Michelle Young

Michelle Young is the founder of Untapped Cities, a publication about rediscovering your city (and discovering a new one). Michelle can usually be found in New York (where she grew up), Paris, backpacking in South America or Southeast Asia, or in-transit between. She’s traveled to 35 countries, including doing earthquake relief in Peru and Sumatra, has an obsession with buses and shoots with a Nikon SLR camera.

She spent a few years breaking cellos in an indie rockband. She is an author of 100 Ways to Make History, published by the New York Public Library. She holds a masters in urban planning from Columbia University, a B.A. from Harvard in the History of Art & Architecture, and is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music.

You can work pretty much where you want to – on the road, do you find it hard to work or do you just have fun and work when you come back home?

It depends on the type of trip. When I'm backpacking, I work when I get home because I don't like to bring anything except my camera, music, and essentials. For me, backpacking is fundamentally about meeting cool people, along with flying by the seat of your pants discovering new places, so technology is kind of anti-that. If I'm covering an event in a different city for Untapped Cities, my company, or another publication, I'll look for a cool coffeeshop with WiFi and camp out all day. On a roadtrip, I'll only get on my computer once every few days.

Do you feel many people are envious of your lifestyle?

Sure, but it took me a long time to realize that this is how I wanted to live. I spent my whole life preparing for the Ivy League and a corporate job, spent almost 5 years working in fashion, had my mid-20s crisis, went backpacking, toured with a rockband, made it through grad school and started my company, which is about discovery, rediscovery and traveling. It took a lot of soul searching.

The bus ride to Siem Reap, Cambodia from the border of Thailand on my southeast Asia backpacking trip was life changing. When it got dark along the unpaved road, the bugs and mud were flying into our faces from the open windows, and the villagers were running along the road collecting grasshoppers, I was the happiest I had ever been even. It was the moment I discovered that this was how I always wanted to travel — unpredictable, without a clear plan and open for adventure.

In which countries have people recognised you, even when you thought nobody would?

When I worked in fashion, I monitored factory production in Bolivia and stayed friends with the guys down there. I vowed to go back because I fell in love with the country. I was supposed to meet up with one of the factory account managers but his wife ended up giving birth prematurely so had to cancel. On our way from Coroico (in the foothills of the Amazon) to Uyuni, the salt flats in the south, we stopped at an ATM in La Paz. A guy came up to me, and it turned out to be my friend! We had picked the one ATM in La Paz that happened to be in his office. And I go to Paris so often now that their customs officials know me now and let me cut the line.

Which three items would you never travel without?

My SLR camera, Osprey Talon 44 pack, and I admit it -- I use the secret fanny pack for my passport! My passport has been through a lot -- a river in Thailand and through 35 countries now. It's pretty beat up.

Are there any specific souvenirs or other things you collect from the places you go to?

I don't collect things anymore because they add to the weight of my pack. But I kept everything from my first backpacking trip to southeast Asia, including boarding passes for Air Niugini (the airline that flies to Papua New Guinea), bus tickets through Cambodia and Malaysia, a map a friend drew to show for me in Jakarta, entry ticket to Angkor Wat. I kept a hotel notepad I found at an abandoned 5-star resort in Dubrovnik, which had been attacked by the Serbian navy in the Bosnian war and the ticket to the United States Presidential Inaugural Ball.

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MichelleYoung
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