Lonely Planet: New England

It was 1988 when Mara first travelled abroad, spending a summer in Scandinavia with a side trip into the Soviet Union. The high-school summer exchange program would shape her life, as it inspired her to learn to speak Russian and to try to end the Cold War.

As a student, she further broadened her horizons, circling the globe on a research fellowship from the Circumnavigators' Foundation. This trip took her from Belize to Budapest, from Senegal to Singapore, comparing the successes and failures of international development projects.

Despite the draw of many foreign lands, she still found herself returning to the former Soviet Union time and time again. Before the Soviet collapse, she taught English in Kyiv, Ukraine, for a year; and during the most tumultuous transition years, she worked on a foreign aid project in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

The pen-wielding traveller has since taken to seeing and saving the world by other means, writing guidebooks for Lonely Planet. Mara has also written for National Geographic Traveler, Executive Travel, the Boston Globe and the LA Times, amongst others. She is an on-line travel expert at Triporati.com and Tripsketch.com. When not traipsing around the planet, she lives in a pink house in Somerville, Massachusetts.