Usually, I'd describe train travel in India as "efficient", "cheap", and "culturally immersive", but every once in a while, the experience is better described as "crowded", "convoluted", and…
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Asia
- Ha Giang has something in common with most truly awesome places; it is just hard enough to get to that it has withstood the ravages of time. Adventurers go trekking in Sapa in pursuit of…
- To describe ourselves in Tokyo as “kids in a candy store” would be cheap writing. It was equally overwhelming, certainly surreal, and we binged on all of our…
Hanoi, Vietnam. Hanoi-ing, I once heard it called. I came with an unmannerly expectation it would be one of those "no thanks, I'm just passing through" kinds of…
With influences from Southeast Asia, neighboring China, and faraway France, Northern Vietnam's cuisine COULD have become a haphazard mix of influences, none of them cohesive, and…
What could possibly be so spectacular about some rocks that prodigious authors only tell of them as supernatural, and influential leaders can’t so much as describe them?
![🌵 The Grandest Canyon 🌵 USA (2019) I was fully prepared to dislike The Grand Canyon. Of course, I’m not talking about the canyon itself. I more expected to be disappointed with what humans had built around something natural. Wild. Immense. After seeing the crowds at Machu Picchu or oversold hoards at Angkor Wat, I was skeptical that we’d be able to avoid the crowds. How would the US choose to cash in on it’s second most visited National Park?But I’ll come right out with it: my skepticism about the Grand Canyon was overplayed. It’s not the deepest, nor the longest, nor the widest canyon in the world. Yet I still came away believing that it IS the grandest. It’s the greatest masterpiece of the Colorado River, some 5 million years in the making. Walls of worn sandstone, shale, and limestone create a gradient of colors that drop down from the canyon’s rim. 446 km (29 km across at it’s widest point) is a big area to get lost in. All it takes is a walk below the rim or a detour off the shuttle route to have the world’s grandest canyon [mostly] to yourself.](http://scontent-ort2-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/c08e7e39dfb215fb66170abba016d952/5DE2E746/t51.2885-15/e35/s320x320/64586682_2340296216243565_2620258413058736904_n.jpg?_nc_ht=scontent-ort2-1.cdninstagram.com "🌵 The Grandest Canyon 🌵 USA (2019) I was fully prepared to dislike The Grand Canyon. Of course, I’m not talking about the canyon itself. I more expected to be disappointed with what humans had built around something natural. Wild. Immense. After seeing the crowds at Machu Picchu or oversold hoards at Angkor Wat, I was skeptical that we’d be able to avoid the crowds. How would the US choose to cash in on it’s second most visited National Park?But I’ll come right out with it: my skepticism about the Grand Canyon was overplayed. It’s not the deepest, nor the longest, nor the widest canyon in the world. Yet I still came away believing that it IS the grandest. It’s the greatest masterpiece of the Colorado River, some 5 million years in the making. Walls of worn sandstone, shale, and limestone create a gradient of colors that drop down from the canyon’s rim. 446 km (29 km across at it’s widest point) is a big area to get lost in. All it takes is a walk below the rim or a detour off the shuttle route to have the world’s grandest canyon [mostly] to yourself.")
