Hola Antigua!

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Guatemala

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This town is breathtaking. Bright colorful history still radiating with its rainbow colored colonial buildings, and cathedrals sprawled out on cobblestone streets. Even the women’s traditional huipils are adorned with tropical birds, flowers, and vibrant patterns. My textile loving heart sang when the different villages gathered to bring their textiles to display. The huipils were as comfortable as they were artfully intriguing. I cant wait to share these vibrant beauties with you in the shop!

The Golden City of India

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This post has been waiting to be finished for several weeks now it seems. So much has happened since Jaisalmer. We’re not even in India anymore. I’m still trying to piece together all the insanity from the last couple of months. It’s wild to look back at these photos and believe I was actually there. Jaisalmer was a special place. Special in a so many ways but I think a big part was due to the fact that it was the first long stop of my solo journey around India while Charmie was experiencing Ashram life in the north. This was a city I got to know all on my own. A place where I had several meals with locals and randomly made friends with an older chap from a nearby desert village that I ended up hanging out with for a couple days. This was also a place where I had never felt so isolated or alone. It was the “off season” so the town was extremely quiet as far as tourists go. Nothing but Indian faces and broken English conversations for days. I took advantage of having absolute freedom of going any direction without discussion. Each day I would go out and walk wherever the wind took me until sundown, getting lost in the maze of alleyways throughout the ancient fort. I remember feeling like I had discovered some sort of mystical desert wonderland and I had it all on my own.

Traveling alone in India was truly life changing. So many moments of peace, anger, excitement, euphoria, shock, confusion… all that can never be re-lived or fully explained. These are images and memories that I will forever hold onto as being one of my favorite stops along the journey so far.

Rajasthan :: Home of the Rajputs

India is a huge country with so much diversity. So many religions with “over 8 million” gods, according to a friendly local. When he asked me how long I’ll be in India for, I said, “Almost 2 months… too short for India, right?”. He replied straight-faced, “Of course, why not. A lifetime is too short to see India.”

With so many places to see, where do you begin? Charmie is stationed in the Himalayas and although I love the mountains, there’s something about desert regions that I always seem to gravitate towards. I decided to spend the next month exploring Rajasthan, a desert region in Western India that is home to the Rajputs. Rajputs are a warrior clan within the Indian caste system that claims to originate from the sun, and by looking in their eyes you would almost believe it. Almost everyone I’ve talked to and photographed so far all seem to have this mysterious haze of bloodshot. I’m not sure if it’s from the constant dust storms or the prevalent opium culture. Whatever it is I’m intrigued. I feel so incredibly grateful to be here right now. Tomorrow I head off into the desert, spending the next 3 days exploring the land by camel! : )

10 Days in Delhi

Wow…10 days is Delhi flew by. An incredible city to set an amazing first impression of India. The land of extremes. One side spinning around a powerful spiritual vortex with devout followers chanting and roaming through the crowds. The other side being a loud, pushy, aggressive and inconsiderate society that seems anything but centered. For peace of mind, I’ve came to the conclusion that both parts must be present in order to obtain some sort of balance. The aesthetics of such a rich and historical culture make you feel as if you’ve stepped into a past lifetime. I’m still trying to put the pieces together from the whirlwind of last week. Now I continue onwards without my love, venturing off to far away places solo for the first time. I’ll miss her by my side but looking forward to the opportunity for complete spontaneity. Off to the Indian desert-region of Rajasthan!

Posted in India, Photography, Travel | Tagged , , , , | 4 Replies

The Loudness of New Delhi

We arrived in New Delhi last night and the past 24 hours has been sensory overload. As me and Aaron sat in a dark restaurant where the power was out, we couldn’t help but thrive off India’s loudness. The people were loud, the colors are loud, the flavors are loud, the smells are loud, and the honking is even louder. It’s exactly the culture shock we were looking for, the kind of shock where you can’t help but do a double take. Where cows cross the traffic, past the holy men, all in the midst of women in bright saris balancing baskets on their heads.









Phnom Penh :: Corrupt City with a Dark History

There’s something about Cambodia that makes it stand way out among the other SE Asian countries we’ve visited so far. It’s something I’ll probably forever struggle with trying to put into words, but there’s a unique feeling I get here that I haven’t felt anywhere else. It’s a mixed feeling of nostalgia, mystery, enchantment, anger, sadness, sympathy… maybe it’s just my subconscious speaking of the country’s dark history, but even before I really learned about all that happened here, I knew this place was something special. It’s the kind of place that continuously triggers thoughts and evokes emotions.

During the Khmer Rouge era, people living in Cambodian cities were forced to evacuate their homes to become slaves in the countryside. The regime’s mission was to solely create a population that was made to work as laborers in one huge federation of collective farms. Anyone in opposition (this meant all intellectuals and educated people) must be eliminated, together with all non-communist aspects of traditional Cambodian society. So in 1975 the beautiful capital city of Phnom Pehn was completely deserted, leaving it to be the world’s largest ghost town. In the end nearly 3 million people or 1/3 of the country’s total population was killed.

In a strange way it almost seems as if time stopped here in the 1970s when all of this happened. Charmie and I visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, a former high school in Central Phnom Penh that was converted into a torture prison in 1975. Nearly 20,000 people were tortured here before being hauled to a killing field about 14km away. On display at the museum were hundreds of documented “mugshots” of the innocent prisoners held there. The faces I saw on the walls looked exactly like the people I see on the streets of Phnom Penh today. They appear to wear the same outfits, have the same haircuts, use the same expressions…. it honestly feels like the majority of people have not changed one bit from that time. It makes it seem like the mass genocide took place only yesterday. It’s as if the Cambodian people just went back to their old homes after the reign was over and acted as if nothing happened.

I look for emotions in the eyes of people I pass on the streets. When I see anyone that looks over the age of 50, I try to imagine the type of life they’ve lived….the terrible sounds and scenes they’ve witnessed. I think about the people close to them that were lost. When I pass someone around my age I wonder what their childhood was like. How did their parents raise them with that darkness still lingering?

You see corruption everywhere you look and you know it’s not stopping anytime soon. Entire families sleep on the sidewalks while policemen drive brand new Range Rovers. The roads leading to the capital city are ridiculous…large portions aren’t even paved. The people of Cambodia are continuing to be dealt a shit hand, but I think now they’re simply content with finally having a sense of peace and quiet. Finally not having to lock their doors in fear of who will come knocking.

I know I’m not the only passing tourist that wonders what this place would look like if the war never took place. This place is wild. The people are beautiful. I can safely say Cambodia has been my favorite stop of the journey so far.

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The Hammock Life of a Mountain Town Called Pai

Last weekend Charmie and I took the motorbike 3 hours north to the little mountain utopia known as Pai. The ride up was amazing. It reminded me of home…making the winding trek from Tennessee to North Carolina. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect with the sun when we reached the bottom of the valley. The view of the rice fields in front of the layering mountain silhouettes was wonderful. It almost felt like I was looking at an illustration that belonged on a “Visit Thailand” postcard.

We stayed at this incredible little bungalow village that sat across the river from the town’s main street. At the entrance of the village there was a small field of flowering plants as tall as our heads, with only a small little path to walk between. We slowly walked through in awe at how beautiful the scene was….butterflies fluttering around the purple plants with whiffs of reefer in the air. I started to wonder if there was something else growing in the middle of the towering plants, but with heaving coughing coming from all directions, I quickly figured out the game. Upon checking in the guesthouse owner whispered with a straight face, “If you want cannibas, I have.”…The tone for the weekend was set from there. It reminded me of being at a summer festival again. During the day people chilled out in their huts and hid from the sun. The streets were empty, with people rolling out only to grab food. Pai came to life at night. It seemed almost every bar had a firepit for people to gather around. The first night we watched a fire spinning contest and met some interesting people from all over. We shared a spliff with two dreadheaded chicks – one crazy looking one from Turkey and the other from Russia, and also a guy from Iran. As usual, I didn’t say much. I just sat there grinning at the thought of sharing that moment with those people from such far-out places (far-out to me anyways). Our backgrounds couldn’t have been more different, but we were all there together…at a small little mountain town in Northern Thailand.

The whole town felt like home. I met a leather artisan name Oil and asked if he could make me a pair of moccasins. He told me he could make them the following day and invited Charmie and I to come have coffee and hang out while he worked on them. We took him up on his offer and drove the bike up to his place the next morning. Him and his friends were incredibly hospitable. They gave us Chinese whiskey to sip on with our coffee and then cooked up some extremely spicy but delicious Thai food. It was a prefect day to end a beautiful weekend.

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Hammocklife

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Village Life in Laos

The “Virgin Land”, as our landlord dubbed her neighboring country to the East, lived up to it’s nickname as being that of a lush and not-so-developed jungle in this beautiful corner of the world. Life is simple and the people are laid back. A lot of women still wear traditional clothing and men butcher their kills right out in the open public. Our boat trip through the Mekong has been one of the highlights of our journey so far.

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Samsara – Birth, Death, and Re-Birth

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“Neither a traditional documentary nor a travelogue, SAMSARA takes the form of a nonverbal, guided meditation on the cycle on birth, death and re-birth. Through powerful images, the film illuminates the links between humanity and the rest of nature, showing how our life cycle mirrors the rhythm of the planet.”

It’s hard to put into words how powerful this movie is. The entire thing is presented without dialogue, encouraging your own inner interpretations through an hour-and-a-half of breathtaking imagery combined with mesmerizing music. For me it was yet another reminder of just how little I know or understand about the world. I keep thinking about birth in the sense of location, and how it dictates the entirety of a person’s life. Their beliefs, religion, perception will depend entirely upon which hemisphere, continent, country, or tribe a person is born into. Of course they could change their location at any given time, but the origins will always be there. And for many people, what they’re handed at birth will be all they ever know. It’s a humbling thought to realize that ultimately we have no control.

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New Crop Playlist 01

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Track Listing
Bonobo – You Know (SuperVision Remix)
Flume – Insane featuring Moon Holiday
Coma – My Orbit (Dauwd Remix)
Lord RAJA – Panthera Bengal
SuperVision – Ancient Souls
Odesza – No.Sleep – Mix.01 Presented by Jiberish
Elephant – Skyscraper
Mat_Zo – DnB Mix of Love
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