Medieval castles, imperial palaces, blocky Soviet throwbacks and new glass and steel buildings lined our paths; poppy seed strudels, potato dumplings, and goose feasts filled our stomachs; light Austrian white wines, hearty Hungarian reds and freshly pulled Czech beers served as social lubrication; and Slavic, Germanic and Finno-Ugric (Hungarian) accents provided the soundtrack.

This is the cultural goulash of Central Europe.

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The arc of our travel experience is shaped by the people we meet. Even the most beautiful food and landscape need a human context. With that in mind, we offer a selection of faces - each with a story - that we will recall whenever we reflect on our travels in China.

The following slideshow is our take on China’s ethnic diversity. While these images represent only a fraction of China’s 56 official ethnic groups (there are scores more unofficial ones), we hope they give you a better feel for the various people who call China their home. Continue Reading »

Unless you just rose from the dead, you are probably aware that today – November 4, 2008 – is election day in the United States.

Sharing photos from Vilnius, Lithuania may seem irrelevant on such a momentous day, but it was from there where we voted for the next U.S. President (by absentee ballot) and sank into the quagmire of election news fixation. Continue Reading »

Autumn days. The sun pulls up short. The light bends. The days shorten. We exchange the coming of winter for the changing of the leaves.

Today, in the midst of Mother Nature’s machinations, a double rainbow appeared outside the window overlooking the Church of St. Teresa in Vilnius, Lithuania. Continue Reading »

Once you get past the mounds of chili-marinated chicken feet and the rows of village dogmeat vendors, Chinese food in China is terrific.

Regional Chinese cuisines and ethnic minority specialties deliver a diversity of flavors and texture. The vast array of peppers, spices and sauces ensure that taste buds rarely grow tired. Continue Reading »

Beijing, China: a place where yesterday’s icons - dragons, Mao, pagodas, drum towers and the Great Wall - meet today’s urge to modernize and build to the sky.

Last winter, we captured a few images that defined our glimpse of Beijing in full-tilt transformation. Continue Reading »

Though we are not mountaineers, we have done our share of trekking. Then, just last week, we came off a 15-day trek in the Himalayas in Nepal that looked and felt something like a “best of” of our previous treks. We would like to think that’s saying something, what with journeys in Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Burma and bits of the western United States under our hiking belts. Continue Reading »

Posting photos from China when we happen to be in India probably seems odd. But we discovered an open wifi connection somewhere in the building here in Kolkata (Calcutta) and are taking the opportunity to catch up with photos and family calls on Skype before someone finds out that we’re taking advantage of their internet connection. Shhh, don’t tell. 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 »

Why are you carrying a dead body with you around the world?

– A fellow traveler attempting to carry one of our backpacks.

If you’ve run into us on this trip, you may have noticed something of a contradiction: we appear heavily laden even though we exhibit a knack for wearing the same clothes almost every day.

“What’s with that?” you might ask.

If our bags aren’t stuffed with spiffy duds for nights out on the back beach, then what on earth are we carrying? Continue Reading »