Udaipur is proof that the best travel moments are those unplanned. Before I went to India, I spent weeks researching the top places to visit on my three week adventure. All the usual suspects popped up, familiar tourist destinations and major cities that promise to deliver the sensory overload of culture that people have come to demand from India.
But one little gem went unnoticed during my planning, and fortunately I heeded the words of locals during my stay and changed my plans. I decided to pay Udaipur a visit, and this detour ended up serving me my favourite Indian destination.
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The last year of my life has been an interesting one. Packing up, selling everything I own and moving across the world to start a new venture has been an incredible experience. It has also allowed me to do quite a bit of travelling. Most of it completely alone.
Not surprisingly, I’ve received a lot of questions from friends and strangers alike curious about solo travel. From safety concerns, itinerary questions to the topic of loneliness – people have a lot of apprehensions. But underneath all the uncertainty lies a pulsating curiosity about what the open road can offer a lone ranger. Here’s why you can – and absolutely should – hit the road on a solo adventure. If paradise had a name – Gilli T would be it. Located off the coast of Bali lies the island of Gilli Trawangan, also known as Gilli T, which is an Indonesian tourism pearl and for good reason.
Revered by locals and tourists alike, Wat Rong Kuhn aka The White Temple in Chiang Rai is a big drawcard in Northern Thailand.
As you approach the pallid Buddhist monolith, the first thing that takes your breath away is that it seems to be sculpted from ice. Hundreds of visitors dot the temple grounds and the black clothing that Thai people have been wearing in mourning stands in stark contrast to the milky landscape. However, this heavenly temple is not what it seems… Trekking through tourist hot spots in Asia can be an adventure, but even more so when you are mobbed by hundreds of Indonesian school kids.
Anyone who has been teaching in Thailand long enough will tell you about the mandatory visa runs that you have to do every few months to ensure your paperwork is all in order. Sometimes you are really lucky, and the closest foreign Thai consulate lies somewhere exciting like Malaysia. And sometimes, you endure a 12hour bus ride to some remote region of Laos. And, for the second time in the past year and a half, I found myself in the sleepy city of Savannakhet.
My cousin and I arrived in Labuan Bajo, a small but charming fishing village located on the island of Flores, on Christmas eve and set off booking some diving and the reason why we came here in the first place – to get up close and personal with a Komodo dragon.
Indonesia is the largest archipelago in the world, compromising of roughly 17,000 islands that sit in the Pacific Ring of Fire. It boasts the highest concentration of active volcanoes in the world, roughly 70 scattered across the total land mass that equates the size of the United States of America.
Mount Bromo, located in East Java at the Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, is a 2,329metres tall active volcano and the most hiked mountain peak in all of Indonesia. If you spend enough time in Thailand soon enough most temples begin to blend into each other – although still beautiful, they tend to follow the same aesthetic mould. Having been here for almost six months I was pretty sure that I was all “templed” out. That was until I laid eyes on the trippiest, most eclectic and truly breath-taking temple I have ever seen!
Loi Krathong is an annual festival celebrated on Thailand and Laos during the full moon of the 12th Thai month (November). Roughly translated, Loi Krathong means “to float a basket” and the purpose of the festival is twofold – to honour the Goddess of Water and to release any bad luck and negativity.
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AuthorWriter. Dreamer. Lover. Explorer. Teacher. Archives
July 2017
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