Who's site is this, anyways?

Written by Tyler Cole | 28 December 2009

Why do I have a site about traveling? Well, I wanted to share useful tips and knowledge that I have gathered while traveling as well as my experiences. Why do I like traveling? I think Pico Iyer says it best:

The person susceptible to 'wanderlust' is not so much addicted to movement as committed to transformation.

After finishing undergrad at the University of Michigan, I hit the road for a long term trip on my own terms. Although I'd dipped my feet in independent travel, that months-long trip without set obligations had evaded me.

With a one-way ticket Jan 2010 to Peru—a country I previously visited and to which I became a bit enamored—I stayed in the southern altiplano (plateau) region for a while before heading north. Over the next four and a half months, I made my way north by bus, boat, hitchhiking and whatever means of transport was possible and was within my budget. I eventually returned to Michigan after going through Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Central America, and hitchhiking from Southern Mexico back home. You can find the details of the hitching trip through Mexico and the US here.

Starting in the Winter of 2011, I'm undertook a new trip that began in Shanghai and took me through China, Mongolia, Siberian Russia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Armenia, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Romania. As of mid 2011, I'm locked down in medical school at Stanford, but being out in the Bay Area is just as good as traveling. I'm trying to take advantage of what Stanford's known for and dabble around in informatics and how it applies in medicine.

If personal details tickle your fancy, I was born in Atlanta and raised outside the metro Detroit area. I graduated with a degree in microbiology and worked a few jobs in college for extra money to fund my trips, including temp hospital employment, teaching, and doing research. When people ask about research I've done, I typically respond that it will lull them into sleep, but digitally I can point you here and then you can actually fall asleep.

Oh right, and my name is Tyler Cole. That's about all I am going to share now, so if you really want to know more I'm sure you can cuddle up with Google and find my blood type, GPA, sperm count, and social security number in a few minutes.

If you're curious about how I pack, you can check out my post How to pack for a trip with no set return date.

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