Welcome To Where Are Those Morgans! We’re Mark and Kristen Morgan, along with baby Maya who joined us in November 2024 and baby Kai who arrived as the latest Morgan traveler in October 2026. We spent 5 and a half years traveling the world full time from mid 2018 to early 2024, exploring more than 40 countries in Europe, Asia and South America, along with over 30 US states. It really was the adventure of a lifetime.
Hold on, you only made it to 40 countries in 6 years? Yes, but there’s a perfectly good explanation. We don’t just spend a day or two in a new country and put a tick in the box to get a higher number, we go to places for weeks or months because (by nature and nurture) we love to see and do everything each destination has to offer. We have a serious case of travel FOMO!
Since 2018, we’ve done just about every type of travel there is: broke backpacking, comfortable mid-budget vacations, luxury trips, cities, national parks, road trips, hiking, photography trips, weekend breaks, one week vacations and of course where it all began – our 18 month honeymoon around the world.
We know how overwhelming and challenging independent travel planning can be, but we’re here to make it easy for you with our unique analytical approach, which we adopted from our scientific careers prior to becoming travel experts. We really can help you plan your next DIY trip with our vast experiences and all the important things we’ve learned over the years.
Right now, we’re based in North Carolina raising our daughter and son. We haven’t stopped traveling (we take Maya and Kai on as many trips as we can fit in) but it’s the first time since we got married in 2018 that we’ve been in one place for this long. It definitely feels strange to us … so who knows how long our perpetual battle against the travel bug will last.
Why We Write About Travel
We started our travel business in 2018 when we set off for Paris (our very first destination) because we wanted to help other serious planners like us who have travel FOMO take DIY trips to the same places we were visiting, without having to pay a fortune to travel agencies. Travel is a luxury, but it doesn’t have to break the bank.
Booking our own flights, hotels, attractions and ground transport was the only way we could afford to visit 4 continents, but the information available online about things to do, itineraries, hotels and getting from A to B was seriously lacking when we were planning our honeymoon. We saw this as our chance to provide genuinely valuable and comprehensive advice from our experiences so that other independent travelers could explore the world the same way.
If we’re being honest, we didn’t know what to expect from writing about our travels. It was a great idea in principle, but could we actually help anyone? We had no writing experience, we weren’t creatives and we didn’t know how to take photos. Then we went on a life changing journey together, learned how to travel efficiently, write guides that could actually help people plan better trips, and capture places through imagery.
How do you define a travel expert? Does our 5 and a half years on the road without a home base count? We think so. Since 2018, our hundreds of free-to-read blog posts filled with destination specific travel advice, itineraries and tips have helped more than 3 million people visit new places with confidence.
Today, we sell premium travel guidebooks (that we practically give away!) for DIY trip planners on a tight budget, and we offer affordable 1-on-1 planning consultations for independent travelers who want more personalized help – book a call with us today if you’d like our expert help planning your next trip. Oh, and we also sell our favorite travel photos from around the world.
We know how long it takes to plan trips and we know how much it costs. Trust us, we’ve spent a fortune on travel since 2018. We want you to use our travel itineraries, hiking guides and photography guides based entirely on our own experiences to learn what we did right and what we did wrong. Why do we write about travel? Because travel isn’t just a hobby, it’s our way of life.
Looking to work with us? Take a look at our partnership opportunities or see where we’ve been featured in our press and media coverage.
What Makes Us Different?
But that was 2018 and now there’s thousands of blogs and influencers doing what we do, so what sets us apart? It’s a great question with a simple answer:
What sets us apart is that we’re in this for the right reason – a true desire to help people travel better. There are too many spammy, AI and copycat websites out there trying to make a quick buck, but we do this because we love traveling and we want to give others the best shot at having the same experiences we had. We could go back and pick up our scientific careers, but we believe in what we’re doing.
We plan and pay for every single DIY trip we take – that’s our time, effort and money. And we only write about places we’ve actually visited ourselves in person, directly from our own firsthand experiences. That means everything you read on our site is written from our personal accounts, it’s our true opinion and it’s free from bias or outside influence.
Every travel guide, photo, video and guidebook you’ll find on our website is real and human made (here’s why we don’t use AI for content creation) by nobody but the two of us. Our biggest pet peeve when traveling is getting to a place with an expectation because we saw a photo or read a guide, only to realize the photo wasn’t real or the guide was fake. That will never be the case on our website. We tell you the good and the bad, but most importantly what you see is what you’ll get.
Here at Where Are Those Morgans, we have just one goal: to help independent travelers plan better trips, visit new places and hike new trails. Helping millions of people make the most of their trips is what gets us out of bed in the morning. And the only way for us to do that authentically is to have done it ourselves, the exact same way you would do it. Our expert travel guides, guidebooks and 1:1 planning gives you the most important information we wish we had for every destination we visited.
Mark Morgan
Mark has been exploring the world since 2018, specializing in crafting detailed itineraries, navigating off-the-beaten-path destinations, and capturing travel stories through photography.
As the lead writer for Where Are Those Morgans, he creates comprehensive guides that help travelers plan trips with confidence.
Mark also offers 1-on-1 travel planning consultations via video call, providing personalized advice and strategies for trips around the world.
Together with Kristen, he co-creates premium downloadable travel guidebooks and sells high-quality travel photography prints through the site’s shop.
Mark also shares his expertise on YouTube videos, walking viewers through destination deep-dives and insider tips, making travel planning even easier to follow.
Kristen Morgan
Kristen has also been exploring the world since 2018, keeping Where Are Those Morgans running smoothly behind the scenes.
She manages hotel bookings, tours, affiliate partnerships, finances, and organizes all aspects of the travel experience.
Kristen also contributes writing, models for photography, and manages the brand’s social media channels on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest.
Together with Mark, Kristen co-creates premium downloadable travel guidebooks and helps bring the site’s photography prints to market.
Her careful planning ensures that every guide, recommendation, and itinerary is accurate, trustworthy, and ready for real travelers.
Our Story
Short version: We started Where Are Those Morgans in June 2018 at the beginning of an 18-month honeymoon around the world. For the next 5.5 years we traveled full time with no home base, spending weeks or months in each place to research, photograph and film our guides. These were work trips, not vacations! In 2024, we settled in North Carolina to start our family. We still travel as often as we can revisiting the places we’ve written about and adding new destinations.
Want the long version? Keep reading!
We’ve been on a wild journey from career scientists working a 9-5 to traveling the world full time for 5 and a half years and becoming genuine independent trip planning experts. Let us tell you, running an online business is harder than you’d ever imagine, but we love it almost as much as we love to travel.
It was 2018 and we’d just taken the biggest risk of our lives by quitting our careers as scientists. We worked for the same company, in which Mark was managing teams and processes for flow cytometry in the UK, US and Singapore, and Kristen was transitioning from the immunology lab to R&D. Things were looking good, but we wanted more from life and after meeting through work in 2016 (when Mark was sent to the US lab) we bonded quickly over our shared passion for travel.
Fast forward 2 years, we walked out of the lab one last time, tied the knot in a castle in the Yorkshire Dales in England and set off on our 18 month honeymoon with just a 40L backpack each.
Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?!
2018
Our adventure started with 3 months traveling through Europe in the middle of summer. And of course it was hot, expensive and crowded. What a great start! Can you tell our travel planning skills hadn’t yet been cultivated?!
But it was still amazing. We spent plenty of time in France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia, Poland, Czechia, Germany and Netherlands. And we did almost all of that by Interrailing, with just one flight from Seville to Pisa which cost €9 each!
Then we took the Eurostar back to England to see Mark’s family for a few days, before flying out to Asia where we spent 3 months split between Dubai, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam and Thailand. This was our first real eye opening trip away from the western world.
2019
By the end of 2018 we were quickly learning the best way to visit new places and improve our photography skills. The travel bug had really taken ahold of us and we were enjoying working on the earliest versions of this website. We had lofty dreams and ambitions to really make it into something truly helpful for others.
In early 2019 we flew from London to Buenos Aires and spent over 2 months traveling around Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Peru. We hiked the W Trek in Patagonia, took the famous Bolivia salt flats tour and hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.
Then we flew to Mexico City for a week before heading back to England while we waited for Mark’s green card for the US to be approved. A few months later we set off on our first 3-month US road trip, the majority of which was spent in South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, California and Arizona.
2020
You know what happened in early 2020. The covid pandemic forced us to stop traveling, but it was a blessing in disguise because we had the time to really grow our website and see if it would become a sustainable living for us – spoiler, it did!
We spent the year living in the New York Finger Lakes region, so we did a ton of (responsible!) local travel to state parks like Letchworth and Watkins Glen which are home to striking gorges and waterfalls.
In September and October when people were starting to explore a bit more regionally, we took our first New England fall road trip and it turned out to be one of our all-time favorite trips (even now, years later).
2021
Imagine what it’s like to start a travel business during an unprecedented global lockdown event. Yes, we had doubts about our risky career move! So to alleviate some of the pressure, Kristen took a traveling med tech role in Bronxville, NY in early 2021 and we moved to NYC while Mark continued building the site.
We spent so much time exploring New York City when it was eerily quiet and we even got a photo of us alone in Times Square. Then Kristen took a 6 month position in Seattle, so we took a long road trip with plenty of stops along the way, including second trips to the Black Hills and Yellowstone.
We kind of fell in love with the Pacific Northwest. We didn’t let the heat dome (it was so hot all summer) stop us hiking pretty much every trail in western Washington State. Our legs were so strong by the end of summer 2021!
Then we spent the last 3 months of the year road tripping down the west coast from Seattle to Sedona. By this point travel planning and photography were like second nature to us and we had an incredible time.
2022
After spending a few weeks back in England with Mark’s family for Christmas, we spent a few months living with Kristen’s close friends near Nashville. This was so much fun but it was colder than we expected! Then we did a few months back in the Finger Lakes with Kristen’s parents, before doing another trip to NYC in April.
From NYC we flew to Italy and spent an unforgettable month exploring Rome, the Amalfi Coast and Tuscany. Then we did one of the best things we’ve ever done: hiked the Tour du Mont Blanc Trail over 8 days. It really was something else, but our prep (a months worth of pizza and wine in Italy) couldn’t have been any worse!
After spending a few more months in York, England with Mark’s family we went back to the US. This time we visited Denver and San Francisco, before taking a 17 hour flight to Singapore. We’d already spent months living in Singapore during our time working in science, so we knew it well. Then we took a short flight to Kuala Lumpur to begin a 90-day stay there.
2023
We spent Christmas of 2022 in a rooftop swimming pool with cocktails and santa hats! We’d always wanted to try the digital nomad lifestyle, which was why we chose to spend 3 full months living in KL. It was a good experience, but we were surprised to find that we ended up spending similar to what it would have cost us to live in the US or UK.
From KL, we flew to Bangkok in January 2023 and spent a month living there. We love big cities, but Bangkok is so loud and chaotic, and we were ready to leave by the end. Next we spent a month living in Siem Reap, visiting Angkor Wat for 3 amazing days. We actually really liked Siem Reap, it’s set up incredibly well for tourism.
Next, we flew to Seoul for 2 truly special weeks (we seriously loved it there), before spending 3 more weeks in Japan during cherry blossoms season. Now, Japan is one of our favorite countries to visit, but it was out of control for cherry blossoms and we actually preferred our fall foliage trip.
After 6 months in Asia, we were ready to be back in the US so we moved down to Raleigh, NC for 4 months to try the area out. But by the end, we’d built a much bigger community of friends in nearby Durham and Chapel Hill. At the end of summer we left NC and took another 3-week New England fall road trip, then we spent more time in England, and capped the year off with an amazing 8-day trip to Paris.
2024
We have to say 2024 was the strangest year we’ve had since meeting each other in 2016. We’d done so much travel, but we wanted to start a family and we were craving things like community, stability and consistency after so many years on the road.
So we decided to move back down to the Triangle area in North Carolina where we’d made new friends for the first time in years. We found it hard to make real lifelong friends when traveling full time, constantly on the move and with an online business to run – which is already isolating enough. So being in one place with a community around us was a nice change of pace.
We did get away to spend time in Normandy with Mark’s family and we visited Paris again, but Kristen wasn’t the biggest fan of traveling when pregnant, so we kept our trip calendar light and focused on starting new projects like publishing guidebooks for our most popular destinations.
Then at the end of the year our baby daughter Maya was born, and we instantly felt justified about our decision to stop traveling full time so we could start a family. It was the best decision we could have made and we can’t wait to take her traveling around the world.
2025
Taking trips instantly became a whole new ball game for us with a newborn. But we wanted to expose Maya to travel as soon as it was safe enough for her, so once she was fully vaccinated we started gently with a short flight up to see family in the Finger Lakes and it was a roaring success.
In spring we took our first trip to the North Carolina coast around the Wilmington area with friends. We all loved spending a few days on the beach, so we decided to go back again for a quieter trip to Topsail Island with family later in the summer.
Between our two beach trips, we took Maya for a 4-day trip to NYC and we did pretty much every major attraction and sight with her in a stroller. It was hard work for us, but Maya absolutely loved it. Then in early fall we took Maya for her first trip to England to see all her family on Mark’s side. The flight there was great but Maya was ill on the flight back and it was not fun for anyone!
Around learning how to travel as a family, we got stuck into tons more work projects – the main one for 2025 being the launching of Mark’s trip planning consultations for independent travelers. Getting our first few bookings was a landmark milestone for us, after talking about starting this client-facing side of the business for a few years.
2026
Having Maya was life-changing for us in the best possible way, and we decided to try again so she’d have a brother or sister to grow up and travel with. Thankfully things went well, but it meant Kristen spent the majority of 2026 pregnant, just like 2024. So we decided to limit the amount of trips we took for yet another year.
We took two more family trips to the Finger Lakes, but an England trip while heavily pregnant and with a super active toddler was too much. Instead, we booked a week-long family stay right on the beach in the Outer Banks, and loved every minute of it. In October, our son Kai was born and those Morgans became a family of 4. We can’t wait to show him the world along with his big sister.
Mark’s trip planning consultations took off in a big way in 2026. The reason we started this business was to help people travel, so Mark really enjoyed being able to sit down 1-on-1 with awesome like-minded travelers wanting to plan better trips to places like Italy and Japan. It’s been so rewarding to help people directly, and the feedback has been amazing.
Launching our YouTube channel was another monumental work project we’d always wanted to do, and we finally got it off the ground in late August 2026. Mark has been filming and editing the videos, which has been a gigantic learning curve but so much fun. Our YouTube style is different: we approach destinations from a travel planning perspective, with topic deep-dives like our consultations.
What’s It Like To Run A Travel Business?
There’s a common misconception that travel writers live this dreamy lifestyle lounging around on beaches drinking cocktails and spending 5 minutes writing about it. Or worse yet, people don’t take it seriously as a “real job”. But that couldn’t be any further from the truth.
Our travel business gives us an amazing lifestyle, but boy is it hard work. We had to learn everything from scratch: how to build and run a business, how to design a website, how to write travel guides and market them, how to take travel photos and videos, and the list goes on. And we did it all ourselves. We’ve never paid anyone to do anything on our site.
You might work in healthcare, finance or education and be great at your job. We create travel guides. And we’re very good at it. This travel business is our platform to directly impact people’s lives in a positive way, and we couldn’t be any happier for it.
We thought it would be fun to share some of our personal guides with you that explain what it’s really like to travel long term and run an online travel business, just in case you’ve been thinking about starting something of your own.
Here’s what we’ve written so far:
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