ABOUT TATTERED ATLAS TALES

Hi. My name is Kevin and I live in Denver, Colorado. I’m originally from Northern California and my travels started out like most Americans; on family vacations. We did the usual trips to Lake Tahoe and Disneyland, but we also went to the World’s Fair (Expo ’86) in Vancouver, Canada. I don’t remember much about that trip because I was so young.

When my sister and I were a little older, our parents started bringing us on their holidays to Mexico. Mazatlán was a fledging resort destination at the time. Beaches, mocktails, and fake waterfalls were great, but I was always more interested in what was going on outside the fabricated reality of Pueblo Bonito; something I only got a glimpse of on the ride from the airport to the resort.

On one of those trips, I convinced my dad to take me on a “jungle tour”. I saw a brochure and thought it would be fun. It was a disaster.

The bus driver was drunk, the bus broke down, and we got stuck for hours in the middle of nowhere while mechanics did their best to reattach the oil pan in front of a shop that looked like it would collapse at any moment. We ended up walking through neighborhoods of cardboard dwellings with cable satellites pitched on top; through the hoards of dirty children and pecking chickens, to the boat where we would embark on the “tour”.

We didn’t see any wildlife, but I was attacked by mosquitos to the point that I jumped in the brown, murky water just to get them off me.

The bus driver tried to make up for lost time on the way back, but it wasn’t comforting when he smelled of tequila and made the sign of the cross every time we passed a roadside memorial to those who lost their lives in car accidents.

My mom was freaking out by the time we arrived. My dad, while happy to be alive, was not in the best of moods either. I was ecstatic though. I was probably 11 years old and it was the best adventure I had ever experienced. I didn’t stop talking about it for weeks.

That was the day my travel bug was born. It would take another decade or so before I was able to feed it. It wasn’t until 2001 when I was sent to India for work. I traveled Europe on the way there and back and I have been traveling as much as possible since.

Many trips to Central America, a year backpacking around SE Asia and Australia, a couple months doing volunteer work in Tanzania and Peru, traveling through Tibet, Nepal, and Patagonia; traveling with my wife, teenager, and 3 month old baby in Scandinavia, a solo trip to the Middle East, a lot of working from abroad during COVID, and a recent trip of a lifetime to Iraq and Afghanistan. Those are just some of the adventures I’ve been lucky enough to experience.

That “jungle tour” in Mexico was just the first of thousands of stories I can’t stop telling.

I was born too early to really take advantage of social platforms to make a living off traveling full time (YouTube was launched just before my year in SE Asia and no one had the bandwidth or knew what to do with it yet), so I’ve just been careful to pursue a career that affords me the ability to travel more than the average person. I don’t take much video and I don’t travel for the likes. I travel first, share later.

Back in the beginning, I would send stories via email from cafes I found along the way. Then Wifi allowed me to share via blogging sites like travelbog.org. Then I was able to stay in touch and share photos from a smartphone. Now I use Facebook and Instagram.

Tattered Atlas Tales was created to share my stories with a larger audience, as well as separate my personal social media from my public facing content. This site is for people who want to know about the world, but don’t have the ability or desire to travel themselves. It’s also for fellow travelers who might gain some insight from what I’ve learned along the way. I will keep it honest and will focus on the “good” but will not hide the bad or the ugly aspects of traveling. My hope is it will inspire others to expand their horizons and venture out of their comfort zone. If nothing else, I hope to open your eyes to a world you don’t see on the news.

Thank you for your support. Please let me know if I can do anything for you.

Kevin