Connecting with Other Travelers

With Natalia from Brazil

Another top reason why I love traveling: the connections formed with other travelers. After a year and a half abroad, I feel lucky to have friends (and places to crash!) all over the world.

A common theme throughout my blog has been my many treasured experiences hanging out with locals in nearly every country I've visited. While the insight and adventures local-style remain unparalleled, I often neglect to mention this other monumental aspect of my days as an independent traveler: other travelers!

Living Like a Local in Pushkar

Everyone in Pushkar is either chanting, meditating, praying or on their way to do so. Most mornings begin with the sound of humming mantras, the days are filled with bathing and making puja in the holy lake and end with spiritual drumming late into the night. As one of the holiest Hindu cities in all of India, what better place to slow down and get comfortable for a while.

When you're traveling long-term, it's necessary to occasionally take time in one location without an agenda. In five months, the longest I've stayed in one place was two weeks in Bangkok. After moving around too much in the past month, I was in need of some serious soul rejuvenation when I arrived.

Camping with Camels and Cacti

Camels are about as exciting to my Israeli friends, native to the middle-east, as cacti are to me growing up in the Sonoran desert of Arizona.

Despite our previous exposure to cacti and camels, we couldn't resist the biggest tourist attraction in Jaisalmer: a camel safari trip in the Thar Desert of northwest India bordering Pakistan.

Bombay in a Day

I'm writing this on a grueling 25-hour train journey from Mumbai to Udaipur (in the northern state of Rajastan).

After a few weeks wandering the south, I met up again with Avia and her new Israeli friend, Ya'ara in Mumbai. Though they weren't keen on sticking around this polluted, overcrowded city long, one day was all I needed to see the city that had yet only existed in my imagination as the setting of countless Indian novels.

A 13-hour sleeper train from Gokarna, where I left a lovely beach, village and friends from all over the world, took me straight to Mumbai. As soon as I stepped onto the streets of Mumbai, a naked toddler who couldn't have been more than two years old, nearly ran into the street. I was alarmed to find her alone, but soon realized the rest of her family was sprawled on blankets just behind the concrete post. Welcome to Bombay.

Employed in India for a Week

Four months on the go now - also the longest period of time that I've been unemployed since before I was even of a legal working age.

From my very first paycheck back in the day, I started saving not knowing what I was saving for. While it's easy to live a backpacker lifestyle at around $10 (USD) a day in India, a lack of income is certainly at the back of my mind. And so the opportunity to “work” couldn't have come at a better time.

Got the India Bug

Intense.

That's the best I can come up with in a word, yet that adjective barely scrapes the surface in describing the subcontinent.

India is a country of stark contrasts: amazing and frustrating; straightforward and complicated; rancid and fragrant; ornate and poverty-stricken; tame but barbaric; sacred and ungodly; free and suppressed; modern and outdated; civilized yet discourteous; breathtakingly scenic and despicable; delicious yet bacteria-ridden; homogenous and diverse; sneaky but sincere; principled and corrupt;  full of creeps & thieves as well as genuine Indians who rearrange their entire day to make you feel at home.

2012 in Review: A Life Changing Year in Asia

Halfway through the first month of the new year, time has escaped me in India - thus my belated new year reflection.

I thought 2011 was monumental for me, but never did I dream of the things that came in 2012.

Welcome to India - Land of Colors!