Hampi, full of Dravidian Hindu temples scattered among huge boulders, was the capital of the medieval Vijayanagar Kingdom in the middle of India. Abandoned in the middle of the sixteenth-century, Hampi retains most of its grand monuments, temples, palaces,…
How do I tell you about a journey of 56257.084 kilometers? I start with the kindness of strangers I met on the road. Literally. When I traveled alone in India and Indonesia, I hitchhiked. I started when there were no…
So I’m back in Berlin after six months of traveling. I am surprised at how cold I find springtime in Berlin. I’m wearing (fake) fur-lined knee-high boots and long wool coats while real Berliners, the ones who survived the winter,…
Vegetarian Fine Dining As a vegetarian since I was 16, I’ve been mostly disappointed in my fine dining experiences. Of course, most restaurants are willing to accommodate vegetarians, but it is not hard to see that vegetables are not given…
After a week of overnight hiking and car camping in Gippsland and Wilson’s Prom in Eastern Victoria, Australia, I realized that if I want to eat more than muesli bars for breakfast and cheese sandwiches for lunch, I better plan…
On my way from Germany to India, I planned a one-day layover in Abu Dhabi, since I was flying with Etihad Airlines on miles from American Airlines. Planning the layover I debated for a while whether I should book a…
Since I knew that I was traveling for four more months after India, I only bought practical souvenirs in India. Pictured above are some of my goodies on an embroidered silk skirt that was custom-made for me. Clockwise from bottom right…
I had an awesome two months in South India. I will write later about the temples, elephants, and all the other magical things I experienced, tasted, and saw in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, because, frankly, the most pressing thing to…
One of the main reasons I want to visit Java is because it’s the birthplace of tempeh, one of my favorite foods. In Bahasa Indonesian I quite often see it written with the ‘h’ at the end, as ‘tempe.’ Apparently,…
We have six UNESCO modernist housing estates around Berlin. The Tuschkastensiedlung is the most colorful of them all. The name translates to a box of watercolors. In fact, when it was built in the 1920s people protested against it! But…