Three locations. Nine days. We had been invited to tag along on a Louis Vuitton photoshoot in China. It was to be an intense trip, travelling across different cities and provinces, riding in planes, cars, boats, golf carts, and sometimes hiking, to remote places. The itinerary? Ancient temples, Buddha caves, winding rivers with bamboo rafts, mystical hills, and otherworldly mountains — what one usually only hears about in fairy tales. It would be a journey to discover places from our imagination.

BY BRIENNA CARTER On the way to the train station, Abdulkhamid told me he failed his English test. We’d spent the last couple days preparing for it, and he’d been nailing the new vocabulary about gift-giving and bag-packing. He could tell you what he’s going to buy his wife for their anniversary (jewelry), and he…

BY JOSEF BUERGI Mongolia, a land of vast steppes and rugged beauty, is home to a unique way of life centered around the winter migration of nomadic herders. As temperatures plummet, these resilient people lead their livestock across the frozen landscape in search of fresh grazing grounds. Battling fierce snowstorms and bitter cold, the herders…

BY KATHRYN HATCHETT We cross the final river of our trek. Not that you could call it a river yet. The winding ribbon carving out a valley for itself is a couple of feet wide and would be shallow enough to walk through on foot without boots. It trickles towards the coast, a riverbed mosaic…

BY MIGUEL NEVES I could see the red and yellow foliage in the distance as the landscape moved in synchronicity with the clanking of the train wheels on the track, making the mountains of Yamagata seem even more entrancing as they slowly passed the window giving way to more and more thickets of warm autumn…

BY MATT WHELAN “Where y’all guys from?” asks the guard with a viscous Southern twang.“Canada,” we reply from the cool confines of the car.“I knew it! I just knew it!” he says through white teeth that gleam in the desert sun.“Right on!” We say, “how so?!”“Oh, I talk to a lot of Canadians! Y’all so…

BY AARON GILBREATH On my family’s first overseas vacation, our seven-year-old daughter Vivian encountered Costa Rica’s enormous iguanas, cute howler monkeys, and iconic colorful birds, but the giant red-winged grasshopper stole her heart. Urbanites like us often struggle to love insects, especially ones with five-inch bodies and red eyes, but Vivian’s affection for Tropidacris cristata…

BY HOLGER HOFFMANN & SYLVIA FURRER It does not take long to get used to the relaxed lifestyle of the Hoti and Penare. No one works more than two hours a day. Much is done playfully, such as fishing. The Hoti and Penare are two Indian tribes that live on a tributary of the Orinoco…

BY MAX HUDGINS “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” I heard as I felt someone kick my foot. It was 3 AM on the border of the Czech Republic and Hungary. I had been sleeping on the floor of the train station waiting for my next train to take me to Budapest. Everything was planned out. I was…