Traveler Profile: Tucker Costain

Tucker was one of the first fellow travelers I met when I started my month-long adventure in Europe. We spent all our days in Santorini together, going on three to six-hour hikes under the sun, and talking about everything…under the sun. Despite coming from different continents, we both had a deep love for literature, and travel, and shared the same philosophies to the point that we finished each other’s sentences.

1. How did we meet?

In the morning, on the Greek island of Santorini, after I’d just gotten back from a run and you’d just been admitted to the hostel. 

2. Where is home?

Montana, USA. Montana is like a Charlie Russel. 

3. What drew you to where we met?

Whim. I flew into Athens from Kathmandu, Nepal, because the US state department advised me that Istanbul was too dangerous at the moment. I had no itinerary except what the desk clerk at my Athens hostel threw out, and it started on the island of Santorini, an 8 hour ferry away. So I bought a ticket and floated away the next day. 

4. Where to next?

Rome —> Spain —> Iceland —> Washington, D.C. 

5. Place you’ve always wanted to go?

The poles. 

6.  Odd thing you always travel with?

A small zuni fetish of a mountain lion from my mother; it’s supposed to protect me. 

7. Book or artist suggestion that fits your frame of mind while traveling?

Charlie Russel. 

8. What would you say to those who’ve always been itching to explore but don’t?

Whatever you imagine it to be like, you’re wrong, and that is very good, that is the spice of life.

Tucker is currently a postgraduate research fellow working the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, Washington, DC.

Interviewed by Nadia Pritta Wibisono. Words and photographs by Tucker Costain.

Photos are taken in Kathmandu, Tal, Pokhara, Upper Pisang, Chame; Nepal.