Blog

We were probably 15 years old when my childhood friend, Mike, told me, “I’m going to make the world’s largest magic square.” What’s a magic square, you ask? It’s essentially a grid filled with numbers, where the sums of the numbers in each row, each column, and both main diagonals are all the same. If […]

You don’t see many elephants in the San Francisco suburbs where I grew up. A few stray cats – sure. But massive animals that can stomp on an SUV? – not so much. I suppose this is one of the reasons I relish traveling in developing countries; the exotic animals that I can only see […]

I think you get the idea that I love ruins (Wow Places #7, #9, #23, #29, #39, #57, #82, #96, #144). Most of the time, the site of the ruins is isolated somewhere outside of town. In other words, you have to make an effort to go out and see them. The Roman Forum is […]

My wife, Donica, and I are BIG fans of Bollywood movies. The more singing, dancing and colorful saris, the better. Imagine our surprise, then, when we went to Mumbai for a wedding a few years back and didn’t discover the Bollywood-style colors and music we were expecting. To our disappointment, Mumbai was, in fact, a […]

As I walk down the rocky path toward the remains of the Library of Celsus, an impressive, two-story building façade of crumbling stone columns and pediments, I can almost imagine what life must have been like here in ancient Ephesus. Built in 125 AD, the library was funded by a Greek, Tiberius Julius Caesar Polemaenus, […]

Like all kids, I used to hate long family car rides. Anything over 2 hours was sheer torture for me, especially as this was pre-Internet and I couldn’t just plug into a game or movie to distract myself. No, we had to talk or, if conversation failed, play games. I particularly liked car bingo, played […]

When thinking about river trips, I hearken back to the rafting trip I once did on the American River near Sacramento, CA. This was a rollicking, high-speed adventure with rocky rapids threatening to toss you out of the raft at any time into the cold, roiling water. The fact that one of the rapids was […]

Religious statues confuse me. When you pray in front of a statue of your god, are you asking the statue, itself, to bless you, or the god that the statue represents? Some religions, of course, don’t even have artistic representations of their gods. And then there’s Buddhism, a “religion” based on the teachings of a […]

In days of yore, it wouldn’t be uncommon for someone to say to you, “Top of the morning!” In India, by contrast, at some point you might just experience a “Top of the bus” morning. Here’s how it happens to me. Arriving at the bus station in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, I’m disappointed to learn that there […]

Everyone has their pilgrimage. For some, it’s going to Graceland to see the home of Elvis Presley. For others, it’s stopping by Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris to view the burial place of Jim Morrison. For me, it’s Sarnath, India, the site of the Gautama Buddha’s first sermon after attaining enlightenment. Just a few clicks […]