Allan Karl

Allan Frederick Karl is an American author, adventurer and speaker. He is most known for travelling around the world on his motorcycle and subsequently writing the book, Forks: A Quest for Culture, Cuisine and Connection.

After a divorce and finding himself unemployed, in 2005, Karl decided to go on a trip around the world. He spent the next three years travelling on five continents and visited 35 countries. He returned to the United States in 2008 and became a public speaker talking about his travel experience. He is a graduate of S.I. Newhouse School, Syracuse University. He is one of four sons of Wayne Frederick Karl and Audrey Karl (later Shaff). His father ran Karl's Autobody in Stamford, Connecticut, founded by his own father, James, in 1925. He has brothers Jonathan, James, and the late Robert.

Career Karl was a marketer by profession before he left for his trip. In 2000, he co-founded the company Wirestone, a creative and interactive services company and served there as a vice president. However, he felt that his job was not fulfilling and he started another company, but he still felt unhappy. Following a divorce, Karl left his job and decided to travel.

After returning from his trip Karl became a tech entrepreneur and motivational speaker. In his presentations, he shares his travel experience. He was a speaker at the general session the Global Business Travel Association's Leadership Summit in 2013. and Roadrunner magazine's annual touring weekend in 2014.

Three-year trip In 2003, after Karl's marriage ended in divorce, he left his company. He had always wanted to travel around the world and was passionate about bikes and photography, so he started planning a trip. He spent the next two years planning the routes for his trip. He wanted to visit as many UNESCO sites as many he could.

Six months into his travel, when Karl was going to Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, he had an accident while riding on a muddy dirt road 15,000 feet high in the Bolivian Andes. It had been raining from several days and his bike slipped out from under him and his panniers fell on top of his left leg and broke it in three places.

After three years, Karl was in Turkey and tried once more to get a visa for entrance into Iran. The Iran government turned him down for the third time. At that time, he decided to go home. He shipped his motorcycle to Baltimore, Maryland and then continued his journey from Washington, D.C. across the United States, riding only on the backroads, not on interstate highways, and returned to Newport Beach, California.

On his trip, Karl learned to speak Spanish, Portuguese, as well as a little Arabic.

Forks In his book, Forks: A Quest for Culture, Cuisine, and Connection, Karl documents his travels through the many stories, images and recipes he collected. In the book, each of his destinations is arranged into a short chapter in the order in which he visited, illustrated with photos and chronicled with a travelogue anchored with a recipe that represents the national dish. The book includes 40 recipes and 700 photos of places he visited. Initially, he did not plan to add recipes in the book, however one day he made moqueca, a Brazilian fish stew, for friends. His friends enjoyed the dish a lot and he decided to add recipes of dishes he liked on his travel to his book.

Forks has been compared to Anthony Bourdain's work. and Midwest Book Review wrote that Forks is "sure to be the crown jewel of many an armchair traveler's collection."

Kickstarter campaign When Karl returned to United States, he pitched the idea of his book to publishers, but they refused to work on his book. The publishers asked him to simplify the premise of the book by removing the recipes and making the book a traditional travelogue. However, he did not want to do that. Karl then started a Kickstarter campaign to self-publish his book. He set a goal of raising $22,000, which he raised in nine days and ended up raising $40,994. With the funds he raised, he printed 2,000 copies of first-run books, hired a publicist, printed more books and planned a national book launch tour.