Moreintelligentlife.com is the website of Intelligent Life magazine. Articles about Arts, Lifestyle, Travels, and Ideas

LOVE AND SPIRITS | October 9th 2008

In search of a proper conclusion to her screenplay, Deborah Stoll heads to Puerto Vallarta and finds a "rehab for the lovelorn" ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE

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ZEITGEIST | July 18th 2008

Heuhotel

Travellers across Europe are seeking out accommodations similar to those of barnyard animals. Rebecca Willis describes the allure of hay hotels ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, Summer 2008  read more »

A SCEPTIC'S PILGRIMAGE | May 9th 2008

Pingu1963/Flickr

A cranky cynic, Anand Prakash didn't know what to expect from his summer of ashram-hopping. But he found something unexpectedly heartening in the story of Anandathirtha, a formidable monk and his namesake ...

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CASH IS THE BEST MEDICINE | January 29th 2008

salimfadhley/Flickr

The Hungarian health system is in a parlous state, Adam LeBor writes. Doctors are poorly paid, prices are high and bribes are often expected. Perhaps this helps to explain the country's low birth-rate ...

From ECONOMIST.COM*

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HE GOES WITH THE FLOE | January 3rd 2008

All photos Ben Saunders/Flickr

What does it mean to be an explorer in a world where everything has been explored? Ben Saunders explains to Joanne Ramos why he still wants to load up his sledge and head for the North Pole ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE MAGAZINE, December 2007

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A MOUNTAINOUS SUMMIT | December 17th 2007

Julius Strauss

At his ranch in the Selkirk mountains of British Columbia, Julius Strauss finds that quad-biking tourists and government-approved bear-culling are turning him into a militant conservationist ...

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RULE ONE: AVOID THE FOOD | November 30th 2007

popix/Flickr

Bottle-scarred Economist correspondent Edward Lucas breakfasts on plum brandy, lunches on balsams and dines on bison-grass vodka, but draws the line at a side-dish of Hungarian lung stew ...

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AND DAZZLING SEASCAPES TOO

Travelling through Ukraine, Jon Fasman finds much to surprise him, from the plain everyday life of his wife's ancestral town of Uman, to the near-Mediterranean landscapes and exotic history of Crimea ...

from our travel blog, FURTHERMORE

I'm back from a two-and-a-half week trip through Ukraine. We missed Lviv, unfortunately, but saw the other big-three cities: Kyiv, Odessa and Yalta. All were enjoyable, but, like most tourists, we went knowing what to expect: Kyiv the bustling capital, Odessa the tree-lined and fast-talking port town, and Yalta the glitzy and rather corny beach resort.

Between our first two stops, however, we spent a couple of days in Uman, an unremarkable agricultural town of about 100,000 in the centre of Ukraine's wheat belt. I went for family reasons--my spouse's great-grandfather emigrated from there two New York--and spent two days scouring graveyards, trying (and failing) to find archival records, or even a phone book, and basking in a lot of curious stares.

Tourists tend not to go to Uman (tourists tend not to go to Ukraine, but that's another story), and why would they? Its major attractions are Sofiyikva Park, a nature reserve about which Ukrainians tend to get quite breathless but which is about as exciting as a subsection of Central Park or Kew Gardens; and the tomb of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, which draws about 20,000 Hasidic pilgrims--different, of course, from tourists--every Rosh Hashanah.  read more »

AN ADVENTURE IN THE SINAI DESERT

Israeli Independence Day, by Gideon Lichfield

Gideon Lichfield goes in search of a messianic settler, who is giving safe haven to Sudanese refugees in a desert kibbutz, hard by Israel's border with Egypt. Not strictly travel writing, but try beating this for a sense of place ...

From our travel blog, FURTHERMORE


KIBBUTZ Kadesh Barnea is literally the last stop before Egypt. About 50 yards after the turn-off to the kibbutz is a decrepit military observation tower and a sign saying “Official Vehicles Only”. The border fence runs alongside the road. We didn’t think it could be the border fence, until I switched off the car engine and we heard Egyptian music issuing from a tinny radio in a hut on the other side. The Egyptians helpfully waved their torches at the Israeli soldiers patrolling somewhere down the road to warn them that someone might be trying to trespass.

It is an incongruous part of the country. As you drive down from Jerusalem, the towns give way to sprawling Bedouin villages that are fighting a losing battle for recognition and state services. Then the encampments thin out, and for a while there is nothing but army bases, prisons and war memorials, whose very remoteness seems itself a form of mourning. There are also some really weird road signs. As we approached the border, with the sun about to set, the slight background claustrophobia that accompanies wherever I go in this tiny country fell away, and I became suddenly aware of the immensity of the Sinai desert opening up ahead.  read more »