I can't knock the feeling that as a child, I was cheated in my education of the history of the world.
Read MoreVirupaksha temple sits at the end of one of the main thoroughfares in Hampi, India
Stories about finding your heart and soul around the world.
Lakshmi the elephant at the Virupaksha temple, Hampi
Falling in love with an elephant in India
In Hampi there is a temple. In that temple lives an elephant.
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Sunrise in Black Rock City, NV
Instagramming Art at Burning Man 2013
Every year an unlikely group of creative minds gather in the middle of a dry harsh lakebed in Black Rock Desert, Nevada to practice radical self-reliance and radical self-expression, among other things.
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How to pack for the trip of a lifetime
Things I carry: RTW Master Packing List & Pre-departure Travel Tips
Now that I've been traveling for nine months, it's time to update my master packing list. One of the most common questions I'm asked by those preparing to depart on a backpacking journey of their own is: what's in your pack? After months vagabonding through India, SE Asia, and Europe, I have some opinions about what to take and what to leave behind.
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En route to Hampi, women construction workers walk along the train track
Stepping off the path + A train ride to Hampi, India
"Chai chai chai! Chai chai chai!"
"Pakora! Samosa! Pakora!"
We are on a train heading east to Hampi. Food hawkers jump on and off at every stop, rushing through the cars shouting, selling refreshments. I want to taste everything that passes—samosas served from a worn cardboard box, crispy masala rice snacks in a giant plastic garbage bag, fresh mango lassis carried in a tattered milk crate. Yet I cringe as the vendors grab food with their bare hands, passing it to customers wrapped in sheets of used newspaper."Chai chai chai! Chai chai chai!"
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Driving away from an angry mob of kids swarming the rickshaw
The sting of fear, poverty & injustice in India
I am being mobbed and I'm scared.
A crowd of kids is swarming, pushing the rickshaw with me inside. My driver yells, telling them to back off. Crowd psychology has already kicked in though, and more little arms reach inside to grab me.
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Cows at a farm along the road in Netravali Wildlife Sanctuary, India
Jungle Leopards + Adventuring in Goa, India
Goa is where we motorbike through dry rural winding country backroads, weaving past gypsy camps filled with colorful Rajasthani women who wear brilliant red orange saris and layers of silver jewelry. Tents line the road where these workers from the north live temporarily doing hard construction labor, carrying bowls of rock on their head. Yaks and cows lazily wander, oblivious to the cars and motorbikes that zip past. The farther away from the beach we get, the more worn and dry the landscape becomes. Yellow haystacks á la Monet and brown rice paddies void of crop or water fly past as we move deeper inland.
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Hauling in a boat after a day at sea, sunset view from my favorite hangout on Palolem beach
The value of mapping what you know + Beach life in Goa, India
I've grown to love late night arrivals. A blanket of darkness wraps around everything keeping it secret until morning's unveiling. There are so many unknowns that come with travel: Will this new bed have bugs in it? Will I die in a rickshaw? Will there be toilet paper? All that is unfamiliar dawns the next day. Ok, maybe not all, but at least you get to see where it is that you've landed.
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Exploring The Quiraing on the Isle of Skye, Scotland
Wanderlust + Solitude vs. loneliness + How I finally decided to travel the world
I have always had it in me, wanderlust. It's pretty much forever been my dream to explore the world through long-term travel.
Forget those short stolen twelve days of annual vacation allotted to working America (even though that's all the time I've had these past few years). No, that kind of travel is frenzied, restricting the majority of life to an unnatural cycle of constant want of more. I'm talking about the kind of long-term travel where you give up owning most things, leave behind a stable home, learn to live simply on a budget, and really see the world.
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Traditional puppets for sale at the street market in Fort Kochi, Kerala
Exploring the heart of Fort Kochi, India
Luckily the local government hospital isn't the only thing we see while in Fort Kochi. A casual rickshaw tour offers a different glimpse of life in this South Indian spice capital. It's not the churches or museums that grab my attention with the story of this place, but the people. And the street goats.
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On suffering, survival, & the Indian heart
I am at the hospital. A woman wearing a hijab motions for me to sit next to her.
"Where you from?" she stares up with wonder, as if she's never seen anyone so tall before. If I ever thought the frequent statement you're tall from strangers back in the States was annoying, I've come to accept that being nearly six feet in India makes me quite a giant of a superstar. Oftentimes I am wary of this attention as it can mean photo after cell phone photo with teenage boys and entire extended families. But right now, it's just a woman and a man who want to meet me, so I sit.
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Docked houseboats on the backwaters in Alleppey, India
Houseboating through the backwaters of Kerala, India
Dawn is breaking, soft and blue. The river and I are just rousing from sleep. Gazing out the window, a placid bed of water gently ripples beneath me as a bird dips down in search of breakfast.
I have spent the night on a houseboat in the famous Kerala backwaters. Here, a web of about 500 miles of lagoons weave between barrier islands inland from the Arabian sea on the western side of southern India.
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