Lions licking their lips, monkey's crying from trees in forests, and standing naked in a desert sunset, while pastels wash white sand a myriad of shades from magenta to ochre. Lorraine Chittock wanted all this and more.

By the age of six, Lorraine had traveled twelve times across the Atlantic Ocean with her British parents - the foundation for her nomadic life. As a teenager, Lorraine saw a dilemma. "How do you travel while tied down making a living?"

Chittock stayed relatively stationary during her school years, but at 18, flouted convention by buying a motorcycle to travel solo around California. Women didn't ride in 1978. A year later she was trekking across Europe.

At 23, after completing a two year degree in photography, the road beckoned once again, and she traveled to West Africa to photograph people in their natural element. Upon returning to the states, she realized she couldn't continue giving her belongings and cats to friends, and then attempt to reclaim her previous life upon re-entry. Potential employers saw her as a bad risk. There had to be another way. While pondering the situation, she completed a B.A. degree in Liberal Studies at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. She paid her way by waitressing and bartending in seedy diners, chain restaurants and five star hotels. While late nights were spent serving vodka-tonics and steaks medium rare, daylight hours were used to photograph carnival workers, the homeless and pets for an animal organization.

In 1991, after a year of mentoring from Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Michael Williamson, she was hired as a photo editor and photographer for Egypt Today, an American owned magazine in Cairo, Egypt. Over the next two years she traveled on assignment to the Sudan, Morocco, Pakistan, Jordan and extensively around Egypt, photographing ex-presidents, open heart surgery, haute couture fashion and top Egyptian film directors and actors.

Chittock left the magazine to teach photography to expatriates, while exhibiting in galleries and taking on advertising assignments. In 1994 she began producing greeting cards depicting whimsical scenes of camels munching on Christmas trees and Santa riding a camel - the magestic pyramids as a backdrop.

The following year she returned to the Sudan with American writer Angela Stephens, and they accompanied 200 camels and eight Sudanese men across the Libyan Desert on the Forty Days Road, an ancient caravan route. The trek resulted in Shadows in the Sand - Following the Forty Days Road. The coffee-table book was an immediate hit amongst the expatriate population, helped by over thirty talks given as part of Lorraine's publicity campaign.

When in Cairo, Chittock became an urban wild-life tracker, photographing the felines roaming the streets as they have for thousands of years. The subsequent picture book juxtaposed Chittock's intimate images with words from Arabian and Ancient Egyptian literature and folklore. Her aim? To connect Westerners with a much-misunderstood part of the world with an animal many can relate. Chittock initially self-published Cairo Cats which sold out in three months. Abbeville Press then printed their own edition. Cairo Cats is now back with Lorraine in it's third edition.

In 1998 Lorraine married and moved to Kenya. Living in a suburb of Nairobi merely a mile from where Out of Africa was filmed, Chittock suffered the same isolation that Isak Dinesen endured eighty-five years earlier. She began writing fiction as an escape, and explored her nature-rich surroundings with two neighborhood hounds, DOG and Bruiser. These daily walks gave Chittock a renewed sense of both herself, and her work.

Lorraine and her husband eventually left colonial suburbia where utilities rarely worked, and moved to the edge of the Nairobi Game Park. Her previous difficulties were dwarfed by the ongoing life and death dramas at their doorstep. In the bush, nature rules, and Lorraine's walks were fraught with danger, including heart-stopping encounters with spitting cobras, warthogs and big cats. These events, and her travels with DOG and Bruiser resulted in On a Mission from DOG - Walking Adventures in Africa.

In 2003, after twelve years of living overseas, Lorraine returned to America with her canine companions, and spent two and a half years touring the U.S. The Pack then headed south until reaching Costa Rica where they lived in a fishing village - Lorraine the only English speaker. In May 2007 they continued their journey to South America. Their adventures can be read at The DOGBLOG

During her travels she's discovered why so many retirees take to the open road. "Nomadism," says Lorraine,"isn't an escape from society, but a return to natural rhythms deeply embedded in us."

Lorraine belongs to the Society of American Travel Writers and Arabian Eye stock agencies, as well as being published in French and Russian GEO, The Washington Post, Scientific America, Cat World, and Best Friends, as well as numerous dog magazines in Australia, England and the U.S..

Ms. Chittock was a key note speaker for the Alliance for Contraception in Cats and Dogs annual convention November 2006 held in Washington D.C.. In a heavy research environment, she was the animal adventurer who explained with pictures and words the uses she's seen for non-surgical sterilization overseas. www.acc-d.org

Lorraine's teenage dreams came true. Her livelihood doesn't depend on working in one location. Some people travel to find themselves. Others to escape. For Lorraine, it is the rhythm of life itself.