Welcome to Further Volume 5

“I’m a citizen — no, a patriot of elsewhere.”
— John Berger, answering the question, “Where are you from?”

That delightful quote from the British writer John Berger sums up Further’s mission as well as any phrase could. Our Spring Travel Issue doubles down on the elsewhere, as we range from North Africa to West Bengal to the jungles of Vietnam, uncovering stories you’ll find only here.

First, some exciting news from home: Just six months after launching, Further has earned a Webby Award nomination for “Best Travel & Lifestyle Website” — one of five finalists among thousands of contenders. The New York Times calls the Webbys “the Internet’s top honor,” so we’re pretty thrilled by the nod. Big ups and boundless thanks to our amazing team, who are the best collaborators an editor could dream of.

We’ve got a lot to cover this month, so let’s dive in.

When my friend Thao Vu told me about discovering a grove of wild bananas deep in the forests of Vietnam — whose stalks could be transformed into a silklike thread that’s been coveted across Asia for 800 years — I was sure she was putting me on. The tale was straight out of a Tintin comic. And then Thao showed me her photos of the hidden jungle grove, the epic trek there and back, and, finally, the stunning ao dai tunic she’d crafted from the cloth. Needless to say I was hooked.

One of Vietnam’s most innovative fashion designers, Thao partners with artisans from the Nùng An community in rural Cao Bằng province, near the Chinese border. The Nùng women are renowned for their prowess with loom weaving, embroidery, and natural dye-making (using the famous Vietnamese indigo, wild yam root, and lac beetle resin). But none in their lifetime had seen wild banana stalks made into silk, or knew how on earth one might do so. That’s when a mysterious stranger from Okinawa entered the picture….

You can read the rest of the story here. Don’t miss the mesmerizing video by filmmaker Quang Nông, whom we dispatched to trace every muddy step of this improbable journey. (Volume up for the soundtrack; it’s pure jungle ASMR.)

For Executive Editor Laura Dannen Redman, reporting this month’s Scotland feature was her “favorite assignment ever,” and in my view it’s her finest work yet. If you know LDR, you know of her lifelong obsession with Scotland’s Highlands and Islands; reading her thoughtful and evocative story will make you a believer, too.

While Laura was hiking the Isle of Skye, I was a hundred miles east in Scotland’s Cairngorms National Park to report on one of the most ambitious conservation projects Europe has ever seen: Wildland. The collective also operates some of the U.K.’s most stylish and inviting retreats, ranging from a Scandi-chic stone farmhouse in the Cairngorms to a castle on the shores of Loch Ness. All I can say is run, don’t walk — and then walk, in that glorious pine-scented air, for miles and miles, until you find your bliss (or perhaps a free-roaming Highland pony or two). You’ll find my Wildland dispatch at the end of Laura’s Scotland story.

• Marrakech, Expressed  Shout-out to Gisela Williams for her sensational work on this month’s Further Guide to Marrakech, our sixth destination omnibus. (You’ll find them all collected here.) Along with ace reporters Tara Stevens and Jen Murphy, photographer Sarah Jessica Marie Burns, and editor Peter J. Frank, Gisela brought decades of Moroccan savvy and intel to the endeavor, and it shows. Meet you in the gardens at Jnane Rumi?

• Scents of Place  In the latest installment of The Places That Made Us, we catch up with Kavi and David Moltz of indie perfume house D.S. & Durga, whose scents reference singular locations around the world. (“Perfume as armchair travel” was an early tagline.) I first met them at a backyard party in Brooklyn where I happened to be wearing their Radio Bombay cologne. David recognized it, and we wound up talking for hours — about traveling in India, the Pixies (Debaser is another D.S. & Durga scent), and guitars (David was a touring musician before detouring into perfume). For Further, Kavi and David spoke with another hero of mine, writer Fiorella Valdesolo, cofounder of the late great Gather Journal.

• Mountain Highs  Special Correspondent Darrell Hartman laces up his Danner boots and turns the clock back to mountaineering’s golden age, with a look at five of Europe’s classic Alpine hiking towns.

• The Best of Bangkok  Bill Bensley is the creative force behind many of your favorite hotels and resorts, from Rosewood Luang Prabang to Oberoi Amarvilas to the Four Seasons Koh Samui (yes, of White Lotus fame). In our Bangkok Sourcebook, the architect goes deep on his adopted hometown, which is still Bensley’s favorite city on earth. You’ll see why when you read his guide.

• Oh! Kolkata  And speaking of oft-slighted cities: Jyoti Kumari makes a strong case for reassessing Kolkata, which seldom shows up on travelers’ India itineraries, but reveals a whole other side (literally) of the subcontinent. Come for the rich architectural heritage and that mustard-scented Bengali cuisine; stay for the late-night jazz clubs and clever cocktails, and to show the naysayers what they’ve been missing.

You’ll find all that and much more in the current issue of Further. Thanks for joining the adventure, and for spending some of your downtime with us. We’ll see you out there, my friends.

Yours,
Peter

Peter Jon Lindberg
Editor-in-Chief
April 28, 2025