US, US, baby

At another Wonder of the World…

Zambian side of Victoria Falls…

Zimbabwean side of the Falls…

Can you tell what animals are with me in the following pics?

So Cape Town wasn’t ALL bad. I mean, nobody tried to mug me there…hehehe.

Seriously, though. Once I got out of the city and started doing some outdoorsy kinds of things (like hiking up Table Mountain, cycling to Cape Point, and then walking to the Cape of Good Hope), my time in the city definitely brightened.

And I have to say, the other tourists there also made me OK with the place. They were just plain good company. Even though, I did wake up one night to find myself on a couch that had been moved to the hostel’s balcony…all moved as I slept quite peacefully, I might add. They even moved the coffee table for me, too. Crazy Brits.

Hopping onto a camel and spending a night sleeping in the desert wasn’t one of my plans when I started this trip. If you knew me then, you’d know I actually had very little planned other than, you know, hopping on a plane to China and figuring I’d see the Great Wall there and then try to keep up with my other pre-purchased flights.

In my last week in China, though, I came across the first American on the trip. We hung out at Jiuzhaigou together that day and swapped a few travel stories. When she heard I was traveling to India at some point, she said I should go on a camel safari in Rajasthan.

I took note in the handy-dandy moleskin notebook I’ve been carrying around with me and almost nine months later I did just that. And LOVED it.

Holy cow…has it already been nine months? Yikes.

The Taj Mahal was one of three “must-see” sites for me on this trip. The others were The Great Wall and Victoria Falls.

How impressive was the Taj? Not so much as impressive in size as I expected. But it’s one heck of a tribute to love, that’s for sure.

Near Udaipur, Tripura, Neermahal is a palace in the middle of a lake…and absolutely gorgeous! I think maybe one of the prettiest things I’ve seen on this trip…

At the Monolith Park. This one is 27-feet tall.
(Monoliths are stone memorials…in this case to Jaintia kings.)

PS: I’m leaving the state! I’ll be traveling to one of the neighboring states for the rest of the week. I’ll be staying in a state capital, so there *should* be Internet easily accessible. But if I’m MIA for a few days, that’s why…hopefully, though, that won’t be the case.

Because most people dress in traditional or local clothing for the workshops, I too, wore my new salwar suit…

For lucky #13 gratuitious-photo post, I was at (as I’m sure you can read) Cherrapunjee, the old “Rainiest Place on Earth.” For years now, the actual rainiest-place has been in another nearby city, but that city hasn’t seemed as eager to claim the title, so Cherapunjee still touts itself as said place.

I went on a tour of the “city”…which is gorgeous even in the dry season. Lots of mountains, a few waterfalls (of course there are way more during the monsoon season), and plenty of goats. And on a clear day, you can even see Bangladesh (in the picture of the bridge, it’s the flat area past the treeline).

Hopefully, I’ll get to see more places around Shillong as the weeks go on…

Malaysia. Malaysia.

After having a day layover there six years ago and sleeping the whole time, I figured on this layover I should give the country a bit more time…a week to be exact. So here are some pics from my time there, first in Melaka, a city two hours from Kuala Lumpur then on a hike outside KL, which was a bit more strenuous than I was led to believe the night before…wanna see where it was? The slightly misleading hiker has this GPS map on his blog…

Thanks to Vincent for these last two pics…