We started preparing for the trip since before my son became 3 years old. Living at 11,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains, I took countless walks with my son when he was a toddler. When he was 3, we backpacked for four months around Europe. Before we embarked for the Himalayas, only two months before his 4th birthday, my son summited a 13,000 foot peak in the Rockies all on his own power; we camped one night on the mountain just to shorten the trek by dividing it into two days it took to climb the mountain leaving from our house. Our routine walks in the Rocky Mountains were always easy going with constant stops to teach him about the nature and its cycles. Although we frequently walked on longer outings, I always kept our walks to what I sensed he could comfortably handle. Sometimes he was tired or not in the mood to go around where he had already been so many times with me. By the end of the summer before his fourth birthday, I felt he could do much, if not all, that I envisioned we do in the Himalayas and we could have fun doing it. Above all, I knew I needed to stay aware and not press for the unattainable for him and the two of us together, no matter what lay ahead where we headed. We would need to stay flexible and only do what the circumstances would allow. I was always prepared having to abort our journey for whatever the circumstances, whether medical, political, financial, or just any reason plainly beyond our control. I had a loose plan and itinerary in mind that I was confident would fit together, and we would accomplish our journey. As I ran an adventure and cultural travel company, I could work my business from anywhere. In the Himalayas, we often camped, and I cooked. Other times we stayed in people’s homes or simple rest houses.

Our first trip to India became a stepping stone to six years of travel that followed, always traveling just the two of us. I got a permit to homeschool him and we did so until he started public school when in the 6th grade. By the time he was 7 years old, we traveled to India a second time and had been twice all over China, as well as Bhutan, Sikkim, Thailand, and Vietnam. By the time he started school, we travelled to Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and all the way to the bottom of South America, to Tierra del Fuego, around Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil. We always traveled adventure style, backpacking, always on entirely self-supported trips, and often in remote areas, including a trek in the Andes.

If you have small children and wish you could see the world but can’t because your children are small, you can! Travel with small children is utterly enriching, eye-opening for you and them. Twenty-some years ago, I have given a few lectures on the topic of adventure travel with children, from institutions as the Sierra Club to universities, often encountering many people who dreamed of what my son and I were doing but felt they could not until hearing about our travels. While many became inspired to follow our example, perhaps only some of them indeed did, and perhaps even only a handful of you, if any of you at all, seeing this post may follow as well.

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I will never forget the moment I took this photograph. It was late afternoon, some fifty kilometers north of the Nepal-Tibet border crossing at Zhangmu. Atop the barren Tibetan plateau some 4,500 meters above sea level, it got cold and a fierce wind was blowing. The setting sun was magical, alas, blinding at this altitude. Yet, a village woman cast her defiant look straight in its direction, as if to quell its piercing rays. The look in her eyes, the harsh, wrinkled face chiseled by icy winds that whip the prayer flags to frenzy atop the highest region on Earth. Stretching to the south, the snow-covered peaks of the High Himalaya — Gaurishankar, Cho Oyu, Mt. Everest massif, areas where I trekked last only a year earlier — loomed steadfast under the azure sky. The Nepal midlands and the Indian subcontinent extending far beyond to the south, now only an image etched on my mind, invisible.

After my treks through the Nepal Himalaya in the 1970s, I was eager to visit Tibet. Unfortunately, Tibet was still off limits to visitors for much of the decade. But in the late 1970s, at last, as the dust settled on China’s tumultuous Cultural Revolution, the newly opened Kodari Bridge became a threshold to a world awakening from a long slumber. Mere 2,300 m (7,500 ft) above sea level, in the rain shadow of the High Himalaya, spanning the Bhote Koshi River, the Kodari Bridge in the early 1980s turned into a gateway to Tibet, with Kathmandu as the staging point for the arduous journey to Lhasa and the “Roof of the World”.

The Cultural Revolution, a decade of political and social upheaval, had cast a long shadow over China. Tibet, a land steeped in ancient traditions, felt the brunt of this ideological purge. Ransacked and destroyed, some 6,000 Buddhist monasteries stood in ruin across the desolate high altitude landscape. Religious practices outlawed, tens of thousands of monks and nuns dead or in reeducation camps, fifteen hundred years of unique Tibetan cultural identity became threatened.

I was fortunate to be among the first handful of intrepid travelers that stood at the precipice of history, ready to cross the Kodari Bridge and ascend into the icy winds atop the plateau. I recall my anticipation as I walked alone across the bridge to the Chinese side of the border. The morning I did, I was the only Western traveler making my way across and then steeply up into the thin air of 4,000 to 5,000 meters (13,000 to 15,000 feet) in altitude. Nepal, a vibrant tapestry of cultures, would give way to the stark beauty of the Tibetan plateau. Villages nestled amongst soaring peaks, prayer wheels turning in the wind — these would be the first sights to greet me. But the real intrigue lay beneath the surface as I uncovered it in the days ahead.

The Tibet I encountered would be a land in transition, during a time of immense change, a chance to witness a culture rise from the ashes, stronger and more vibrant than ever before. Monasteries, once silent testaments to a vibrant faith, would slowly stir back to life. Monks, hesitant at first, would emerge from the shadows. Some only recently returned from prisons, their maroon robes a stark contrast to the desolate landscape. The air would be thick with a blend of hope and uncertainty.

The journey between the Nepal border and Lhasa I experienced was unlike anything I could have imagined, and would be impossible to repeat in the years to come. This was the time to roam freely across the vast, frozen plateau and the craggy remote mountains. Scaling steep slopes dotted with isolated monasteries, I witnessed them coming alive, often with only one or two monks rebuilding their isolated outposts of faith. The views and panoramas of and from these isolated locations and frontiers of once thriving monastic settlements were breathtaking. The monks and villagers that came to help them rebuild were so hardened by life, and stoic, yet friendly, all the while they focused on their quest where time did not matter.

My treks into remote pockets of Tibet along the skeleton of a new road connecting remote villages between the Kodari Bridge and the reawakening towns of Shigatse and Gyantse en route to Lhasa were absolutely spontaneous, unhindered by checks and permits. But that changed once in Tibet’s capital in a brief span of 2 to 3 years. The more travellers arrived in Tibet, by then also by air, the more they faced strict rules and regulations curtailing free movement without permits and needing to be accompanied by guides. Culminating with March 8, 1989, when Chinese authorities imposed martial law on Lhasa, the decade at the beginning of which I experienced Tibet’s unique slice of history was over.

Indeed, I was most fortunate to discover the many amazing places between the Nepal border and Central Tibet. Mesmerized by my experience, from Lhasa I continued across Tibet north to Qinghai and on to Xinjiang, the Chinese Turkestan, at the time also still undiscovered by tourism. Crossing Xinjiang, eventually I traversed the Khunjerab Pass into Hunza in Pakistan. Trekking in the Karakoram, roaming about Hindukush, yet another frontier virtually unknown to outside visitors, still years before the real onset of mass travel. And little did I know then where everywhere else would my travels take me thereafter.

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It was precisely the character of Yemen’s mountainous highlands and the unique architectural style of their villages that brought me to this region of the world, for both the adventure of trekking this remote region and my academic interests. While for now, Yemen is an unlikely destination for trekking or cycling for years to come, its undeniably amazing landscape will lure adventure travelers one day again.

Yemen’s architectural style, particularly its village design and house architecture, reflects the historical context of the region having to defend against external threats and adopt to the harsh environment.

One of the most iconic features of Yemeni village architecture is the “qasaba” or the fortified village. Qasabas are typically built on hilltops or elevated terrain, providing strategic advantages for defense and visibility. The layout of these villages often includes narrow, winding streets and alleys designed to confuse and deter potential attackers. Constructed close together, they form a cohesive defensive perimeter around the village center.

One striking feature of Yemeni village architecture is the “tower houses” or “mud skyscrapers” that dominate the skyline of many highland settlements. Because of the compact settlement pattern of the Yemeni villages, I usually camped near their villages or in remote areas, but more than once, when I unzipped my tent in the early morning, a group of villagers waited quietly near my tent with a kettle of hot tea …

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