Made it to Bangkok around 0500. Slept good through the flight with the usual routine. We were really pleased we avoided checking any bags for that flight because Thai AirAsia has a 7 kg limit on carryon luggage. We put the breakable electronics and stuff into our day bags and then our MEI bags were […]
*Full picture gallery below* “Delhi Belly,” the “Montezuma’s Revenge” of India, is greatly feared by travelers. In the best case scenario, it can ruin your trip. In the worst case, you’re going to the hospital. Maybe you don’t even leave the hospital. This is definitely something to be feared as a traveler in India and […]
Along with a few other sites, today we planned on checking off our last of the three UNESCO “World Heritage” sites in New Delhi: Red Fort. I gotta be honest with this one, it looks like a construction zone and is really in no way picturesque inside. This place was touched in many areas by […]
Now that our time in India is coming to a close, I think we’re just beginning to really work effectively as a team when dealing with the large variety of predators that are encountered on the streets here. Shopkeepers are easy, just keep walking… or if inside and not going well… leave. Beggars…. ignore them, […]
On the way to our “First Class Sleeper” train car, we walked past dozens and dozens and dozens of open-air hard seating general cars. They had bars on the windows with very sad faces peering out, with people packed in tightly on hard benches. Thousands of people. It looked like the train to some forced […]
After reading a lot of India travel blogs, one thing becomes clear: Agra is not a place many people are fond of after actually visiting there. It’s often the place where travelers end up getting really ill during a visit to India. It’s filthy, smelly, has packs of wild dogs roaming the streets, and aggressive […]
After a restful night in our fully air conditioned “oasis in the desert,” we started another day of sightseeing with our trusty tuk-tuk driver Vijay. We had asked him to be there at 8:45 a.m. to make sure we started as early as possible–and it turns out he was more punctual than we were! We […]
As we planned out this trip, we received plenty of advice…. some solicited, some not so much. Some advice has proven priceless…. and some has proven worthless. And now, as the India segment of our trip has gotten underway, I recall the words of an Indian surgeon I worked with in Cambridge: “Nothing can prepare […]
As we’re sitting at the airport waiting for our flight, I wanted to put together a small list of the most interesting or surprising things we noticed in Russia: 1. Russians love their history. They embrace it, make memorials to it, talk about it, joke about it, and drink to it all the time. Not […]
*Check out our complete Moscow photo gallery below* We spent our last full day here wrapping up the most “touristy” (although most of the tourists here are Russian) sites on our itinerary. We started out with the Lenin mausoleum. The mausoleum has pretty limited hours of 1000-1300 only and closed Monday and Friday. The VERY […]
We’ve been battling some sleep disturbance since our arrival in Moscow. Not just because of the 8 hour difference from Jacksonville (actually 9 hours if our stay in Mexico counts), but because the sun is always out. Mike and I have found ourselves galavanting around town (sun still out and bright) thinking it is early […]
Walking through the Moscow Metro, you get the sense that you’re moving through hallowed ground. The place is busy, but not notably so, and everyone moves with a very quiet efficiency. Workers are constantly cleaning and polishing the floors. I saw one worker diligently moving a straight line of fine wood chips across the floor […]
After an uneventful flight to JFK, we checked in at Terminal 1 for our Aeroflot flight to Moscow. I don’t think we’ve ever been in Terminal 1 in JFK before, but I’ll say this: the place is a zoo. Flights are departing to every imaginable destination with every imaginable culture being jammed through the same […]
You know, one can’t help but filter travel experiences through the lens of your own culture and experience. You step into another way of life, observe the differences, and usually start out thinking “WTF is wrong with these people?!!” At least, that’s what I usually think. Seriously though, when observing things that don’t seem to […]
Our hiking trip began catching a bus and bringing all our gear from Mexico City to Puebla. After overnighting in Puebla, we met our mountain guide “Oso” (Translation: The bear), who drove us to our first acclimatization stop in Tlachichuca. An interesting note on Oso, while he’s been professionally guiding on mountains for at least […]