Travel Archives | Philip Yancey

Thanksgiving Derailed

November 2021

The year was 1982, one of my first trips overseas. I got a sore neck, turning this way and that to take in the sights of the five-ring circus that is India. A brightly painted elephant walking unaccompanied down the street among the roaming cows. A snake charmer with his wily mongoose and basketful of cobras. Women in colorful silk saris, no two alike, exotic as tropical birds. A monkey dressed in an embroidered jacket and fez sitting on a ...

In the Air Again

June 2021

After staying home virtually all of 2020, in the Spring of this year I started traveling again. In May I ventured an international trip, accepting an invitation to speak at a Europe Teen Challenge conference in Portugal. At the airline gate, twenty minutes before departure, I learned that my COVID-19 antigen test, required for travel, was valid for my connection through Germany but not for entering Portugal. United Airlines pulled my suitcase off the plane, issued me a hotel voucher ...

An Anniversary Worth Remembering

November 2019

On a driving trip through Scandinavia I got my first view of aurora borealis, the Northern Lights. In Finland, just twenty miles from the Russian border, I stood shivering in the cold and watched as waves of luminous color arced across the sky, covering perhaps one-seventh of the dark dome above. Tendrils of green light pulsed and slid together like the interlocking teeth of a giant comb, blocking the stars. It seemed at once ominous and magical. An hour later, ...

Snapshots from Asia

September 2019

I traveled to Southeast Asia in late July, in the midst of their steamy tropical summer. The trip began in Singapore, a clean and modern place where, mercifully, most buildings are air-conditioned. The tiny city-state reminds me of Disneyland: no litter, no graffiti, no sign of poverty. Singapore punishes vandalism with caning, and bans the sale of chewing gum, lest it end up on the sidewalk. Singapore has one of Asia’s most vibrant Christian communities. I spoke at a conference ...

A Refugee Haven

July 2019

I am flying into Beirut, Lebanon, for a conference, and from the air the city looks to deserve its reputation as “the Paris of the Middle East.” Upscale shops and apartment buildings hug the hills bordering the turquoise Mediterranean. On the ground, however, the city tells a different story. Holes made by artillery pockmark many of the downtown buildings, a remnant of the civil war that raged from 1975 to 1990. Lest Lebanon forget, a Hope for Peace Monument, encasing ...

Thanksgiving Derailed

In the Air Again

An Anniversary Worth Remembering

Snapshots from Asia

A Refugee Haven

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