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If I ever go back to India, it’ll be to ride the local trains in Mumbai.

Hastily thrown together montage of the cargo freighter voyage a year ago. Music by Dear Lions. Enjoy.

30 Years Into Life and 30 Years of ‘The Golden Girls’ -- check it: http://bit.ly/30YearsGolden

I wrote an article about being on the cargo freighter over at The Hairpin. You should, like, read it.

Got some of my travel photos up on ye olde flickr page right here.

The Final Travel Tally.

CONTINENTS: 4 COUNTRIES: 9 COUNTRIES MY BAG HAS BEEN TO: MORE COUNTRIES WHERE IT WAS WARM: 8 COUNTRIES WHERE IT WAS COLD: 1 FLIGHTS: 15 TYPES OF TRANSIT: 18 NATIONAL PARKS: 7 HAMMOCKS: 17 HOLIDAY INNS: 1 SHARPIE TATTOOS: 9 BIKE RIDES: 6 KARAOKE INCIDENTS: 4 EARTHQUAKES: 1 DAYS LIVING ON A BOAT: 34 TIMES I CRASHED A SAILBOAT: 0 KNOTS LEARNED: 7 NEW JERSEY CONNECTIONS ABROAD: 4 COUNTRIES REPRESENTED IN A SINGLE ROOM AT ONCE, AT LEAST THAT I WAS AWARE OF: 13 MOZZARELLA STICKS CONSUMED: 8 FAKE VERSIONS AT DISNEYLAND OF REAL ANIMALS SEEN IN AFRICA: 9 TIMES I WAS SURPRISED BY HOW MUCH I WAS ENJOYING ANIMALS: 87 BOLLYWOOD FILM TAKES: 16 HOURS WEARING FAKE BUNNY EARS: 9 TIMES OTHER TOURISTS OPENLY USED MY NUT ALLERGY AS AN EXCUSE TO EAT AMERICAN FAST FOOD: 3 TIMES CUSTOMS OFFICERS BROKE THEIR COOL WHILE LOOKING AT MY PASSPORT: 2 TIMES MY BLONDE HAIR GOT ME NOTICED: HA FAKE HUSBANDS: 1 BEERS: YEAH, RIGHT

Norway, a dash of Portugal, and the EAST COAST.

A month and a half for the final chapter of Sarah Royal Travels the World & Writes About It isn't too bad, I'd say. Currently snowed in from the not-as-big-as-it-was-supposed-to-be East Coast storm, now's a great time to sum things up. I finally said goodbye to Southern California and the West Coast for a decidedly long period of time, and made an extremely brief trip (less than ten hours) back to NJ, where I saw my folks, swapped my summer clothes for winter ones, and hopped a plane to Oslo, Norway, to visit my college friend who had moved there some months back. Oslo was small and beautiful, with about six hours of sunlight per day and the entire city classily decorated for the Christmas season. It took a bit of getting used to the fact that I was in Europe, rather than the quite dissimilar continents I'd been traveling in of late. I spent the days when my friend was at work wandering around town getting mistaken for being Norwegian every chance I got. Everyone there speaks better English than any American I know, of course, but sometimes they'd accidentally lapse back into Norwegian again while talking to me. It was, as you might guess, decidedly the opposite of my experience in India. I almost felt guilty for not knowing Norwegian, it just seemed that much like I should... what with being blonde and white and all.

Oslo was chilly, but there was no snow yet. It was nice to see my breath again, and a fantastic environment to prepare for Christmas time in New York. In wandering around, I ended up learning things about Norway that I already knew about but just didn't know they were Norwegian. For example: those navy sweaters with the stripe of white reindeer and snowflakes on it (I could glean that they were from a cold climate, but just didn't know which one), Disney's Frozen takes place there, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded there (and was awarded when I was there), Edvard Munch's The Scream painting is Norwegian and actually in Oslo, and brown cheese is everyone's breakfast. Brown cheese is this block of caramel-like cheese that I first consumed in Portland, Oregon when my first roommate there, a butcher, was using it on cheeseburgers at my house. I was instantly obsessed, and knew it was one of those things that people either love or hate -- there's very little opinion in between. My friend, upon my arrival in Norway, told me, "You have to eat this brown cheese that is such a Norwegian thing -- it's amazing," and it of course turned out to be the same. I brought back so many blocks of it I got flagged in the airport. Of course, one thing I recently learned was Norwegian was the vessel the Gjøa, as mentioned in my last blog post. The Gjøa was the first ship to sail through the Northwest passage, captained by Roald Amundsen (who also discovered the South Pole and planted a Norwegian flag there), and the name of one of my sailboats paying it homage when I was in Mexico. We headed over to the Fram museum to check it out, and it was in superb condition. (Polar bear for scale.)

We ate great late-night food, I joined my friend at a work party dinner (though it wasn't their Christmas work party "Julebord" where everyone goes insane and gets shit-faced), I bought a Christmas sweatshirt that looked like Santa's coat, we watched a stellar live band play jazzy blues, we turned a quiet coffee shop into a dance hall filled with 1990's R&B radio hits, and I wished it had been snowing so everyone would be Nordic skiing in the streets. Oslo is apparently big on statues, too, so I laughed a lot at people taking photos of the dirty ones and not really taking photos of any of the others.

My better part of the week frolicking in Scandinavia ended much too soon, and I had one more country to hit up -- super briefly -- before heading back to the states: Portugal. When booking my Oslo ticket, I had to have a layover of some sort on the way back. A few hours in London, a few in Paris, or an overnight in Lisbon where my college roommate lives were my choices. I chose wisely. My old roommate, who for all I remember I last saw in Lisbon in 2007, and her boyfriend picked me up at the airport and we headed over to their apartment, where I was made a fantastic little bed space while they packed up to prepare to head back to Boston the following day. I spent a good deal of time laughing at my old roommate for having a heavy Portuguese accent when she spoke English, and reminded her that she was from New Hampshire. I perused their German philosophy and classical music books and various instruments lying around for a bit, and then we wandered a few blocks over to have dinner at boyfriend's mom's house.

An hour into touching down in Portugal, I was getting a homecooked meal and heavily encouraged to drink as much Port as I could down. My friend translated for me and we had a nice little dinnertime chat before checking out my friend and boyfriend's studio, where they make dubby dance music under the moniker Niagara and use a lot of weird equipment to do so. Their studio was also pretty much a dining room, so it gave it an extra classy Euro feel. What an ending to the travel, I tell ya.

After checking out some Portuguese street art, watching street dogs fight, and enjoying a quiet chat over tea in the kitchen, the next morning I headed to the airport bright and early. I landed in Newark, NJ and was finally back on the East Coast. I quickly hopped in the car for a stellar road trip out to Ohio, then rejoined my family to do the Christmas thing in NJ, then spent New Years Eve in a whirlwind of three parties in New York, and am now settled down on the job hunt, ready for more insane life adventures in that new old city of mine.

Processing the entirety of the past five months or so will take a bit to really get myself up to speed with what it all means and what changed or didn't really change about my perspective on things, on myself, and on the world -- but it's certain that, despite the credit card debt I'm in, it was one of the best decisions I've ever fucking made in my life. The best bridge between Portland and New York, the best country choices, the best people, the best experiences, the best timing, and, of course, the best stories.

Thanks for reading along, friends.

Que Wow: Sailing Freakin' Sailboats in Baja California, Mexico

Ahoy, there! I've returned from three weeks of learning to sail in a fleet of four 22' Drascombe longboats in the Sea of Cortez in Baja California, Mexico with 16 others on a NOLS course. And now I'm in a coffee shop in LA ready to tell you about it. I woke up early on our first day and wandered over to the hotel meeting spot in Loreto, where I first met an 18-year-old and then met a 42-year-old. Age variety? Check. We got shuttled off to the NOLS headquarters about an hour away, where we spent the day preparing our food rations, prepping our gear, and meeting our instructors -- one of whom went to high school with my old roommate, because what else is new. Much of the group was around 18 years old and on gap years, which thoroughly impressed me as I don't even think I knew what the hell a gap year was until I was out of college already. We were getting to know each other on the second floor of a little shack when I experienced my first earthquake ever. One of the instructors criss-crossed her disaster advice and commanded us to "Stop, cover, and roll!", to which we all responded with covering our heads half-assedly and perplexed looks. We survived. Our course had a fleet of four Drascombe longboats: La Tigresa (the tigress), Kingfisher, Zopilote (turkey vulture), and Gjöa (we had no idea what it meant at the time, but the internet now tells me that Gjöa was the name of the first ship to cross the Northwest Passage. Fun fact: Roald Amundsen was the captain of that ship, and two years ago in Alaska I drank at a bar with his granddaughter. What.). The next day we pretty much just all piled on the boats with zero sailing knowledge except for what I had gleaned from The Ocean Almanac, which Moe Bowstern the zinester had told me about years ago and of which we had a copy in our trip library.

The folks on my boat and I hurled a zillion questions to our captain on the first day, and she was completely stoked on it. By the end of the first few days, I could say shit like, "Well, we were on a run wing-on-wing but with the wind change we took out the sprit boom and the whisker pole and switched directions to a close haul port tack with a working jib taking us on a heading of 127," even if I didn't really know what it actually meant. Due to the 'winter' weather in Baja, which consists of several northernly winds called 'nortes' that spill through the Sea of Cortez, we were marooned on three separate beaches for a few days at a time due to our inability to sail in the rough weather. There was plenty to do ashore, though. You might be surprised to learn that I cooked a decent amount for my cook group. I mean, I was. We did hikes and saw gigantic cactuses called cardones. We snorkled and swam and bathed and cleaned and just lived in salt water. We did a 24-hour solo day where I successfully set up my hammock on a rock formation overlooking the sea. We played on the beaches and collected such a wide variety of seashells that my 10-year-old self reading Zillions magazine about non-New Jersey beaches in the world that were not picked over would be so insanely jealous. We spoke to fishermen ('pongeros') in Spanish and I remembered more than I thought I did. A few of the crew did some fishing and caught fish that we grilled up and even made fresh ceviche with. One of the days we visited a friend of NOLS, an old fisherman dude named Chico, whose family cooked us a ridiculous amount of fish tacos, commanded us to pick and consume as many mandarin oranges and grapefruits from his citrus grove as possible, and loaned me a crusty old guitarra with spiders spilling out of it to play Killing Me Softly and Single Ladies on. (#internationalsuperhits)

(I think the drawing of me done by a friend is more accurate than the above photo of actual me, but you can enjoy both.) One of the days a group of seven us us hiked 12 miles up and down a rolling mountainous coast to a small beach farm, where we bought, slaughtered, butchered, and carried back a goat to cook for our crew. The Fellowship of the Goat was proud of its accomplishment, and needless to say it was quite the experience, but I do believe that much of the reason it tasted so good at the time was that we hadn't been eating any other meat in our rations. Yep, it was just another day on a Baja beach. We did a number of great drills (besides learning how to sail in such a wide variety of conditions that I swore our instructors were somehow controlling the weather): We rescued crew overboard, we capsized the boats by sailing incorrectly (and bailed them out with buckets like good little deckhands), learned how to 'surf land' the boats by rolling with the waves onto the shore like a boogieboard, and rolled the boats fully up onto the beach numerous times. At one point our centerboard, a giant metal fin that raises and lowers in the center of the boat, got a bunch of gravel stuck in it and we had to dive under the boat and scrape it all out so we could sail that day.

I learned how to tie a bunch of neat knots, how to helm, how to work a variety of sails, how to prepare for shallow and deep-water anchoring, and how to be First Mate Royal and generally be a competent crew member on a sailboat. It's kind of insane how much shit I learned. Plus, I got to be a big sister to an 18-year-old (by her request) for three weeks. At one point she sidled up alongside me and said the same phrase twice, obviously quoting something, but I was confused. She groaned and said, "Duh, it's from High School Musical," and I said, "I'm OLD, remember?" She said, "Of course I remember -- I just wanted to make sure you didn't forget." Snarktastic.

After we got back to civilization, I found that I didn't remember how to work my iPhone touchscreen all that well and still felt waves rolling in my brain when I lay down (and kept getting up with the sun, which was the strangest thing of all), but quickly reentered the matrix, so to speak. I spent the weekend relaxing with my bud in Santa Monica, riding on the back of her Vespa and drinking dirty gin martinis in a ship-themed bar called The Galley, and tomorrow I'm off on (supposedly) my last leg of my international travels by heading to Oslo, NORWAY to visit a college buddy of mine, with a layover in Lisbon, PORTUGAL to visit my college roommate. THEN I will be back in the U.S. At least I think I will be. But I'm fairly certain this time. Until the next update, harass me with comments and texts (I also didn't receive any texts that were sent to me on either phone in Mexico because my phones ate them all, so if there were really good gems in there you might want to send them to me again). Happy belated Thanksgiving y hasta luego, mis amigos.

Joburg, PDX, California National Parks Galore, & SoCal Done Right. Oh, and MEXICO.

Yeah, I suppose it's been an entire month since I last provided my six readers with an update, so we've got a bit of catching up to do, as I'm halfway around the world again. Last I left you, I returned from my Kruger Safari and spent a few days exploring Johannesburg proper. I decided to (again) hop on one of those red double-decker buses and use it as my transport around the big, crazy city, where I visited the Apartheid Museum, saw a weird run-down outdoor park where they built 10-foot replicas of famous landmarks in Africa, crossed over the new Nelson Mandela bridge, saw the tallest building in Africa (spoiler alert: it's not very tall at all), and marveled at the fact that Johannesburg is the world's largest city not situated on a lake, river, or coastline. The only reason folks are here is because of gold, and I got to see a lot of the "gold dumps" that were the excess minerals post-mining just sitting around town. Once again, I got super stoked on the big-city-ness of it all. Yes, what else is new.

After a full day of wandering around the downtown area and taking the bus here and there, a majorly awesome thunderstorm broke out, and after admiring it for a while I took the train to meet my friend's cousin and a couple of his buddies for dinner and some drinks. They were super great, and my friend's cousin actually got me an Uber ride back to the hostel. Yes, Uber is in Joburg, folks. I headed into the thatch bar for another nightcap and had a good long chat with the hostel owner about his past life booking punk shows and his love for the band Q and Not U. He also was quite excited to show me the New Zealand rugby team the "All Blacks" adoption of a traditional war cry dance thing called the "haka" which they do before their games to psych the other team out. I've never played rugby or been laden with testosterone before a match, but I feel like the expression of the guy at 0:44 in this video about sums up my response to it. They do love their rugby. The next day I had some grand plans to spend my second-to-last day in Africa trying to get some shit together, like updating a blog post and my journal and sorting out all of the crap I'd acquired in my travels. I woke up early, sent a few great emails, and at about 11 a.m. I wandered out to the bar to find the hostel owner to pay up for my stay. Instead, I found four people pounding beers and smoking cigarettes and dancing to the techno music that was blasting all around. One of the guys was wearing a wolf mask, and the gal was dressed up as a mouse with painted-on whiskers and ears and all. They immediately all exclaimed, "HEYYYY" and handed me a beer, and proceeded to explain that they come in from various parts of the country every year for a huge rave that takes place at a closed-down waterpark, which just happens to be right down the street. The theme was, of course, "Animal Instincts," and it took about 30 more seconds before my new best friend the mouse was online saying, "I'LL GET YOU A TICKET OK YOU CAN JUST PAY ME BACK." I couldn't stop smiling -- I literally had only walked into my backyard. An hour later, white bunny ears were placed on my head and I was in a cab with the rest of them headed to the rave. Inside, I just spent HOURS wandering around to the various stages with various forms of dance music that many of my friends would appreciate more than me, but I still enjoyed the fuck out of it. Talk about people-watching -- this empty waterpark was filled to the brim with people of all ages (though mostly 20-nothings), all filming videos on their phones, all wearing some form of neon colors, and all drunk/high/whatever dancing their asses off and thinking that whatever particular DJ is providing the musical accompaniment of the particular area they are standing in at the moment is a god. There were more than a handful of animal costumes, and more than a handful of girls that attempted to put their hand on my shoulder but really ended up falling into me, saying, "OH MY GOD WHERE DID YOU GET THOSE BUNNY EARS I WANT THEM NOW." Also of note: every third person was wearing a shirt that either said "NYC" or "BROOKLYN" on it. My face hurt from smiling so much. It was insane.

I watched a ton of different beatboxers, watched drunk people play in the pool and think that it wasn't quite the best idea, got more excited than I thought I would when I walked past the hip hop stage to get some french fries and they started playing Blackstreet's "No Diggity," and marveled at the fact that if people actually came at the start and stayed til the end that they'd be there for around 20 hours -- with no re-entry allowed. I also remembered that I was at a "rave" about 18 times an hour and was in love with it so. Oh, and for the win, here's an official yo mtv raps photo of me and the mouse on the social medias:

After many laserbeams and smoke machines and bass beats blowing up around my head after dark, I was ready to call it a day, and bid goodbye to those of my new friends that I could find and headed back to the gas station meeting spot to wait for my cab driver. As I'm leaning against the outside wall drinking a Pepsi and watching the inebriated teens get picked up by their disappointed parents, a dude with a torn T-shirt -- and I don't think in the intentional Abercrombie way -- and gold spandex shorts comes up to me, puts his hands on my shoulders, looks into my eyes with his enormous pupils, and says, "Hey. Don't do drugs. They're bad for you," and walks away. I gagged, I laughed so hard. The next day, I had a plan to get picked up early to head down to Soweto, a neighboring city technically part of Joburg that was originally made up of many South Western Townships, hence the name "Soweto," during the mining era and apartheid, where non-whites were sent. Before the best cabbie I had all trip arrived, I took a morning dip in the pool and packed all of my shit to be ready to head straight to the airport after I got back from the tour. The cabbie and I talked about New York, about South Africa, about apartheid and racism, about opportunity and regret, and pretty much every awesome and heavy topic that I've rarely ever chatted with a cabbie about. He dropped me off at a bicycle tour with me as the sole tourist (again... no one wants to bike. What's up with that?) and we rolled off on shitty bikes through an entirely different world from the big city of Joburg. We said hey to neighbors that knew him, got an impromptu tour of a new brewery that had started up and tasted insanely good ginger beer beer, went to a woman's house that just happened to have 12 snakes as pets and I put a boa constrictor around my neck (obviously), saw Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu's old houses and a ton of other historical sites, and climbed up dual graffitied cooling towers and watched a girl bungee jump off of them. The constant references to our future marriage together got slightly stale by the end of our four hours, but all in all I had a total blast with this wacky guy who was in love with his town and certainly knew a ton about it. It wasn't even a tour, really -- it was as if some friend of a friend had said, "Oh, you have four hours? This guy has an extra bike if you want to go with him and see what he does in his usual life for a while."

The same cabbie and I drove back to Joburg, where he delivered me to the hostel just so I could bid farewell to the hostel owner and pick up my bag to head to the airport. Until I was actually on the plane to Portland from Frankfurt, where my layover was, it didn't truly hit me that my next stop was the U.S. again. It felt WAY too soon, actually. I was thrilled to see my friends again, of course, but I wondered if I'd still feel like I lived in Portland again. Turns out it was sort of half of that -- enough time hadn't elapsed for me to feel like it was a visit, but it definitely didn't feel like I still lived there. Of course, it helped that in my 48 hours in Portland I was supremely jet jagged and drunk most of the time. I got picked up by my friend at the airport and, classically, we went straight to a bar where we met my other friend and I drank far too many NW IPAs for having been 'off' of them for a while. We then took a good, hard nap on my crashing spot -- my friend's fabulous red couch -- before heading to dinner with a bunch of incredible folks. Then three of us went to another bar, and two of us to another, and then I wandered home in the Portland rain and felt insanely lucky to be back, though a bit confused because I kind of thought I was still in Africa and couldn't really recall where the last day had gone. The next morning, I woke up just to head to the bathroom with every intention of going back to sleep afterwards, but instead I hung out and drank coffee with two of my buddies before they left for work. My one friend gave me a task to help her find a lost key somewhere in a large, ten-drawer cabinet. I put laundry in, queued up Arrested Development on the Netflix, and settled down on my quest. I pulled open the first drawer and found the key before the opening credits ended. Now with my extra free time, and now that it appeared that I truly was not going back to bed, I texted a friend to see if she would meet me for lunch after a meeting she had downtown. She wrote back and said yep, and also that she had strangely seen another friend of ours in the same building downtown for some Rotary event. It dawned on me that it happened to be Tuesday at noon, and that the weekly Rotary meeting I used to run was underway, and that my other friend was being sworn in as a member today. The two folks involved had no idea I was even in the country still, and so I expertly timed a walk right up to their table and delivered one of the better surprises of my lifetime. We immediately met up with original friend for lunch and drinks, and more drinks, and some more drinks, and pretty soon we had to go to dinner, so we gathered more friends up and headed to another favorite haunt. Then it was off with other friends to a bar, and then off to watch my friends pack our car for our road trip starting early the next morning. More and more folks came out of the woodwork to say goodbye to us and bid us farewell as we took off on our road trip to Death Valley to do our 100-mile bicycle ride in support of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and our badass friend who has Type I Diabetes. And so -- we did. The next morning we blasted off to Lassen National Park in northern California with a pile of camping crap on the roof of our SUV, coolers in the trunk, and bicycles on the back. I think as we woke up surrounded by snow and gurgling geyser activity and headed south to Death Valley, I began chipping away at my jet lag and started believing I was actually back home with my friends. And it was fucking beautiful. We rolled into Death Valley at night, blown away by the stars, and found my friend's parents, and her friend and sister who were also doing the ride with us. We piled our shit into our hotel, ate our amazing free dinner, I found my delivered-by-UPS bicycle and hugged it again, I informed my friend that I had this blog, and we drank beers and ate a lot of salt to prep for our epic ride in two days.

Death Valley was surprisingly robust and filled with canyons and dunes and lots of colorful scenery, rather than just being a desolate wasteland as I expected. We had a great six-mile or so warm-up ride, where I yet again remembered how much I love cycling, and immediately headed to the fancy pool at this insane resort in the middle of the desert that we deemed Hotel California. One week before, I was in a safari in Africa, and today I was swimming in a pool in the middle of Death Valley. It did not compute. But I went with it anyway. The next day was the day. We got up before sunrise, of course, slipped on our spandex, and ate our free breakfast as my friend gave us sharpie tattoos for team unity's sake. Well, and also for the sake of sharpie tattoos in and of themselves. My randomly-assigned rider number was 316, so we had a fuck of a good time referring to Royal 3:16 as a bible verse, as my wrestling name, and as just about anything else. We cranked out a pretty good pace and marveled at the tiny dots of riders ahead of us going around curves miles ahead. We had a bit of a brutal headwind as we approached the six-mile climb at the halfway point, and I definitely felt a bit nauseous as we climbed the hill. But, as I chugged up, like a desert mirage a coach on a bicycle appeared like an apparition to chat with me as encouragement as my friend and I climbed, and after a few minutes of huffing conversation it turns out he knows a family I know from Bayonne, NJ, because that's the way my life works.

Our awesome support team (of my friend's parents and our other road tripping friend) provided us with cold water, sips of beer, and ridiculous encouragement at the top before we plunged down the same hill we had just climbed to meet up with our friends at the bottom. We set off as a whole group again, and struggled through the heat and headwinds back to a few more rest stops. At around mile 70 we were informed that if we didn't keep a speedy pace all the way to the end, we were gonna be pulled off the road for sunset reasons. I went with my friend who wasn't feeling too hot into a sag wagon to skip ahead to mile 99 -- which happened to be outside Hotel California -- so we could cruise the last mile into the finish line. We ended up having to pee so bad from all of the gallons of water we had been chugging that we rode our bicycles through the hotel hallways to get to the bathroom in there faster. Then we crossed the finish line.

The rest of our friends cruised through one by one, and were all presented with medals, given freezing cold wet washcloths, presented with ice cold water and beer, and even had their names announced over the loudspeaker. It was snazzy. We awaited our two friends who were completing the full ride and were dead last, and enjoyed ourselves immensely when we sprayed two full cans of silly string in their faces as they crossed. It was epic. My friend that hates beer even drank beer in celebration, it was that kind of awesome. Later that night after some delightful showers and piles and piles of steak, we enjoyed the final banquet where awards were given out and cheesy photos were displayed. Our friend got an honorable mention for the "spirit" award because she was cracking dad jokes with the coaches at the very end of the hundred miles, and when they described her "bio" they got just about everything wrong except her first name. It was hilarious, and I had my first of 40 crying/laughing episodes for the next eight days.

Packing up the car to venture off to explore Death Valley and other national parks the next afternoon, we all kind of realized we hadn't eaten anything and that food should be our next priority. Three seconds later, a woman in a van pulls up next to us in the parking lot and says, "Hey, you guys look like you're on a road trip. I bought a cooler for this event and have some leftover food and drinks in it, too, but I've got to go catch a flight now. You want it?" The freaking thing even had nut-free pesto in it. We were in heaven.

I could go on and on about this road trip and these friends o' mine, but I'm going to cheat and do a nice bullet-point summary of the events of the next week as I previously did for the San Juan Islands:

hammock camping in Death Valley under the insanely bright Milky Way, only to be awakened by dozens and dozens of coyotes howling and yipping in the night

exploring and enjoying canyons, dunes, rock formations, mines, ghost towns, castles, salt washes, streams, and incredible sunsets

hearing the story of how my friend was stuck at this bar in Death Valley 10 years ago with her brother when their car broke down, laughing about a painting of a naked woman hanging above the bar and postulating on whether she was naked when they painted it or not, only to have that same woman walk into the bar for the first time since the painting had been hung and have her tell them, "A lady never tells."

walking into that same bar and being disappointed that the painting wasn't still there, only to be on our second margaritas and have a waiter march in and pull a cord to lift a curtain that had been covering the painting the entire time we'd been there: "We only usually take her out starting at happy hour."

Sitting in a hot springs in the middle of a field on our way to Yosemite and having a dude walk up and sit in the hot tub with us who tells us he used to live in a cave in Yosemite for nine years

Enjoying the flickers of light on Half Dome rock in Yosemite at night, only to realize that those are actually rock climbers who are slung in their hammocks on the side of the cliff at night

sitting in our own hammocks much more safely on the side of a mountain watching the 'reverse' sunset reflecting on the rocks, and spotting a bonafide surprise marriage proposal happen a few yards away from us

driving to Kings Canyon National Park and finally satisfying our five-day-long craving for mozzarella sticks, while my other friend reconnects with her cousin that she hadn't seen in a decade

having our minds blown by the magnitude of the Giant Sequoias, and even seeing the oldest tree on the planet by cover of darkness on our own with only our headlamps

eating a night-time picnic dinner post epic sunset at Moro Rock, where we had to watch carefully for bears, and then later that evening accidentally ending up in civilization again and having to stay at a Holiday Inn that had two pools which were both closed

recouping from that unfortunate turn of events and blasting the GirlTalk/Pitbull/Sugarhill Gang refrain of "WE AT THE HO-TEL MO-TEL HOLIDAY INN" as we pulled out of the parking lot

saying the final nail-in-the-coffin goodbye to my Portland friends in an Amtrak parking lot in Stockton, CA as Boyz II Men's "End of the Road" plays from the car as we hug, and having a dude on a bicycle roll up and go, "Wow, is she goin' to COLLEGE?!"

I suddenly found myself on an Amtrak train to San Francisco to last-minute stay with two great friends of mine who had recently moved there. I met their adorable kiddo, we went to dinner, we briefed each other on the happenings of our lives over the last year or so, we frolicked in parks and played in playgrounds, we explored the aquarium, and just had an absolutely stellar few days. I even managed to find out that my friend in Santa Monica who I would be staying with at the end of the week was actually in town for business, so I had an amazing dinner with her. San Fran was never part of the original plan for this road trip, but it was oh so wondrous that it ended up being so. I decided that, in order to get down to LA, why not go big or go home? ... so I rented a car and set out down Highway 1 to Big Sur. I watched the sunset over the ocean with a martini in hand, camped in my car, woke up early the next day to do a waterfall hike and admire the endless incredible cliffs and ocean overlooks, and ended up at Santa Barbara by late afternoon reminiscing about the end of my cross-country bicycle trip. I then had the inkling that, since I had the car one more day, I should probably jet over to Joshua Tree National Park and playfully rub it in my road trip friends' faces that I had eventually made it there when we hadn't had time for it earlier in the week. And so I did.

I watched the stars for an hour at night, camped in the car again, climbed on a bunch of enormous rocks, saw a ton of lizards, and was thrilled at my own little car commercial as I drove speedily around the crazy road curves throughout the park. I even made it to nearby Pioneertown at the recommendation of a friend, which was a town created solely to film Westerns, and marveled at the literary breadth of the bathroom graffiti philosophers in the tavern there.

With Pioneertown behind me, I stopped off for a quick lunch in Palm Springs and laughed wondering why that place really exists, and then headed back West to Orange, CA to my friends' house. We had a few beers and wandered around the downtown Halloween close-the-streets-and-have-kids-trick-or-treat-at-local-businesses affair feeling old because we couldn't identify at least a third of the costumes the kids were wearing. We had a nice dinner and a lazy morning the next day, grabbing coffee and so forth, and then I jet off to Santa Monica to spend Halloween with aforementioned friend and her fiance before my friend took a safari trip to Africa herself. The night was supposed to last until about 9:00 p.m. but somewhat predictably ended around 4:00 a.m. wearing viking helmets and wandering in out of the strange SoCal rain to eat California's version of New York slices.

After our much-calmer-by-comparison hangover recovery the next day, I backtracked on Amtrak to Orange early in the morning just in time to meet the previous pair of friends and other Portland visiting folk at Disneyland, to see my friend in action as a stage manager. All day long we went back and forth between the two parks and did the usual Disney things: riding rides, eating too much expensive food, and pretending we were five years old. It was quite the experience to go on the punniest ride in the world -- The Jungle Cruise -- and see the animatronic versions of the real animals I had seen two weeks before in Africa.

I also witnessed my second-ever live marriage proposal under the Disneyland castle post fireworks starring the two visiting friends from Portland, which was a trip. After our 12-ish hour day, we drank some wine outside at home and soon I was off to my next SoCal stop, North Hollywood. My friend was very gracious and let me hang at his house and watch Netflix by day while he did actual work, and then eat dinner and drink beers (and even make a short film!) with me by night. It was super relaxing to have that free time before I kicked off the next crazy traveling adventure by showing up at my friend’s house in San Diego a day earlier than she expected me, given that I had told her I’d be there Saturday the 9th, which is a date that didn’t exist. I joined their college football viewing party, ate some tacos, and got a great sleep before venturing out the next morning via the trolley to walk across the border to Tijuana. I chatted with a former long-haul trucker and Vietnam Vet on the trolley, and his favorite life refrain was, “Take it one day at a time, and stop fucking worrying so damn much.” After a very easy trek through a big metal gate, I was already in Mexico on the way to the airport trying to practice my Spanish with a cab driver who was trying to practice his English. A family of San Diegans ahead of me in the baggage check line started chit-chatting with me, and once we found out we were both heading to Loreto, told me to head down to this particular bar where they knew the owner and would be probably playing music over the next few days. Our puddle-jumper got us there in an hour and a half, and I checked into my hotel, which was way nicer and swankier than I realized. I counted three lizards in my room before taking a walk around to explore the little town I’d be in for two more days before departing on my Baja sailing adventure. I watched the sunset on the beach and enjoyed the fact that everyone on the street smiled and said hola to me, and then spotted a sign that said "sushi" on this bar and decided to head in for dinner. As soon as I walked in, a gringo dude sitting at the bar greeted me, and it turns out he was the owner. After chatting with him briefly about how he was originally from San Diego, I said, “Wait a minute – do you have friends that are coming in today to see you, for a family reunion?” He said, “Yeah, they’re upstairs.” The family gave me a great cheer when I walked upstairs, and invited me to join their table as we swapped travel stories. Once they left a while later, I went back downstairs to finish watching the NFL game that was on – because if I’m already in a gringo bar in Mexico, why not? – and ended up chatting with an old guy at the bar sitting with a book of essays he had written. We got to talking about writing – “I don’t write for anyone but me. If someone likes it, that’s a bonus” – as he chewed antacid tablets as he drank beer because beer “didn’t agree with him.” Somehow we drift onwards in conversation about American road trips, and he tells me this story that he was hitchhiking to Colorado in Illinois in the late 60s and was picked up by this guy who touched his knee awkwardly and invited him to come back to his place for dinner. He was super uncomfortable and made up some story about having to get to Colorado to take care of a sick aunt, and left the guy's car at the next town. Years later he was in a bar and saw the same guy on TV, convicted of multiple murders of teenage boys. It was John Wayne Gacy. I was loving this old dude’s stories, and pretty soon the bar was empty save for these two younger guys that walked in late. We all got to talking, too, and found out the two of them were down in Loreto as a support team for the Baja 1000, a super famous off-road car race. One of the guys, a former professional driver who had done the Baja numerous times, was now a professional stunt driver in his spare time and had been Rick Moranis’ stunt driver in The Flintstones movie from the 90s. Amazing. They mention that they’re heading up to the same Mission that I wanted to check out tomorrow, the oldest Mission in California, and also riding on some of the track that the Baja takes place on, and invited me to go with. Meet at 8:00 a.m. at the coffee shop tomorrow? Hell yes.

At the coffee shop, the two guys discussed how the previous night one of them wondered aloud whether or not I would show up, and stunt double dude said, in a supreme vote of confidence for me, “100% definite. She’s gonna show.” After some coffee, I climbed into the back of their “prerunner” and literally strapped on the full racecar driver shoulder harness and all for our off-roading adventure.

This was seriously the coolest and most ridiculous thing, and these two dudes were so super nice and just so stoked to share the thing they loved the most in the world with someone new. (The one guy had to tell me just how famous the other guy, the stunt driver, was, since he was so amazingly modest himself -- not only had he won this Baja thing multiple times, his dad was ridiculously famous in the sport... like royalty. His dad was so famous, in fact, that when I googled him later on, I realized that he was the creator/namesake of an arcade game I played CONSTANTLY as a kid, and that you probably did, too: Ivan 'Ironman' Stewart's Super Off Road, with the red, yelow, and blue steering wheels racing each other around a dirt track. YES.) We went off-road through streams, over rocks, through sand and silt, and around 20-foot-tall cactuses on potholed dirt roads for the entire day. We even rode along a dirt road on the edge of a cliff to get to a spectacular view of the ocean and to a small village on the water to have lunch, spotting a Corona box delivery truck somehow miraculously making it down on the same road. And, as you can clearly see, we even wore headsets when in the damn thing to talk to each other and crack jokes as the clanking of the shocks and roar of the engine over the dirt was too loud to even hear yourself think over.

I could not stop laughing maniacally in the back seat and thinking especially of my motorcycle-riding adrenaline-loving friend back in Portland and how she probably will murder me when she hears this story. We wound back through the gorgeous back roads of Baja back to Loreto, ate some dinner, and wandered back to our bar from the night before, where -- like fucking Cheers -- eight people say, "Hey, Sarah!" when I walk in. ALL RIGHTY. You're still reading this whole thing? Lordy, good for you. I am now finally caught up to the present day, which I spent sleeping in like a champ, sorting some NOLS stuff for my course, eating guacamole outside watching street scenes, and writing this blog post. I'm now, of course, off to grab another beer or three with my family reunion and wacky writing grandpa one more time, before departing early tomorrow morning to LEARN HOW TO SAIL A SAILBOAT. See you cats in December, when (new development) my international travels are still not yet over. Text me on my travel phone, leave me a comment, send me an email, love me forever.

Cape Town & Kruger: A Ridiculous Amount of Animals

Hi, folks! I last left you about to board on my four-flight exciting transfer day from Mumbai to Cape Town. After trying to confirm five times with the hostel guy (who didn't speak much English) that there would be a tuk tuk waiting for me at 2:30 a.m. to take me to the airport, and being told, "Don't worry, don't worry, it will be there," it wasn't, of course. I had to bang on the now-locked hostel door five times before he woke up and came to the door looking stunned, and I said, "Remember that tuk tuk?" Luckily he made a phone call and one came right away. At the airport I checked in with one airline but was switching to another after two of the flights, so I only received the first two boarding passes. "So what do I do when I get to that point? I don't have much time in the airport." She reassured me that I could easily go to the gate and check in to receive the next two tickets -- she just couldn't print them out there. "And my bag will be in Cape Town when I get there?" Absolutely, don't worry, don't worry." You can see where this is going. The multiple flights were actually quite pleasant -- I got the window seat in the emergency exit row twice and watched One Fine Day with George Clooney and Michelle Pfeiffer (which is as old as I am, I think). Arriving to connect to my third flight in Zimbabwe, we were shuffled off the plane into this skinny hallway and our brains were scanned in a very sci-fi way for Ebola. After this check, we spilled out into a small space where seemingly the only option was to pass through immigration. I asked around, given that I had a flight to Durban, South Africa that was boarding in 20 minutes, how the hell I connect to it, and no one seemed to know. I really can't have been the only person to ever transfer flights in this airport, I thought, but hell, maybe I was. The fifth person I talked to said to wait by a door and a guy would come pick me up and drive me to the terminal -- just show him my boarding pass. "But I don't have a boarding pass yet," I said, realizing how ridiculously complicated this was, and then I spoke to at least eight more people. All of them made some refrain of "Don't worry, don't worry," and then the ninth one, after looking at my itinerary, said, "This flight is boarding!" No fucking shit. He took me through a back door, which I guarantee would be illegal in the U.S., talked to the customs people about how I wasn't actually entering the country, but needed to go to a counter to get a boarding pass, and then brought me to the new airline's counter. They, of course, were confused as to where I came from and why I didn't have luggage, but eventually some guy not even looking at the computer, it seemed, printed two passes quickly, and I grabbed them and ran back through my illegal passageway and amazingly caught the flight on time. After another window seat and pleasant flight, I cruised through the baggage claim area and onto the connecting flights passageway (there actually was one of those in Durban), excited for my two-hour layover, when the guard stopped me and said I couldn't come through until I collected my luggage. I explained to him that it was in Cape Town, he said it was impossible as there were no more flights to Cape Town on that airline tonight. I showed him my boarding pass for the flight, and upon closer inspection, the flight number was different than the one my bag was supposedly checked to, and in fact, the flight on the boarding pass had already taken off a half an hour ago. A woman from the airline came over to me and told me that the original flight number where my bag supposedly was hadn't operated for at least eight months. OK then. A whole insane airport debacle followed, including searching for my lost bag in their creepy baggage room, opening a lost baggage claim ticket and trying to describe what a backpacker's backpack is, bouncing back and forth between airline counters to talk to new people, and finally getting them to get me (without my bag, of course, but just me) to Cape Town that evening on British Airways. Everyone was super nice, I must say, and that really made the difference. I went through security, exchanged my money for some Rand, drank a South African Castle beer, and then proceeded to my gate -- just when the loud speaker said, "Sarah Royal proceed to your gate." I figured it was good news, that they had found my bag, but when I got there they told me my ticket on British Airways was invalid, and they were going to try to get me on another flight leaving at the same time on a different airline because of "internal politics," and I had to go back outside of security. Right. I bolted outside, and running towards the counter saw the woman who had helped me earlier. She thrust a new ticket in my hand and said, "SORRY!" I don't even think I mumbled a thank-you, and bolted again through the thankfully-short security line, ran to my new gate, and again just made the plane in time. I sat between two South Africans that were incredibly cheerful and sorry that my experience had been a bust so far, and we all drank wine and shared stories and I instantly was back in a good mood again. Fuck my baggage -- on to Cape Town!

After a good chat with my cab driver and the guy working at the hostel, I had an awesome sleep and then was already getting picked up in the morning for another bicycle tour -- this time to the Cape of Good Hope. As always, we had a great hodgepodge of nations on the tour, and we had a ridiculously cheerful and friendly tour guide, who brought us to more places than I even thought I signed up for, including an island full of hundreds of seals and a beach full of penguins. We cruised around gorgeous mountain curves with the ocean right beside us -- on an exceedingly clear day, which everyone was saying was pure luck -- and then hopped on bicycles as we entered the Cape of Good Hope preserve area. And damn, was it preserved -- I expected that such a key geographic spot in all the world's history would be somewhat run-down and over-trodden, but it looked like beautiful untouched New Mexico desert and called to mind zillions of moments on Bike & Build as we cruised south in the super-heavy winds. I obviously fucking loved it.

After bicycling down to the Cape of Good Hope and dodging the crazy baboons that hang out in the area and open people's car doors, we hiked up a mountain with wind blowing in all directions to Cape Point, the other edge of the cape that is (somewhat) the dividing point between the Indian and Atlantic Oceans (although neither is actually the southernmost point of Africa -- that's a bit further east). It was stunningly beautiful, and I didn't quite expect it.

We cruised back to the city, I ate ribs for dinner at a local spot and had a South African IPA (which was awesome) and chatted with the bartender for a long while about how fucking deliriously cheerful everyone in Cape Town seemed to be, and then took a cab to Long Street to go to Mama Africa, a bar/restaurant that was supposed to have great live music. They did -- this band of three wooden xylophones, a drummer, a saxophonist, and two singers had zero amplification and played cover songs with an African beat, as well as originals. The two singers sounded like fucking opera singers, they were amazing. I sat with a few of my new friends from the tour, and eventually the band was working the crowd and pulled us up to dance. At one point one of the singers was passing around a tamborine, trying to teach people how to play with the beat, and then he passed it to me and was impressed with how quickly I picked it up. Thank you, TriSarahTops. The next day I decided to buy a ticket on one of those double-decker buses, since it was as cheap as a single cab ride (well, with the tourist tax) and took me literally everywhere. Again, I had a perfectly sunny and clear day, and went to a ton of beaches, ate great sushi, had a ton of fun people-watching, went to wine country and got a nice buzz chatting with a lady from Syracuse, watched paragliders, and marveled at how Cape Town was like Portland. Everyone was young and happy and semi-retired. Just when I thought I should hike Table Mountain, the crazy-huge flat-topped mountain looming over the city, the infamous "table cloth" cloud blew over the top of it and spilled over into the city, spoiling whatever view I would get from up there. Oh well, another day. After partying with a bunch of future Dutch doctors who were at my hostel doing an internship at the hospital where the first heart transplant took place, I woke up early the next morning to get picked up to go to Gansbaai, a town a few hours away where you can go cage diving with Great White Sharks. Uh, yeah.

I had seen a poster for it when I arrived, and though it had never crossed my mind to ever do this in my life, much less having a plan to do it in South Africa, I decided that I should. Before I knew it, I was putting on a damp wet suit on a boat in the middle of the ocean and climbing into a cage off the side of the boat.

I had imagined a single-person cage, with you fully submerged the entire viewing time with an air tube sticking out of the top. It wasn't like that at all -- the cage was long along the side of the boat and could fit five people side by side, and you donned only a diving mask and a wetsuit (unless you were the German guys trying to be tough, as pictured above, who did actually put on wetsuits for their second time, because duh). You stood on the back bars of the cage (the ones against the boat) and held onto an inside metal bar of the cage (protecting your fingers from the outside of the cage, of course) and waited about neck-deep in the water. To the right of the cage on the boat was the bait guy, who was swinging a rope with a floater on the end with two giant tuna heads attached to it and dragging it in front of the cage to attract the sharks. When a shark would come by, he would shout "DOWN DOWN DOWN DOWN DOWN" and everyone in the cage would take a deep breath, push themselves under, and watch the shark pass by. The bait guy would pull the bait away just in time before the shark got it, and then the process would begin again. I couldn't help but laugh the entire time -- humans are so fucking ridiculous that we do shit like this. But I was loving it.

The sharks got REALLY fucking close. The water wasn't that clear that day, but man, you could still see them in front of your face. And they were huge. The best "pass" was one where the shark with its mouth wide open swam directly at the cage and bumped into it, showing its teeth to the girl most terrified to be there, of course. She immediately wanted out of the cage, and the rest of us immediately wanted to slap her since she just got the best experience and wanted it the least. But I was super lucky on my third chance in the cage, as the shark actually was too quick for the bait guy, caught the bait, and struggled to break it free so hard that it was slapping its entire body against the cage, and at one point wedged itself between the boat and the bottom of the cage so it made the cage shake and tilt on a diagonal angle. So. Fucking. Crazy.

As if that weren't enough, on the way back to Cape Town we stopped at a whale watching spot on a beach that had cliffs that dropped immediately into the ocean, so that the water very close to shore was really deep. As a result, the whales came right up to the rocks. Sure enough, we showed up and there were at least six whales visible, and we got quite the show when a younger one was breaching continuously and leaping out of the water 87 times. I don't think I've ever really seen a proper whale breach, and then I saw it repeatedly. Even the photographer guy next to me stopped taking shots because it happened so many times. Unreal. I constantly thought of my whale-obsessed friends in Portland and said "Life's a breach" over and over in my head and cracked myself up.

After a quick cruise back to Cape Town, to my surprise I found my luggage waiting for me back at the hostel. (I left out the parts where I called the airline 14 times to check up on it). The long sticker that indicates what airport it flies to said CPT on the outside and had about 12 other stickers piled up on the inside. I think my bag had traveled more than I had. I took a shower and changed into some clean clothes -- well, relatively -- had a nice drink, and hit the hay. The next day was 100 degrees (or 38, depending on where you're from) outside, and due to that fact, the fact that I couldn't wrangle anyone else to accompany me, and the fact that countless people had said DON'T HIKE IT ALONE, I decided to not be a stupid stubborn tourist and hike Table Mountain, and instead cheated and took the tram up (you're welcome, Mom). The tram meant I had a lot more time at the top, of course, as I had a flight to Joburg to catch later, and I explored the insane views that reminded me of the Grand Canyon, except greener and with more vegetation and with a city and an ocean in the background. It was stellar, and I stayed up there in the sun for hours.

Since I had a little bonus time post-non-hike, I took a bus to a beach and went swimming in the frigid water after having a nice group of Dutch ladies watch my purse. Everyone was out doing all sorts of beach things, but mostly hiding under umbrellas, and being covered in salt and sand was a fine way to head back to the airport and move onwards to Johannesburg.

I actually got to Joburg successfully and my backpack was one of the first out of the conveyor belt -- for the win! Due to the immense size of the city, though, my cab driver didn't really have much of a clue as to where he was going or where my hostel was, but eventually we called the hostel and figured it out. And it was a good thing, too, because the hostel had an enormous grass-covered backyard with dozens of plants and palm trees, a swimming pool, and a huge thatch-covered shack in the backyard with a bar in it. I settled into my room and halfway greeted my roommates, one of whom would be joining me early in the morning on the tour of Kruger National Park the next day, and had a nightcap beer in the bar and chatted with some Brazilians about Brazil but mostly about New York City. Everyone is excited either about New York or California when they hear you're from the states, and I'm proud to report that on this trip New York was winning. Not by much, especially in South Africa where everyone loves surfing, but still ahead. We were a "late" pickup at 6 a.m., and me and my new Austrian friend piled into the backseat of a mini-bus and began the long trek to Kruger with an Italian lady, two separate groups of Dutch girls, and a Swiss guy -- all speaking English together, of course. We had a great time swapping stories on the way to camp, and after dropping off our stuff in our tents (made by Campmor in New Jersey -- classic) at our peaceful-except-sometimes-leopards-came-around campground, we went for an evening tour of an animal sanctuary, where they take care of wild animals that have been caught in snares or would otherwise be killed by farmers by messing with their land or livestock and what not. We got up close to lots of animals -- three of the Dutch girls were chased by a giraffe that was wildly kicking its legs and "wanted to play" -- and heard a really interesting talk from the ranger showing us around about how big-game hunting makes money for places like Kruger and the animal sanctuary to survive, as much as people don't like to think about it. We ended the tour checking out a honey badger. The ranger was holding some leftover meat scraps that he was feeding lions with, and the honey badger was freaking the fuck out, trying to grab it through the cage. Contrary to its reputation, it really did give a shit.

After an awesome meal of meaty macaroni and cheese and boxed South African wine, we settled in to wake up at 4:30 a.m. and start our game drive in the park itself. Our guide was a guy named Lloyd who very clearly was in love with his job, and interviewed us all beforehand about which animal we were most excited to see. I said that, though it seemed sexist, I really wanted to see a big male lion with the full mane on his head. Others said hippos, leopards, cheetahs, zebras, elephants -- pretty much everything. The "Big Five" animals of Africa, so called because of these five being historically the most difficult to hunt, are elephants, African buffalo, lions, rhinoceros, and leopards, with the leopards being the animal least likely to be seen. Five minutes into our game drive we saw a fucking leopard.

Lloyd was freaking out, so excited for us but also excited for himself, as seeing a leopard first thing is practically unheard of. It was about 10 meters away from us (I think in meters now), hanging in the shade, but got up and moved around a bit. It was badass and huge. Only maybe a half hour later, BAM -- we find a whole group of lions, including a "big male lion" with the whole mane thing. Unreal. We watched them laze around and lick each other and basically act like the cats they are for an hour. And yes, people, I did actually enjoy every minute of it.

The two days that followed really were perfect -- in the first day we saw the entire Big Five, and throughout our whole trip we saw more of the Big Five plus elephants, hippos, giraffes, zebras, baboons, monkeys, crocodiles, a shitton of impala, water bucks, wildebeest, nyalas, warthogs, and a zillion birds. We even saw not one, but TWO cheetahs eating a water buck carcass that they had just killed. Cheetahs are even more rare than leopards, and as we were watching them Lloyd was giddy and just said, "This isn't supposed to happen."

We kept making jokes that Lloyd was just calling ahead to his buddies to release the animals on cue as we pulled up to certain spots. Elephants and giraffe waltzed up to watering holes just as we arrived. Hippos could have been miles in either direction along a riverbank but were situated right in front of this blind (they called them "hides") that we walked into. At one point when it was crazy hot and we asked about hyenas, Lloyd said, "Ah, I wouldn't bet on seeing them in this heat," and then we saw three of them. Just before we left the last day, we saw lions eating the remains of a buffalo carcass that they had killed. Nature was really putting on a show for us, and I don't know who was the good luck charm, but man -- even Lloyd was perplexed at how perfect our experience was. "People come here for 20 years on end and never see a kill, let alone two or a cheetah kill. Christ."

I have a zillion photos, of course, and better ones of zebras, but I thought you'd appreciate the selfie-gone-awry. All in all, we could hold our heads high and be insanely proud of how flipping lucky we were to have seen all of that (and to have a guide who can spot a hyena standing in the woods at 80 kph). Our group was super fun, too, and somewhere sometime I'll have access to good jumping photo we did at sunset one of the days. We got back to camp, jumped into the pool in our clothes since it was over 100 degrees, and had a campfire party over thick steaks and more wine telling life stories and relishing in our success. And next: Joburg for a few days, and then back to the UNITED STATES for a few weeks for my cycling trip and camping. Holy balls, how am I there already?

Toy Trains, Bollywood, and Pune Family Fun

The night train to Shimla was very peaceful and easy, mostly because I took a Benadryl to be able to fall asleep and block out any potential noise from the kids sleeping in the bottom bunk, and soon my feet were being shaken by the train conductor, waking me up to alert me that I was at my destination and was ready to board the toy train to head up to Shimla in the mountains. The 'toy train' is so named because it's a smaller train that is specially made to wind through tight turns in the mountains up in Himachal Pradesh ("In the lap of Himalayas"). Needless to say, it was one of my fucking favorite things -- particularly because you could hang your entire head out the window.

I wasn't the only dork taking a ton of photos, as you can see in the background. When I arrived in Shimla, it was pretty sad to be off the train, but there were some epic views of the mountains, and the landscape, of course, was entirely different from any of the golden triangle area I had visited previously. My 'very nice hotel' (as described by the travel agent) was basically a truck stop, but oh well -- it was time to head out and explore. Shimla had a pedestrian (and cow and horse and pig and monkey and and and) mall wandering up several switchbacks, and I ventured up there through the folks selling various sweets and wooden walking stick souvenirs. The good news is that I could relax a bit without the hawkers attacking me -- these folks didn't seem to sell as hard as the 'save the polar bear' types on every street corner previously -- but the bad news was that I still couldn't be even slightly anonymous. Every man that I passed continued to stare the exhausting and uncomfortable stare. At one point I sat down to have a bag of chips in a vaguely-quiet area overlooking a hill, and when I glanced up from the chips for a moment, there were at least 15 guys just glaring at me. I had to actually retreat to the hotel, it was so ridiculous. Later, after a refresher chai and a mood bounce-back, I ventured out with my sweatshirt fully on (it was still hot as balls, although much more bearable given the mountains), thumbhole sleeves pulled over my hands, hood fully covering my pulled-back hair, sunglasses on. I looked like the fucking unibomber.

After wandering a little further throughout Shimla and focusing my attention on the wild monkeys roaming around, it was time to board the toy train back -- at sunset, this time. Some guy was standing outside the train before we pulled out of the station taking approximately 3,000 selfies, so I decided that he wouldn't run away with my camera and asked him to take a photo of me hanging out of the train. You're welcome.

One toy train ride and one sleeper car back -- where good karma is coming to me, as I switched with some girl so she could be in a four-bunk with her friends and then discovered that the woman on the lower bunk of my new bed was hacking herself to death with a cough -- I ended up back in Delhi to head straight to the airport to fly to Mumbai. The flight was super easy, and then the fight at the airport to get a taxi/rickshaw/anything that wasn't ripping me off wasn't. The hostel I was staying at had warned me ahead of time that the rickshaw ride was, in actuality, just 50 rupees -- and the lowest I could barter with the pre-paid taxi, taxi line, even the police was 170 rupees. The 'tourist tax,' of course. I was tired of fighting and took the deal, and then the rickshaw guy couldn't find the hostel at all even when talking to the hostel dude in Hindi. Finally landing there, I actually lay down to take a nap. And I never nap. I coordinated some online bullshit, signed up for a walking tour the next morning (as no one else had signed up for the bicycling tour -- what gives?), walked down the street to buy some Kingfisher beer, ate some naan from some British gal's takeout, and hit the hay. The next morning I woke up extra early to try my hand at navigating Mumbai's infamous local trains at rush hour to get to the meeting spot for my walking tour. I somehow managed to purchase a ticket card, select my destination, pick the correct track, and jump on the train just as it was pulling away (yes, quickly grabbing the handle and hoisting myself into yet another 'ladies only' coach in the nick of time). I decided, as I stood there holding a post with my hair blowing in the breeze and my feet right up to the edge of the door-that-never-closes, that this pretty much fulfilled any of the notions of hopping a freight train. This felt like the same damn exhilarating thing.

Mumbai, too, was a big city -- much bigger and more vibrant than Delhi, truly -- and therefore I felt supremely comfortable. Also, given the 'big city' feel and the fact that Mumbai was in the 'south', men were staring and glaring far less, and I felt a gigantic sigh of relief, being vaguely anonymous again. The walking tour I signed up for was through an NGO that took you through 'Asia's largest slum', Dharavi. I knew about it, as many westerners have, from Slumdog Millionaire, but didn't know much else about it, like the fact that there are a ridiculous amount of businesses (and government-supported businesses) inside like recycling, welding, sewing, and the like, and the fact that doctors, lawyers, police officers, and other professionals live there, too. It's an odd blend of modern enterprise and frozen-in-time ancient practices, like much of India, it seems. We met a lot of neat people working towards education for kids who grow up there, and I talked for a while about nonprofit marketing with one of the teachers at the NGO.

At the end of the Dharavi tour, as we were drinking our complementary Coca-Colas and filling out feedback forms, this friend-of-the-tour-guide walks in slightly out of breath and holding a cell phone. Turns out he's an 'international talent scout' for Bollywood films, and he was on the hunt for some last-minute "western-looking" folks, and would my blonde hair want to join for a few hours with pay and food? The next thing I know, I'm in a car with two Spaniards and said talent scout driving a million kilometers an hour through the highways of Mumbai to a movie studio on the other side of town. We head in through the gates and got dropped off at a little hut, where some other non-Indians were trying on very loud and ill-fitting gowns. We were to play background guests at a 'garden party' outdoors in an Anil Kapoor film sequel. For those of you who don't follow Bollywood, Anil Kapoor is the guy who reads the questions in Slumdog Millionaire. Yes. Less than an hour after leaving the slum, I'm in an obnoxious dress and in a goddamn Bollywood film.

We mostly stood around and got sunburned, but we also looked serious when a very intense argument scene was being filmed, exchanged stories of our travels, recommended other Bollywood films to watch, laughed at the crew killing time by filling water bottles with dry ice and watching them explode and frighten people, and planned drinks together that evening. I schmoozed a bit with the director's four- or five-year-old daughter who was hanging around pretending to direct, as her name was 'Sara'. She seemed to get a big kick out of me having nearly the same name, but her father still didn't select me for a speaking role.

On the long bus ride through rush hour traffic back down south, I chatted with a new Portuguese friend of mine, who had lived in China for a number of years and had been in India for a bit and was finally heading back home. I asked him what he was looking forward to most, and he said, "Drinking water from the tap." True that. Given that he was leaving India the next day, and given that another new Belgian friend of mine had also been in India for a while, the plan was to head to McDonalds for dinner -- and I swear, I didn't even suggest it first this time, this was all them. Drinks followed at Leopold Cafe, a famous traveler bar that ended up being one of the sites of the 2008 terrorist attacks. It was supremely odd to have remembered hearing about that from so far away, and now be sitting near one of the still-existing bullet holes in the wall. We chatted for a long while over beers, and continued the enjoyment at another bar until they started dimming the lights. "Are those mood lights, or we-want-you-to-leave lights?" A few minutes later, the lights went out. "Oh, OK. The second one."

The next day was spent wandering to some big attractions like the train station, the Gateway of India, the 'thief market', famous mosques and temples, and all sorts of on-the-street preparations for the big upcoming festival Navaratri, a celebration of the goddess Durga. Everyone was telling me that it was a shame that I had just missed the Ganesha festival (the god with the elephant head), as he's a favorite of Maharashtra state and people go nuts. But folks were setting up stages for storytelling and idols, making flower streamers and dancing to music -- even if it wasn't Ganesh, it was pretty cool. My Belgian friend was treating herself by staying at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, a super-fancy hotel that is claimed to be the best service in India. The story goes that the owner built it in the early 20th century after being denied entry to a "whites only" hotel in town. I decided that since the rooms were too rich for my blood, I might as well go join her for a fancy cocktail in one of the bars instead. Due to my cell phone SIM card acting up and missed timing, I ended up sitting in the bar myself at a table up close to a guy and gal playing music and singing a whole crazy variety of English and American covers. My waiter, who was absolutely treating my grubby self like a five-star guest, basically read my mind and told me that the band accepts requests, if I happened to have any, and then presented me a fancy pen and a notepad. I wrote, ' "Do you know any Bruce Springsteen?" -- An American', and it was hand-delivered to the band by my waiter. The very next song, the singer smiled at me and said, "This goes out to the American," and they played a great lounge-act rendition of 'Dancing in the Dark.' Amazing. Soon I had a new friend -- the only other person in the room outwardly enjoying the band -- and a South African guy joined me and started chatting with me about India and traveling and such. He bought my last two drinks, and then the band joined us, and then we all planned to be there again the following night. A "cool cab" ride back to the hotel later, with a driver in uniform and everything, and I got a great night's sleep. The next day it was time to chase down the dabbawallas. These are the guys that run lunchpails, or tiffins, of home-cooked meals to offices for the Mumbai businessmen who don't want to eat out every single day and also don't want to spare any space on the insanely-packed local trains as they're holding on for dear life just trying to get to work. So these dabbawallas ride trains and rickshaws and bicycles to shift these tiffins via a coding system to the exact right businessman in the exact right office. Harvard even did some crazy study of their simple yet incredibly effective methodology and found that for every six million deliveries they only make a handful of mistakes. They even got a six-sigma rating. I waited around at the train station to spot the first guy carrying a huge tray of 40 lunchpails on his head, and then followed him outside to where he set it down. Soon he was joined by a dozen other dabbawallas, each placing their bounty down for organization and eventual loading onto a bicycle. They knew they were famous, of course, and loved hamming it up for the cameras. I made friends with a German gal also there taking photos, and we exchanged info to grab a drink later on -- at the Taj, of course.

Later I hit up the open-air laundry spot called Dhobi Ghat, which was interesting and odd and so very India all at the same time, and wandered around some more in the heat. I ended up on a hill in a fancy area, apparently where Mumbai's richest businessman lives, and saw more festival dancing and streets coming alive. I watched the sunset from the pier overlooking the skyline, and once again fell deeply in love with big cities. Rejuvenated once again, I headed to be treated like a queen, and handed a bathroom towel by an attendant, at the Taj. This time my Belgian friend pulled herself away from her amazing bathtub and balcony room to join my new German friend and I for a few beverages, where we compared some more notes on being foreign women traveling by themselves in India. We missed the band, and also my new South African friend, but my waiter from the previous night gave me a warm welcome, and continued to bring exceptional beverages. After one more boxcar-esque crazy local train ride the next day, I met a driver arranged by my "welcome to India" friend from the plane to head a few hours southeast to Pune, where I would meet my college buddy's extended family and spend some relaxing time with them for a few days. My hosts were two grandparents who wanted nothing more than to ensure that I was extremely comfortable and at home at their house... and to feed me nut-free Indian food until I could no longer move. Which they did, on both counts. I couldn't believe how much delicious food I could eat and did eat, and it more than made up for the McDonalds and plain naan that had been my diet for the past few weeks.

(sorry for you weirdos that like photos of food -- I was just blown away that I didn't have to leave anything that I couldn't identify on a plate for once.) Pune was even more relaxed atmosphere-wise than Mumbai, and I had a great time wandering the streets and then rickshawing back to the house. Each time I would take a rickshaw out, my host would put his slippers on and walk outside to translate into Marathi (the language of Maharashtra) so that there would be no confusion as to where I was headed. One evening I was whisked away by my hosts' son and family to eat more delicious dinner, climb a hill to watch the sunset and accompany the family's daughter on taking excellent up-close photos of dragonflies, ride on the back of a scooter at night (FINALLY), and join the whole family -- complete with authentic colorful skirt and jewelry -- at a Garba dance party in celebration of the Navratri festival. You basically go around in opposite circles with two sticks in your hand, hitting a pattern against the opposing person's sticks in tune to the music, for an eternity. I got insanely sweaty, but did actually receive a handful of compliments for my stick-hitting prowess. Videos do exist somewhere, but they're unfortunately not in my possession. I had a blast relaxing afterwards and cooling off, watching all of the pint-sized kids run around on the lawn in their traditional outfits, burning off crazy energy dancing on their own. It was fantastic to be taken in to a celebration like that.

The next two days were filled with drinking beer with my friend from the plane, seeing more sights whilst wandering around, unsuccessfully finding a heritage walking tour start point, sleeping in, visiting temples, watching more celebrations, eating more amazing food, riding more scooters at night and having a hell of a time talking traveling and Bollywood with my friend's cousin and buddy, and learning all sorts of amazing history and religious knowledge from my hosts. I couldn't have asked for a better closing chapter to India. And so, after a particularly long search for an internet cafe (which culminated in me pretending that I'm staying at the Courtyard Marriott and writing this blog post from their delightful business center)(free mineral water), I get up at 2:00 a.m. to being a really really long journey to get to Cape Town, South Africa (!). Talk to you from a new continent, folks. SEND MORE TEXTS PLEASE I LOVE THEM AND I LOVE YOU

Guilin & Yangshou, China... and INDIA thus far

Greetings, faithful readers. Last I left you was in Guilin, China, after taking a 12-hour bullet train ride down there. I stayed at a super friendly and awesome hostel, and immediately signed up to get into a van in the morning to ride to the Longji rice terraces for a "tour". The "tour" really meant that the driver would drive through weird dirt/mud roads and then drop you off at the entrance to these rice terraces, and then meet you back in four hours to drive you home. I ended up walking through pouring rain, and then misting rain, and then blazing sun (and then repeat) with a Spainiard, an Egyptian, two Germans, a Russian, and an Irishman, and we had an illegal amount of fun exploring the terraces and watching the clouds roll out to show them and the Chinese mountains in their full glory.

We all decided to head out and explore Guilin over drinks later that night, of course, so after eating not-Chinese food, I wasted time at the computer a little bit looking up phrases in Hindi for my upcoming India trip, and laughed about it with the front desk lady (who had an awesome combined Chinese & Australian accent when she spoke English. On a page of "useful phrases", such as "where is the bathroom?" and "how much does this cost?", our favorite was "there is a large insect in my room." Our new Russian friend spoke (and read) very good Mandarin, which was useful for navigating the bus system. I tried a powerful Chinese liquor, similar to sake, and then switched back to beers as we wandering through outdoor cafes, dance clubs, and a restaurant where a guy was singing songs in Chinese and playing guitar. I asked him if he knew any English songs, and after a prolonged conference ended up with me singing "Hey Jude" and leading ten tables of Chinese people (and my faithful travelers) in endless "na na na NA-NA NA NA na-na na na hey jude" rounds. Somewhere on the internet there's a video of the spectacle floating about, probably. The following day, my new friends convinced me that instead of spending an additional day in Guilin -- which was a quite small city -- that I should join them on a bamboo raft tour down to Yangshuo, on the basis that "People come to Guilin JUST so they can go to Yangshuo." All right, people who know more about China than me. Sounds great. Our 'bamboo' rafts were actually giant PVC pipe rafts with motors attached, but damn, it was worth it. The view of the mountains was ridiculous, and we had an incredible two hour ride through them. The view we saw is actually the scene depicted on the 20-Yuan Chinese bill, in case you were wondering. I figured that in all of gigantic China, if where I am is literally on the money, I'm doing something right.

In Yangshuo, we visited a 1400-year-old 'dragon bridge' (where I remarked that to me, the American, it seemed really old... though it didn't impress the Egyptian or the Spaniard all that much), took a float on an actual bamboo raft (where our raft driver refused to accept the tip from me and the Spaniard, the two ladies -- it looked like he was trying to point to the Egyptian guy, who was on another raft, to tip him, but we decided to just let that one be), and fed a water buffalo (where, yes, I participated in activities involving animals). Oh, and we also went to KFC for lunch, given that that was really my only filling and safe option, and the Egyptian and Spainiard joined me, saying, "Just between you and me, it's really nice to get a break from the Chinese food once in a while and have the comfort of some Western grub." However I can help you out, folks. It reminded me of Seinfeld, of course. I bid my new friends farewell and headed to the airport, to spend a few hours on a layover in Guangzhou, China, and then I boarded my flight to NEW DELHI, INDIA. India has always been the centerpiece of this trip -- I think I've seriously attempted to go at least twice before without it working out. But now, I was on the flight, and, seated very comfortably in an exit row, I struck up conversation with the Indian businessman next to me, talking about China, Canada, the U.S., and, of course, India. He seemed pretty excited that I was on my way to experience his country for the first time, and told me some great spots to check out in Mumbai and Pune. When the plane landed at around 11:00 p.m., after we'd all been sleeping, he turned to me with the hugest grin on his face and said, "Welcome to India." I keep having great luck with immigration officers, because this one -- again, stone-faced at first -- folds my passport over and says, "'Royal' is your surname?" I said, "Yeah, and I didn't even change that -- that's real." He raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips in a Robert DeNiro kind of way, and nodded his head in delight and approval. A driver from my hotel (and yes, hotel, as India doesn't have too much in the way of hostels as hotels are so damn cheap) picked me up from the airport, name on the card and everything, and drove me through the insane and amazing streets of Delhi at night, where dudes were riding on the tops of colorfully-painted trucks and tuk-tuk auto-rickshaws were weaving in and out of the lanes -- which no one really paid attention to, anyway. Since coming from China, though, I actually found the Indian traffic to be slightly more tame. In Delhi, it seemed like you actually could see the few seconds of hesitation on the part of one or both of the drivers just before you think there's gonna be a crash. In China, I never could see that, no matter how hard I tried to decipher the traffic.

My hotel, recommended by a friend from India, was like night and day compared to the surrounding neighborhood. I was staying pretty much right in the middle of Old Delhi, the pre-British area, which felt like I was back in 1800 or something. Hand-pulled carts, crumbling rocks and dirt and garbage everywhere, cows and horses and donkeys (and their shit) scattered about in the street, people preparing food on the ground, washing laundry on rocks... everything. I even saw a kid on a bicycle with a block of ice mounted on it, for christsakes. Amazing stuff, and I fucking loved it all. In direct contrast, my hotel (and much of actual New Delhi) was pristine and white and had Apple products in the lobby. I've never felt like more of an imperialist in my life. Walking around was exhausting, actually -- if not for the people trying to sell you something everywhere, then for the innumerable stares I got for being blonde and white and a woman. I escaped into the Delhi Metro, which was super slick and modern, and would have felt like any other major city save for the 'Women Only' cars at the front of each train. It was a major relief, of course, to just be anonymous in a city once again -- and it also was kind of nuts that such cars existed in the first place. I explored some of the quieter, New Delhi British areas, where compounds that now belonged to Vice Presidents were teeming with monkeys just playing around on the trees, gates, and street. I wandered up to India Gate, sort of India's version of the Arc de Triomphe, and immediately was approached by another blonde white American girl, asking me to take her photo. I made a joke asking her if she's sure she didn't want a photo with me, and we chatted for two minutes before she invited me to come with her and her private driver for the day (she was here on business) on to do some sightseeing. It sounded great to me, and even better when the driver had some ice cold water in the car. We saw a couple spots around town before ending up at a restaurant, where I, of course, ate some plain naan. I asked them if they had beer, since it wasn't on the menu, and the waiter gave a sort of nervous smile. "Uh, we do have beer, ma'am, though we are not allowed to sell it, but we do it anyway. Can you give me ten minutes?" Ten minutes later, he came back with two glasses filled with cold Kingfisher beer, covered with napkins so as not to show the contents. Amazing. It was delicious, and really brought out the very complicated and intricate flavors and spices of the plain naan.

Blonde gal's driver dropped me off at a park, where I had aimed to find people playing cricket and immediately succeeded. I managed to get back to the hotel just before sundown (another success), and planned my Golden Triangle tour with a travel guy at the hotel to head to Agra and Jaipur over the next three days. I finally got my iMessages to work once again (say hello, folks!), and, once I announced to my family that I had made it to India, received a text from my brother that said, "If I had to go to India, I wouldn't go to the bathroom the entire trip." The next morning, I woke up stupid early to get to the meeting spot for a Delhi by Cycle tour, as I actually could not believe I hadn't yet done a bike tour on this trip (have I been gone for weeks at this point? months? years? I have no clue). Six of us wove through the insane Delhi streets, starting early "before it gets too crazy," and it was the best possible way to see -- as they say -- 'incredible India.' No one caught as much as an elbow shove, somehow, as we dodged cows and tuk-tuks and other bicycles and pedestrians and chai stands and spice carts and dogs and cats and and and and and everything. There is SO much going on, I could just find a rooftop and stare at it for days on end.

After wandering around New Delhi some more after the ride, and after telling many stories of my husband "who's just around the corner waiting to meet me, here on business," (His name is George, by the way, and he's in the tech industry. We really wanted him to get a job where he got to travel a lot, so that me and the kids could join him. Oh yes, did I tell you I have kids, too? Well, see you later!) I rode in a tuk-tuk back to the hotel, and got to bed early to prep for getting up early again the next day to head to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. But first I watched a Bollywood movie, of course. My driver was a really nice guy, and had been a tourist driver around these parts of India since I was one year old. I watched the crazy scenes of the morning commute from my car window, and then the plains and farms from the new super-highway as we cruised to Agra at 6 a.m. After stopping for some chai, we ended up at the entrance to the road to the Taj Mahal (complete with many cows and the same insane street scenes from Delhi right in front). Unbeknownst to me, I ended up with a guide, who hopped into the car with us and we cruised onwards. I was pretty surprised that there weren't many people lined up outside, and even inside the compound it was relatively tranquil. It was quite the sight when I rounded a corner and peered through the original brown-stone entrance gate, which displayed the bright white Taj Mahal through it. It really is the most beautiful building I've ever seen -- that is not up for debate. It's insanely intricately carved (22 years time was spent on it), and even though I thought that all of the colorful detailing around it was painted onto the marble, it's actually precious gems like rubies and sapphires cut and placed into the marble perfectly, so that the surface is smooth. You think I would have remembered that from the sixth grade project I did where I made a model of the Taj Mahal out of Model Magic(TM) and did a report on it, but my memory was fuzzy on that one. Anyways, another tourist site that was 1000% worth it. That's my vote.

Heading further west, we eventually arrived in Jaipur after listening to Hindu prayer songs and origin story narrations on endless loop in the car. My driver brought me down the block to check out some textiles made by friends of his, and where I walked in expecting a tour guide to show me around, I found four Chileans and two Indian guys sitting around drinking 22 oz. beers. So, of course, we pulled up some chairs and joined them. Turned out that their driver was also a friend or relative of the textile folks, and everyone was just swapping India stories and travels and history and so forth. We stayed there well into the night, me firmly securing a place to stay in Santiago when I eventually make it there, and our hosts ended up ordering some sort of Indian takeout, which one of the guys was adamant about me trying despite me trying to inform him of my allergies. I eventually lied and told him I had already had some, and boy, was it delicious. Good thing he was drunk. The next day, my driver took me around about half the day and half the day I walked around on my own. I saw the Amber Fort and the Pink Palace and all sorts of other Jaipur sights. After getting caught in an elephant traffic jam (yes, an elephant traffic jam), I said something about how that was cool, and suddenly we ended up at a nearby NGO called Elephant Village, where very nice but very intense employees tried to get me to purchase all sorts of "elephant fun packages" for "once in a lifetime experiences." One of the ones that they were really pushing was 'elephant painting' -- paint an elephant! Yes, I understand that back in the day, elephants were painted for special occasions with pretty detailing and such, but literally the photo in the brochure showed a bunch of white girls painting, "HI MOM FROM INDIA" and "YOLO" on the side of an elephant. Lordy, humans are stupid. If they forced me to do that, I was planned on writing, "THIS IS SO WEIRD" and sending it as a postcard to you all. But I managed to escape with only a 5-minute elephant ride ('are you sure you don't want 30 minutes or an hour, ma'am? it is really once in a lifetime'), which was very cool but plenty of time for me and my backside. Back at the homestead, the Chileans and our drivers and textile buddies and myself all wandered back to the textile spot, but went upstairs into the showroom this time. The Chilean guys ordered some custom-made shirts, and I think the textile dudes felt better that the sales part was over, and that they could just drink beer and hang out. One of the guys was cooking some sort of special chicken for us, and after confirming three times with him, I discovered I was actually able to eat it, and it was some of the best chicken I've ever had. We all got rowdy and had an amazing time, sitting on the floor of a textile showroom, eating Indian food and spilling beer on their silk handmade carpets, enjoying the dimming light from outside when the power kept going out. That's a memory that I'll not soon forget.

The next day started casual and slow, with some more solo exploring through a market (my favorite hawker come-on was, "HELLO MISS WOULD YOU LIKE TO SPEND SOME MONEY TODAY?"), and after that we headed back to Delhi. My driver and I, at lunch, were talking about India's roads, and he said, "You really have to be ready for anything to run across at any time," and as soon as we got back in the car, in the next 30 seconds a cow ran across the road, and then a dog, and then a camel. We were laughing so damn hard. "Incredible India," he said, smiling and shaking his head. Heading back into Delhi, and after my driver stopped on the side of the road to feed some monkeys some bananas, we waited in double traffic -- once for rush hour, and once because the Chinese President was visiting the Prime Minister. My driver, at this point knowing my allergies very well, invited me back to his house to eat dinner with him and his family. We climbed to his fourth-floor apartment, which was New York City in size, and I sat and ate a ridiculously delicious meal of EVERYTHING at the table with him, his wife, his son, their neighbor, and their neighbor's daughter. And there was a cricket match on TV. It was too great. Everyone was so ridiculously nice, so interested in what I was doing in both life and in traveling, and by the end of the night the two 17-year-olds were vowing that I would be invited to their respective weddings in 10 years, and that I should get them all plane tickets and visas to mine so that they can come and cook for me and my future husband.

Ah, yes. Phew. That brings us to this morning, where I woke up early yet again to do a different route of the bicycle tour (they have five different routes), I liked it that much. We watched street scenes from more rooftops, climbed through holes in the walls in alleyways with our bikes when we couldn't ride, visited a small temple, drank chai, and again dodged every single possible object or living thing that could possibly be on one roadway at once -- successfully. Following that, I took another walk, showered up, bought some gifts, and wrote you this intense update -- and in a few hours, I'll be heading on a night train towards Shimla in the mountains, which should be like another world, though it's still in India. Until then, folks -- send me more texts and comments, and know that I endlessly appreciate them.

Busan Driving Tour, Tokyo Karaoke, and Beijing Beer

Hey kids,

I've been on even more of a whirlwind than I usually am in the past few days. Currently I'm clean (relatively) and rested from a 12-hour bullet train ride to Guilin, China today, and so while I sip a Tsingtao beer, I thought I'd write up a tidy little update of Busan, Tokyo, and Beijing.

As noted, the boat was quite late, and so while I got to experience an inordinate amount of Canada, I had to sacrifice Korea and Japan a bit. Lucky for me, while I was leaving the ship and being 'fetched' to customs, as the officers called it, and supposed to have gone straight from there to the airport, I was able to accidentally snag a driving tour of Busan by my customs agent on account of having to use a credit card machine back at his office, deep in the heart of the city. He was a 20-something uber-hip, Armani-wearing, Lucky-Strike-smoking, listens-to-Eminem-and-Jay-Z-as-well-as-'Hit-Me-Baby-One-More-Time'-in-the-car kinda guy, and we had a great time chatting about Busan traffic, working at the port, and how much he loathes Psy. At immigration at the airport, I stood by while a stone-faced agent inspected my passport and sought to find the page with the entry stamp into Korea. He flipped open to a page that had a big Machu Picchu stamp on it (I honestly don't remember why the hell we got a souvenir stamp at the site in our actual passports) and audibly gasped as he looked up at me with his mouth open. We both said, "Machu Picchu" at the same time, and he then turned another page, stamped my passport and folded it, and handed it back to me with a small smile. He said, "My dream."

Next up, I hit Tokyo at a hostel in the Asakusa district, complete with a ton of neat alleyways and people riding bicycles while holding clear umbrellas for the three drops of rain coming down. I planned to head out to grab a beer as soon as I got settled, but I found a Dutch gal in my hostel room who was looking to grab some food and then a beer, so I decided to tag along. Due to her not being an adventurous eater and thinking of food as a mere practicality, she was aiming to swing by McDonalds on our way to the bar. "Some people look at me like I'm insane, but for me eating the food isn't the core reason, or even a reason, why I love traveling," she said, and I was comforted in my allergic-to-Asian-cuisine travel lifestyle just because someone finally said that shit out loud. Loads of sake and free expensive sake shots from a crazy bar owner lady -- who took one with us -- later, I settled in for some sleep for my day of walking Tokyo for about 13 hours the next day. And I nailed that shit.

I was loving this -- everyone waits for the green light to cross, no matter if there are no cars anywhere in sight. Everyone.

... and some nonsensical English for good measure.

Also, everyone in Tokyo was insanely good looking and dressed to the nines. Even the skater punks appeared to be wearing $50 T-shirts. I played a game where I tried to find someone looking grubby, and failed until I saw my reflection in a store window. Later in the evening, my Dutch buddy and I were aiming to find some karaoke where we could sing with some local strangers -- which, of course, is a tad hard to come by, seeing as the market is dominated by private box karaoke (shoutout to VOICEBOX). We got a tip from our hostel that on the second floor of a bar in one of the nearby alleys they sometimes do karaoke, and so we ventured in and foresook the happening downstairs bar to head up a creepy, dark staircase to a tiny bar-within-a-bar, where two young Japanese guys were playing darts and one very bubbly bartender was anxious to have more customers. As soon as we said 'karaoke', she immediately got excited and took out a little hand-held computer screen, placed it on the bar, and showed us where the English songs were. With a flatscreen behind her, we could just sit at the bar and drink and sing at the same time. I asked the bartender what her favorite American artists were, and she said Michael Jackson and Madonna. So, with four audience members, I selected the TriSarahTops favorite The Way You Make Me Feel and started 'er up. This bartender was made to work in a karaoke joint, because she immediately got SUPER into it and started dancing. The dart guys played it cool but gave me thumbs up as they were vaguely bopping along to the song, and halfway through an older Japanese man and woman literally walked in mid-dance. One Like A Prayer later and we were all on the dance floor, the dart boys were ordering their own karaoke screen to chime in, and instant friends were made. Right as my Dutch friend was killing it on Just A Girl, a very drunk friend of the bartender (or just a regular drunk, I couldn't tell which) walked in and started celebrating the fact that we were singing karaoke with 87 'WHOOOO's and by grabbing a tambourine and playing it terribly off beat. She worshiped us, and several drinks later appeared to be conferring with both the bartender and the older Japanese couple as to whether or not to ask me something, and with their encouragement, she asked me if I would sing I Will Always Love You. I did -- it was objectively terrible but subjectively the best thing that ever happened to that girl. So inspired was she, as a matter of fact, that she belted out a broken-English Celine Dion and was quite good. When we left that night, she gave 14 hugs and said, "You are Whitney and I am Celine." I said, "No fair -- I'm dead," but I don't think she got it. Following the Tokyo frenzy was Beijing, which was navigating a world of less English and far more don't-get-hit-by-scooters. The subway was a breeze to figure out, thanks to the Western spellings under each name, but the squeezing by the wild crowds was something to get used to. Later in the day I spoke with an ex-pat, and she hit the nail on the head: "I used to live in New York, so I think the hardest thing for me to get used to in China -- after four years of living here -- is still the subway and crowd navigation," she told me. "In New York, there are different rules about who you let through and who you don't, and different choreography for selecting how to move through a crowd and who to push and who to let off. Here, it's all bizarre, and it's really hard to shake your natural urges. Almost everyone I talk to that first moves here says that they almost got into 12 fights in the first few weeks."

After wandering the Hutongs (the alleyways all over the city)(I resisted the urge to tell you they were right up my alley)(dad joke), making friends with an Australian, checking out the Forbidden City and surrounding parks, and getting asked for a photo with my blonde hair & whiteness three times in Tiananmen Square, I hustled back to the hostel to meet up with a Bike & Build friend of a friend for after-dinner drinks. He lives in Beijing, did a trip with a few friends of mine, and had other guests in town that he was entertaining, so they were swinging by to grab me before heading off to a whiskey bar down a nearby Hutong. I spotted him immediately -- as he looked like a Bike & Builder, of course -- and he and I and his two buddies (who he knew from studying abroad) played the 'where are you from' game. This girl he was with said, "New York City area," so of course I said, "Where at?" She said, "Western New Jersey," and I said, "Where at?" She told me that I probably didn't know it -- it was a little place called Union Township. I then confessed that I actually went to Union Township School from half of sixth grade til eighth, and yada yada her fucking brother was in my class. This. Actually. Happened. As if that weren't enough ridiculous excitement for a few days, the next day I climbed along 6K of the Great Wall of Goddamn China with maybe four extra folks besides our group of 10 spotted the entire time. The impossibility of it all is insane to fathom, but even more amazing is how the wall is literally along the absolute peaks of these pointing mountains, so that at times you're rock climbing instead of just 'hiking.' Let's just say I'm still staying in shape for the 100 miles in Death Valley in October.

(selfies have been specifically requested -- so here you go, assholes) Fried chicken, beers with Aussies, and one bullet train later, I'll be back to report from Guilin and the Longji rice terraces shortly. Cheers Salud Prost Kanpai arriba / abajo / al centro / adentro

The Cargo Vessel: Across the Pacific

When I was renting a truck from a neighbor of mine in the last week of Portland, we got to chatting, and I told her the truck was to haul my shit because I was moving away. She got a bit flustered and cried out, "No!", but then we talked for a while, and I told her my dictum of reserving the right to move back if need be. "Damn straight," she said, "because this --" gesturing to the plants and foliage in her insanely green and flowery front yard, glistening in the sunlight, "this does not suck."

Many times on the boat I repeated, "This -- this does not suck," to myself (and then, of course, laughed very hard). This is going to necessarily be a short briefing on the near-two-week journey due to the fact that I'm currently in Tokyo and in an hour have to go show the Japanese, a Dutch gal, and two Canadians how karaoke is done, but here we go.

When I finally boarded in Canada, I was greeted briefly (as promised) by a few of the Filipino crew members and the German Chief Mate and led to my cabin, which was complete with a full bathroom, wardrobe, desk and chair, table, double bed, couch, cabinet with an inordinate amount of liquor glasses in it, mini fridge, and TV/DVD player. Oh, and two portholes, but they were blocked on the outside by containers, of course. I sat out on the deck above me (there was a lower deck, which only overlooked the ocean in the very back of the ship, an upper deck which went all the way around, decks A through G which had varying overlook points, and the bridge, where the officers were most of the time, steering the vessel) and watched the shipyard guys at Vancouver move the containers on the boat, and then just before midnight we set out to sea.

I spent most of my time wandering the decks and watching the waves. Seriously. There really wasn't too much life out there, besides a few other vessels here and there, but I did see dolphins every single day, whales most days, and jellyfish, kelp, and crazy diving seabirds float by often. I also read five books, wrote letters, drank Becks beer with the Captain and San Miguel with the Filipino crew, marveled at all of the grungy containers and ship features, and daydreamed about Portland and New York. When you put it into a list form like that, it doesn't sound like much, but I swear it was the perfect amount of time to live a simple life like that. I could have even added on those days we lost.

Other highlights include: + me standing at my favorite spot on the ship -- the lower deck at the stern -- and have a string of thoughts that culminated in "Gee, I really wish one of those dolphins would come up closer to the ship... or maybe even a wha--" as a fucking gigantic whale surfaces no less than four feet from me, with the blowhole burst scaring the hell out of me, and hovers there for a good six seconds before heading back down. Well, then. Yes, that is what I was looking for, nature. Nice work. + a Saturday night BBQ we had with the full officer team and crew, which drunkenly degenerated into the Filipinos grabbing a guitar and playing -- their choice, mind you -- an endless string of 1990s American pop hits,(such as the Cranberries, Oasis, Eric Clapton) which ended with me taking lead vocals on "What's Up" by Four Non Blondes, because... yes. + learning the intricacies of what happens when piracy occurs (not in the Pacific, thankfully): "So, if you guys are not allowed to have weapons on board, do you do anything to try to fight back or prepare?" "Well -- we throw the fire hoses over the side of the deck so that we can try to spray them off if they climb up, if that's what you mean." + a conversation with the Captain and Chief Mate about what the hell I'm doing: "So you moved from Portland to go where?" "New York City." "Ah, yes -- usually I love New York, but in the port in New Jersey, I HATE this Bayonne Bridge. It is old and short and we are always having to scrape by with less than 15 centimeters between the top of the vessel and the bottom of the bridge. I hate this Bayonne." + Watching the pulling-in to the port of Pusan, South Korea at 4:00 a.m. from the bridge, with German officers, a Filipino steerer (actually inputting the turns as they are commanded), a Korean pilot (who awesomely comes on board via a ladder up the side of the boat a little outside the port, to actually be the one to command the turns to get the boat into his port safely), all speaking together in English (the official marine language, which I assume must be British-Empire influence -- I'll look into it), with me hoving over their shoulders. Ah, the world. Look out for more photos from the ship when I can get them online (and I mean a LOT -- I took a ton), as well as more ship writings and hopefully a video compilation when I actually get back to the U.S. See you next time, kids, likely with a South Korea/Japan/China update.

Home for the next two weeks

Welp. Here we are.

Ah, hello there. Here's this new-fangled blog thing that I'll be using to do the updating thing on my August-through-December frolicking 'round the world. Would you like the story so far? Here we are then: I left Portland, Oregon one week ago, after a stellar going-away party -- featuring a quite cathartic dunk tank in which I spent a good portion of the evening. Each time I think about it, the first scene that plays is myself and my two old roommates alone on the dance floor, with Drake blaring in the background narrating my leaving-Portland panic and healthy life reminder: What am I doing? What am I doing? Oh yeah, that's right, I'm doing me I got two very telling glances and smirks from said roommates. It was only appropriate. The next morning/same morning, after a bleary-eyed brunch, tearful goodbyes, and some last-minute FedExing, I was whisked away to the San Juan Islands by seven dear friends of mine for several days of hammock-camping and debauchery. This included: + an eight-hour boat ride watching lots of porpoises and seals + whale tail sightings from the beach + nearly being eaten by guard dogs + a friend dropping his iPhone in the ocean + another friend sketching Sharpie tattoos on young children (with parental permission) on the ferry + hyperactively excited summer camp host teenagers that said ABSOLUTELY! to any request + owning a bar (again) + sunsetz + beerz + love We parted ways and said goodbye on the bridge over Deception Pass -- and I'm sure there's a metaphor or something poetic and shit in there somewhere, but I can't find it right now. My driver took me to the Mount Vernon Amtrak and shared a final IPA with me, and I headed off to Vancouver, BC. Where I am now. And where I have been for the last few days. The boat is late. But no matter! I've been entertaining the hell out of myself here in America: Lite, and have managed to do a hell of a lot already. I laid out on some rocks on the jetty to watch the sunset. I ate sushi and drank a $10 beer (gotta ease into those NYC prices). I went to a punk show at the Cobalt. I rented a road bike -- which happened to be the same make and model as my own bike, save for the fact that mine has a lady seat (yes, it turned out to be quite important) -- and biked 50ish miles in the mountains and trees and up to a lighthouse. It was a savory, end-of-living-on-the-West-Coast moment. I'm about to pop over to the beach again in a few hours to see if I can spot the good ol' cargo freighter coming into the harbor -- and then I think it'll feel real. Save for a few freaky dreams with whatever is swirling around in my subconscious, I haven't felt the pangs of change just yet. Oh, I'm sure they'll arrive -- I'm just trying to put it off as long as possible, donchaknow. I love all of you fools. Leave me ridiculous comments, please. I'm off to listen to Drake. He is from Canada, after all.

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