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and fragrant; ornate and poverty-stricken; tame but barbaric; sacred and ungodly; free and suppressed; modern and outdated; civilized yet discourteous; breathtakingly scenic and despicable; delicious yet bacteria-ridden; homogenous and diverse; sneaky but sincere; principled and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!

Sri Lanka: Impossibly Beautiful

I was under a decade old when I was given my very first globe. I distinctly recall playing my favorite past-time one afternoon, spinning the globe and seeing what remote place my finger would land on, when I was introduced to the small island nation in the Indian Ocean: Sri Lanka. I remember picking my mother's brain for information and learning to pronounce this faraway land with an "sh" emphasis - Shri Lanka.

Having not yet developed my insatiable travel curiosity, Sri Lanka was placed into a filing cabinet in the back of my mind and remained a remote place that only existed in books and movies. Never did I imagine that I'd find myself 15 years later in the very place my little finger touched on the globe.

Goodbye Southeast Asia, Hello South Asia

It's been 14 and a half months since I left Southeast Asia. In my final days in Thailand, I've been trying to figure out how to say goodbye to a place that has changed my life.

Steaming hot Hoi Tod (fried mussels with egg)

Ingesting as many meals as my stomach will fit, I'm trying to savor every last bite of Thai food. I'm especially flaunting my broken Thai, because, who knows when I'll be able to communicate in a language other than English again. I'm smiling at every stranger and giggling at all the cultural quirks I've grown fond of. I am remembering the 10 Things I'll Miss About Living in Thailand that I wrote when I left for traveling two months ago. My departure is rapidly approaching and it's hard to believe I am really leaving this place.