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Michael Kohn
A Bay Area native, Michael spent a good deal of his youth travelling up and down the California coast before finally heading south to attend the University of California, Santa Barbara. During his third year Michael swapped one utopia for another, boarding the SS Universe, a floating university that sailed from the Bahamas to China, stopping en route in South America, Africa and India. The semester complete, Michael left the group and crossed the Tibetan plateau to Nepal. Returning to university, Michael founded a chapter of the Free Tibet campaign at UC Santa Barbara before completing a liberal arts degree.
After graduation, Michael bought a ticket to Europe and sought out every bit of artwork he had studied over the past four years. He ended up in Osaka, where he taught English, saving up enough cash for a nine-month island-hopping trip through Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand. A keen hiker, Michael climbed 14 volcanoes in Indonesia and spent more than 40 days trekking in New Zealand.
An offer to work as a hiking guide sent him briefly to Durango, Colorado but a yearning for Asia had him winding up in Mongolia, where he found work as the English editor of a local newspaper, The Mongol Messenger.
Normally a quiet backwater, Mongolia was experiencing a period of political upheaval, and Michael began stringing news stories to the Associated Press and BBC World Service. His material also appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Baltimore Sun, New York Times, South China Morning Post and UNESCO magazine, among others.
During his stint in Mongolia, Michael had lunch with the Prime Minister, hosted a radio talk show, starred in a movie and read the news for a local TV station. He also crisscrossed hundreds of miles of trackless terrain from the Gobi to the Altai mountains.
Three winters later, Michael?s itchy feet sent him wandering again, this time under the guise of journalist and travel writer. In India he reported on elections in Kashmir and the movements of the Dalai Lama. He also covered political and social affairs in Kathmandu, Ulaanbaatar and Rangoon.
Michael speaks Mongolian and can find himself a hotel room in half a dozen other languages. He first hooked up with Lonely Planet in 2003, when he was sent to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to update the Central Asia guide. Michael has since worked on Tibet, The Middle East, Caribbean Islands, Mongolia and Colombia. You can see his blogs for Israel and Colombia on this website.
While his native California remains close to his heart, Michael?s favourite destination is a tie between Jerusalem and Lhasa. His favourite trip, however, was a journey to the Mongolian province of Bayan Ölgii, where he spent 10 days in subzero temperatures with a group of Kazakh ?eagle hunters.
His best travel tip: don?t fooled by the notion of the ?real world?. When you?re on the road or living in a different country, you?re in the real world, and there?s no rush to go back.
