Abrupt Transitions: Dhal Bhat Days – Volume 1
I arrived in Kathmandu after 27 hours of travel from NYC to Nepal…My body and mind felt like mush, on top of it I had cramps. I was excited to be in a new country again – yet a bit intimidated to be doing this all by myself. When I left on my around the world travel 2 years ago, I left with a group of friends who I could talk to and in some way that could comfort me and ease me into the solo adventure. Read More

Landslides & Local Buses: Dhal Bhat Days – Volume 2
Today was the day the surrender happened; surrendering to my new environment. I believe this to be the first surrender, I think there will be many more. I met my ‘guide’ Khadgo in the morning in Kathmandu and we set out to go catch a ‘minibus’ to the village of Puma an approximate 6 hr journey. Khadgo was not really my guide, but more of the delivery man. Read More

Learning How to Remove Leeches: Dhal Bhat Days – Volume 3
Today I arrived at the village of Puma where I will be staying for 2 weeks. It’s pretty much what I thought it would be in my ‘prepare for the worst’ expectations. Yet I don’t know that one can ever be prepared to pull big leaches off their body. Read More

Powers of Observation: Dhal Bhat Days – Volume 4
It rained last night like I’ve never experienced before in my life. I now understand the meaning of Monsoon season. Sure, maybe it was amplified in my mind as it sounds worse when you are sleeping under a tin roof; it echoed through my little barn room as if someone was dumping gravel from above. At one point I did actually consider that the whole mountain might float away. It was better to think of that rather than the huge spider that I saw above my bed before I fell asleep. Read More

Saved by Youth: Dhal Bhat Days – Volume 5
I hit a low today. I think it was due to many different things; but what affects me the most is not being able to have any type of conversation with anyone. I’m not simply sitting here silent – I am trying to form together a few words whenever I can, but it is very hard to get a question out or a sentence out when you really just know the words for rain, good, small, big, eat, house, leach, you, my, tomorrow, mother, sister, father, I and water. Read More

At Last: Dhal Bhat Days – Volume 6
I think it’s happening – I’m settling into my travel life a bit more. I’m not fighting all of the change as much, and starting to accept. However, the key to all of this was to have some people to talk to. Read More

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Barbot or Bust: Dhal Bhat Days – Volume 7
What the F have I done? Just when I was starting to settle in – I agreed to turn my little village world upside down again. I think the Dhal Bhat is making me crazy. I’m traveling through some of the worst conditions for the past 8 hours. Maybe it is more mental than anything physical, but after the 6th hour of sweating profusely, feeling disgusting, and now trekking in the complete darkness up a trail that I cannot see – I started to cry. Read More

School Days: Dhal Bhat Days – Volume 8
The whole reason I came to Nepal was to volunteer and teach. In some way I was trying to recapture my rewarding experience that I had in Delhi last year I suppose. When I arrived however, I quickly realized that the teaching was a bit secondary to my culture shock that I was experiencing. Considering my new living environment in Puma, teaching was really the least of my concerns. Read More

Do You Meat?: Dhal Bhat Days – Volume 9
During a break at school one afternoon, I noticed a big crowd in the village. I asked the children what was going on and they said “buffalo kill”. The village was slaughtering a buffalo and from my vantage point it looked like a lot of work as they were hacking away at various parts with an ax and knives. Read More

Flower Children: Dhal Bhat Days – Volume 10
Time is very powerful. In fact, I think it’s the most powerful thing in this universe. Time heals feelings, it causes us to forget, and with time; everything gets better. My time in Puma felt like it moved slowly, especially at first. I agonized about how I would ever survive the two weeks living in conditions that were completely foreign to my mindset. Then time arrived. Read More

I Prefer Window: Dhal Bhat Days – Volume 11
I thought I would be more excited about leaving Puma considering my living conditions for the last two weeks, but surprisingly, I wasn’t. In fact, it was a bittersweet. I was excited to get to some sort of civilization (yet I had started to question if civilization actually existed anywhere in Nepal), but I was sad to leave my new friends in Puma. They took excellent care of me in the best way they could. Read More

Kathmandu – Second Time’s a Charm: Dhal Bhat Days – Volume 12
After a refreshing, civilized stay in Pokhara for two nights, I arrived back in Kathmandu with a new outlook; it was no longer scary. I was reminded again of just how powerful time is. As I’ve noted before, I think time is one of the most important resources in the world. Forget pining away for youth…I just want more time. I’m a time whore. It makes everything better. Read More

Hands for Help – Final Thoughts: Dhal Bhat Days – Volume 13
While in Nepal I heard from my old students in India; they wished me a happy teacher day via email; it took me completely off guard, and shook me up a bit . It had been a year ago that I was there living in Delhi teaching my wonderful group of young adults that I become so attached to. Read More

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Spice Diaries – Volume 1
I have arrived in India…everyone said that it would be an assault to your senses, that it would be overwhelming, that it would be hard – after all, India is the big leagues for vagabonds like myself. Yet, I arrived here 5 days ago – and I’ve felt none of this. It’s been a simple transition so far – yet I proceed cautiously. My only explanation for this is that my past travel experiences have seasoned me – and for that, I’m immensely proud. I wear a big grin on my face and think to myself…India…try to shock me! Read More

Spice Diaries – Volume 2
I’m surprised…very surprised by India. I’m surprised that I have adjusted so easily…dare I say it – but India was actually a very easy transition for me. Sure – as we drove from the airport to the flat on Saturday morning we dodged the cows in the road, I saw people sleeping out on the streets…we drove down the wrong side of the road most of the time, and ignored stop lights…but in my world these days…that’s all normal. Read More

Spice Diaries – Volume 3
Whoohooo…..it’s the weekend! I’ve worked my butt off this week – mainly stressing out about teaching and banging my head against a wall when it comes to internet usage around here..which I can’t seem to find anywhere with any reliability. Despite being in a nice air conditioned building with ample facilities to teach – I am having a very hard time teaching. This is mainly due to the amount of work that I have to do to prepare for teaching 2 different classes every day in English and Computers. Read More

Spice Diaries – Volume 4
I learned today that there is a man that works in our colony (neighborhood) that simply is the ‘ironing man’. No – I’m not talking about a James Taylor song. He irons clothes all day for 1 rupee per piece – that equates to about 2 cents a garment. He works between my flat and my neighbors flat, collecting the washed and dried clothes from the various housekeepers and ironing them all day out in the alleyway. That’s India. Read More

Spice Diaries – Volume 5
Every day is full of lessons. Today was a varied as normal. I’m starting to get a feel for the teaching. A part of me even thinks that I’m good at it…and then I realize the difference between ‘that’ and ‘this’…and I’m jolted back to reality. Regardless of how effective I am, I thoroughly enjoy working with the kids. Read More

Spice Diaries – Volume 6
Another week has passed. Something has happened that I really wasn’t expecting – it has taken me by surprise. All my thoughts are consumed by it…I am giddy…I walk around with a big smile on my face when I talk about it…I am elated. I have been swept off my feet! No, not by some wonderful, sexy man; but by my students at my volunteer placement. Read More

Spice Diaries – Volume 7
The days are going very fast. Too fast. This is my 3rd week here already and I have no idea where the time went. I only have a week left of teaching and I’m already sad about the thought of leaving. This month has been full of realizations for me – realizing  just how much I have changed in this last year. Read More

Spice Diaries – Volume 8
Today is the day – my last day of work a year ago. My last paycheck…that’s a painful thought. But if I think about the trade off of – no money, but world experiences instead – then it’s all worth it. However, I am working currently (even though I’m paying them to work). The volunteer teaching is certainly a job. Read More

Spice Diaries – Volume 12
No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks…Over the past year I have had many reasons to smile. Yet today was probably one of the most memorable reasons to smile this entire year of adventure and work free lifestyle. Read More

Spice Diaries – Volume 13
I have cried many tears throughout this year of travel, however they have mainly been tears for me. These tears tend to fall into two categories; tears for my unanswered questions about my future, and tears for joy. However yesterday I shed many, many tears and they weren’t for me at all. Read More

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Spice Diaries – Volume 10
I woke up this morning, and went out to fetch the Sunday paper. The moment I stepped out on our little terrace I knew it was going to be a tough day…the air was thick and heavy. The weather forecast in the paper said that it was to get to 35 degrees in Delhi today – which is over 100 degrees to those of you living in a Fahrenheit world. Read More

Spice Diaries – Volume 11
Today was yet another holiday in India…the land of constant festivals! Today was Lord Krishna’s birthday – an important God in the Hindu religion. The festival is called Janmashtami – and it basically means that I had the day off of work. It’s strange – I don’t think I’ve ever had a job in my life in which I was upset that I had a day off. Read More

A Functioning Anarchy – Driving in India
Up until now, I used to think that Vietnam was the craziest traffic I had ever seen in my life. Well…move over Vietnam…enter India. I am absolutely positive that the word clusterfuck was created here by some Westerner riding in a taxi around Delhi. In my month here in India, I heard someone say – traffic in India is like a functioning anarchy…I thought that it was a perfect way to describe the orderly craziness! Read More

Spice Diaries – Volume 14
It’s hard to believe that yet another Sep. 11th is going by. Once again I’m out of the country this year. Just two weeks ago in India there was a huge terrorist attack in Hyderabad – killing over 40 people…did you even hear about it? Probably not. Here in India, the front page of the newspapers lead with photos of blood soaked stadium seats; the terrorists struck at a amusement park full of families. Terrorism isn’t just in the US…people struggle with it all over the world. Read More

Spice Diaries – Volume 15
You’ve all heard about my wonderful experience teaching – however I haven’t really spoken much about my living arrangements in Delhi. Sure the flats were livable, nothing spectacular, but livable. It was a good location, it had air conditioning, we had people cooking for us, we usually had hot water, we had cable (yet we rarely watched TV) – but the best thing about my living arrangement was that I loved my roommates. Read More

Spice Diaries – Volume 16
My India visa was such a pain in the ass to acquire, I felt like I should use every ounce of it. My visa ran out on Sept. 15th, and my volunteer work was completed on Sept. 7th. I decided to take an extra 6 days to travel around India and see something besides he crowded streets and pollution of Delhi. Read More

Spice Diaries – Volume 17
I wasn’t supposed to be here, in India that is. When I left the US a year ago I had many people ask me if I was going to India on my around the world tour. I said “No, I don’t want to go to India, and I certainly don’t want to go solo. I think it would be too hard for me and I would be frustrated.” For some reason India seemed liked the big leagues of travel. Read More

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Lost in Transition – Tokyo
This is it – the last stop before I hit the US, one last hurrah – and I chose to do it completely on my own…solo…what I want to do, when I want to do it. No tour company, no friends, no sister, no travel book….just me, with a camera, an internet connection and an immense amount of patience. It had been a while since I had been completely solo, so it was quite a transition for me to make again. Not only was it a transition to be solo, but it was a transition to be back exploring some place new again since I had spent the last 20 days in Singapore, now considered my 2nd home. Read More

The Underbelly of Tokyo
There are 32 million people living in Tokyo. 8 Million of them ride the subway every day. That turns into about 3,000 people on each train. No wonder why most of the time you feel like a sardine and it often takes a white gloved ‘subway conductor’ to squeeze you into the car before the doors shut. Not only were they a great way to travel across the massive city at a reasonable price, but they provided quite a lot of entertainment for me as I kept my mind busy comparing and contrasting the Tokyo metro with other subways around the world. Read More

Fishy Business – Tsukiji Market, Tokyo
The alarm went off at 2:45AM – I got up disoriented and thought…why do I do this to myself? Yet as my eyes adjusted to the overhead light, and I got up off of my floor mat, I reminded myself that this was the whole purpose of my trip here…this early morning adventure. I know that the best experiences seems to happen in the dark, so I put on my warmest clothes, and my waterproof running shoes, armed myself with my cameras, lenses, flash and a backpack. Made sure that I had my little hand written note in Japanese to give to the cab driver, and I took off out of the Ryokan and out into the dark Tokyo streets to find a cab. Read More

Budget Tokyo
Since I only had 4 days in Tokyo, and little money left for traveling, I had a challenge – how do you stay in Tokyo on a budget. After months of living a simple life – I think I was up to the challenge. The first big accomplishment was finding a reasonably priced hotel amongst the sea of business travelers on company expense budgets. I was lucky enough to find Sawonoya Ryokan – an oasis surrounded by the old neighborhoods of Tokyo. Read More

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A Father, A Daughter, and Some Chinese Food – Beijing
When I was about 12 years old, I was treated to my first memory of international cuisine…Chinese food. I will never forget going to a Chinese restaurant in Peoria for the first time. It was darkly lit, with big round tables and little cups for tea. I was fascinated with these cups because they didn’t have handles – pretty unconventional for the Midwest! Read More

Battle of the Bugs – Voyage to the Great Wall
The Great Wall of China – yet another site that I never really expected to see in my life – but when you do – it makes it all that more special and amazing. Thousands of years ago, the various Chinese emperors, mainly the Ming Dynasty, built the Great Wall to keep the Monguls (Mongolians) out. It was actually rather effective. As I would marvel at the wall construction on steep mountainsides I wondered not only how they got materials up there to build it – but what Mongolians could make it up there to attack?! It looked like an impossible place for any human to go. Yet my father and I took off for 3 days of hiking on the Great Wall. Read More

The Great Wall – The Great Destroyer of Knees
This is one of the main reasons I came to China, to hike this section of the Great Wall – Jinshaling and Simatai. One of the most breathtaking sections of the Great Wall is Jinshanling. It undulates through the steep mountaintops, hence – my knees wouldn’t like me for days after this hike! It is approximately 8 miles from Jinshaling to Simatai via the Great Wall – but it will take anywhere from 4 to 7 hours to complete it depending on your fitness, and your knees! Read More

High in the Jet Stream and Deep in the Ground – Xi’an
My last stop on my tour of Northern China was the small town of Xi’an. Of course – small in China is a population of 8 million people. Most people fly from Beijing to Xi’an, however we decided to take another route…the train. When I booked the overnight train to Xi’an, I really didn’t know what to expect. I actually enjoy taking overnight trains – it’s a good way to see a different side of a country, interact with some locals, and see the countryside. Read More

My Ancient Chinese Hero – Dali
My sister and I were in search of a hiking trip on southern China. After much searching on the internet, I finally located a company called Backroads of China. Who seemed to cover much of the Yunan Provence in Southern China as well as included a fair amount of trekking that would challenge us. Plus – the company seemed very much about cultural exchange and simple travel through the region – which is my preferred way to travel as opposed to a big tour bus (just kill me). Read More

Tiger Leaping Gorge-ous!!!
One of the main reasons why Cyndi and I decided to come to Yunnan was to hike in the Tiger Leaping Gorge – a deep canyon on the Yangtze River. It is actually one of the deepest river canyons in the world. It received its unique name from an ancient story about a tiger who was running from a hunter and leaped over the gorge (and presumably to his freedom) at the gorge’s narrowest point (about 25 meters wide). Read More

Yak-it-ty Yak – Shangi-la
Before coming to Southwest China, my sister and I were out one night with some of her Singapore friends and they wanted to know where we were going on our pending trip to Yunnan. We rattled off a few places including Shangri-la. There was an immediate ooooohh around the room as someone started talking about how lovely Shangri-la was – wonderful food, great service, nice spa, comfortable beds and the list went on. We were a bit confused by this at first and then it hit us…”No, we aren’t going to the hotel, we are going to the town of Shangri-la!” Read More

Electric Blankets and Chains
For the 4 days we spent in and around Shangri-la we had the unique opportunity to experience the 4 seasons…one each day. The bad news is that my suitcase wasn’t really outfitted to experience the 4 seasons, and the Chinese concept of heating was an electric blanket – herein lied the problem. Read More

China Syndrome
I’m neutral on China. Some of it was better than expected and some worse. Then there were some things that met my expectations exactly such as the amount of people and the smog. Don’t let my neutrality fool you though, I am happy that I spent 4 weeks there, observing the largest populated country in the world, and an emerging economic power. China seemed vastly different than its Asian neighbors – and I can sum that up with the term ‘impersonal’. Read More

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Hong Kong – Journey to Enlightenment?
I had 4 days in Hong Kong, I felt that would be plenty to see the sites, after all – it’s just a big city – and I’ve been to big cities before. Cyndi has a large web of expat friends strewn across Asia – so we were able to call upon one of them, Lynn and Lee, in Hong Kong and luckily stay with a ‘local’. Any time I have an opportunity to stay with someone that lives in a country I’m visiting, I snap it up. It has the obvious advantage of saving money – but more importantly than that, it helps you cut through all of the guidebooks and to the chase of what to do and how to get there. Read More

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I just finished my trek through the Annapurna Circuit of Nepal and it was an incredible three-week experience.  It seems like it lasted a lifetime, yet also went by so fast.  This is one of the most beautiful countries and the quiet and peacefulness of being in the middle of nowhere at this time was a welcome opportunity.  I loved the fact that for the past three weeks we were cut off from everything.  The only things we needed to know each day was what time wake up call was and how long we should expect to walk.

Our trek led us through so many diverse settings — rice paddies, rain forests, waterfalls, rivers, dry-desert like villages, and of course the absolute beauty of the Annapurna Range, which consists of 8 of the 14 largest mountains in the world.  Words and photos would never do this place justice. We shared the trails and campsites with donkeys, goats, sheep, water buffalo, yaks, and chickens as we climbed to nearly 18,000 feet and trekked for almost 120 miles.  And as we passed through the small villages, we were always greeted by excited children and beautiful smiles.  The Nepalese people are so beautiful and friendly and just their presence made us all feel at peace.

Our group consisted of 14 people, mostly Brits, a couple of Canadians, an Aussie and 3 of us Americans.  Considering the number of people and the extreme conditions, we managed to all get along fabulously and shared lots of laughs every day.  They are all very special people and we were so fortunate to be able to share this experience with them.  And the trekking staff (porters, sherpas, and kitchen boys) were all so sweet, and we shared many laughs, singing, and dancing with them as well.  It is sad when it has to all end, but the memories will definitely last a lifetime.

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