New Zealand

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Im in New Zealand! I arrived in Auckland and under suggestion of a friend, I take a plane from North Island to Christchurch in South Island. From there I take a local bus across island through the "Lord of the Rings" territory to beautiful Queenstown in an eight hour drive. The snowy mountains are everywhere as far as the eye can see and just begging me to be climbed. I concede and climb one the next day, overlooking the lake, under the hot sun, I walk the epic landscape.

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Queenstown is famous for its "extreem" sporting activities. From this beautifly scenic location, you can choose between bunjee jumping, paragliding, trekking, Kayaking, Frisby Golfing, mountain biking...pretty much everything Extreme Sporty people do. Yes, I consider frolfing an extreem sport.

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New Zealand has a feeling of epic scale even though its such a small country. It sports glacial mountains and lakes of incredible beauty in the south island, jungle tropical weather in the north. Days spent hiking and exploring, nights spent drinking and playing Ausies at pool. This was a pretty good time. This is a place I can see myself moving to.

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For the second time, I run out of time before I can correctly experience the county Im in. I pack my bags and hop on the plane to California. New Zealand marks the end of my trip and Im completely in denial about going home. I had so many plans and so much I wanted to do once I got home, but last week I hesitantly agreed to a movie job that begins next week in LA, so that's it. No big last hurrah. No day to relax. Nope. Just fall right back into work ..lame..Six more months, and Im ready for the next trip. I got the fever

India

As I arrived in New Delhi, India, I was immediatly blown away by the oranized madness in front of me. The sheer number of people in this country is so overwhelming. With the Streets alive with Riksaws, cows, and Indians shouting and scurrying every which way, It felt like i was walking around in the middle of an antfarm. Without a destination, I walked the crowded streets, took the local bus, and just tried to adjust to this new place- so different from everywhere else I've been. After a day of maddnes spent in New Delhi, I hopped the train to Agra.

As the train crossed the indian country side, one thing that struck me was the conditions that Indias poor endure. Seeing children, so young, sifting through mountains of trash. Seeing shells of homes made of just two or three walls. Starving families. Everywhere along the country side, was an view of someones life that put my own in a new perspective. We in America have it so easy ...hell, the homeless in America have it so easy! This trip, Ive been witnessing the poor in countries all over the world - so far India is the worst Ive seen, and from what Ive read, the gap between the the rich and poor growing without an end in sight.

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After arriving in Agra, I followed the line of tourists to see the fammed Taj Mahal. At dawn, it was was an awesome sight. I took photos. I went inside. Walked the perimeter. After a few hours, I got sick of looking at it, and took off. Fiending some America, I ate lunch at a round Table, then Hopped the night train to Varanasi.

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As one of the countrys holiest cities, Varanasi had an amazing vibe. Sitting on the steps of the Famed Ganges River, the place where families travel for hundreds of miles to burn their dead and wash themselves in the holy waters. In the mornings, I could hear the chants from the ghats and an errie fog covered the city.

The following day was the Festival known as Holi. A festival where everyone akes to the streets and douses eachother with colored water and powdered pigment. Within fiteen minutes of waking up, My face, hair, and clothing was yellow, pink, green and blue. Kids from rooftops pooring buckets of pink water on the people below. Dogs and cows dyed orane and blue. It was a big huge color fight. The other travelers I was with, as well as myself, looked like little rainbow children of the sixties laughing and hanging out on the roof of our hotel. It was an awesome day.

The next two days were spent terribly sick and just laying in my hotel bed reading. Some food or water I ingested was to blame no doubt, and it was completly expected. After dozens of warnings of unaviodable poisoning from other travelers, It was my time.

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Unfortunatly, I had to cut out darjeeling, bollywood, and Goa because of time. Depressingly, India was but a stopover. And to really get a good taste of this gigantic culturally rich (as well as mentally exhausting) country, one would need to spend a month- minimum.

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Peace out India, I'll be back soon-

The Nepali Himalaya

From the day I booked my round the world trip, there was one place that I was lookiong forward to most. That place was Nepal. The life long dream to trek in the Himalayas in the foothills of Everest. In the past two weeks, I made that dream come true, and it was the best two weeks of my trip without a doubt.

I began in Katmandu, and took the local bus to Pokahara. It was from this small town, that I begain the trek. Mountain after mountain, day after day, I climbed through the Himalayan range with my sherpa porters and guide. In the evenings, I slept in little tea hut farming villages hanging on the mountain cliff edges with beautiful farmed terraced mountain sides. Showers meant a bucket of boiled water, and toilets were simply holes in the ground. For dinner, I ate dal Baht- the traditional Himalayan meal of lentels, vegies, potatoes and rice - sometimes with a spoon, sometimes scooping the bowl with my bare hands like the sherpas. For two weeks, the 6am wake up rutine meant putting on my hiking boots and gators, coffee, brushing the teath, and then a full day of upward mountain momentum. Old rickity wooden bridges with holes of missing wooden planks, locals with huge man sized baskets of transported goods on their backs, and stairs- Thousands and thousands of rock carved stairs. About a week in I finally left the tree line and hit the snow.

As I walked up and through the glacier carved valleys, the views were so stunning that at times it didn't seem real. Straight out of Lord of the Rings. Waterfalls. Iceflows. Avelanches. On one day, in a matter of minutes, the mist moved in but left a framed little window of blue sky and mountain. It was one of the must amazing things Ive ever seen. Another day, I woke up early, and climbed a nearby mountain to watch the sunrise over the entire Anapurna Range. The peaks of the mountains lit up with an amazing redish-orange glow that slowly moved down the mountain as the sun rose up into the crisp clear morning air.

The Final destination of the trek was a place called Anapurna Base Camp, 15 thousand foot elevation, and fifty miles deep into the range. Surrounded by snowy capped mountains, and a huge glacier flow to the north at the bottom a a 2000 foot cliff, it was here, that we celebrated our accomplishment with a snowball fight- Sherpas vs Americans - Laughing and fallng over in the snow, It was an awesom day. Nepal is dope.