Women Who Travel | Condé Nast Traveler

We’re diving into something we’re all doing a lot of around the holiday season: partying. In Ukraine, where our two guests are based, rave culture has become a necessary vehicle for letting off steam, distraction, and finding joy. Lale talks to Kyiv-based journalist Anastacia Galouchka, and novelist Haska Shyyan, who lives in Lviv, about what raving means to them and the power of community and safe spaces during unimaginable turbulence and uncertainty. This episode is a rerun. It recently won a Society of American Travel Writers Foundation Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Selassie Atadika is a chef, food innovator, and the founder of Midunu, a nomadic private dining experience based out of Accra, Ghana. She’s also happened to have visited 40 African countries. Lale chats with Atadika about the rich bounty of diverse cuisine to be found across Africa, some of her most memorable travel experiences, making artisanal chocolate, and the enduring intersection of food and politics.

We revisit our conversation with Gabrielle Union about her BET docuseries, in which she celebrates her 50th birthday on a trip across Africa with her husband, Dwyane Wade, their children, and friends.

This episode, we join Ashley C. Ford, a writer, educator, and host of the podcast Monumental, and move around the country to find out more about statues, monuments, memorials, and landmarks. Who gets to choose to put them up? And how are our ideas about them changing? Plus, Ashley shares her own personal stories about the monuments that changed her ways of thinking.

Comedian Cat Cohen returns to the podcast with stories of the Edinburgh Festival, a long-awaited trip to Australia after a challenging year, and nights spent on the world’s various comedy stages. Plus, she teases her first album, and looks back on her award-winning standup show The Twist…? She's Gorgeous, which has now landed on Netflix.

In this episode of Travel That Matters, Bruce speaks with Divia, the Global Editorial Director of Condé Nast Traveler, about her home country of India, inclusive of the bustling scene in Goa, the best time of year to visit, where to find the best jewelry, and the thrills of a tiger safari (and how it’s different than the safari experience in African countries). Divia gives useful tips like how to see India without falling into a tourist trap, if you should see the Taj Mahal or skip it, where to go if you have particular hobbies such as hiking or skiing, and how to find authentic food in India. Divia also tells us about her favorite Indian dish, mentions a few specific restaurants in India that you'll want to try, and talks about Indian cuisine in London, where she lives today. Listen to Travel That Matters wherever you get your podcasts.

Women make up just 7% of truckers in the United States—a number that shows no sign of increasing, even while the industry suffers from a huge shortage of workers. We hear from trucker Desiree Wood, whose job has taken her to 48 states, about the freedom of life on the road, the dangers that herself and women colleagues face, and the joys that come with the occassional return trip home.

Kelsey McKinney has received more than her fair share of salacious tips during her tenure as the host of Normal Gossip. One theme that crops up time and time again? Group travel. This week, Lale chats with the podcaster and author of the upcoming book, You Didn’t Hear This From Me, to find out about her own memorable travel escapades, the places she loves for eavesdropping and connecting with strangers, and why she’ll never, ever, go on another bachelorette.

Emma Roberts has acted in TV thrillers like American Horror Story and Scream Queens, as well as movies including We Are the Millers, Valentines Day, and Hotel for Dogs. She also happens to be both an avid traveler and the founder of online reading community Belletrist. Lale chats with the actor about the books she likes to travel with (and where she likes to buy them), her love of train travel, and one of her all-time favorite cities: New Orleans.

With the US election looming, this week’s episode is a dispatch from Cristina Tzintzun Ramirez, who is in the midst of touring 114 college campuses and hosting parties to mobilize newly eligible voters. She shares stories from the road, what she’s hearing from young voters, and how her own heritage influenced her career as a youth vote organizer.

Food has the power to forge connections, and for Palestinian American chef Reem Assil that means using the flavors, aromas, and hospitality of Arab cooking to strengthen and grow her community in Oakland. Reem chats with Lale about her visionary bakery Reems, her family’s Palestinian and Syrian legacies, the surreal experience of winning a James Beard award, and her own personal ties with Gaza.

Earlier this year, New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead reported on the scandals taking place within the British Museum—and its own history of cultural theft that continues to define how we approach it as a museum today. Lale joins Rebecca on the ground in London to learn more about the institution she grew up visiting—and more broadly, how to tackle some of the world’s biggest museums in a way that’s both fulfilling and, well, fun.

Ever contemplated studying abroad? Charissa Enget needed to find an engineering course she could afford and eventually found one in rural Thailand—drawn in by a scholarship and low living costs. In a listener dispatch, Charissa shares how she learned Thai in six months, made a new circle of friends, traveled around the country in her free time, and finally decided to make Thailand a permanent fixture in her life.

If a new opportunity comes your way, are you ready to take it? When professional photographer Leslie McKellar was forced to move out of her apartment in 2020 because of toxic mold, she took it as an opportunity to reevaluate her trajectory. After realizing her calling to travel full-time, she set out a plan to make it happen and left for Europe in January 2022. Listen to Zero to Travel wherever you get your podcasts.

Our solo travel mini series has followed guests on a work trip to Cannes and a six-month backpacking odyssey across South America. But in this third and final installment, we speak to a guest who pushed themselves even further—to Antarctica. Lale chats with Preet Chandhi, an endurance athlete who’s broken records skiing alone across one of the world’s most brutal and isolated landscapes, to find out how she trained for it, combatted loneliness, and relied on her survival skills during multiple polar expeditions.

In the second installment of our solo travel series, we hear from Christie Bowers, who spent six months backpacking across South America, stopping everywhere from the Amazon to Argentina. She shares how she planned the trip, budgeted for it, and navigated both the joys and challenges of going it alone far from home.

In the first installment of our three-part solo travel series, Zakiya Gibbons, host of dating podcast Hang Up, recounts a pretty glamorous work trip to Cannes—and shares how she navigated moments of loneliness, figured out ways to prioritize downtime and actually see the destination, and even managed to squeeze in a date.

As part of Condé Nast Traveler’s music and travel coverage this month, Lale sits down with reggae singer Lila Iké to find out about life in Kingston, the old school influences that still shape her music now, and what it was like performing live on stage for the first time. But even as she tours the world, she remains faithful to Jamaica’s reggae heritage. “I am a very Jamaican girl,” says Iké. “I grew up in the country, and it doesn't get any more Jamaican than that. I'm a very rootsy, and my music reflects a lot of that.” Eager for more once you’ve listened? Don’t miss Iké’s local’s guide to Kingston on cntraveler.com.

Freezing your eggs can be logistically challenging—and costly—here in the US, which is why some women are turning their sights overseas. Lale chats with Los Angeles-based Esther Yu McElroy about her own fertility journey, one that took her all the way to Barcelona with a stop in London along the way.

The Paris Olympics are in full swing, but far away from the main stadium, the world’s greatest surfers are taking on Tahiti’s biggest wave as part of the competition. Lale catches up with Condé Nast Traveler’s Megan Spurrell, who flew out to the French Polynesian island to witness the power of the wave firsthand—and speak to the women surfers who are riding it in the hopes of winning gold. (After listening, read her full story here.)