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The deliciously slow-paced months of low-key exploration and relaxation following last year’s intensive trekking season in Nepal will forever stick out in my mind as one of the most joyous and peaceful periods of my current hobo-sapien lifestyle. Since officially beginning my travel-binge in the fall of 2011, I have had one major objective in mind: explore as much back-country trail as possible. When I first left home, I had just wrapped up a month-long course in wilderness survival and felt ready to stretch this period of freedom and avoidance of responsibility as long as possible by steering clear of the high cost of luxuries and comforts in 
towns and cities (and by the end of my stay in the States I was pretty damn sick of city-life). Nature was primarily my way of getting to know the countries I visited. I also was reluctant to idly loiter around any tourist hot-spot too long because I felt like it was unproductive, but after a few months of some of the most intensive high-altitude, rough-going conditions I have ever faced, I was finally prepared for backpackistan. I let go of my preconceived judgments of the average traveler’s routine and dove in head-first. Months of beach-combing, taste-testing, booze-indulgence, ranting, sight-seeing, and above all, connecting with incredible human-beings gave me more joy than I ever could have imagined. My extended vaction-holiday from my long-term travels gave me the opportunity to just go with the flow and enjoy the vast variety of characters and settings that surrounded me on any given day. After almost two unforgettable months in south India, Lucas and I headed across the ocean to spend one month in the Andaman Islands and another in Sri Lanka. There are many stories to tell of all of these wonderful places, but frankly I was too much in the moment during these euphoric months to even bother writing. Maybe I’ll catch up in the future…. Eventually, I remembered my true reason (or excuse) for lurking around the Indian subcontinent and had to jet back to Delhi and transition back into my old ways. I had a seat in the Advanced Mountaineering Course at the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering based out of Uttarakashi, Uttarakhand. The start date was April 23rd. It was time to be a mountain-man again. (more…)
Beyond the Concrete 