5th installment of the epic photo series

Don't forget to check out Untapped Cities and my post about Boston's waterfront! Now on to the photos...

It is just do damned easy to take amazing photographs in India - the entire country is constructed of vibrant colors. This is a temple in Haridwar, one of the holy cities of Hinduism.

I was in the middle of eating the single best plate of makhani dhal (black lentils - om nom nom) I have ever had in RIshikesh, when I noticed the flowers out the window. Rishikesh is a very hilly town, as you can see from the slope of the buildings behind it, and everything is sloped down to the Ganga, the center of the community. 

If you turned and looked left from the above picture, you would see this stretch of Ganga. Up here, the water is clean and cool, nothing like the polluted - some would say putrid - water as you travel down the river. To be fair, the water is used for everything from bathing to laundry to, in the case of Varanasi, floating the corpses that are considered too pure fror cremation (that would be, let me see... children, pregnant women, holy men... and lepers. Leprosy is considered a sign of being chosen by God, so instead of cremating lepers, their bodies are sent down the river as is). So up here was the only chance we had to jump in the river ourselves without risking serious illness - and we did, taking my first ever rafting trip.

More boats off of my island.

My island.

Again.

And yes, once more. But can we note that this light is not a trick of my camera? As the sun set, on this very weird day full of bickering and sadness (but ending with giant Chang beers on a beachfront restaurant), the whole sky bloomed bright pink. And for those of you that have stubbornly refused to click the link this is Koh Tao, or Turtle Island, in Thailand.

An alley in Barcelona. What I didn't know is that most of Barcelona is made up of winding narrow alleys... I arrived by myself, late at night, and was trying to find my friend who was already at our hostel. But for the life of me, I couldn't find it. I had just said goodbye to the Boyf, which is the worst, in Prague and then had been hanging around in airports for about 10 hours straight. I was exhausted, sweaty, hungry, and scared - because I speak no Spanish, my friend didn't have a working phone, and lugging a big suitcase (I was sending my friend back to the States with a pile of my stuff because Id be moving home soon) along cobbled alleys is... not discreet. I was sure I'd be mugged. It all ended fine, with an Estrella Damm and some tapas at around 11 o'clock, but MAN that was one of my least-favorite arrivals to any new city! By the way, I loved out hostel in Barcelona, so you should hit me up if you are planning to go there.

Why doesn't America embrace scooter culture like Europe (this is in Spain)? Well, this American has one theory - I was going to buy a scooter, then spent all my money on an upcoming trip to Colombia. PRIORITIES.

Me and a lot of jamon in Tarragona, Spain. This shmegetarian was in love.