glaciers to narrow, dramatic fjords, but also for the pleasure of each other’s company, moments that feel harder and harder to come by back home, given our frenetic schedules. Though we miss my husband and son, this mother-daughter time feels like a gift.

It’s an idea that’s time has come, and tour operators are catching on. “This year, we’ve noticed a significant rise in one-parent, one-child trips,” notes Torunn Tronsvang, founder of bespoke travel outfitter Up Norway, who arranged our 10-day adventure. “We specialize in crafting itineraries that connect travelers to Norway’s landscapes and rich culture and foster deeper relationships among those traveling.”

Photography by Aron Klein

In recent years, I’ve traveled with each of my children individually. My son and I visited lush Kauai, spying on green sea turtles in the placid waters and taking to the sky above the craggy Napali Coast in a helicopter. A few summers prior, my piano-playing daughter and I followed in the footsteps of Mozart and Beethoven in Vienna and Salzburg. I’m immensely fortunate to have had these opportunities and have come to treasure them. And I’m not the only one.

Photography provided by Up Norway

Los Angeles–based mom Julie Bustrum also sees the value and joy in one-parent, one-child travel. “With three kids who each have their interests, motivations and stamina, it can be challenging to find activities that appeal to everyone,” she explains. In addition to vacations with the entire family, “my husband and I have begun adding in a different kind of travel: special trips with just one parent and one child that allow us to plan activities that appeal to each kid’s interests.”

A few years ago, Bustrum took her elder daughter to Detroit on an art and architecture-themed jaunt. It included tours of the Detroit Institute of Arts — which boasts one of the most significant art collections in the United States — and the striking art deco Guardian Building. She traveled with her foodie middle son to New Orleans, seeking the best gumbo, po’boys, shrimp and grits, beignets and king cake. This past summer, her husband and younger daughter explored Iceland, bonding through shared experiences like horseback riding, waterfall hikes, strolls along black sand beaches and long, soothing soaks in the Blue Lagoon.

Photography provided by Up Norway

In addition to allowing for deeper engagement in interests unique to each child, traveling as a pair can be “less hurried, less stressful and more spontaneous,” according to Bustrum. “With just one child, it tends to be easier to stay aligned on energy, pace and appetite.” She also makes a point of including her kids in the process. “These are trips they have chosen, and the whole experience is enhanced by the fact that they have been involved in the planning.”

Parents inviting their children to actively participate in the itinerary planning is another trend Tronsvang is seeing — one the 2025 Hilton Trends Report noted among 70% of parents of Gen Alpha kids (born between 2010 and 2024) surveyed. “It gives the child more ownership of the journey and, in turn, increases overall satisfaction,” she says.

Photography provided by Up Norway

That satisfaction goes both ways. Ellen McBreen, founder of Paris Muse, a company known for its expert-led museum tours in the City of Lights, has noticed how traveling as a one-parent, one-child duo can also be rewarding for the parent. “So many parents traveling with multiple kids are inevitably focused on whether all their kids are engaged,” she notes. “They can easily forget about their enjoyment.”

One-on-one travel enables parents to relax and enjoy themselves, McBreen says. “They will ask more questions and be more willing to play along and figure out the riddles to our Louvre scavenger hunt alongside their child. Without all the competing voices, our conversations about the art in front of us can be very focused. And when that happens, it’s magic.”

Photography provided by Up Norway

Having grown up with four siblings, McBreen recounts a favorite last-minute getaway she took as a child to Martha’s Vineyard with just her mother. “I saw a side of her I never got to see, doing all the things she loved. She seemed so much freer, so much younger. Seeing a mother and daughter together on a vacation in Paris reminds me of that trip. As a guide, you’re a small part of making these incredible memories.”

The benefits of travel are innumerable, but it’s no surprise that the parent-child bond is strengthened in the context of one-parent, one-child trips.

“Traveling to new places and experiencing new cultures is important for personal growth and also our ability to feel empathy toward others,” notes Dr. Julie Cederbaum, an associate professor at the University of Southern California whose work focuses on child and adolescent well-being. “One-on-one travel, in particular, really allows for focused time with and attention to that child, increasing attachment and creating shared positive memories.” Bustrum echoes that sentiment: “The dedicated time to just be together truly deepens the parent-child bond.”

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“You see that pointy black rock peaking above the green vegetation there? He’s about half a meter directly below that,” our naturalist Jaime said patiently as he handed a pair of binoculars to me … for a third time. He had spotted a Galápagos short-eared owl — a tricky sight to catch as its dark features and diminutive stature blend effortlessly into the shades of gray and black on the Galápagos’ island of Genovesa. I had been trying for at least five minutes to slowly move my gaze from the aforementioned pointy rock directly south, and I’d continued to come up dry. “Ugh, I still don’t see him!” I announced back to Jaime, aggravated that I was missing out on this IRL Planet Earth moment. I handed him back the binoculars, bewildered yet pleasantly surprised and impressed by the time and energy I was giving this. Me? Interested in birds?

Photography provided by Aqua Expeditions

It was a sun-soaked summer afternoon, and I had just embarked on a bucket-list adventure upon Aqua Expeditions’ Aqua Mare off the coast of the Galápagos’ Baltra Island. A welcome change from my city life, the expedition was structured similarly to a safari trip with twice-daily land and sea excursions. The Aqua Mare takes guests to five of the archipelago’s 13 primary and three smaller islands, including Santa Cruz, Genovesa, Santiago, Santa Fé and Española. Each island was distinct from the last. While one offered picturesque sandy beaches and sea lions, the next featured a vast stretch of rock inhabited by land iguanas, blue-footed boobies and frigate birds (the males utilize their iconic red-throat pouches to attract females). The ship, which stakes its claim as the Galápagos’ first actual superyacht experience, features seven luxury cabins, offering a maximum of 16 guests an intimate travel experience with a 1-to-1 crew-to-guest ratio.

Charles Darwin famously researched the wildlife of the Galápagos, leading him to develop his theory of natural selection. And while I haven’t read On the Origin of Species, I couldn’t help but imagine Darwin’s historic explorations as I gazed up at the tiny warbler finches, the same creatures he set his sights on over 150 years ago. Like Darwin, the two expert naturalist guides aboard the Aqua Mare were incredibly passionate about exploring this wonderland of biodiversity. Each time the boat’s motor slowed as we approached the day’s island to explore, their eyes would light up. Moments later, I’d find them crouching next to the wildlife, snapping countless iPhone photos of the captivating bird species right alongside the rest of us. Their enthusiasm was contagious, and I soon found myself calling out sightings of the fluffy and adorable baby frigate birds. I listened intently as they explained the identifiers of each species. Minute by minute, I collected new nuggets of information, doing my best to stash them away safely in my brain for future recollection.

To fuel our jam-packed daily itineraries, the culinary team aboard the Aqua Mare kept us well-fed with a Peruvian Japanese Nikkei-inspired menu curated by chef Pedro Miguel Schiaffino. Offering only the freshest, sustainable ingredients sourced from local suppliers, we enjoyed dinners like classic Ecuadorian seco de bife (a flavorful beef dish) and lunches like linguine ai frutti di mare (fresh seafood pasta). On a particularly breezy day on the main deck, I bit into a homemade empanada bursting with stringy Ecuadorian cheese. “Oh, I could eat like 20 of these,” I told the guest next to me as I prepped my next bite with a scoop of salsa. As someone with a savory-over-sweet palate, I admittedly found the impeccably crafted sweets — think tree tomato cheesecake and passionfruit suspiro (a Peruvian pie-like treat) — to be the absolute cherry on top of unforgettable meals.

After touching back down in the United States — with a keener than ever appreciation for the wonders of nature and a sense of pride for completing my first solo adventure — I scrolled through the 400-some photos and videos I captured on the trip and felt a pang of nostalgia. I missed the quirky animals, the fellow guests and crew, and the inexplicable thrill of exploring one of the world’s most rarified ecosystems. Having been immersed for seven days in a place that was bursting at the seams with adventure, beauty and history in its rawest form, I’m now holding tight to the feeling I had when I first set eyes on a baby sea lion or watched the sun set over the Pacific Ocean atop the upper deck of the Aqua Mare. The Galápagos Islands are a destination with heart. When given the respect and love that the land and its inhabitants deserve, it will love you back in ways you could never imagine. And while I may never hear that endearing bark of the native sea lion or witness the famed albatross mating dance again, I’m forever changed by my week walking in Darwin’s footsteps.

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Photography provided by Canaves Ena

The photo is long gone, but the memories of Santorini remain: widows clad in black, fishermen with rugged faces and undulating white houses built into the cliffside. I remember the caldera — the water-filled crater formed 3,600 years ago by a volcanic eruption and a bona fide geological masterpiece. What was most indelible was the remoteness of the place, and the dusty ribbons of empty streets that wound through town.

That changed in the early 1980s, in part, perhaps, because of a somewhat forgotten movie, Summer Lovers. The film was about a young couple’s sexual liberation in Santorini, and the location was almost more significant than the story. Soon after arriving in Oia (from Connecticut), a boyish Peter Gallagher turns to his girlfriend, played by willowy Daryl Hannah, and says, “I can’t tell you how this place turns me on.” Travelers, including most of my graduating college class, began flocking to Santorini, seeking that decadent mystique.

Around that time, the Chaidemenos family, who were native to Santorini but living in Athens, decided to transform the caves that had been in the family for generations — where they stored their wine, chickens and mules — into a hotel. “It was a very progressive idea at the time, and of course, everyone thought they were crazy,” says their son Markos, 36, managing director of the family’s Canaves Collection. Their five properties around Santorini are wildly chic interpretations of the sun-kissed architectural vernacular that, along with its powerful landscape and prime location in the heart of the Aegean, helped put Santorini on the map 40 years ago.

When I recently returned, I was eager to revisit the secluded outpost I remembered as a teenager. I also wanted to experience the Greek island that, since then, has become a darling among high-end travelers who love their sensuous playgrounds in the sun served up with local flavor, refined style and a chilled glass of Assyrtiko wine.

Photography provided by Canaves Ena

After four decades, the Chaidemenos’ original property was reimagined, reopening in 2024 as Canaves Ena, a boutique hotel that, despite its central location in Oia, feels like a private, exclusive villa. Each room has a zillion-dollar view of the caldera and Santorini’s fabled sunsets and is furnished—minimally and gorgeously — with coffee tables fashioned from Greek marble and ceramic vessels crafted by local artist Andreas Makaris. I visited his atelier and he guided me as I spun a bowl, one of many experiences that filled my dreamy days.

I stayed in the family’s Canaves Epitome, which opened in 2018, and where I sensed something increasingly rare in the luxury hotel space. The glamour here was not the white-hot pretentious kind, but the warm and earthy version: in the spare but exquisite room and the understated yet flawless service. “True luxury is also about plants, gardens, space and total privacy,” said Markos. “That’s why we created this sanctuary.”

Photography provided by Canaves Ena

We were chatting over an al-fresco breakfast. Birds trilled in 700-year-old olive trees that the family shipped to Santorini, where the volcanic earth allows little to flourish besides cherry tomatoes and grapes. It’s hard to decide what was more pleasing — the scent of jasmine drifting around our table or my fragrant bowl of kagianas, a sublime concoction of scrambled eggs, feta cheese, tomatoes and local sausage.

We discussed Santorini’s reputation for overcrowding, which may have been, in recent years, a deterrent (although it is Mykonos that regularly makes news for price-gouging tourists). In fact, says Markos, the island, especially Oia, is highly resistant to overdevelopment due mainly to legislation made when his father served as mayor, including a law forbidding the construction of any new establishment without another one being closed. “People said, ‘You’re killing the destination!’ But what he was really doing was saving it.”

Markos’ current mission, he said, is to preserve and promote the Santorini he knew growing up, spending every summer and holiday there. “This will always be a destination because of the natural beauty and the energy,” he said. “But it’s up to us to offer not just a hotel but a whole experience that’s different and authentic to this island.”

Photography provided by Canaves Ena

The streets in Oia were busy but not congested. Ambling through town, showered in sunshine, I ordered tender pork souvlaki wrapped in a pita that I ate on a whitewashed step overlooking the sea. The hotel arranged for a catamaran to sail around the caldera to the hot springs, where I had a soothing swim. On deck, I showered off the strong residue of sulfur. That and the panorama of black and white lava cliffs reminded me that this is still an active underwater volcano.

One afternoon, I sojourned to the island’s premier winemaker, Sigalas. It was quiet there, almost contemplative. The head of hospitality, Labrini Kouvatsi, led me through the grapevines, which are gathered into round baskets fashioned from older vines to protect them from dryness and the salt wind. The soil was a remarkable red, black and white volcanic ash. “There is not a lot of production, but the quality is outstanding,” she told me as I sipped an assortment of citrusy whites and peppery reds.

Photography provided by Canaves Ena

I descended past dramatic escarpments from the hotel to the port of Ammoudi and the hotel’s taverna, Armeni. There, I feasted on grilled prawns, tomatoes and feta and red snapper that was swimming that morning. I saw mules on the hillside and recognized it as the place I had been with my parents years ago. I smiled at the memory of my absurd footwear and my mother laughing herself to tears.

I sensed that Santorini — the perfume in the wind and my elegantly minimal room with a private pool, where I watched the sun set over the Aegean — might occupy my daydreams in icy winter. I ate decadently and slept deeply. My time in Oia was escapism with a twist. I didn’t simply laze on a beach. I engaged with the village, the sea and my past, and fell hard for the rugged landscape. I will not wait another fifty years to return.

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I stood about 20 feet below him, my crampons skittering in a pile of loose rocks at 27,700 feet, high in what they call the “Death Zone” on the North Face of Mount Everest. I had just unclipped from the fixed ropes that climbers use as their umbilical cord on the way up and down from the summit, and this, I was now being told by this veteran guide, is something that you simply don’t do.

But I was on an entirely different mission than the other climbers on the mountain that year, and I had a very good reason for leaving the security of those ropes. It was the spring of 2019, and I was leading a team sponsored by National Geographic that was trying to solve one of the great mysteries of exploration: Who really was the first to stand atop the roof of the world? Officially, the tallest mountain on Earth was first ascended by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary in May 1953. But there has always been a chance that pioneering British mountaineers, George Leigh Mallory and Andrew Comyn “Sandy” Irvine might have beaten them to the punch.

Shortly after noon on June 8, 1924, Mallory and Irvine’s teammate Noel Odell scrambled atop a small limestone crag jutting from the North Face of Mount Everest. A thick cottony veil had enveloped the upper reaches of the mountain all morning, but as Odell turned his gaze towards the summit, 3,000 feet above him, the swirling cloud cap lifted. High on the Northeast Ridge, at what he later approximated to be 28,200 feet — just 800 feet shy of the summit — Odell spotted two tiny silhouettes going strong for the summit. “My eyes became fixed on one tiny black spot silhouetted on a small snow crest,” Odell would write a few days later in his diary. “The first then approached the great rock step and shortly emerged on top; the second did likewise. Then the whole fascinating vision vanished, enveloped in clouds once more.”

It was the last time Odell would ever see his two friends. At that moment, two of history’s greatest explorers — men decades ahead of their time, clad in wool and gabardine, hobnailed leather boots and homemade oxygen sets — vanished into the ether.

Photography by Royal Geographical Society

In the years since, clues as to what might have happened on that fateful day have been few and far between. A subsequent British expedition in 1933 found Irvine’s ice ax laying atop a rock slab not far from where he’d last been seen. Then, in 1999, my friend Conrad Anker found Mallory’s body on a ledge at 26,700 feet. Mallory lay face down, frozen into the ground, his arms outstretched overhead, bare fingers dug into the gravel. His jacket had been shorn from his body, and his right leg was broken cleanly above the top of his boot. Rope burns on the left side of his torso suggest that he had taken a hard, swinging fall. The rope itself was tangled around his body, its severed end whipping in the wind. Anker and his companions searched Mallory’s pockets, finding a pair of green tinted goggles and a wrist watch missing its crystal that had stopped working between one and two (but was that a.m. or p.m.?).

More significant, though, was what they didn’t find, namely the photo of Mallory’s wife, Ruth, which he had said he would leave on the summit. There was also no trace of Sandy Irvine, nor of the Kodak Vest Pocket camera, known as the VPK, that he is believed to have been carrying. If that camera could be found, and the film was salvageable and held snapshots of the summit, it could rewrite the history of the world’s tallest peak. In the meantime, new research had resulted in a set of GPS coordinates that might mark the spot of Sandy’s final resting place. This is what my team had come to investigate.

As I contemplated how Lhakpa might react if I disobeyed his order to clip back in, I took a moment to assess how I felt. Since setting off from Advanced Base Camp three days earlier, I had barely slept or ate. That morning, I had forced myself to choke down a bite of Snickers — only to vomit it on the front of my down suit. Lhakpa was right, of course. One slip and I would meet the same fate as the man I was trying to find. And after leading dozens of mountaineering expeditions all over the world, I had promised my wife and four children that I would never step over to the wrong side of the fence. But this mystery and this mountain that Tibetans call Chomolungma, which means “goddess mother of the world,” had by now all but consumed me. And so, against those promises and Lhakpa’s admonitions, I turned into the slope and began downclimbing into the unknown.

Photography by Royal Geographical Society

After traversing about 200 feet, I arrived atop a small rock step about as high and steep as a playground slide. It would have been inconsequential almost anywhere else, but up here in the Death Zone, in my depleted state, alone and without a rope, it was a daunting obstacle. Looking down, I took in the dizzying void between me and the glacier, 7,000 feet below. Then I removed the steel blade of my ax from the snow and stepped gingerly down onto the rock. My crampons grated on the sloping gray limestone, but they didn’t slip, and step after timid step, I made my way down.

At the bottom of the cliff, I stomped my foot into a panel of rock-hard snow, took a few deep breaths and paused to take in my surroundings. Balancing carefully, I reached into my suit and pulled out the GPS which hung from a string around my neck. It showed that I had arrived at the waypoint. Ten feet to my right lay a small alcove with a niche in the back that looked like the kind of place where a climber in distress might try to find shelter. My eyes opened wide.

Wind whispered through the thin air, and high above I could see the summit of Chomolungma etched against a pale blue sky. Fourteen thousand feet below, the arid plain of the Tibetan Plateau shimmered like a mirage. I had risked my life to reach this forlorn place. And I now knew with awful clarity that it had been a fool’s errand. The niche was empty. Sandy Irvine wasn’t there.

Unlike Mallory and Irvine — and so many others — I was allowed safe passage back to those fixed ropes, which led me down Chomolungma and back to my family. But I had failed in my quest to find that infamous camera and the images it might hold. Then, in the fall of 2021, about six months following the publication of my book, The Third Pole: Mystery, Obsession and Death on Mt. Everest, a former high ranking official in the British Embassy dropped a bombshell that he had been sitting on for almost forty years.

According to my source (who has asked to remain anonymous), he attended a meeting at the headquarters of the Chinese Mountaineering Association in Beijing back in 1984. At this meeting, a woman named Pan Duo, who made the first female ascent of the North Face of Everest in 1975, told the diplomat that on the way to the summit her team stumbled upon a body high on the mountain. And on that body, they found the Kodak VPK. They brought the camera back to China and tried to develop the film. But they either botched it or the film was ruined. No images were recovered.

I assumed this would be the end of the story, but then in October 2024 came some stunning news out of Tibet: a National Geographic team led by my old climbing partner Jimmy Chin had found Sandy’s boot, with a sock labeled A.C. [Andrew Comyn] Irvine, on the Central Rongbuk Glacier, at the base of the North Face of Everest. At one point or another, it seems that Sandy did indeed fall to the bottom of the mountain. The coincidence of this discovery happening on the 100 year anniversary of Sandy’s disappearance is almost too hard to believe, but as I have learned time and again with this story, sometimes real life is more incredible than anything we could make up.

My initial reaction when hearing this news was one of intense relief to finally know where Sandy rests in peace. But like all the other clues in this mystery, the boot offers more questions than answers, and, of course, the camera is still out there somewhere. If the story from the British diplomat is true, one possible place for the VPK to reside is the Tsering Chey Nga Snow Mountain Museum in Lhasa. And yes, I would like to visit this museum and ask its director if they have the VPK. But there’s another part of me, a stronger part, that is glad that I still don’t know what happened on that fateful day a century ago — and that the mystery of Mallory and Irvine endures.

And maybe that’s the nut of it all: In not knowing, the ending to this epic story is left to all of us. For me, this will always be a vision of those two intrepid souls, still going strong for the summit — despite the late hour of the day, and the odds stacked terribly against them.

Excerpted and adapted from The Third Pole: Mystery, Obsession and Death on Mount Everest (Dutton, 2021).

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