What better time to visit Crawford Market in Mumbai than mango season! And these are not just any mangoes, but alphonso mangoes — the king of mangoes in India.
Travel
Tanzania: My 7th Continent, A Mountain to Climb
This is a story of an old legal pad, a mountain in Africa, and a distant dream of shooting an honest game of golf under 90.
Tucked deep inside a cardboard box in Prague, Czech Republic, there’s a half-torn crumpled piece of yellow legal pad paper that reads somewhere in the middle, scribbled in blue ballpoint: “Climb Mt. Kilimanjaro.”
Travel Snobbery and a Tour to Bali
Apparently, it’s easy to be a travel snob.
Independent travelers can look down on tour groups as not being “hard core” or “authentic” enough. Luxury travelers can look down on backpackers as cheapskates one notch above street riffraff. Holiday-makers looking to relax with a cocktail on the beach are not “real” travelers while those who are trying to live on $5 a day are “escapists.”
I could go on and on with the stereotypes and slurs that I’ve heard fly in all directions, but that’s not the point. One thing travel can teach you – if you allow it to – is that the world is made up of people whose goals and preferences differ. And those differences — they also apply to travel.
Bangladesh Faces: Frequently Asked Questions and the People Who Ask Them
Oh, Bangladesh. To unpack this country is the stuff of lifetimes. But let’s begin with this: Bangladeshis are a curious lot. And there are a lot of them, as in 150 million or so, all living in a country the size of the state of Wisconsin.
The Destination Is Everything, The Destination Is Nothing
Have you ever set off for a destination not really caring whether you actually arrive?
Petra and Jordan’s Wadi Musa [Audio Slideshow]
Whereas we sometimes feel like we know the Romans and Greeks when we visit the ruined cities they left behind, the Nabataeans, the mysterious ancient civilization behind Petra, are people we need to meet.
Life Lessons We Learned from Jordan’s Bedouins
Bedouins. Before our visit to Jordan, the term conjured an image of mysterious desert-bound, tunic-wearing nomads.
While in Jordan, we met our share of Bedouins — some camel collectors and shepherds, others guides and businessmen. Upwards of 40% of the Jordanian population is of Bedouin heritage. As a result, Jordanian hospitality, wisdom and culture are all very much a product of their Bedouin roots.
As our Bedouin hosts shared some of their protocols, their wisdom, and their clever ways of looking at the world, we took note. Here's what we learned.
Jordan: First Impressions
For the last several days we’ve been making our way around Jordan – from the capital of Amman to the edges of the Rift Valley, from the north, now to the south. Although we still have much more to do and see, we thought we'd take a breath and share some of our first impressions of Jordan — from the cultural, to the human, to the culinary.
The Bad News Barber of Kuala Lumpur
This is a story about a haircut, some bad news, life in Kuala Lumpur, and crocodile poop.
Before I set off for my first trip abroad to India many years ago, I harbored visions — visions of mystical women in colorful saris who would place their hands upon the crown of my youthful head and say, “I see great things in your future.” Through osmosis, I would absorb their wisdom and they would enlighten me with the path I might take to achieve such great things.
Instead, 14 years later, as I sat in a barber’s chair in Kuala Lumpur, a man named Deepak, a Gujarati Indian barber from Mumbai decked out in too-tight jeans and a checkered shirt, placed his hand upon the front of my head and told me I was going bald.
Where did I go wrong?
Panorama of the Week: The Rhythm and Ritual of a Hindu Temple
Every morning and every evening, just down the block from our guest house in Kuala Lumpur, the local Hindu temple comes alive with the daily puja (prayer). Worshippers line up to break coconuts, families gather to share blessed meals, Hindu priests prepare to dress Ganesh, and the sadhu attempts to sell 3-D calendars sporting likenesses of Hindu gods.
Each time we pass, we are drawn in by it all.