Udaipur is such a charming city that Cousin Helen and I decided to camp out there for about six days  – that gave us time to relax and take our time exploring the city…plus it saves me money if I’m not constantly on the move.  Most of the hotels in the area have rooftop restaurants with fantastic views of the various palaces in the city. There are, more specifically, three main palaces that are available for exploration, the Lake Palace, City Palace and the Monsoon Palace.
The Lake Palace, as …

My time in India didn’t really start off on the right foot – starting with two majorly huge cities.  I’ve heard from other travelers you should never plan your first trip to India for less than three weeks – if you do you may very well leave hating the country.  The theory being that if you stay for a bit longer your brain and body are able to overcome some of the ridiculousness and instead embrace the orchestrated chaos and charm.  I would have to say that I largely …

I like to think that I have both a great sense of humor and a fair amount of tolerance…but India is trying really hard to test those two qualities at every opportunity.  Cousin Helen and I arrived in Ahmedabad exhausted from the constant jostling of nine hours of being stared at and touched by other Indian commuters on our train – it’s not that it’s bad, immersion is the whole point, but it’s not what we had prepared for mentally so it tested us.  I don’t think it’s a …

I’ve been in India for a few weeks now but I wanted to take you guys back to some of the adventures of that first week in India.  Leaving Southeast Asia was pretty hard – over the six weeks I was there with Laura I really grew to love the people and the culture in that region.
I’ve talked about the slow pace of the Laos, and also about the faster pace of Cambodia – well, even the big city aspect of Phnom Penh couldn’t quite prepare me for landing in …

It was a little painful for Helen and me to wake up at 5:00am to catch our train out of Jaipur after the Holi Festival of Colors revelry but we managed to drag ourselves out of bed, slung our pre-packed backpacks onto our shoulders and trudged to the train station – it was early and it really hadn’t hit either of us yet that we were on our way to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal.

I mean, can I just repeat this one more time…the TAJ MAHAL!  Once we got …

Holi, Festival of Colors and Jaipur’s Elephant Festival
India’s Festival of Colors, was tops at my list of travel experiences when I planned my RTW trip back in 2008. The rainbow of colors streaking radiantly happy faces during Holi just stuck a cord and a little research showed that Jaipur hosts the annual Jaipur Elephant Festival the day before Holi!

Rajasthan acts as the epicenter of the most intense Holi action although the Festival of Colors is celebrated throughout India and even Nepal.  The Holi celebrations actually fully …

After the ziplining at Gibbon Experience in Laos I really didn’t have a lot of time left in Southeast Asia before I was due to meet cousin Helen in India.  With that in mind I hopped on a quick puddle-jumper flight out of Luang Prabang and landed in Siem Reap, Cambodia just an hour later – home to one of the most recognizable UNESCO site in the world.

I decided to take out Vietnam from my itinerary – it was just too much to do in just six weeks and now …

I have largely neglected my duties to this blog so far by not updating all of my readers on the state of driving on this side of the world.  For those who have not yet had the pleasure of traveling or backpacking through Asia, well, it’s unique and an assault on Western safety sensibilities.  To understand the way these people drive you pretty much have to completely abandon your conceptions about Western driving tactics and strategies and instead accept the organized chaos of a free-for-all.

From what I’ve discovered so far, …