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—during which I witnessed the chaos …
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 McLeodganj—I stopped for several nights in Amritsar …
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 through India, 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, …
Arriving in India after backpacking Southeast Asia shocked my senses. Traveling for those weeks gave me a sense of rhythm to the region and I had just begun to figure it out. I knew the cultural nuances, had figured out the lay of the land, and I enjoyed traveling with my friend Laura. Landing in …
It was a little painful to wake up at 5:00am, but we had no choice but to catch the morning train out of Jaipur after the Holi Festival of Colors revelry. My cousin and I dragged ourselves out of bed, slung our pre-packed backpacks onto our shoulders, and trudged to the train station—it was early. It also …
I knew it was inevitable that I would get sick at some point. When you travel through Asia it’s less a matter of “if” than “when.” I didn’t consider what it would mean to get violently ill in a region of the world so untouched by Western medicine. Just a few weeks into my five months …
Luang Prabang is a beautiful city, it’s like the adored child who is the apple her parents’ eye. The city crawls along the Mekong River. The gilded tips of temples peek above the palm trees. In 1995, UNESCO designated the entire city as a World Heritage site. Key aspects of the city are now protected from tourism, time, and …