CJ and Jake Around the World

Last Sunday was Shivaratri, a major Hindu festival dedicated to the lord Shiva. While mainly celebrated at night, the traditions begin early in the morning. Lena and Bishwo explained that every year the young kids use a rope to block roads until they receive a 5 or 10 rupee fee. The revenue is used to purchase candy and also wood to burn for the celebration at night. We watched this unfold time and time again from our vantage point on the farm. Some drivers were more obliging than others. After the day of farming and some rest, the celebration began to unfold. A key part of Shivaratri is burning fires in temples and out in the street. And also apparently smoking weed - it's the one day of the year where smoking marijuana is legal. Lena and Bishwo kindly offered to drive us into Kathmandu to see the activities in full force. By this point our volunteer numbers had grown. I went with (from left to right) Tifen (French), Ewen (French), and Pau (Spanish). With Lena and Bishwo at the he...

As I admired the Himalayas en route to Nepal it occurred to me how little I knew about what the next month had in store for me. The plan is to volunteer on a small organic farm for at least a month. I will be staying at a hostel run by the same people who operate the farm. Beyond that, the rest was a mystery. I landed in Kathmandu excited and nervous. I was immediately thrown back into the absurdity and chaos of South Asia when my taxi served as a hop on and off shuttle for not one or two, but three different people throughout the journey. Welcome to Kathmandu. I took an hour long taxi from Kathmandu to the neighboring city of Bhaktapur, my home for the next month. There were a lot of unknowns as I entered the hostel. One major unknown was solved quickly. Fast WiFi? Check. This was huge for the program. I'm staying at the Swastik Hostel, run by Bishwo, a Nepali native, and Lena, his New Zealander business partner of four years. They took me out to dinner for the first night along w...

Jake once described my travels as a three act show. The first act was traveling with him. The second act was my various solo and joint escapades (shoutout Sophie, Grace, Julia, Will, and Derek). The third act is farming in Nepal. Three months after Jake left and concluded Act I, I found myself rolling into Wuhan (yes, that Wuhan) for the last dance of Act II. I could feel myself getting progressively sicker (ironic, I know) as the 13 hour journey went on. The train from Harbin covered some 1,500 miles of track. For my American readers, that is roughly the same distance as Hanover, NH to Miami, FL. I love China. I was a bit delirious by the end. Who could have guessed that a global pandemic started in this city? I slept in until 1pm on my first day to try to recover from my post-Harbin syndrome. I opened up the day of eating with these fantastic pan fried soup pork buns. I wandered down the pedestrian street near my hotel. I was quickly approached by a young Chinese man named Fei (unsu...