INDIA | Monday, 21 Apr 2008 | Views [106]
Handing me back the piece of paper with the single word on it, my student says, "Um. I'm not sure I know what this is…" Part
of the mission of my work (in experiential education) is that of
fostering eleven (what we call) "core values"... Read more >
INDIA | Wednesday, 9 Apr 2008 | Views [381]
One of my students recently quipped, "...arranged marriages give me faith in marriage." And
as quickly as I agreed with her, I wondered, "what a once-foreign idea
with which I have so naturally nodded my head in agreement!" It's
one ... Read more >
INDIA | Tuesday, 25 Mar 2008 | Views [192] | Comments [1]
"Well. You know what Buddhists would say? You must have some karmic
connection that keeps bringing you back..." � the woman checking me
into the Roots Institute of Wisdom Buddhist Retreat Center , Bodhgaya (Bihar), India And
even I have ... Read more >
INDIA | Tuesday, 11 Mar 2008 | Views [235]
India is the home of almost 1/6th of the world population; 1.13 billion
people and around 80% of this population lives in rural areas. Last
weekend I spent a long weekend in a small, rural village on the
outskirts of Varanasi of which I've visited ... Read more >
Tags: Family
INDIA | Tuesday, 19 Feb 2008 | Views [171]
For about six months I've been feeling something shifting inside of me.
I can only compare the sensation to being made of sand; where every
move I make shifts a million grains into a new order that fills the
holes and packs down to take the shape of ... Read more >
Tags: On the Road
INDIA | Friday, 1 Feb 2008 | Views [163]
my camera kit
A
friend recently told me over tea, "So I'd decided along with everyone
else to stop researching cameras and computers and just buy whatever
you do..." Both off and online, I get a lot of questions on my
camera kit (as ... Read more >
Tags: Packing & gadgets
INDIA | Tuesday, 29 Jan 2008 | Views [205]
(This is an excerpt from a personal
journal entry from the first week when I arrived in India. I sometimes
cringe and curse at the weird way my sentences wrap around each other
in odd-measured rhyme when I get writing. So know that it's
unintentional, ... Read more >
Tags: People
INDIA | Sunday, 13 Jan 2008 | Views [181]
I recently answered the following questions from a Portuguese journalist and figured to recycle the content. The answers are short because the last time I had something published, the editor had no mercy with the scissors and cut my tresses of words to ... Read more >
Tags: Philosophy of travel
INDIA | Saturday, 5 Jan 2008 | Views [161]
For most Westerners, it's unfathomable for a major city to function
without 24-hour electricity. Yet like the monsoon rains on their
mission to Ganga-ji (respected river), the 1.3 million people who live
here in Varanasi somehow always manage to ... Read more >
Tags: On the Road
INDIA | Tuesday, 20 Nov 2007 | Views [214]
At this very minute, scouts from every major city in India are making their way to the site of the recent natural disaster in Bangladesh .
There, they will pick through the rubble of the dead and displaced, in
order to find, lure, trap and/or steal ... Read more >
Tags: History & Politics
INDIA | Tuesday, 13 Nov 2007 | Views [193] | Comments [2]
(Buddhism was the first Eastern religion I encountered on my travels and when reincarnation was explained to me, it changed my world in the way it did mapmakers when they were told the earth was round. But it did not so much, “explain” as it, “told me ... Read more >
Tags: Family
INDIA | Sunday, 21 Oct 2007 | Views [230]
This is not my first cup of chai with Agam-ji. While the kinship I feel for him might well transcend centuries, Agam has already become a revered character in one of my many lifetimes within this one; I studied the art of silversmith under his mentorship, ... Read more >
Tags: Friends
INDIA | Wednesday, 17 Oct 2007 | Views [289]
Why India? I find the inquiry funny for the fact that the question is, for others, as obscurely obvious as the answer, for me. But I was asked this question three times this week and, only just, woke to the idea that perhaps it was not a rhetorical ... Read more >
Tags: Philosophy of travel
INDIA | Sunday, 7 Oct 2007 | Views [208]
The Himalayas are a holy place. For a moment, I forgot this. And remembered them only, as big mountains. But slowly crawling along the valleys and ridges of the Earth’s crust had the effect of a pumice stone on my soul. For 15 days I walked. And for ... Read more >
Tags: Mountains
PERU | Monday, 27 Aug 2007 | Views [257] | Comments [1]
Before we leave the
village
of
Quelqanqa
, we take one last tour of the sites laying (quite physical) tribute to
the successes of our manual labor. We walk down the valley to visit the
new stone bridge and ... Read more >
Tags: Philosophy of travel
PERU | Monday, 27 Aug 2007 | Views [289]
Our bridge is only a few hundred hauled-stones away
from completion when I wander up the hill following a rumor that the
men of the Quelqanqa are constructing a traditional "earth oven" or
pachamanca in which the feast, celebrating ... Read more >
Tags: Culture
PERU | Wednesday, 22 Aug 2007 | Views [286]
After a night of tossing through below-freezing temperatures, the sun finally rises. And as I peer out of my tent to watch it chase away the shadows, melt the frost and fill our valley with fuzzy light and flushing warmth – I clearly understand, and ... Read more >
Tags: Culture
PERU | Monday, 20 Aug 2007 | Views [235]
Our first mistake is thinking that we’ve come to organize and/or manage; our first lesson is realizing that the locals coordinating this project are professionally skilled and competent, and that the most valuable things we really have to offer are ... Read more >
Tags: Culture
PERU | Monday, 20 Aug 2007 | Views [342]
“Oh! It’s just so beautiful! To live in this amazing valley, pulling your meals from your garden, surrounded by your extended family, breathing fresh Andes air with views of glaciated peaks out your windows, all while living so close to the ground and ... Read more >
Tags: History & Politics
PERU | Sunday, 19 Aug 2007 | Views [915]
Footprint in Peru, Day 6: a welcome to the house of great mountains
a community service project sponsored by World Nomads As
we descend into the valley, I can't help but feel like I'm strolling
through ... Read more >
Tags: Mountains
PERU | Wednesday, 15 Aug 2007 | Views [458]
In my defense, I have to point out that it really should have been the responsibility of Javier and Jairo to inquire as to my personal definition of “favorable weather” before asking me to make the offering to the Apus. In consideration of their logistical ... Read more >
Tags: Snow
PERU | Monday, 13 Aug 2007 | Views [371]
Veronica & her Apus “I knew you were better as soon as your laugh woke me up,” declares Javier. Indeed,
while my mental facilitates napped through a 13-hour siesta, my body,
with the assistance ... Read more >
Tags: Mountains
PERU | Friday, 10 Aug 2007 | Views [398]
I call it, “living in my head” and am usually sequestered to this claustrophobically small space under one of the following conditions: my 12th consecutive hour in an office, my 4th cup of coffee in one hour, falling in love or severe physical illness.... Read more >
Tags: Doctors, hospitals & health
PERU | Monday, 6 Aug 2007 | Views [918] | Comments [1]
Plaza de Armas, Cusco, Peru
"Where are you from?"
It’s the same first question every shoe shining boy in the Plaza de Armas has been trained to ask.
"The heavens," I reply in Spanish.
He shakes his head strongly in disagreement and, with ... Read more >
Tags: Philosophy of travel
INDIA | Monday, 18 Dec 2006 | Views [680]
This week, on the streets of Pondicherry, I was blessed by an elephant. And
she raised her trunk to deliver, upon my forehead, a sacred thump, a
story that I always felt compelled ... Read more >
Tags: Animals
INDIA | Monday, 18 Dec 2006 | Views [441]
pouring. drenching. pounding. drowning. rain. When
I was in Pune, they asked me, “Did it rain in the North, in Mumbai,
when you were there?” When I was in Goa, they asked me, “Did it rain in
the North, ... Read more >
Tags: On the Road
FRANCE | Monday, 6 Nov 2006 | Views [450]
Where
the line narrows at the neck of the plane, instead of offering extended
arms of right-of-way (as I have been accustomed), men briskly step in
front of me with unknown, but unquestioned, authority ... Read more >
Tags: Airports
FRANCE | Friday, 3 Nov 2006 | Views [439]
Popes,
priests and prophets have their methods. Merchants, and those who buy
from them, name it in terms of this or that currency. But the value and
blessing upon any object, for me, cannot be determined by karat,
weight, ... Read more >
Tags: Friends
FRANCE | Friday, 3 Nov 2006 | Views [381]
pinched but not popped
Journal Entry Condom, France (How unfortunate to have a contraceptive device named after your city!) Mid-October Four
days ago, my brother (by blood) and my sister (by ... Read more >
Tags: Family
FRANCE | Thursday, 19 Oct 2006 | Views [418]
Once upon a time, in the Caribbean waters on the coast of Honduras, where the water and sky constantly compete in an indiscernible photo finish for the definition of turquoise, I was working as a divemaster with a Swiss and an Australian boy. ... Read more >
Tags: Animals
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