The driver carved his way across northern West Bengal through territory unknown to most, including the mapmakers. Our SUV eventually rolled to a stop at the end of a dirt road where a group of village women dressed in their best and brightest saris were seated in a semi-circle on the ground. They had been waiting for hours.

And they were waiting for us.
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To say that you’ve seen the world before seeing India is like saying you know yourself before taking a good long look at your naked body in the mirror.

Evening Puja (Prayers) in Udaipur, Rajasthan. Click Fullscreen and move around the panoramic image.

Author’s Note: As we begin to write about our last visit to India in greater depth, I’m reminded of my first trip there — also my first trip abroad that I took solo in 1997. Those were the days of traveler’s checks, thick stapled wads of Indian rupees, and exorbitantly priced, poor quality phone calls booked from telephone wallahs on the street. The ATM machines, internet cafes and easy-to-purchase mobile phone SIM cards of today’s India seemed only a pipe dream back then.

This is the first of a multi-part series chronicling the bizarre experiences and lessons – about India, travel and me – that first visit imparted. No other trip since has affected me in quite the same way. Continue Reading »

Astute Chinese women told us what they thought about men in Ten Secrets of Women Call.

Now, men get their say.

For all the women out there who spend countless hours wondering what annoys men, this one’s for you. Continue Reading »

While sifting through papers tonight, I found this Kolkata (Calcutta) newspaper clipping from our time there in April 2008. I couldn’t have made this up if I tried.

I’m not normally moved to poetry, but India is a place of firsts. I wrote this in Kolkata (Calcutta), but was reminded of it today as I walked the streets of Thamel, Kathmandu’s backpacker ghetto.

This poem is for all who ceaselessly sidle up to me as I walk down the street, befriending me only for the sake of a sale. Although I’m certain those who inspired this poem are unlikely to ever see it, I offer it just the same. Continue Reading »

Wondering where we’ve been and what we’ve been up to? Our recent Twitter updates from the hills of Sikkim were all a facade.

We ran out of money. So Audrey went looking for work in Varanasi, India’s holiest city. And this is what she found.

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“Chandigarh??” Travelers often squawk in confusion when we share our India itinerary with them. While places like Rajasthan, Kerala, and Varanasi register as usual suspects for visits to India, Chandigarh – a planned and rather atypical city in the northern Indian state of Punjab – rarely finds itself on travelers’ must-see checklists.

Our primary motivation to stop in Chandigarh was to visit a friend, one we’d never met in person. (Actually he’s the programmer we hired last year to help us tune some parts of our website photo gallery.)

As it turns out, our high expectations for the visit were far exceeded. We solidified a friendship, developed some new ones, gained insights into India’s culture, and even peeked into its future.
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It was our India moment. You know, the kind of travel moment when you’re on a trip and you think to yourself, “Now this is why I came here.”

No, we weren’t sipping masala tea and eating chicken tikka while admiring the image of the Taj Mahal in its reflecting pool. Rather, we were tucked into the sticky folds and the dingy creases of an uncontrived real-life Indian experience.

It was awful; it was amazing. Maybe not amazing, but eye-opening. Uncomfortable, certainly.

Most of all, we wondered how on Earth our overnight Indian tourist sleeper bus transformed into a chicken bus stuffed to the gills with what seemed like a crowd of refugees. Continue Reading »

A roller coaster ride on a bus honking in sync to the beat of Bollywood tunes blaring on a television dangling from the ceiling; a dash through endless strings of chaotic villages and heaps of people; a panorama of barreling trucks listing and careening their way through clouds of dust; an endless cacophony of ear-piercing, elephant-inspired air horns; roadside vendors stringing together flower garland temple offerings amidst clouds of pollution; food stalls serving up colorful bites in makeshift newspaper cups and banana leaves; cows and long-horned oxen browsing through sidewalk trash heaps; and Brahmin priest blessings by morning and elephant blessings by night.

Life in all its incarnations of filth and colorful glory. Just another typical day for us in southern India. Continue Reading »

We arrived in India with mild travel trepidation. Aside from the monsoon-like rains which greeted our arrival, we’ve been pleasantly surprised by how relaxed life is in the southern Indian state of Kerala. 

To give you an idea, we offer a photographic mosaic and a few highlights from our first two days. Continue Reading »