Lha – An Intro to International Teaching

I have always had a strong sense of community service growing up, and the feeling of wanting to give back to the community grew even larger once I started traveling around Asia. Seeing people live in real poverty stirred something inside of me. As I’ve traveled around I’ve often reflected on what my next step …

A Spiritual Rebirth: Tenzin Chom-Chu

It wasn’t a big surprise when I failed to be granted an audience with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. Since he didn’t have any public teachings while I was in town, I figured I wouldn’t even see him at all. Turns out the last few days I was in town, he had cancelled some events …

Homemade Tibetan Food – Momos and Thupka

First off – you won’t really learn how to make Tibetan Momos from this blog. This is just about my experience TRYING to learn. With that said, enjoy the story telling, photo story, and yummy looking goodness. As some of you know, I’ve been teaching English with a program called Lha, and one of my …

My First Himalayan Hike – Triund Hill

With all of the craziness I’ve experienced in India…I came to India with one thing in mind: Himalayas. It is true that this time of year I would’ve been better off in Nepal, but at the time I wasn’t confident enough in myself to travel to an even more remote country alone. While my lovely …

Review: Mama’s Kitchen

Traveling through Asia has made me a little homesick for my mom’s food, and when I saw a small curtained shop that said “Mama’s Kitchen”, I walked right in without any hesitation. It seemed like a small ma and pa type shop, and I couldn’t have been more spot on. After months of eating out, …

The Beatles Ashram and a Dip in the Ganges

Rishikesh is known as the Yoga Capital of the world, as many forms of yoga came from this area. It used to be filled with legitimate ashrams (the ones that don’t ask you to pay hundreds of dollars to get your om on) but these days, it’s heavily catered to the western yoga enthusiasts (and therefore use …

Rishikesh Wanderings

The first time I could smell, feel, and even taste, fresh, crisp relatively smog free air in India, I couldn’t help but have a smile on my face. I stuck my head out of the rickety government bus window (probably not the best idea since something could’ve swatted my head off or the bus would …

My First Indian Wedding

I like to think I am generally a confident person. It takes a lot to make me uncomfortable or second guess myself. However, nothing could have prepared me the amount of self-conscious anxiety I would encounter at an Indian wedding. Even after being in India for a few weeks, I’m used to the double-takes and …

Naan Alley

Almost needless to say, Tina and I did not enjoy our time in Delhi. It’s louder, dirtier, crazier, and sketchier than any of the other cities we visited. We tried our hardest to get in and out as fast as we could but because we couldn’t access wi-fi to arrange our next set of long-distance …

Portraits of Jaipur

Tina and I have been fretting about what to wear to this Indian wedding of a friend of a friend of her’s. So we mostly spent our only free day in Jaipur shopping/bargaining/hunting in the markets. Tina got a whole new custom tailored outfit while I was still trying to piece together my sari. haha. …

Pushkar, India

Flew kites. Became mini-town stars.     Too much time spent shopping the markets.     Climbed a hillside to a temple. Found a shirtless hippie American who was about to smash a guitar. We became friends.         That’s the end of my riveting time in Pushkar. No really it was a place I …

Pushkar’s Kite Festival Celebrity – Tina Sever

For some reason, Indians really like to take pictures with foreigners. However, they must not care about Asians because I never get asked for a photograph but mobs of people will pull Tina away from me and ask to take a photo with her. It’s really quite hilarious. It must just be a white person …

A Forting We Will Go – Jodhpur, India

With only a month in India and anticipated Indian wedding on Jan. 19, Tina and I had a limited amount of time in Rajastan, unless we were ok with backtracking. Which, neither of us were. So we decided to start our trip in Jodhpur, a desert city southwest of Delhi and make our way east. Jodhpur is …

My First Indian Railway Experience

I love trains. I really do. Even when I end up in the wrong place. You’ve heard me talk about it before, and all I’ve ever heard about Indian trains was that no visit to India would be complete without a train experience. The image that comes to mind are the small trains with overcrowded …

An Indian Homestay Experience

You know that scene in Cinderella when goes to wake her stepsisters and they have the vaulted ceiling rooms and she has to go clear across to room to draw open the ginormous drapes covering the windows? Ok, the guys have no clue what I’m talking about but I know at Leslie knows what I’m talking about. Well …