I am now sitting in my filthy hotel room in the backpacker area of Paharganj in Delhi trying to reflect on my time in India before my flight to Indonesia. It is hard not to be affected by the heat and humidity of the room as well as the stains on the walls and yelling both from the halls and the narrow streets. However, when I consider my time here along with the experience that I am having now, then I feel that it is actually perfect because India is a place tha...

We arrived in Srinagar very tired from our twenty-four hour journey through the Himalayas that included several hours in a bus and then a short stop in the military town of Kargil in order to switch to a jeep and continue on through the night. However, our fantastic Belgian friend, Geoffrey, was full of energy, so we followed him around for hours looking for an affordable and nice houseboat in which to stay. The house boats are more similar to wooden barges all ...

We left Dharamsala at night on a long and winding bus ride through the mountains in order to reach Manali to the East. Manali is a beautiful, small mountain town nestled in a valley with a strong river passing through, which makes it a fantastic destination for snow skiing but also white water rafting. We only spent a few days in Manali on our way to another Himalayan region called Ladakh, but we had an exhilarating time braving the cold glacier rivers for ra...

After an enjoyable but hair-raising ride through the Indian countryside on a local bus, we finally arrived to Dharamsala at the base of the Himalayan Mountain Range. This town claims to be the home of the Dalai Lama, but his actual home and government in exile is just a few kilometers up the mountain in a town called McLeod Ganj. We decided to stay in McLeod Ganj along with a host of other tourists, but it was wonderful since it was at a high altitude and out of ...

Upon arriving to Amritsar, we were told that we could not leave without seeing the "famed" changing of the guards at the India/ Pakistan border at Attari. Now, my impression of this event was that it was going to be a strict and stiff stand-off between the two rival nations and possibly a show of military arms. Luckily, I read a short paragraph about it in the Lonely Planet and knew a little bit more of what to expect, which was definitely not anything ...