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solbeam Equipped with backpack, blog and her sense of Wonder, a perpetual pilgrim wanders aimfully on....

Trip: Visions of India

There are [17] stories from my trip: Visions of India


non-dualism

INDIA | Wednesday, 25 Mar 2009 | Views [1260] | Comments [1]

For the third time in a year, I’m in India. I feel ourselves in something of a desperate love affair; one, and just as often the other, on her knees, begging the other to come back, just go, or not leave. Four months ago, in a dizzy spell in Delhi, ... Read more >


citizen of the bardo

THAILAND | Wednesday, 16 Jul 2008 | Views [1480]

I think it was this photo. ... that made me and my girlfriend change our plans, mid-sentence from... "Let's just go. We've been planning this trip to Kashmir for months!" to... "Hum. Maybe not." And suddenly I find myself ... Read more >

Tags: kashmir


a stone on simmer

INDIA | Monday, 21 Apr 2008 | Views [1385]

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 >


arranged love marriage

INDIA | Wednesday, 9 Apr 2008 | Views [5872] | Comments [1]

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 >


walking down the up escalator

INDIA | Tuesday, 25 Mar 2008 | Views [2358] | 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 >


interview with a village family

INDIA | Tuesday, 11 Mar 2008 | Views [6938]

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


a creative life

INDIA | Tuesday, 19 Feb 2008 | Views [1498]

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


my camera kit

INDIA | Friday, 1 Feb 2008 | Views [2245]

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 it has evolved significantly ... Read more >

Tags: cameras, packing & gadgets


india is an arranged marriage

INDIA | Tuesday, 29 Jan 2008 | Views [1482]

(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


some questions & answers

INDIA | Sunday, 13 Jan 2008 | Views [1414]

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


days debrief

INDIA | Saturday, 5 Jan 2008 | Views [1432]

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


the guts to look inside

INDIA | Tuesday, 20 Nov 2007 | Views [1733]

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


i choose

INDIA | Tuesday, 13 Nov 2007 | Views [1313] | 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


chai with Agam-ji

INDIA | Sunday, 21 Oct 2007 | Views [1487]

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


divine chaos

INDIA | Wednesday, 17 Oct 2007 | Views [2884]

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


Gallery: Visions of India

INDIA | Sunday, 7 Oct 2007 | Photo Gallery

A new India adventure begins...
See all 53 photos >>
 


a new revolution 'round the sun

INDIA | Sunday, 7 Oct 2007 | Views [1659]

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