Inanma prefers the farmer. I don’t know why. The signage doesn’t say, and I can’t read cuneiform. I’m at the Museum of the Ancient Orient in Istanbul looking at a small collection of Sumerian literature: about a dozen clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform (which means “wedge-shaped”). They are from various sites in Mesopotamia, or modern [...]

“Everyone keeps saying about us, “Oh, look at the foreign journalists,” Sercin tells me gleefully as we squeeze between the flapping Turkish flags and yet another portrait of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, revered founder of the country. This one is behind glass in a wooden frame, as if it had been hastily dehooked from the living [...]

As the sheer amount of everythingness has nearly become too much for me to get my back under, the elastic waist around where I am and what’s reflected on the site has gotten irreversibly stretched. (Jesus, what a tortured double metaphor.) That is to say, I’m waaaay behind. I’m in London and still haven’t posted [...]

It’s Vishnu’s birthday, and I’ve gotten him nothing. I peer over the wall separating the hotel from the Krishna temple. It’s 6:30 am on the morning of the Vishu, a religious festival unique to Kerala. Anub tells me the queue is already a couple of hours old. It looks it; hundreds of people coil through [...]

Shots from the Chiang Mai Zoo* in northern Thailand—especially for Zoe! Giraffe feeding*. Drying off. Sweetness. Where are the munchies?* Tadpoles in the murk. The zoo’s prudish star attraction has lunch. * Only read this if you’re prepared to have your cute-animal high given a severe downer (so perhaps no Zoe eyes). Chiang Mai Zoo [...]

People in places. ****** Guides young and old atop Gulmarg. A sleighride, over even ground, at the mountain base. A man sitting in Jamia Masjid in Srinagar. Undercover in the central courtyard of Jamia Masjid. At the Shah Hamdan mosque, the faithful swarm a woman bringing rice blessed by the imam. At Shah Hamdan mosque, [...]

Each restaurant along the cliff of Varkala has a table set up to display the catch of the day, which they hose down periodically to keep them glistening. Who knows when they were phoned in. At Kerala Bamboo House, a waiter with gloriously glossy and wavy hair (exactly like Steve’s but black instead of blond) [...]

The most excellent thing about the beach is that you are allowed—required, even—to have no greater ambition than to exist as a sunning mammal, and to attend to the needs of that body. You must regulate your physical state, and that’s about it. Too hot, swim. Too wet, dry. Too relaxed, sleep. Too hungry, eat. [...]

For the hike near Sonamarg, I gained two companions: Monika and Susanna. They were two Polish women just beginning a month’s tour of northern India. It turned out they had a similiar story to mine: wander into a supposed “government agency” near Connaught Place in Delhi to find a map/train information/objective advice, get thrown out [...]

An Arm-Wrestling Tournament at a Bar in Kunming, Yunnan, China on Chinese New Year Getting a Foot Massage in Chiang Mai, Thailand, on a Sunday Afternoon The Rockin’ Scene in a Cliffside Restaurant in Varkala, Kerala, India Eating Street Pineapple in Kunming Terrified on the Low Road of Tiger Leaping Gorge, Qiaotou, Yunnan, China The [...]