New York City. The city of bright lights and big dreams. A place where you can unknowingly rub elbows with local bums and foreign diplomats on your daily commute; where you can find ramen and saag paneer and hot dogs all on the same block; where you can take the subway uptown, a taxi downtown, … Continued
Some would think that public transport is a service that carries you from one place to another rather than an adventure without regrets. After a year in Africa and with more hours clocked up in transit than is thinkable I would have to disagree. From car to bus, to boat to motorcycle, to pick-up trucks … Continued
My car was whirling on the curvy, rocky highway of NH-31A, the sole connector of Sikkim to the Indian territory. It was a 12 hour ride and as for me, you could connect me to a barrel of scopolamine (drug for motion sickness) but still my vomitus would flow more heavily than rain pouring down … Continued
The further south one travels in the US, the less relevant and more fluid time becomes, as though the Mason-Dixon Line were some boundary not of cartography, but relativistic physics. Reasonable standards of time are casually tossed out the window like so much warmed sweet tea; phrases like “a little while” encompass not minutes, but … Continued
Prolonged exposure to the frenzied pace of Southeast Asia’s mega-metropolitan areas is perhaps best remedied by a detour to Hoi An in central Vietnam. In addition to the beautiful Cua Dai Beach showcasing views of the Cham Islands, the former port trading center offers a picturesque and historic, UNESCO-designated downtown featuring centuries-old Vietnamese homes, museums … Continued
We needed two days to get to the peak. Three, if you counted travel. We spent the night in Huaraz, Peru, a small mountain town in the Andes, and before the sun rose the next day we were in a van built for eight but filled with twenty Peruvians. Our bags were strapped to the … Continued
Arizona is a living, breathing place. She isn’t simply desert, spanning out over miles and miles. She is an oxymoron: the marriage of practicality and mysticism over a wasteland of scorched earth, seemingly barren yet teeming with life. The passing of the day is contingent on Arizona’s temperature and the vitality that she inspires. Your … Continued
At first light, a flock of birds broadcast their sandpaper calls from the tops of two tall palm trees next to the house. Soon after, the neighbors begin sweeping the shared courtyard, the swish-swish of twig brooms insisting that we get up, too, and start the day in the relative cool of an African dawn. … Continued
Guyana has had an inspiration for me ever since I came to know about it in 1959 as a teenager. It was then called British Guiana, a name which is regrettably used, even now, by many folks, educated but ignorant of the world-wide explosion of freedom from colonialism in the last sixty odd years. Missionaries … Continued
To Sway with the Island in Massachusetts Up on Martha’s Vineyard I sleep with the windows open. It allows the tempo of time to continue like a cool jazz symphony with unexpected rhythms and riffs. The breezes play in the curtains, thunder arrives unexpectedly yet there’s always the ocean, always, in the distance, keeping pace … Continued