About Barbara Weibel

Barbara Weibel After years of working 70 hours a week at jobs I detested, I felt like the proverbial "hole in the donut" - solid on the outside, but empty on the inside. Searching for meaning in my life, I abandoned my successful but unsatisfying career and set out on a six-month solo backpacking trip around the world to pursue my true passions of travel, writing, and photography. My blog features stories about the destinations I visit, people I meet, the crazy things...Read more here....
  • Eiffel Tower, Paris, France
  • Angkor Wat Cambodia
    Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia
  • Hill Tribe Chief Northern Thailand
    Hill Tribe Chief, Thailand
  • Machu Picchu Peru
    Machu Picchu, Peru
  • Franz Josef Glacier New Zealand
    Franz Josef Glacier, New Zealand
  • Olympic National Park Washington State
    Olympic Peninsula, Washington
  • Damnoen Saduak Floating Market Thailand
    Damnoen Saduak Floating Market, Thailand
  • Maasai Tribe Ngorongoro Tanzania
    Maasai Warriors, Ngorongoro, Tanzania
  • Lion Serengeti National Park Tanzania
    Serengeti National Park, Tanzania
  • Chichen Itza Yucatan Mexico
    Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico
  • Wat Xieng Thong
    Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang, Laos
  • Feast Central India
    Traditional Feast, Central India
  • China Shangahi Skyline Pudong
    Pudong Skyline, Shanghai, China
  • Honeymoon Beach Florida
    Honeymoon Beach, Florida
  • Great Wallof China Jinshanling Beijing
    Great Wall, Jinshanling, China
  • Lake Louise Banff National Park Canada
    Lake Louise, Banff National Park, Canada
  • pura ulun danu temple batur bali
    Lake Temple, Central Bali
  • Galapagos Islands Ecuador
    Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

Doing good. Helping others. Giving back. All things that have been on my mind a great deal lately here in Nepal. Over the past two months I’ve visited with children who have been denied an education simply because they are from lower caste parentage. I’ve met families living in dire poverty, sleeping five to a bed in a mud-walled shack on the shores of a filthy, trash-choked stream. And I have spoken extensively with Tibetan refugees who are unemployable because China demands that Nepal not give them citizenship; literally people without a country, they live in limbo, awaiting their chance to emigrate to other countries where they become productive citizens. These appalling experiences drive home how lucky I am to have been born in the USA, where a good education is commonplace and a world of opportunity is available to those willing to work hard. Having received so much in my life, I am now driven by a need to give back, but I have long struggled to find the best way to do so.

Passports with Purpose 2010 Campaign

Passports with Purpose 2010 Campaign

Though there are myriad choices for charities and non-profit organizations with which I might have associated, it was hard to know which were the most effective. Especially with larger organizations, I worried that an inordinate portion of donations were used for administrative costs rather than benefiting the people who really needed it. Fortunately, this concern was resolved for me when some of my fellow travel bloggers, who have all seen more than their equitable share of poverty and suffering around the world, launched a non-profit initiative named Passports with Purpose three years ago. In its first year, PwP raised money online for Heifer International, an organization that donates cows to poor rural families around the world. Last year they raised $30,000 to build a school in rural Cambodia; the school opened early last month and now there are a few hundred kids learning to read and write who would not otherwise have received an education. Continue reading

The synchronicity of the world constantly amazes me. Yesterday I wrote about traveling to India, and today I receive an email from my friend, Dorothy, who hails from Edinburgh, Scotland. Dorothy and I became fast friends when we both attended a very special Yoga retreat in a remote area of central India a few years ago.

dorothy_steedman_yoga

Dorothy strikes a Yoga pose on a deserted beach

We ended up in adjacent bunks but we shared more than a bedroom – we both came down with a case of Delhi Belly and kept each other company from our sickbeds. Here’s what she sent me as a reminder: Continue reading

Ah, India! Just saying the word conjures up images of the Taj Mahal in the soft light of dawn, camels trekking across deserts, worshipers bathing in the sacred Ganges, mountains of spices in marketplace stalls, and women wrapped in luscious silk saris. India also means being exposed to filth, poverty, masses of humanity, beggars on the streets, incessant touts, and bouts of “Delhi Belly.”

Planning to travel to India? You MUST get this book!

Planning to travel to India? You MUST get this book!

Nowhere else in the world are these contrasts so evident as in Mother India, and many visitors arrive on the sub-continent wholly unprepared for these incongruities. I saw all this and more when I traveled to India a few years ago. In areas of Mumbai, shanty towns constructed with scraps of scavenged wood and cardboard stretched as far as I could see. Here, people lived in abject poverty, clad in rags and defecating by the side of the road. Garbage was strewn throughout the streets and the overwhelming stench of sewage permeated everything. Homeless wraiths curled along the edges of the sidewalks in front of my hotel each night, yet inside everything was luxury and staff in starched white uniforms. Fortunately, I was forewarned. I had a friend who had been to India and he Continue reading

As I drive from the southern border of our great country to the northern, I am painfully aware of my carbon footprint. Although I am somewhat comforted that my car gets 30 miles to the gallon, and that when I am home in Sarasota I walk everywhere, it doesn’t change the fact that travel is not an environmentally friendly activity.

Soleckshaw Solar Rickshaw in India

Soleckshaw Solar Rickshaw in India

Someday, we will have the technology to reduce fossil fuels; Virgin Air is currently testing a jet engine fuel that contains a high percentage of biofuels, and numerous manufacturers are bring electric vehicles to market. One of the latter, the “soleckshaw,” is a motorized cycle rickshaw that can be pedaled normally or run on a 36-volt solar battery.

Continue reading

Ockham’s Razor is a scientific principle that is often paraphrased as “All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.” Today this principle is often taken as a rule of thumb that advises economy or simplicity, especially in scientific theories. This summer, masons and mechanics, farmers and welders, scientists and a pastor dedicated themselves to the theory of Ockham’s Razor as they brainstormed methods to create low-tech solutions to big problems that persist across the globe.

Converging at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the three-week long International Development Design Summit, these 61 inventors from 20 countries divided into ten teams that worked round-the-clock to develop and build prototypes of low-tech device designed to make life a little easier for the poor peoples of the world. Prototypes ranged from an inexpensive incubator for low-birth-weight babies to a rope system that could help craftswomen in the Himalayas get their products to market, but in my opinion, the two most interesting inventions to emerge from this year’s summit are a low-cost charcoal crusher and a scheme to produce electrical power with incidental effort as people go about their everyday tasks.

I was personally made aware of the need for a charcoal crusher when I visited Tanzania last year. My safari driver stopped one day to buy charcoal for his family’s cooking needs. The whole affair seemed cloaked in secrecy; the bags were nowhere to be seen upon arriving at the store and my diver disappeared into a back room to negotiate for the purchase. Finally, a tall young man emerged from around the rear of the store, toting an enormous sack, which was Continue reading

During the past few years, I have frequently contemplated the issue of charitable giving. Every time there is a disaster of major proportion, we are called upon to donate. I listened to these pleas following 9/11 and the tsunami. Of late, the earthquake in China, the Myanmar cyclone, and the flooding along the Mississippi have prompted organizations like the American Red Cross to redouble their efforts to raise money. Regularly, I am subject to appeals from non-profit organizations that solicit money for a plethora of causes: Jerry Lewis browbeats me on behalf of children suffering from Muscular Dystrophy, the Fraternal Order of Police demands that I purchase their light bulbs, and National Public Radio subjects me to a full day of on-air begging twice per year.

Because I rarely donate to any of these organizations, I sometimes worry that I do not do enough to help others. I wonder if I am selfish or less generous than I should be. My problem, however, is that I have a healthy suspicion of charitable organizations. Although I believe Continue reading

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