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Saturday, November 14, 2026Nov 14

Cook: How to travel the world without leaving home

The Carisch family traveled to Peru, one of dozens of countries during their year-long adventure.
The Carisch family traveled to Peru, one of dozens of countries during their year-long adventure.

Long before she swam with bull sharks in Fiji or wept with Buddhist nuns in Cambodia or heard the voice of God while sick on a bathroom floor in Nicaragua, Tracey Carisch sat down one Chattanooga night with a simple glass of pinot noir.

That’s when everything began to change.

It was a girls’ night out, 2013. As Carisch and friends settled in for drinks at a North Shore wine bar, somebody turned to her and casually asked: So, Tracey, what did you do this week?

She … didn’t … know.

Sure, she’d done things that week, lots of things. Carisch was neck-deep in the life of a working mother. She had 600 emails in her inbox. Two dozen errands to run.