The trip from Amman to Jerusalem involved a land-border crossing. It was the third one of the trip and they are never quite as easy as entering the country through an airport. The two cities are only 50 miles apart, but the whole process took us almost eight hours; it involved three buses and four different taxis. Part of the problem was access to cash at the Israeli border station. We traded in the last of our Jordanian Dinars at the only currency exchange place available, which took an outrageous …

An old capital of Egypt, the ancient city of Thebes is our next stop. These days the city is known by its Arabic name, Luxor, but it still holds some amazing ancient ruins. The 300 mile journey from Cairo gave us another chance to take an overnight train. This time we even had a dining car, but the outrageously priced cup of Nescafe kept us from getting too excited. The train arrived early in the morning, we found a hotel, and set out to see some temples right away.
The …

Our tour of Rajasthan ended, and we arrived back in Delhi just in time to see crowds of Hindus starting an annual pilgrimage. They were mostly dressed in orange and each carried two small jugs of water which will be deposited at a temple 200 kilometers away. The other major activity in town is construction. They are getting ready for the Commonwealth Games in October and have a lot of streets to fix, hotels to upgrade, subway lines to build, and various other infrastructure projects. There is much speculation, and …

Although Rajasthan is not home to the Taj Mahal, it does contain the Pink City, the Blue City, and numerous palaces and temples. We opted for a ten day private car tour of the area. Fittingly our driver’s name was Raj!
The first stop was Agra. We didn’t head to the main attraction right away but instead went to Agra Fort. From the outside it looked like we’d be there all day, it is massive. However, once inside we learned that it is still used by the military so we …

Chiang Mai is Thailand’s second largest city and we headed straight for it from Hong Kong. The flight to Bangkok served the best airplane food we’ve ever had, no joke. They also had quite the selection on board for Muslims, Hindus, Vegans, you name it, impressive Thai Airways!
The first night out we encountered the Thai tri-fecta. One – Friendly people. Despite not exactly knowing where he was going our cab driver got us to our destination, charged us less for getting lost and then walked us to the door of …

With one week left in China, we had several places we still wanted to see. It seems that everywhere we look there is a city here with more than a million people, and we still wanted to find something a bit quieter. We decided to go west from Xi’an to higher, and cooler, ground. This is the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, and we thought we’d find something different here out. It took another overnight train to get to Xining, another place home to over a million.
We had hoped …

After the commotion of Beijing, we were looking forward to spending a few days somewhere quieter. A sacred mountain and the home town of Confucius were on the way to Shanghai and that sounded like the perfect stop. The town of Tai’an still had plenty of energy and the mountain is a pilgrimage for Chinese people so we didn’t really find the peaceful spot we were looking for. We did get to climb up about 7,000 steps, so it was still a productive day.
We arrived on the bullet train from …

Mike’s birthday, we easily memorized our first full day in China months ago. Without a lot of research and given the convenience from our hostel, we hit up some of the most well known attractions on the first day out. We visited Tiananmen Square and the final resting place of Chairman Mao. Interesting that he is covered with red blanket with the Soviet hammer and sickle. Most of our afternoon was spent inside the Forbidden City. We quickly learned that everything is set up along the cardinal directions, with north …

Even though we were outside of climbing season, we decided to spend a few days in one of the small towns at the base of Fuji-San (Mt Fuji). Kawaguchiko is a small town next to a lake, so we decided to relax and see what we could see before heading back Tokyo. We didn’t have very good luck with the weather and didn’t even get to see the mountain, which was shrouded in fog the entire time we were there. We did get a chance to walk around the lake, …

After spending a week in two big, modern cities, we went to see some of the history of Japan. To do that, we went to another huge city, but this one was different. Kyoto is one of the only major cities to have been spared massive damage during the war; it was also the capital of Japan for about a thousand years. This means the city has an enormous number of old, in tact, and very impressive buildings. The amount of temples and shrines is overwhelming.
Speaking of very old …