Adam Skolnick

Posting from Kupang, West Timor. This shot was taken in Temkessi, an indigenous village high in the mountains. Something about her is haunting in the most beautiful way. West Timor is a mind bender.

After some epic and challenging dives in West Papua’s spectacular Raja Ampat Islands, we motored through the spidery mangroves to Pulau Batanta where we wandered a couple miles up a cascading river to this 150m high waterfall.

Diego Arrarte hangs up his cell and accelerates his moderately dented late-model Toyota pick-up past hip-high stone fencing, and thatched lontar-palm shacks as we speed down the white earth roads of Nembrala Town – the tourist epicenter of little-known Rote island. Seems his guest, a hilarious, middle-aged Argentinean surfer, misjudged the road to Bo’a beach. [...]

The Overture At the remote 13th century Phajo Ding monastery, set high on a Himalayan ridge, Kencho Doji, a smiling 23 year old monk swathed in burgundy robes, holds a piece of a man’s skull. Not just any man’s. This skull fragment belongs to an enlightened Rinpoche, a Tantric master and the founder of this very [...]

The prison system in the U.S. is in crisis mode. States across the country are grappling with massive budget shortfalls, much of which can be credited to the runaway growth of prison budgets over the past 25 years. At $50 billion spent on corrections a year nationwide, it’s the second-largest state expenditure behind Medicaid. To put it [...]

It hit me as I traversed the sinuous toll-road that hugs the cliffs south of Tijuana.  Though I’d driven Baja California a dozen times, I had never once enjoyed a glass of wine here. Baja’s spectacular beaches practically scream for cerveza. But I’d recently heard about Las Brisas del Valle, a new inn owned by a [...]