Lauren Keith is a freelance travel writer and guidebook author specializing in off-the-beaten-track and underloved places from the Midwest US to the Middle East. For several years, she worked as Lonely Planet’s editor for the Middle East and North Africa, and she continues to travel the region widely, from scouting out traces of the Islamic empire on the southernmost tip of Spain to walking alongside nomads in the remote mountains of Iran. She’s been published in Lonely Planet, National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, Atlas Obscura, Al Jazeera, AFAR and elsewhere.