Monthly Archives: September 2009

So far on this trip we’ve been lucky. We’ve had a pair of underwear and a tanktop disappear at the laundry. We left a headlamp somewhere in Nicaragua (probably the very first night). We managed to lose an ATM card in Vietnam, but despite not noticing that the card was missing for a day since we last used it, no one else tried to use it, and we were able to cancel it without consequence. We also had thought ahead …

13 responses to “Stolen!”

There’s a certain romanticism associated with the desert. Perhaps it’s because of ancient stories of explorers crossing the desert in camel trains, the silk route winding its way through the sandy landscapes of the east. Maybe it’s the vastness–of the desert underfoot and the sky overhead–that ignites the imagination. Perhaps it’s the harshness of it, the incredulousness that anything or anyone can survive here. Whatever it is, it has spawned stories and songs. The Eagles sang of their desire to …

5 responses to “Through the Desert on Camelback”

It’s no secret that India and Pakistan are long-time rivals and, often, enemies. Border territory, like Kashmir, is still disputed, and more than one war has been fought over the last fifty years. But the rivalry descends into its silliest at the border in Wagha, outside Amritsar. It seems, over the years, “oneupsmanship” between the Indian and Pakistani border guards has led to quite a spectacle every night as the border closes. We arrived in our rickshaw amid hundreds of …

9 responses to “The Silliest Border Ever”

Back in the day when I had more tapes than CDs and had no idea what an MP3 was, my brother had in his music collection a tape of the Tibetan Freedom Concert. I can’t recall a single song on the tape, but I’m sure it must have had on it what we considered good music. I’m pretty certain we didn’t buy it out of altruism or a burning desire to help Tibet, because I’ll go ahead and be frank …

4 responses to “Dharamshala: Tibet in Exile”

Sometimes you wake up at 5:00 AM and start walking through the pouring rain … and really start to question why you keep doing this. Then you get on the painfully slow, narrow gauge train that supposedly has such wonderful views only to realize you won’t see anything due to this wonderful rain that has now soaked you through to the core. And all the while, we’re trying to cope with a sensation we haven’t felt in a long time …

0 responses to “The Weather Turns”

So you’re probably wondering who these people are that we’re posing with in these photos. Well, so are we. We don’t know them. We didn’t meet them until about two seconds before the camera shutter snapped. They might have mentioned their names when they thanked us for the photo, but that’s all we got. So why are we in the photos? Well, we’re not exactly clear on that either, but apparently Indian people really like to have their photo taken …

3 responses to “Smile! You’re On Some Indians Camera”

It’s hard to believe its come to this, but we now have less than one month left on our journey. We are spending most of that time in India, having arrived here last night. So far, here are our first impressions. We have this habit of overpreparing. This is sometimes good and useful, and other times pretty much counterproductive. For the last four days of our time in Malaysia, we poured over websites and through our guidebook, absorbing every tidbit …

7 responses to “First Impressions of India”