On Jeff Greenwald's first trip to Asia in 1979, rather than following the typical tourist's trail, he designed urban playgrounds for UNICEF and the Nepal Children’s Organization. Arriving several months later in Thailand during the Khmer civil war, he served as a volunteer water engineer at Khao-I-Dang...-the largest of the Cambodian refugee camps. These early travel experiences shaped his career and philosophy about travel. In the Spring of 1983, Greenwald was awarded a journalism fellowship by the Rotary International Foundation, and departed for a second trip to Asia. Over the course of 16 months he lived in Kathmandu, Nepal, and made excursions to the Himalaya, India, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Japan, Java, and Bali. His articles about those trips appeared in the magazines GEO and Islands. It was around this time that he began writing "Mr. Raja¹s Neighborhood: Letters from Nepal." Four years later, his travels in Nepal and Tibet would inspire "Shopping for Buddhas," first published by Harper and Row in 1990. A later edition, published in the Lonely Planet "Journeys" series, won theLowell Thomas Gold Award for Best Travel Book of 1996.

As he circled the globe writing The Size of the World in 1993-1994, Greenwald posted dispatches to GNN, the Global Network Navigator, describing his journey. Consequently, he is hailed by several writers as an internet pioneer for creating the first international blog (before the term was coined). How to travel ethically

The Savvy Traveler Rundown - Week of October 24, 2003

In 2003, Jeff Greenwald co-founded the organization Ethical Traveler, of which he serves as the Executive Director. A project of the Earth Island Institute, Ethical Traveler is a global community dedicated to exploring the ambassadorial potential of world travel, as outlined in Greenwald's "Thirteen Tips for the Accidental Ambassador." Ethical Traveler: Travel Guidelines

Using his many travel adventures as material, Greenwald also developed a one-man show in 2003 called "Strange Travel Suggestions." The show, which premiered at The Marsh in San Francisco, is an improvised monologue whose content is determined by the spin of a on-stage "wheel of fortune".

Mr. Raja’s Neighborhood: Letters from Nepal (1986, John Daniel Publications)

Shopping for Buddhas (1990, Harper & Row; 1996, Lonely Planet)

The Size of the World (1996, Globe Pequot; March 1997, Ballantine Books)

Future Perfect: How Star Trek Conquered Planet Earth (1998, Viking; 1999,Penguin)

Scratching the Surface: Impressions of Planet Earth from Hollywood to Shiraz (2002, Naga Press)

Snake Lake (coming in Fall 2010 from Counterpoint Press)

Greenwald has written stories and essays for such publications as The New York Times Magazine, Wired, National Geographic Adventure, Outside, and Salon.com. His travel writing appears in numerous anthologies, such as The Kindness of Strangers, In Search of Adventure, Salon Wanderlust, and in many volumes of the award-winning Travelers Tales series.

"For anyone with an appetite for fantastic legends, a thirst for color (especially red), and a general craving for utter theological wonder, Nepal is a case study in all-you-can-eat."

"We go where we need to go, then try to figure out what we're doing there.”

"Every time I set off on a journey, I feel like God has thrown me the keys to her car."

Jeff Greenwald quotes

Thanks to a casting director who was a fan of his writing, Greenwald made a cameo appearance as “Security Guard” on the "Jail" episode of the NBC sitcom News Radio.NewsRadio season 5