Doc Returns: Once Hostage in Shanghai—My BMW F650GS Comes Home Listen to the podcast and watch the video near the bottom of this page. Allan Karl and Panayioti Yannitsos discuss their experience filming a pilot episode of a new television/streaming travel series that follows Allan “WorldRider” Karl as he rides his motorcycle “border-to-border” in China […]
I think the video says it all. So, after nearly some 7 months, I am reunited with my bike after it’s roundtrip journey across the great Atlantic to Shanghai and China.
No matter where I travel, between the nooks and crannies of local culture I always find an expat community—either thriving, starving, or simply lost. While one might argue that I’m an expat hanging in the world, a more descriptive moniker might be a traveler, explorer, or even a nomad. I’d define an expat (short for […]
During my last visit to China, in 2004 just over a year before I embarked on my life-changing motorcycle exploration of our planet, I was eager to blast out of the madness of the SARS-paranoia of Guangzhou to the countryside and home to the minority-populated Guangxi province; specifically I wanted to visit Guilin and Yangshou. That […]
The Chinese refer to their infamous cities in order. First cities are Shanghai and Beijing, second cities that are candidates for first include Shenzhen, Guanzhou and others. Third cities perhaps include perhaps Ningbo, Wuhan, Suzhou and so forth. There is no formal classification, but it’s estimated there are more than 160 cities with more than 1 […]
This is China. People keep reminding me of this with each challenge I’m faced. These people are typically expats, people who’ve made the decision to live here despite the challenge. When things don’t go smooth or expectations are far from realized, it’s a simple, yet, hopeless moment of throwing one’s hands up in the air, […]
It’s 4:30—Wake Up… I press the electronic dimmer for the window from my seat on Air Canada’s Boeing 787 Dreamliner. I’m on flight 25 and the pilot just announced we’d be landing in Shanghai thirty minutes ahead of schedule. As the window magically brightens we descend through the low lying clouds, water beads dot my […]
Not long ago China, comfortable hiding behind its wall of isolation, for the most part, closed itself to foreign visitors—and most everything else. In 1949, Mao Zedong, after conquering Chiang Kai-shek in the Chinese Civil War, formed the People’s Republic of China. In the process of socializing the country, foreign investors were kicked out and landowners were forced […]
“What’s next?” My friends and family asked when I returned from my original WorldRider journey several years ago. I’d come to a fork in my road. I asked myself the same question, often. People also asked, “Was your trip a life-changing experience?” Sure, circumstances surrounding one’s life always change and evolve. Yet deep inside, I […]
Since my book FORKS was published this summer I have been on a whirlwind promotional tour. Crisscrossing the county several times in a van wrapped in photos and graphics from the book and toting a pallet of books and my trusty F650GS Dakar motorcycle. Even so, the bike saw the lenses of more cameras and […]
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