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Polly Witker is a travel designer who specializes in planning experiential adventure travel. With many years of experience as a luxury travel advisor, Polly was named a Rising Star advisor by Travel + Leisure and ILTM in 2022 and has booked trips for hundreds of curious, discerning travelers to all seven continents. She started Polly Goes to create a space to share stories and expert travel tips from her in depth knowledge of planning adventures all over the world for more than a decade. She is passionate about making travel more sustainable and believes individual travelers have more power to create impact than they think!

Using her own personal experiences and deep industry relationships, Polly especially loves planning safaris in Africa, cultural immersions in Latin America, expeditions to farflung parts of the Scandinavian arctic and Patagonia, and culinary journeys in Asia and beyond. Contact Polly or read more about her services here.

Travel + Leisure Rising Star Award Luxury Travel Advisor Polly Witker

WHAT IS POLLY GOES?

Polly Goes is a travelogue, a guidebook, a source of inspiration for a certain kind of traveler.

This is a place to read about and plan adventures that make the best stories, and have a positive impact on both you and the place you visit. 

Imagine hiking into a Ugandan rainforest to see mountain gorillas in the wild. Sharing laughs with three generations of Nepalese women as they host you in their home. Bringing home an immortal pair of sandals lovingly made by a Turk who doesn’t speak a word of English but asked you to stay for tea anyway. Venturing into a cave in Belize with a third generation Mayan archaeologist and stopping for lunch made that morning by his mother. 

A well-constructed travel plan ahead of time leaves more room for moments of magic and surprise once you’re actually on the ground in a new place. By planning ahead you’re setting yourself up to create the best experiences and memories.

 

Recent

This is Good Life: the Garifuna of Hopkins, Belize

This is Good Life: the Garifuna of Hopkins, Belize

Felix My driver, Felix, tells me he’s from Hopkins as I get into the front seat of his car. He’s just picked me up at the Sleeping Giant Lodge in Belize’s Cayo District, the lush western part of the country bordering Guatemala where one of many mountains is in fact […]

Conscious Travel Glossary – Sustainable Tourism Terms You Need to Know

Conscious Travel Glossary – Sustainable Tourism Terms You Need to Know

For conscious travelers who are just starting to look into traveling more sustainably, the terminology can be overwhelming. I hear a lot of questions like, what exactly is sustainable tourism? And how is it different from the terms sustainable travel, ethical travel, or ecotourism? When it comes to conscious travel, […]

All About Kahvalti – How to Eat Breakfast in Turkey

All About Kahvalti – How to Eat Breakfast in Turkey

To this day, Kahvalti – the word for a traditional breakfast in Turkey – is by far the most fabulous, most delicious, most diverse in flavors and foods of breakfast in any destination I’ve visited. And somehow, thankfully, the recipes that make up a Turkish breakfast are relatively easy to […]

Crowds on Istiklal

Expat Stories: Culture Shock and Life as a Yabanci in Turkey

I spent a year living as an English teacher in Istanbul, fumbling my way through the challenges and culture shock that come with being a foreigner in a country you’ve never visited. Before remote work and digital nomadism became so prevalent, finding community, accommodation, and professional opportunities was a different experience.

The Path of the Gods: Solo Hiking on the Amalfi Coast

The Path of the Gods: Solo Hiking on the Amalfi Coast

To get from Naples train station to a tiny town called San Lazzaro in a region called Agerola, it’s a 30 minute ride on the Circumvesuviana and then an hour-long bus ride that winds up the steep precipices of the mountains behind the better-known towns of the Amalfi coast – […]

Deep in the Art of Sofia, Bulgaria

Deep in the Art of Sofia, Bulgaria

Reader, I’ve pulled this from the archives. I wrote about my trip to Sofia around the same time I started my original blog, in 2011.  Around the corner from my old apartment in New York City’s East Village, where I loved in my 20s, there was an establishment called the […]

Cappadocia, Before and After

Cappadocia, Before and After

Cappadocia has become wildly popular in the decade since I visited. Nestled in and around the Nevsehir province in central Turkey, Cappadocia looks like a moonscape or the other side of a portal to another planet. With its strange rock formations, a history of hermit cave dwellers, places with names […]

Cambodia Travel : Where to Stay and Shop in Phnom Penh

Cambodia Travel : Where to Stay and Shop in Phnom Penh

On a whirlwind trip to Southeast Asia, after a few days where it seemed like the travel gods were really out to get me, with 30 hours of food poisoning in Thailand followed by four flights in three countries over the course of one day, I was really ready for […]