As my backpacking journey through India was drawing to a close, there was still one significant experience I was eager to tick off my list: to immerse myself in a hands-on environmental volunteering project. My prior stint in Auroville had sparked a curiosity about alternative, sustainable ways of living, setting the perfect stage for my next adventure. Discovering Sadhana Forest Sadhana Forest stands on the…
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After a chaotic Boxing Day in Kochi, where seemingly everyone in the city had come out shopping, I made my way to the Isha Ashram near Coimbatore, one of the largest and iconic ashrams in India. As a follower of Sadhguru’s teachings and having been dazzled by Mahashivratri celebrations in years prior, the ashram was at the top of my short list of places to…
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Six years have passed since my last overnight rail journey, but time hasn’t deterred my excitement for the chance to embark on several more. While all of my railway adventures in India barely lasted a single night, for some of those trips the end couldn’t come soon enough – but were an experience, nonetheless. Booking tickets Travelling via train in India is an experience unlike…
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Dharamsala, the co-capital of the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, was my base for a sizeable chunk of my trip. Dharamsala is notable for being the home of the Dalai Lama and where large numbers of Tibetans call home after sadly being exiled from their own country over the last half century. A long twisty drive on a bus from Chandigarh through the smoggy fields…
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Here we go again. I’ve been on another long adventure. It’s been a special journey that I feel incredibly fortunate to have undertaken. I told myself in the summer of 2022 that this was a winter I wasn’t to spend at home. The bleak lockdowns during the previous two winters and general robotic routine of working from home had caught up with me. I’d been…
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Those who know me well often groan when I subject them to my frequent ramblings about orangutans. As I’ve remarked on this blog before, I’ve long had a fascination with the human like tendencies of these great apes. Back in October 2019, I embarked on a two-week volunteering experience in Borneo. It was an action-packed trip, so brace yourself, this post is a long one….
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The final destination on our road-trip was further up the Californian coast in the serene region of Big Sur. The Pacific Coast Highway was closed due to a major landslide in 2017 which buried part of the road, so the satnav suggested we stick to Highway 101 North for 100 miles which I wasn’t particularly excited about. After a brief visual inspection on Google maps,…
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We set off from Stovepipe Wells early, bound for San Diego at the very southern tip of California near the Mexican border. We anticipated taking the same spectacular hillside road that originally brought us to Death Valley from Bakersfield, but instead the navigation system took us through the heart of the sister Panamint Valley. For 50 miles we drove without seeing the faintest sight of…
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We started our descent from the Sierra Nevada mountains in desperate need of fuel. A combination of our Mustang’s thirsty engine and the constant hilly terrain meant we were achieving truly horrendous fuel economy. We’d almost run the tank dry but luckily found a fuel station just in time. Reaching Death Valley involved a long ‘U’ route around the Sierra Nevada mountains, as the Tioga…
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I was immediately thrown into the deep-end as we departed SF airport. The early afternoon traffic was pilling up on Highway 101 as we slowly made our way south east through the Bay Area. Driving on the wrong side of the road wasn’t the challenge; I last drove in Iceland a few weeks prior which was also on the left side. The challenge on the…
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