Snorkelling has got to be one of the most underappreciated activities going. First of all, there isn’t a more relaxing hobby outside of say, sleeping, once you get the mask, snorkel and fins sorted out. There are a series of irksome things that can be wrong with these items.  The mask can get too foggy…

Each week it seems we’re met with feelings ranging from extremes of happiness to the lowest of stanky bottom-feeding lows.  One minute we’re cracking up at some hilariously mistranslated sign or a man’s words that, when not understood, sound like a yippy toy dog; the next minute we’re wondering what damn fool thing we’ve gotten…

They’ll have you thinking you have to pay for the fancy tours going into Chitwan National Park. To get the guides and ride the elephants to see the one horned rhinoceros(rhinoceri?).  To stay in the all inclusive resorts with river bank sunset views. This can all feel discouraging and well, if you’re like us –…

Some funny things about India, and I use the word funny in the loosest of ways: 1) The roads are crazy (duh) but here’s why:  the goal for every driver is to go as fast as possible. To once again liken it to a cyclocross race, it’s similar to being a pretty fast guy in…

Pokhara.  The city that Nepal tourism loves touting as the most beautiful city in the country, with its lakeside setting and snow-capped mountain backdrop.  But after 4 days of hiking through the country, the full immersion experience back into tourist central was a shock to the system.  And with full on haze as the flavor…

Maybe it was the stories of “not uncommon” bus crashes, reinforced by a flamboyant Thai tourist’s tale of buses plunging dramatically and irrecoverably off cliffs wth goats tied barbarically to roofs by no more than their ankles. Or maybe it was our new found love of hiking. We had, after all, walked 20 miles over…

It’s nice to be off the tourist trail.  We’ve been going back and forth between tourist heavy towns and cities, and places that haven’t had a westerner since the Y2K crisis gripped the world. There’s no question that we prefer the latter.  However, as we found on the first day of the bike tour, not…

Queen Maya awoke from a fitful sleep and, feeling confined by the walls of the palace, decided to have a little walk through a nearby flower garden near Lumbini.  She was so taken with all of it, and it was real hot in her queen garb, that she just had to take a swim.  When…

Well, we sold the bikes. We knew they wouldn’t be with us long, since we were heading into the hills, but we couldn’t hack the second day of riding. We left early from Ghazipur and headed due north.  With no good alternative other than the main road, the going was busy and hot. With bums…

After blastoff, we reached a dead end and asked a couple of teens(one of our best sources of info as it turns out) which way over the tracks out of town.  They pointed in the direction of “Mughal side” of the river and off we went. While on the bridge we spotted an elephant with…

The second day in Varanasi was spent bike shopping and eating and drinking our way through the city.  We started out listening to some live Indian music at 7 am.  These people get going early.  Looking around, once again we were unsure of the protocol.  In one area there were only women sitting and the…

There are a lot of mental resources needed when traveling that you don’t normally tap into – from the logistics of hotels and transportation to the assessment of food sanitation.  India puts those resources on overdrive because you’re always trying to just understand what is going on around you.  In fact, we even got a…