I stared up at the ceiling as the howling laughter intensified around me — demonic cackles, warm chuckles and everything in between. Should I run? This was nuts. The girl next to me shook uncontrollably and tears rolled down her…
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India
I have never laid eyes on the Mona Lisa, despite having visited Paris numerous times. My childhood home is 40 minutes from San Francisco, yet I have never stepped foot on the Golden Gate. In New York City, “Top…
Tibetan flags, weathered faces and muted colors greet you upon arrival. After a few weeks of moseying around Ladakh’s dusty mountains life takes on an addictive simplicity that steadies the pace, deepens the breath and slows the heart. The trip…
Google Manali–Leh Highway and the first couple of hits you’ll find include dangerousroads.org and thrillophilia.com, the sort of websites whose hyperboles I tend to take with a grain of salt. As I noted the rusted underbellies of the vehicles…
When I think of Varanasi I think of bodies. They’re everywhere, some living, some not. The shores of the river are where they gather. If the city had a heartbeat, the Ganges would be its source. The banks are alive. Corpses burn…
We entered Punjab via Amritsar near the Pakistani border, heading south from mountainous Himachal Pradesh. We’d just spent almost a month exploring areas near Ladakh in the Jammu and Kashmir state and ten days meditating in a vipassana. By now we thought we had…
I couldn’t tell if my sleeping bag was wet or just damp, but I was too tired to care. My whole body ached. When I lay down flat each vertebrae in my back cracked, giving way and settling me…
The input is constant: the smell of burning flesh; the smorgasbord of curries (heaven for your taste buds and hell for your stomach); buzzing street markets; starving street puppies; overpacked buses; and narrow mountain passes. After nearly four months,…