I’d been having a lovely time until I saw him.

It was my night alone in Siem Reap after my husband returned home to Phnom Penh and I stayed to meet work colleagues for a road trip to the provinces the following day. A night in a town filled with so many options, it was hard to choose.

So I started at Temple – a bustling balcony bar overlooking Pub Street (Siem Reap’s lively main avenue) and planted myself at a table above the street with a good view of the bar’s traditional apsara dancers on the stage inside.

With a dose of two-for-one margaritas, I was caught in a whirlwind of several worlds and felt as though I were worshipping the gods of overactivity and stimulation. On one side were the gorgeous and graceful dancers, wrapped in shimmering silks and golden head-dresses, while below me, I watched the ladyboys work the street, posturing in high heels and lycra, giving glances and occasional strokes to the men passing them by.

I’ve never known a place quite like Siem Reap. While New York may be the city that never sleeps and Paris is the city of lights, Siem Reap seems to overshadow them both in the sheer intensity of life from every angle in all hours of the night and day.

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Talkeetna Alaska is the perfect small town, to me. Where else will you see flannel covered nomads driving ATV’s through town with their hunting dogs sitting on the back? It’s a town where you can order sourdough flapjacks for breakfast with a side of elk sausage. It’s situated 150 miles north of Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska, which has an airport, a Fred Meyers and a Nordstrom’s, all the basics. Talkeetna is a small town of 500 people. The town is one little strip of a few shops, some amazing restaurants, and every tour guide you can possibly need to help flatlanders explore the bush. Yes apparently not only mountain people use this term. According to Sarah Palin, in her first book, the term is used by Alaskan’s to describe people from the lower 48 states. Talkeetna is convenient to the Copper River, which overflows with King Salmon. It’s the town people stay in before they try to ascend Mt McKinley, and the town they rest in with a chilled pint of Alaskan Amber when they return to the base of the mountain, exhausted and sun burnt. I would love to ascend “the mountain” one day, but it is a journey that takes weeks to complete. So instead I and my group of BFF’s chose to fly into Anchorage and do a two week Alaska road trip. It would be the vacation of a life time.

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Galicia has cast a spell on me and on my husband. The northwest “bump” atop Portugal, this region of Spain is most famous for its pilgrimage city, Santiago de Compostela. But my husband and I keep returning to a tiny aldea (hamlet) called Trasulfe, twenty minutes from the town of Monforte de Lemos. Monforte, as locals call it, is named for the Count de Lemos. His former castle straddles the hill that rises from the center of town. Monforte is big enough to supply all our shopping needs; but, the outlying villages are what charm us.

Our Trasulfe neighbors keep small farms and live by the seasons, growing crops, tending animals, cultivating vines until the fall wine harvest. Each time we come, these good people give us fresh eggs, bags of whatever is in season (potatoes, onions, tomatoes; apples, peaches, walnuts, chestnuts), and bottles of their newest homemade wine. A vacation in Galicia is a journey into timelessness. In a ride down a side road, you can suddenly find yourself behind a flock of ambling sheep or waiting as a woman prods a small herd of cows.

We go to Galicia in spring, when heather and broom burst in sprays along roadsides, gorse burnishes slopes, and cuckoos call softly from the small woodlands edging pastures. Roe deer shyly leap up slopes. Storks have built nests on top of church spires in two nearby towns.

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She had an innocently angelic complexion, juxtaposed by the crimson vivacity of her Parisian smile. A beauty, lips gilded by the Montmartre sun and a countenance that had the power to intrigue. What a feeling it: to be blessed with my own personal, real life Amelie. The wind channelled the sweet sounds of the carousel, it’s hypnotic melody captivating the young ones and revitalizing the old. In the distance I could see a spectrum of colour, my eyes now tingling with fizzing hues and dazzling shades. The city of light shone bright and her enigmatic side streets converged into pulsating heart of the bustling market place. I ambled through the mazy boulevards with a fatigued stride. Perhaps I was drunk on the sensory overload?

My apartment was rented from a local Parisian family and it was beautifully quaint. It had an antique grandeur that I absorbed from the balcony, sitting down for a moment to watch the passers by. The powerful aromas of the many bistros lingered in the air and the Gallic taverns began to draw in the crowds.

I met my roommates, a weird and wonderful bunch of characters from around the world. Kaiser was a Swedish girl and a self-proclaimed “free spirit, on a quest for enlightenment”. Peter was the typical Aussie, searching for fun and craving adventure in the purest sense of the word. Despite the fact that our backgrounds were completely different and our paths leading us in opposite directions, a feeling of familiarity and togetherness hooked us all. The streets were paved in laughter and instrumental sounds echoed through the twilight. It was time to explore.

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I walked along Via Zamboni, once again deep in the heart of the Bolognese student district. The streets were lined with Portico’s and classical music spilled from the cracks of an open window. You could see the infamous Punk a Bestie loitering around as usual, bizarre characters that epitomized a deep-rooted sense of angst and rebellion that existed within the ranks of Italian youth. Two of them staggered around in unison, a bottle of Peroni in one hand, and their trusty canine companion in the other. In contrast, the Fighetti sauntered around without a care in the world. They carried themselves with a certain arrogance that screamed: “Io sono Fashion!” In the distance a local Barbone nonchalantly cut the chain from a rusty bicycle. It reminded me of a scene from Ladri di Biciclette, and I half expected an angry mob to start chasing him down the road at any moment! On the other side of the Piazza an elderly eccentric spouted politically charged sentiments from an oversized megaphone, which promptly gave birth to yet another student demonstration. It cascaded through the side alleys with vigour and at that precise moment there was so much passion running through the veins of that red brick city.

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It is early evening in Essaouira, Morocco. I climb the narrow stairway that winds the four floors of our guesthouse, Riad El Pacha, which was built in the eighteenth century to be the governor’s palace and converted to a small hotel in the 1970’s. The architecture is replete with the opulent details of a traditional Moroccan riad, and the view from the fourth floor looking down calls to mind a different era and embodies the meaning of the name of the town itself, “beautifully designed”. The walls are hung with vivid Berber artwork and lavish sparkling tapestries, woven in every color in the spectrum and with meticulous attention to detail. I can see the proprietor of the guesthouse on the first floor, sipping tea, and one of the workers resting on a bright cushion on the floor, quietly strumming a guitar.

I step outside onto the rooftop terrace and look out over the town and the sea at its edge, its buildings spread out in pastel like paper-mache creations, their implied delicacy accentuated by the fortress walls that enclose them. The sun is setting and the gulls that constantly circle the harbor are highlighted in pink, their grace in flight becoming emphasized even in their scavaging. I sip a local red wine that, while not exactly rivaling the Spanish tempranillos and garnachas I recently left behind and can still taste, does add to the tranquility and tastes of the earth, and dark currants and the thousands of dates we see every day at the souks in the medina.

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The Light on the Side of the Road

It is just after midnight and I am sitting in the passenger seat of an eighteen-wheeler truck filled with rowing machines on a ferry from Dover, England to Lille, France. This vehicle is the Escalade of the trucking world, outfitted with two comfortable bunk beds, a double-burner hot plate, a little built-in flat-screen television, and even a DVD player.

A British driver named Simon is taking me along on a route that will go from France first down to Spain, then back up through France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, and finally to Warsaw, Poland, before heading back to the United Kingdom. He tells me he can drop me anywhere either on the way or on the way back, as he will be making multiple stops along the way, at least one in each country. I intend on making my way down to Austria eventually, where another friend of mine lives, but I figure I will stay along for the ride to see some more of the European countryside and get dropped off in Germany on the way back.

This afternoon not long after tea…

Simon: “If you ever see a gypsy, stab him.”

Me: “Um, well, but I think I kind of, like am a gypsy. I mean, aren’t they just sort of wanderers that like music and generally having a good time?”

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There are many words. many contradictions, to describe India. Beautiful, hideous, amazing, horrifying, inspiring, depressing, magical, seething, wanting, needing, generous… the list goes on and on. Having just returned, I am still trying to absorb and process – something that feels like it could take years to do.

I struggled with many questions the entire time I was there, but the one that seemed to be most prominent is, Why was I born into my life and why were you born into yours? I felt like I was silently asking this question to every person with whom I came into contact. One can either see great order or complete randomness in the reality of life in India. Do the Hindus and Sikhs believe in reincarnation and karma as a means to explain their lot in life? Is accepting that the life you are born into is completely coincidental just too much to bear? Perhaps the belief that there is meaning and reason behind being born into a Bombay slum or the grandest apartment on Malabar Hill is what makes it manageable. Perhaps it is what makes it allowable, as well.

I spent one afternoon in Dharavi slum in Bombay, which is home to over a million people. The slum is very industrious, doing about $650 million a year in business. One hears this figure and then looks around, and wonders how it is possible that there is raw sewage running through the streets and children playing a game of cricket on a 3-story tall garbage heap without shoes or even underpants? There are plans to destroy the slum and build more acceptable housing for its residents. Two-hundred twenty-five square feet structures will be given to each family who can prove they have been residents in Dharavi since before 1995. The rest will have to find another place to live, as the land will be given to developers who will build for-profit housing and shops and cafes and malls. The slum is a prime bit of real estate, and the land will make many people a tidy bundle. None of the current residents, of course, many of whom will have to find some place else to call home, someplace other than where they’ve been living for the last 13 years.

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“In that state, free from attachment, they move at will, laughing, playing, and rejoicing, They know the Self is not this body, but only tied to it for a time as an ox is tied to its cart”. – Chandogya Upanishad

Varanasi. City of Thieves. City of Light. City of Final Liberation This is how one of my guidebooks described Varanasi, also called Benares. The oldest constantly inhabited city in the world, it is also the holiest city in India and the most auspicious place to die. Being cremated on the banks of the holy Ganges and then scattering the ashes into the flowing current ensures that the soul will be purified of sin and that one will have a peaceful passing into the next life. For the living, three dunks in the river will erase seven generations of bad karma and allow you to start fresh. Everyday the city nearly doubles in population through the influx of pilgrims and those who come there to die. It is a city of fresh beginnings and endings, a constant flow of life forces, some leaving a bodily vessel and some residing in newly purified vessels.

We watched the sun rise from a boat on the river one morning. At the edge of the river people were bathing and washing clothes and meditating and cremating their loved ones. I saw a man brushing his teeth in the water one ghat away from the main cremation ghat. This should have disturbed me, and it did, as I contemplated all the potential diseases he was basically rubbing into his teeth and gums. The Ganges is so polluted in Varanasi that the water is septic. More than disturbed, however, I was taken aback by the jolt of admiration for his faith that I suddenly felt. How amazing that this man believes so fiercely in the sacredness of this river and its healing properties that he is willing to brush his teeth in this clearly filthy water. He, along with all the faithful in Varanasi, will bathe in this water, three dunks, and fully believe that the benefit to their soul is far greater than any harm it could do to their body. Blind faith? Absolutely. But isn’t all faith blind? One could argue that I was witnessing, not acts of faith but acts of ignorance, and I suppose it is possible that there is simply a lack of understanding of just how foul the water is and how waterborne diseases work. Then again, the filthiness is quite visible. Along the banks of the river there are these life-aquatic-style mini “submarines” that periodically test the toxicity of the water, the results of which are completely ignored. I do believe that it is faith that not only allows but compels these people to ignore the obvious, and instead trust in the invisible powers that they know exist. Perhaps this kind of faith is foolish or worse, but I wouldn’t mind having that unshakable of a faith in something. (Incidentally, it didn’t rub off on me, not one bit. While we were sitting on that boat, I gave my traveling companian strict instructions to throw me on one of those cremation pyres if I fell in.)

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If you close your eyes after looking out over the landscape of soft green hills, lush valleys with rivers and trees, you would be forgiven for thinking you were in Tuscany.

But if you kept your eyes open, you will soon see you are in one of those few places in the world where you just need to hear the name to shiver – Rwanda.

They call it the land of the thousand hills. The main hotel in Kigali – Les Mille Collines, immortalised itself by giving its name to the infamous radio station urging racial hatred and mass killings in the streets of the towns and the villages of those thousand hills.

The people trapped in the hotel at the height of the genocide couldn’t leave and the supplies couldn’t get in. They ended up drinking the swimming pool dry. Their story was turned into the film Hotel Rwanda. I would sit around that same pool enjoying a gin and tonic on a warm tropical evening trying to picture the country during the worst of those times. It seemed a thousand miles from the thousand hills.

I love travelling to Africa. I love getting onto the plane in the chill European evening air, watching the movie, sleeping fitfully, eating a cardboard breakfast and landing in the intense humidity of the early African morning. This trip had been that routine – short flight to Brussels, then the twice-a-week direct Sabena flight to Kigali. At the airport in Brussels, it looked like the flight was going to be full of nuns. They came in a selection. The ones in blue looked as if they were going to play the guitar and sing when the plane hit turbulence or when the flight crew had heart trouble. The older ones, in black, were obviously off to look after ‘the little brown babies’ in Africa, and the others had the appearance of executive nuns with briefcases and laptops. There were also a couple of priests in black and white, who seemed to be acting as sheepdogs, keeping the edges of the group of nuns from wandering off too far before they called the flight.

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