Is any trip to India complete without a trip to see the sacred Mother Ganges? This famous river winds through the country, giving life to northern towns and accepting life at Varanasi, where the ghats sit on the banks of India’s holy Ganges River. After nearly two months in India, it was time to make …
The bus skirted the mountainside as my cousin and I traveled toward Dharamsala, India. In my many weeks backpacking through India, this past week had begun the tour of subgroups and other cultures strongly present within India. En route to visit Dharamsala—or, more accurately the small town of McLeod Ganj—I stopped for several nights in …
I left Agra in the dead of night with the promise of a golden temple on the horizon when I awoke in Amritsar, India. My cousin and I had a wild few weeks journeying north from Mumbai. We marveled at the palaces in Udaipur, the camels and monkeys in Pushkar, the colors of celebrating Holi, and …
Monkeys in India are unkind. In fact, as cute as they may look from afar, they are downright nasty. Monkeys don’t wander the mountains and towns back home in Florida, so I didn’t realize that it’s not fun and quirky to encounter a monkey while traveling, it can be harrowing. What would have been a …
One of my wide-sweeping goals for this trip is to learn new things. Not just the intangible knowledge of these new cultures and religions, but also tangible skills and crafts specialized to the people and flavors of each new place. At every stage so far, I’ve tried my hand at new local skills and crafts. It was …
The dilapidated bus that was to be our next means of transportation was my next “welcome to India moment.” The first was the commuter train from Mumbai to Ahmedabad. In this case, the bus has seen more days on this earth than I have, and the last paint job was administered around the time I weaned …
Pacing long-term travel is difficult. It’s not something I anticipated in my many pre-travel worries. I worried about my route, about the culture shock, about a million other tiny details. And yet I didn’t anticipate what it would be like to constantly move. I didn’t realize that being unmoored from a single spot is disorienting. …
Landing in Udaipur and staying for a week was a needed treat in these weeks and months of rapid travel and newness every morning when I face the day. I landed in Mumbai and startled at the lessons I had to learn about this complex country. Social norms here are different, expectations, interactions, cultures, and …