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Tilted Map

Tilted Map

Travel, sustainability & life between two cultures

Is this a travel blog or a sustainability blog?

It’s both! Wanting to see the world and caring about keeping it in good shape? I think those are pretty compatible interests.

And it turns out, I’m not alone. A lot of you, my readers, have written to say that you found me via one topic and then stuck around because of the other. Thank you for that!

I already had a degree in Journalism, and had been living abroad and travel blogging for years when I went back to school in Italy to get my masters in Sustainable Business and Energy. When I finished, I wanted to combine the two – travel and sustainability.

That’s how Tilted Map was born.

I’m still figuring out to how to put it all together – so if you have questions or suggestions, I’d love to hear them! Whether it’s a brand to test, a book to read, or a destination that’s doing something uniquely sustainable. I might not have the answer, but I spend a lot of time testing products, calling experts, and tracking down answers for this blog. (It is my full-time job, after all.)

I’ve summarized a lot of those answers on this page, which lists all my favorite sustainable brands and travel resources.

And I used to spend a lot of time traveling, too. But of course, 2020 has given me some time to focus on the sustainability side, while staying home more than I have in years.

I lived abroad for five years, including three in Italy. I fell in love with a lot of aspects of Italian culture during that time. (My husband, who I met doing Capoeira in Shanghai, is Italian, and we got married in Milan.) So on this site, you’ll also find a lot of writing about US and Italian cultural differences (which, of course, includes a lot about food) plus travel inspiration and detailed reviews of sustainable and plastic-free products.

What’s with the name?

Tilted Map is meant to mean a different way of looking at something familiar.

I’ve loved staring at maps for as long as I can remember, and in my my apartment in Milan, I had a huge, wooden map of the world that took up an entire wall. It was handmade by a friend, and I spent hours looking at that thing. But no matter how many times I tried to straighten it, it was always… Tilted.

More About Ketti

Hi, I’m Ketti – the writer behind this site! I started blogging in 2014, when I moved to China with a job teaching English to 300 university students, a side-hustle as a freelance magazine writer, and just one word of Mandarin.

That turned into a lot more than just one year of travel: After China, there were three years in Italy, a desk job in France, and summers guiding students around Nicaragua and the Caribbean! (With healthy stints as a nomad with a backpack in between.)

Two of my favorite things to write about: 1. What I’ve learned from life as a long-term expat (especially about Italian culture and Italian food culture) and 2. Eco-friendly products that change habits, and ways to travel more sustainably.

I grew up in the mountains of Northwest Montana and have always been a nature lover – that’s part of why I’ve been writing about sustainability and the environment, as well as travel, ever since I started this blog.

Adding a note to a box on a hike in Alaska.

But since I’ve found ways to travel to 40+ countries since college, what you’ll find here isn’t all about Italy or all about eco-friendly travel. It’s about exploring the world! You’ll find stories and photos to scratch your wanderlust, tales of adventure and of culture shock, joy, frustration, love and, hopefully, inspiration. (Even for when you can’t travel.)

Ketti Wilhelm, author of Tilted Map travel and sustainability blog, a blonde woman shown in a close-up, black and white photo. ©KettiWilhelm2021
Greetings from Montana, where I grew up! (Please excuse my unwashed camping face.)

What to read next? How about something…

…Funny:
  • Ship’s Log: An Adventure in Cambodia I Didn’t Mean to Have
  • Schoolin’: All about teaching college English in China
…Daring:
  • Cripple’s Guide to International Travel: Backpacking 10 Countries on Crutches
  • Teaching “Under the Dome” (and luckily not from a Chinese jail)
…Romantic:
  • We Live in a Van Down by the River! (With lots of beautiful New Zealand pics)
  • We Got Married! (And probably forgot to tell you…)
…Useful:
  • Plastic-Free Products You’ll Actually WANT to Use (Hey, I do)
  • Books to make you feel like you’re on an adventure, even when you’re stuck at home
  • How to Eat in Italy – Table manners, differences between the courses & more
  • What tech do you really NEED for travel? (I asked an expert for advice on VPNs & Password Managers)
  • After three years in Italy, this is the most useful thing I learned: Why most Italians aren’t overweight, despite eating all that pizza and pasta

What I Mean by “Sustainable Travel”

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved travel. But I know the travel industry, and our individual choices as travelers, have a huge impact on the environment. It’s mostly a negative impact, but it doesn’t have to be. I’m dedicated to the idea that there are better ways for travelers to do what we love. 

(If you want to know more, I go into more detail in this post about travel and what this blog is for, and how I grew up.)

To me, “sustainable travel” isn’t just about eco-lodges in the rainforest. There are greener, less harmful and more sustainable ways to do every type of travel.

I’m also a big believer in the idea that our small choices really do matter. It’s an idea that in the US we call “voting with your dollar” for what you want to see in the world.

A lot of dollars flow through the travel industry.

One of my goals is to create a much-needed resource to help readers spend their travel budgets with companies who do their best to protect the environment. (Because in every industry – airlines, hotel chains, cruise ships and beyond – not all companies are the same.)

How I Got Here

Officially, I started working in sustainability after completing my master’s degree in Sustainable Business and Energy at Università Bocconi in Milan. At the end of the program, I moved to France to work for an energy and climate change research company. And while I’m passionate about both climate and energy, I was soon reminded that working from an office every day just wasn’t for me.

So I’m back to blogging full-time – and I’ll keep adding more in-depth posts that my readers can use to keep traveling while improving their environmental impact.

For more, please see my Work With Me page. Or if you have questions, please get in touch.

Sitting in a bathtub on a mountainside in Alaska (while hiking the site of an old mine and town). ©KettiWilhelm2019
A place to relax in Alaska.

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Van Part 7 - Flooring! Damn, it's hard to make thi Van Part 7 - Flooring! Damn, it's hard to make this sexy. 😂  As you can tell from the video, it was a pretty slow, tedious, precision type of job. (Which, frankly, my nerd heart loves. ❤)  But that doesn’t explain why I’m acting like an insane person who hasn’t slept. It’s not drugs. It was the Saturday after election day, and I was feeling all those hope-y, change-y feelings. Anyone else remember that?  I still believe in it. The best is yet to come. And someday I’ll be able to get a haircut, too. 💇 ✌
Continuing the van building distraction: Part 6, T Continuing the van building distraction: Part 6, The Wood Ceiling! 🌲  Made from leftover Blue Pine boards piled in my dad's shop, stained by yours truly, and painstakingly wedged into place on an uneven, curved ceiling.  Definitely a square peg / round hole kind of job, but it makes this old Chevy feel like a cabin in the woods! 💚
My mind has been far away from our van project lat My mind has been far away from our van project lately, so I'm a few steps behind in sharing this story. But here we go – Part 5: climbing around on top of a car like a '50s pin-up model, but with more '90s grunge vibes. 🔧 💃  🎬 Video of course by @theaviaoexperience
You may have noticed my stories got a little vulga You may have noticed my stories got a little vulgar and angry and political yesterday. Well, expressing how I feel about what happened in my country yesterday required a lot of fucks.  But first, congratulations to @raphaelwarnock and @jonossoff , who both broke barriers yesterday!  As for the rest of it, well…  This might seem like a break from my usual travel posts, but it’s not. Travel IS political, and I write about it as such. Travel writers and bloggers SHOULD ABSOLUTELY talk about what’s really happening in a place – politics and oppression included.  We’re quick to point out when other countries are unsafe to visit, but what about our own? 
Of all the wealthy democracies I’ve visited and lived in, I've never seen a place with such  terrifying hypocrisy as the United States. And I’m on the easy side of it – I’m white!!  My favorite political science professor in college said, “The only defining marker of a stable democracy is the peaceful transition of power.”  Yesterday, the only “stable” thing I saw was the predictable impunity for white thugs and domestic terrorists who stormed Congress like out-of-control children – because they lost an election. And because they knew they could get away with it. No person of color would ever imagine they could do that in this country.  That is the REALITY OF AMERICA TODAY. And the world is watching.  How could ANYONE abroad see a country where anyone can have a gun, and any hostile, armed (white) person with a grudge can walk into the highest offices of government without being stopped, and think: “That sounds like a nice place for a vacation”?  This is the kind of impunity and lawlessness that makes the US State Department warn us not to visit other countries.  So tell me, if you’re thinking of visiting the USA as a traveler, how safe does it seem right now???  📸 : Photo is from a Trump protest in Chicago back in 2019. The sentiment is what we still have to live up to.
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#thisisamerica #travelusa #travelbloggersofig
#travelblogging
My mantra for the new year. ☝️ I’m looking f My mantra for the new year. ☝️ I’m looking forward to lots more change, new gigs, moving, exploring, learning and, just like last year, adapting to and learning to do things I never thought I could. (Just hopefully more fun things. 🏄‍♀️ 🧳)  Whatever you’ve got in mind, here's to 2021!
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#findyouradventure #newyear2021 #newyearnewgoals #itravelbecause
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