The oldest girl in the group of children, she couldn’t have been more than 13, leveled a sly look my way before stating:
“Lady, you buy our bracelets or who knows what will happen to your bicycles…”
At that point, I think my jaw dropped.
The Backstory
Laura and I rented bikes for a day of exploring the Angkor temples closet to Siem Reap – and after a pretty harried bike ride down a dusty and trafficky road we were grateful to chain up our bikes to a nearby tree with some pretty …

Let’s take a flashback today to the Cambodia stop on my RTW trip…exactly this time last year; I was traveling with a friend through SEA.

I’m not sure what it is about music, but it just bridges gaps. Perhaps it’s the nature of music – inclusive; everyone who can hear it feels a part of the experience.
Laura’s green guitar and with a hand-embroidered Laotian pink strap was like a magnet for all of the children hawking bracelets and guidebooks near the temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. As soon as …

The spicy mingling of scents when you step foot into the country is, perhaps, my favorite memory of India. The food selection in the country is simply outrageous. They have hundreds and hundreds of traditional dishes that vary from region to region and the entire country is suffused with the scent of spicy curries emanating from street stalls and local restaurants. (In addition to the dishes – have you tried the curd…it’s divine ;-)
And as a vegetarian, India meant I was in foodie heaven. I actually  fear what’s in store …

A trip around the world just wouldn’t be complete without a highlight of some of the best foods and local treats I found along the way. And while traveling around the world as a vegetarian has its obvious draw-backs, I still managed to sample plenty of delicacies and specialties along the way.
An example of something I skipped? Fried tarantulas in Cambodia.

A vegetarian friendly highlight? Fruit salad and curd.
In fact, who ever knew that curd could taste so good?! India’s rampant use of curd (it’s a whole lot like yogurt) in …

Quite a few friends and blog readers have asked for a follow up post about the ten day Vipassana Meditation course that I took in Nepal…the journal chronicling my ten day Vipassana course was very raw and there was no room for reflection at the time…
Vipassana Meditation in Nepal
I dubbed my time in Vipassana meditation as my “ten day stint in solitary confinement”- it’s how it felt at the time, and, in jest, I do still think of this intense mediation course as one of my wackier decisions. But now, …

Just wanted to give a quick update on what’s going on with me. First off, I have a guest post this week at ThePlanetD on Dave and Deb’s weekly Giving Back  to the community series. I have so many fond memories of the boys at the Manjurshri Di-Chen monastery in Nepal (here’s some of that story if you haven’t read it yet). Volunteering was an incredible experience so I am honored to have the opportunity to share some of the story and my thoughts on giving back to local communities …

Having Jenn join us for this leg of the trip has really given me a bit of perspective about the months spent traveling in developing world. For me, after five months of backpacking I really lost track of the delineation between my developing world experiences and life back home in the states.
Jenn though had no such confusion when she arrived with shiny-clean clothes and a backpack that smelled distinctly better than mine (what is that funk!?!). Jenn knew two things about herself when deciding to join a leg of …

There is a very distinct rhythm to life in the developing world –things happen day after day often enough that you just forget that life could be lived any other way. For me, carrying toilet paper in every pocket of my clothes was just second nature. My whole days in Nepal were built around the timing of electricity for the day. Another fun part of traveling throughout India and Nepal…hand-washing laundry. Ahh, that is one of those things that just becomes a part of the routine.
In India we were …