I left Miami for a remote village in Pakistan. I have no running hot water and limited electricity — but my quality of life here is infinitely better.

• Samantha Shea had never been outside the US before she started college in 2014.
• After graduating in 2019, she visited India and Pakistan while developing her travel writing.
• She moved to Hunza Valley in Northern Pakistan in 2021, where she's lived ever since.

When I tell people from back home that I live in Northern Pakistan, I'm usually met with shock.

Their disbelief escalates when I show them pictures of the snow-capped Karakoram mountain range that surround the village where I live.

"I thought Pakistan was a desert" is the most common response. As wrong as they are, I don't blame them. I didn't know much about Pakistan before traveling there after college.