“Hair is everything,” Phoebe Waller-Bridge declares in an epic monologue to her hairdresser in “Fleabag.” It’s a symbol of power, a symbol of fertility, and—perhaps most of all—it is “the difference between a good day and a bad day.”Now, you might say that’s giving hair too much credit. As someone who’s spent the equivalent of a down payment on a house and endured innumerable hours of pain and discomfort in the name of hair, I assure you it is not. I want my hair to reflect who I am, how I see m...

Japan is most often associated with images of megalopolises like Tokyo and Osaka, with their neon lights, hidden bars, and crowded subways. But there’s an antidote to all that (delightful) urban chaos: Japan’s rural side is a hiker’s paradise. Beyond the well-trod trails of famous mountains such as the Japanese Alps and the country’s icon, Mount Fuji, here are six spectacular places to explore the archipelago’s wild side on foot. Tokushima Prefecture, Shikoku Deep in the mountains of Shikoku—the...

For all of our evangelizing over pristine paradises and unspoiled beaches, we rarely, if ever, find ourselves in a position of real discovery. Mergui, however, might finally be the place to change that.
Chances are you’ve never heard of the archipelago, spread over some 12,000 square miles in the Andaman Sea, with 800 islands—nearly all of which are uninhabited—scattered just off the coasts of Myanmar and Thailand. Though it’s the territory of the former, it looks far more like the latter: Cover...

It had been less than two weeks since I arrived in India when I boarded a bus for what would be the longest trip I’d ever taken. The 17-hour ride from the holy city of Varanasi to Jaisalmer in the western desert included a long stretch near the heavily militarized border with Pakistan—a fitting backdrop to what promised to be a jarring ride.
A Western woman in India, I often felt like a prime target for being ripped off or otherwise taken advantage of and found it hard to trust anyone. As my gi...