Dispatches from the global frontier

If you haven't read my friend Nathan's travel blog yet, you are missing not only some of the best blogging on the Internet, but some of the best travel writing anywhere.

Actually, to call it travel writing is an insult, given a lot of the shillery that passes for travel writing in publications like Outside, Conde Nast and even sometimes National Geographic Traveler. Nathan's a writer who happens to write about travel.

Far from the posh accommodations and glitzy getaways profiled in those mags, he blogs about his trips to a ramshackle African orphanage, a gritty dhow wharf in Dubai and Christmas in Djibouti, among other topics.

Through his words, you'll get glimpses of not only places you've only dreamed of visiting, but places you'd never want to visit. His posts are snapshots at everyday humanity beyond our cozy borders; they can be hopeful and inspiring, unsettling and heart-breaking.

Above all, they make me feel something.

Read his recent post entitled "Three eggs" and you'll know what I'm talking about.