More images from Burma and the temples around the city of Mandalay.

An impromptu English lesson with tourism students

Related posts:

Photo Friday: Love is in the air in Mandalay
Images from Burma: life on wheels
Photo Friday…new friends at Shwedagon Pagoda

When I was saving for my trip around the world, I didn’t get out much, so I’ve been pretty excited to be back in Sydney right in time for festival season (despite the appalling weather).

Chinese New Year celebrations in Sydney are some of the largest in the world outside Asia, and culminate in a parade that wends its way south from the Sydney town hall to Chinatown. After a bargain Korean BBQ dinner, some friends and I muscled our way into a viewing point along the route on George St for an explosion of light and sound from across Asia.

Related posts:

Dealing with re-entry
A very farm new year

Images of life on the dusty (and largely unpaved) roads of Myanmar.

It takes a long time to get anywhere in Burma. The roads are in terrible condition and the buses not much better. It can take 12 hours to travel 300 kilometres and most buses travel by night. Breakdowns and long waits are common.

Getting around on foot – or by bicycle! – is even slower, but much less stressful.

Alicia and I took to two wheels to explore the temples of Bagan…

…but I never quite got the hang of it.

(Credit where credit is due: many of these images were taken by Alicia, flatmate/travelling companion and general partner in crime.)

Related posts:

My Burmese daze
Images from Burma: The temples of Mandalay
Photo Friday…new friends at Shwedagon Pagoda

There is so much that I regret about my brief time in Burma.

I travelled through the country for two weeks at the beginning of 2011, at the very end of the first part of my round the world trip.  But I barely scratched the surface. My good friend Alicia had come all the way to Sydney met me in Bangkok just in time for us to board an Air Asia flight to Rangoon and I felt horribly guilty that she’d travelled so far and I was being, let’s face it, a horrible travel companion.

Our itinerary I left completely up to Alicia. I did no research about the country and spent most of the time there moping and wondering when the government in Myanmar was going to turn the internet back on – I was on the cusp of heartbreak and desperately wanted to be able to log in to Gmail and – sigh – Facebook.

I was tired. I was sick constantly and so done with being dirty and smelly all the time. I was nine months in to my round the world trip and – gasp! – bored of travelling. And poor Myanmar copped the brunt of my listlessness.

It is an incredible place to travel to. In February 2011 there were barely any other foreigners in the country and those that were were French or German. The temples were amazing, the people never stopped smiling. The dictatorship was a constant, invisible presence and changing money felt like participating in a drug deal.

But I didn’t do the country justice and I was numb to most of it. It takes 12 hours to travel 300 kilometres in Burma and so poor planning meant that we only had time to visit Rangoon, Mandalay and Bagan before making it back to the airport in time for Alicia’s flight to Bangkok and onwards to, of all places, the faraway Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan.

So because Asia is on my mind lately, over the next couple of weeks I’m going to be posting some of the photos I took in Burma, those that I’m rediscovering now I’m back in Sydney and have a year of distance from the way I felt last February.

Don’t worry. I will write more about Peru. And Bolivia. And Argentina. And maybe even what it’s like to be home. And where I’m going next.

Related posts:

Photo Friday…new friends at Shwedagon Pagoda
Photo Friday: Love is in the air in Mandalay
Images from Burma: life on wheels

My flatmate and BFF (you might remember her from such posts as Lost in a high place) is all loved up with a cotton farmer. So the day before New Year’s Eve, we got in the car and made the seven hour drive north west from Sydney to his farm.

Naturally, being Sydney girls, as soon as we turned off the highway we got the car bogged. 

And had to abandon ship.

But we were only two kilometres from the homestead, so pretty soon we were flat out preparing for our extremely busy New Year’s…

Naturally, we took some time out to rescue the car.

And more friends showed up.

And then we ate.

And ate.

And some of us made pasta.

So naturally we had to eat some more.

Before our farm tour.

And did I mention we made sangria? And missed the New Year’s countdown because we were watching Sex and the City?

And on the way home we had McDonalds. Because that’s just what you do when you drive for eight hours after a long weekend of eating.  

How was your new year?

Related posts:

Enter the dragon
Dealing with re-entry

From almost the moment I crossed the border and wound up in the seaside town of Mancora on the country’s north coast, Peru was my favourite Latin American country so far (at least until I arrived in Bolivia a month later).

The Pan American highway runs right through Mancora.

Trucks steam through town and throw up clouds of desert dust and grit. No one seems to mind, though and it’s Southeast Asian style chill, a place for long lazy breakfasts and lying in the sun.

…and eating a lot of chocolate brownies.

An overnight trip on a surprisingly comfortable Cruz del Sur bus later and I was in the dreary, overly concreted town of Huanchaco.

The rain was misty and constant – it could have been Britain, and it could have been the Irish sea.

Not that I felt it was a waste of time. After all, it was where I cemented my love affair with Inca Kola:

and for the humble alfajor, shortbread cakes filled with dulce de leche.

In Lima, I wondered what all the fuss was about. 

It didn’t seem particularly unsafe to me. I even managed to conquer part of the bus system.

But to be fair I spent my four days safely ensconced in the wealthy barrios of Miraflores and Barranco.

And I finally tried ceviche.

Lima is surrounded by shanty towns. Hugely dense at first they slowly begin to give way to desert. The cost of water in these places is several times that of water in Miraflores.

The Nazca lines were underwhelming.

Then, high into the Andes.

Arequipa was bright, crisp and busy. 

The road to Colca Canyon soared above 5,000 metres, the highest I’d been since Tibet.

The bus crossed high passes and vicunas roamed the altiplano.

And the Quechua women selling trinkets reminded me of other traders I’d met on high roads continents away.

Fully acclimatized to life 3,500 metres above sea level, no time amount of time in Cuzco was long enough.

For shopping, for eating, for people watching. For putting off thoughts of the Inca trail I’d signed up to complete.

But I made it in the end.  

And then it was time to climb higher, Puno, to Lake Titicaca.

And onwards to Bolivia. 

No related posts.

‘So has it changed you? Travelling for so long?’

I was at the bus station in sky-high Potosi, Bolivia. It was about a month before I was due to return to Australia. A fellow traveller, who I’d just met in the taxi to the bus station, and I, were waiting in line to purchase snacks for the journey to nearby Sucre. And she was the first person to ask me the question I’d spent several weeks mulling over myself.

How had a year and a half of travel changed me?

The answer is: I’m not too sure.

I know what new skills I’ve developed. I know that it’s propelled me forward in life and given me opportunities I would never had otherwise. But have I experienced some kind of intrinsic shift in the direction of my life or the way I live it?

Over the last eighteen months there are most definitely several standout moments. Moments where I experienced something - where something in me clicked, shifted, turned over.

When I first left Sydney in May 2010 and I spent my flight to Los Angeles struggling to fathom what I’d just done.

At the train station in Beijing, getting ready to board the train to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, the one place I’d been dreaming of visiting for so long.

The three emotionally and physically shattering days I spent on the Kailash kora in Tibet.

The evening of the day I crossed Dead Woman’s Pass on the Inca Trail in Peru.

But what is it that’s changed? 

I take better photographs. I can pack my backpack in three minutes flat. I drink tea instead of coffee. And green vegetables no longer terrify me but strange dogs do.

I’m more adaptable. New and potentially stressful situations don’t bother me so much anymore. I’m more resourceful and independent. I’m more tolerant of difference.

And, perhaps most importantly, my restlessness has…well, been given a rest. 

For a good five or six years before I left, travel consumed me. I thought about it, read about it, worked in the industry and hopped on a plane as often as my job and my bank balance would allow. I spent most of my evenings and weekends researching my eventual Epic Adventure.

By the time I arrived in Buenos Aires this October, I knew that I was ready to go home. I felt done.

I was ready for a break from travelling long term. I was beginning to crave routine and consistency. I no longer had a fiercely burning desire to stay away from Australia. I’ve been home in Sydney for a month now. I’m living with my best friend in a place we’ve christened the PP (Party Pad) and I have my own kitchen. I have a wardrobe full of pretty things. I see my friends and family frequently.

And I haven’t worn my hiking boots in weeks. 

And it feels pretty damn good.

So am I finished with travel?

Not by a long shot. It will always be a priority for me and I’m already thinking about next year’s short trips. I’ll give you a hint…the destination features in my brand new header image.

And what about long-term travel?

It’s in my not-so-distant future. I guarantee it.

Related posts:

Dealing with re-entry
The people you meet: Xela, Guatemala
A year-long adventure

Hola!

No, I am not lost in the Andes and nor have I found myself in hospital in a fourth country after having been mauled by a savage pack of South American stray dogs (though not for a lack of trying on their part).

Nope, I’m in Sydney, doing my best to settle into life without a backpack and wondering how on earth I’m ever going to manage to do justice on this blog to the experiences of the last few months.

There is still so much I have to tell you about Peru, about Bolivia and about how freaking expensive Argentina was.

But while I procrastinate, head to Flickr and check out some images from my four days in a 4WD through the otherworldly landscapes of Bolivia. 

Related posts:

An update from Bolivia
2011 Travel Plans
Has travel changed me?

My career as an adrenaline junkie began as a 3 year old, when I threw myself off a living room cabinet at least twice as high as I was.

It ended in a late night doctor’s surgery, my mother holding my head down while the doctor stitched up the back of my head. 

I’d like to say I’ve become more fearful as I’ve gotten older, but the truth is that apart from that one time, I’ve never been a risk taker. At theme parks, I chose the carousel while everyone else was on the roller coaster.

On a work trip to New Zealand, birthplace of the bungy jump, I turned down all-expenses-paid sky dives, opting instead to watch those more ballsy than me throw themselves off a bridge and into a gorge outside Queenstown.

A few months later, I swam with dolphins off the coast of Western Australia and went hot air ballooning over Cairns – not because I’d chosen to but because it was work and I was being paid to do it. (To qualify: the dolphin swimming was incredible. The hot air ballooning? Meh.)

When you travel to Costa Rica, there are certain questions other travellers ask you:

Have you been ziplining? What was whitewater rafting like? Are you going to do a bungy jump? 

My answers to those questions would usually be: no. I don’t know. And no freaking way. I am more than happy to watch my friends participate in potentially deadly activities. But me? Participate? I don’t think so.

But then I met someone. A fellow Australian, she felt the same way I did about adrenaline activities.

But on her trip to Central America she had decided that she wouldn’t be (in her words) ‘the one left holding the bags’ while her companions were off having fun.  

And hadn’t I resolved (as well as taking more photographs) to say YES as much as possible on this leg of my trip RTW, even when I really want to say no?

And so on a drizzling Monteverde morning in the cloud forest of Costa Rica, I got kitted up with cables and carabiners that were apparently going to stop me from plummeting from the zip lines stretched above the canopy to my death.

The guy behind me in this incredibly flattering portrait was one of the guides.

He also ended up being my ‘taxi’ when I decided that the panic I felt on the first couple of wires would probably result in either my braking arm being wrenched off or, even worse, my braking arm stopping myself completely in the middle of an 800m long cable, where I would turn in useless circles on the wire, stuck above a small (though admittedly picturesque) valley.

So yes, in Costa Rica I went ziplining. Even if I did do it the cheat’s way.

But I said yes when I really wanted to say no. I lived to tell the tale. And do you know what?

I actually had fun.

And for once, it wasn’t me holding the bags and looking up at my friends, shouting encouragement from the safest of vantage points.

At least until we got to the Tarzan swing. Because? I am not insane. Unlike other travel bloggers I know!

Related posts:

2011 Travel Plans
A rollicking ride to Roatan
Lessons I learned hiking with Quetzaltrekkers: Part 1

So here I am in La Paz, Bolivia after nearly a month in Peru, enjoying the sunshine and wondering why it is that I’m feeling so breathless here, despite having spent the last several weeks at not much lower altitudes.

I’m nearing the end of my travels through Latin America and still have so much to tell you, like…

…conquering (sort of) my fear of heights in Costa Rica

…the epic night bus to Panama City

…clambering backwards up walls in the Ecuadorian Amazon

…becoming obsessed with Peruvian cuisine and the perfect chocolate brownie

…being taken to hospital in a Peruvian ambulance

…and conquering (most definitely) the Inca Trail to Machu Pichu. 

And that’s just for starters.

So stay tuned, and sign up to the RSS feed, if you haven’t already.

Related posts:

The otherworldly landscapes of Bolivia
Fifteen London
Getting Lost in Damascus