Holi, the festival of colors, is celebrated at the end of winter throughout India, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Though the most well-known festivities are held by Hindus, Holi is sometimes observed in Sikh and Buddhist communities as well. Holi is generally celebrated on the full moon of the twelfth lunar month, but it lasts up to two weeks in some areas of India (such as Bihar).

The night before Holi (Holika Dahan), giant bonfires are lit to commemorate Prahlada and symbolize the letting go of last year’s troubles. The next day people roam the streets dumping colored powder and water on each other, often chugging diluted vodka from water bottles and eating balls of hash.

Women generally stay far away from the colorful packs of disinhibited, sexually repressed young men, except in Barsana where tradition dictates that they beat them with sticks.

Darjeeling isn’t a popular destination for Holi, but it happens here just the same. Colored water is frowned upon because of the late-winter Himalayan chill, but enormous amounts of powder make up for it. (Just don’t eat it – the red stuff probably has mercury in it).

1. Men prepare the Holika bonfire with scrap wood, straw and offerings.

2. The fire.

3.A branch is stuck in the top of the pile before being lit. When the fire catches, young men scale the flaming mound, yank the branch out and run around shaking each other off it it. The last one holding on will be married this year.

4. A young man takes a video of the fire.

5. A man jumps off the bonfire while others throw on more fuel.

6. A trash fire burns the night before Holi.

7. Kids are usually the most enthusiastic about getting colored.

8. A man sells boxes of colored powder in Darjeeling’s Chowk Bazar.

9. Pink is the cheapest and sticks the best, but the variety of colors available isn’t lacking.

10. One of Darjeeling’s depressed ponies sees a rare moment of joy.

11. No one is safe.

12.A man and his crew.

13. After the excitement has died down, Darjeeling looks like a clown massacre.

Community Connection

Want to see more wild festivals? Check out the focus page to Burning Man and Carnival Travel.

And don’t forget to check out Life’s Recipes to Celebrate Holi.

Have you ever experienced Holi? Share your comments below!

Photo: viaj24h / Feature photo: wandering angel

You’re sitting in a dirty alleyway, perched on a bright blue plastic stool eating the best bowl of noodles you’ve ever had.

A group of fanny-pack toting tourists shuffles by, following their guide’s umbrella and craning their necks to hear her narration. You let out a chuckle, happy to be on your own, free of the constraints of an organized tour and content in the knowledge that they have no idea what they’re missing.

You return to your hole-in-the-wall guesthouse, only to find that the tourists and their umbrella are staying on your floor.

The tour group mentality has always been an easy target for anyone who travels, making us feel better about our own adventures and providing a convenient Other to poke fun at.

It’s getting harder and harder though, with companies like Urbane Nomads billing themselves as “travel mixologists” and blurring the line between hardcore travel and hand-holding tours.

According to them, they’ve:

“turned the typical tourist itinerary on its head- taking the tourist through a city’s back alleys, revealing its seamier (and/or more interesting) side , continually testing the limits of accessibility in travel or using a local folkloric legend as a premise for an itinerary revealing current social and political problems.”

The Back Door Philosophy

Up until recently, almost all tour companies have presented their services with an image of ease and relaxation – you can’t open an issue of Conde Nast Traveller without seeing the words “style” or “luxury” – but what they’re selling is ultimately far more about leisure than travel.

Going it alone and spending as little money as possible provides a far richer experience, something everyone’s idol Rick Steves has always espoused with his “back door” philosophy.

It’s true that a lot of backpackers do it on the cheap purely because they’re broke, but most at least pay lip service to this idea of staying close to the ground.

Rightly or wrongly, travelers often feel like their journeys are constantly under siege by everyone else’s.

Think of the backpacker who laughs at you for paying 140 Baht for a guesthouse when he only paid 115 – we’ve all met that guy and a lot of us have been him. Examples like that come off as a little insane, but that sentiment is a common thread even among veteran travelers.

Much as we’d like to play the part of the hardened vagabond, we’re all afraid of everyone else cheapening our “authentic experience.”

From what I can tell, Urbane Nomads actually does threaten to do that.

Urbane Nomads is offering tours that guarantee life-changing experiences without having to exert yourself to get there. It’s presenting hardcore adventure – placing yourself in unfamiliar and unexpected situations for the purpose of discovery and personal development – as something that can be done free of worry and hardship.

This is totally antithetical to the things I’ve come to believe through traveling. Adventure isn’t just about the highlights; it’s the everyday misery and difficulty that produces the best stories and clearest insights.

Departure From The Urbane

If, in twenty years, this sort of thing becomes the norm, will anybody really value travel as a holistic experience anymore? If it’s acceptable to watch a Mongolian polo match on the steppes and go home to a perfect cosmo in your five-star hotel bar, have you learned anything about yourself, Mongolia or travel?

Camels in Mongolia / Photo: mooney47

Sure, no one will stop you from riding a bicycle down the Karakoram Highway, but as writers, artists and photographers we all know that it’s never just about us. If the image of adventurous travel as a series of dizzying highs and backbreaking lows is watered down to a flattened, five-star package tour, where will you and I fit?

Of course, there are two sides to everything. As dire as I’ve made it sound, there seem to be some great things about Urbane Nomads.

It’s run by one person, not a huge corporation, which makes me believe that their commitment to sustainable, ethical and personally enriching tourism is sincere. Their owner says that, “Under her guidance, the itineraries and destinations offered by Urbane Nomads reflect a concern for the social, cultural and historical nuances of the destinations visited.”

It’s also probable that, before this company existed, their clients would have spent ten thousand dollars on a luxury tour of Western Europe instead of hot air ballooning in Burma.

As a concept, I think Urbane Nomads is the sort of tour company we’d all like to run. It’s the “urbane” part that bothers me.

Adventure has always been a departure from the urbane, and if we begin to blur the lines between everyday comfort and eye-opening experiences we stand to lose the most important aspect of travel: to transform ourselves.

Community Connection

Check out F. Daniel Harbecke’s classic The Last Article On the Tourist/Traveler Distinction You’ll Ever Read. Also don’t miss From Tourist To Travel In 5 Easy Steps.

What do you think? Am I being too hard on companies like Urbane Nomads? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Photo by whatwhat. Feature photo by dbasulto.

The ad wizards at Crispin Porter + Bogusky have crafted “Whopper Virgins,” a campaign so absurd that it’s difficult to take as anything but a farce.

In one smooth motion Burger King has called to mind the spectre of imperialism, demeaned entire ethnic groups, and reminded the rest of the world that, even though we elected Barack Obama, there are still plenty of reasons to hate–or at least laugh at– America.

The agency realized that Americans are so saturated with advertising that it’s impossible to get an unbiased opinion of fast food from them.

The only way to get an “entirely pure taste test,” they reasoned, is to ask people with no exposure to the Big Mac or Whopper which they prefer.

The people they chose were Hmong minorities in Thailand, the Inuit of Greenland, and rural Romanians.

The documentary opens with an awkward justification of the hamburger’s importance, the epic swell of a string orchestra and, most importantly, people in wacky clothing failing to eat a big pile of hamburger.

Photo by renaissance chambara

The first part is a straight up taste test, with participants flown in from their homes to taste the freshest McDonald’s and Burger King food possible. Most prefer the Whopper. Then, it’s on to the villages themselves. The crew brings along an authentic Burger King broiler, grills some burgers and films the natives enjoying them.

Burger King probably didn’t do much actual harm to these communities by feeding them crappy American food – in fact, they actually donated educational supplies and funded a church restoration. The issue is how this documentary is presented to its final audience – the English-speaking world and Americans in particular.

The team’s discussion about their subjects is littered with liberal clichés and fake cross-cultural tolerance. The participants are “very difficult people to find” who are “really off the grid,” people who “don’t have television, who don’t have access to, you know, restaurants and what not.”

They’re given taste tests while wearing traditional clothes — which, you may notice later, few are actually wearing in their hometowns. Throughout its eight minutes, the documentary drives home the point that they don’t even know how to eat a burger.

They are “Whopper Virgins,” to be deflowered for our amusement and Burger King’s bottom line.

Americans already have a skewed image of poverty, foreign cultures and the rest of the world, and Burger King’s orientalist nonsense isn’t helping. They’re playing to poisonous sentiments and making money off of reinforcing them, taking on a new White Man’s Burden and playing missionary for American culture to impress the clients back home.

It’s exoticism on par with Ota Benga, and something modern anthropologists, travelers and journalists have been trying to kill for decades.

For better or worse, companies like Burger King are the face of America and the ambassadors of its culture. They wield an extraordinary amount of influence over the perceptions of Americans in places like rural Thailand, Greenland and Romania, but also in the rest of the industrialized world.

Photo by Sister 72

Their power has gone far beyond the average corner restaurant, and as we all know from Spider Man, with great power comes great responsibility. The world is getting smaller and smaller, and in the coming decades we’re all going to be exposed to people who think nothing like us.

Burger King and its ilk will be the ultimate arbiters of intercultural exchange, foisting American culture on the world and the world’s culture on us. It should be their duty to make sure it’s done in a way that is graceful, respectful and productive – this ad campaign was none of those and is an egregious failure to live up to that duty.

I know that by writing about this I’m giving Burger King more publicity. I know that’s exactly why they made it. But if things like Matt Harding’s dancing videos and Vice Travel (both of which I’m a big fan of) are any indication, documentaries like this are the tip of the iceberg.

In an increasingly globalized world, it’s important to open a dialogue about the way the exotic is presented to those that don’t have the will or means to see it for themselves.

Perhaps I’m not the right person to talk about this, though.

Seng Vang, a Hmong man from Minnesota, wrote a letter to the ad agency responsible and he’s not happy about the way they’ve handled things. Burger King responded with a typically sanitized corporate letter, stating its commitment to authenticity, respect and good taste.

Because if there’s one thing Burger King knows, it’s good taste.

Author’s Note:

Short of armed revolution, not much is going to stop Burger King from advertising how it wishes. That doesn’t mean we should all give up though; there’s plenty to be done. Letters are an old standby, and you can write them to both the ad agency and Burger King itself.

Tell your friends how you feel about it – part of the reason this ad is so bad is that most people accept it without thinking (it’s not their fault, though!).

And, of course, don’t eat at Burger King.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

Matador doesn’t shy away from calling companies to task for advertising or business practices of the Burger King Whopper Virgins ilk. We’ve taken on Exxon and Ecko, and we’ve also written extensively about how more informed consumer practices can influence companies to be more responsible.

What’s your opinion of the Whopper Virgins ad campaign? Share your thoughts below.

Art Mortvedt. Alaska, USA. / Explorers Club

What’s been to both poles, the top of Mt. Everest and the surface of the moon?

The official flag of the Explorer’s Club, that’s what.

So why has hardly anyone actually heard of the Explorer’s Club if they’ve had such a big role in so many important expeditions? A loose organization of intrepid individuals founded in 1904, the club doesn’t talk much about what goes on behind closed doors.

Even so, they make it abundantly clear that lavish dinners, awards ceremonies and explorations to far corners of the globe are the norm for members of the Explorer’s Club.

A good portion of the 20th century’s most interesting and influential adventurers were members of this secretive society, and the organization itself had a somewhat shadowy and ill-defined hand in their most important expeditions.

To name just a few:

• Sir Edmund Hillary – After climbing Everest, Hillary made expeditions to both poles, rode a boat up the Ganges and flew to Antarctica when he was eighty-eight years old. He’s also the club’s honorary chair, despite being dead.
• Tenzing Norgay – Along with Sir Edmund Hillary, one of the first two people to reach the top of Mt. Everest. Even though he was illiterate and had no idea when he was born, he spent his entire life climbing mountains and later founded a successful adventure company.
• John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, Sally Ride - The first man to orbit the earth, the first man on the moon, and the first American woman in space.
• Thor Heyerdahl – Rode 4,300 miles (8000km) on a tiny bamboo raft just to prove he could do it.
• Charles Lindbergh – Piloted the first non-stop, solo flight across the Atlantic
• Chuck Yeager – First man to break the sound barrier.

And that’s just eight, the club has at least three thousand members.

What They Do

Like most ultra-elite associations, much of what the Explorer’s Club actually does is kept tightly under wraps.

The members hold a degree of secrecy – events are invite only, and photos on their site are behind a members only login page. There are a few awards given out every year and dinners that journalists are invited to, but for the most part the club retains a relatively low profile.

The Explorer’s Club headquarters is a gigantic rowhouse in New York City, with bizarre rooms filled with elephant tusks and stuffed wildlife (check out the virtual tour).

They also throw some crazy parties. The biggest and best is the Explorer’s Club Dinner, held with great fanfare every year in New York. Members from all over the world give talks, showcase their work and schmooze with some of the most adventurous people on the planet.

Most famously, a buffet of epic proportions is presented to attendees, reportedly consisting of exotic delicacies like fried cockroaches and spiders.

In 1951 (and this has been confirmed by the club archivist), they even went so far as to include bits of woolly mammoth meat that had been languishing in Siberian permafrost for ten thousand years. The dinners sometimes include displays of exotic live animals, often endangered.

While it’s probably in keeping with the spirit of the events, they’ve been criticized for making them feel like Victorian carnivals and bringing to mind the specter of European colonialism.

How To Join

The Trophy Room / Explorers Club

Want to join? Of course you do.

Unfortunately, your last backpacking trip to South America probably won’t get you in. The Explorer’s Club is all about hardcore discovery, and usually admits only serious scientists, adventurers and journalists.

“A Member is someone who has evidenced a sustained interest in some aspect of field exploration and has contributed in broad terms to the cause of exploration, which includes furthering the scientific knowledge of the world,” says the application.

While you probably don’t have to summit Everest or land on the Moon you’ll want some real experience under your belt. It helps to have a specialty – graduate or post-grad level fieldwork is always a plus, or even just volunteering on a few expeditions.

Club dues depend on how involved you are and the exact amount is kept under-wraps, but you can bet they aren’t cheap. Luckily, you can take part even if you don’t have time to discover new species of moss in the Andes or eat bugs in India.

The Club offers two categories for us normal folks: “A Friend is someone who does not possess the qualifications and experience of a Member or Fellow, but supports the goals of the Club” and “A Student Member is at least 16 years old and enrolled in an accredited school full time.”

Since full membership requires the sponsorship of two existing members, the club says this can be a good way to network.

Pushing the Boundaries

The Explorer’s Club also hosts a good amount of intrepid tours through far-off lands, lead by scientists, adventurers and other people who actually know what they’re talking about.

These tours might cost a pretty penny, but they’re open to everyone and you can be sure you’ll get your money’s worth. Impressively, these include a tour to Bhutan, which is one of the most remote countries in the world and notoriously difficult to enter.

There are plenty of organizations for those with loose feet, but the Explorer’s Club is arguably more important than most. It might be secretive, exclusive and a little strange, but if you’ve got a thirst for adventure – you just might find yourself with a membership.

Have you ever wished to join the Explorer’s Club? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Food is just as much a part of culture as language. Eating local is a big commitment for travelers, but it can serve to make any journey more memorable and unique.

Sadly, traveling can sometimes be an excuse to eat quick and easy food, to walk between those ubiquitous golden arches for just one little cheeseburger. At home, most of us would prefer a delicious, well prepared Chinese or Thai dish to a value meal monstrosity, so why do so many travelers stuff their faces with imitation Western comfort food?

Many of us, in life and especially while traveling, see eating as a chore no different from filling up the gas tank. When traveling, we’re often tired and frustrated, so just about any old crap will do to put some weight in our stomachs.

Additionally, we’re often looking for some semblance of home to soften the bombardment of culture shock, and so we opt for something bland, familiar and safe.

I’m reminded of the time my friend and I were wandering around Hanoi, and two foreigners asked us if we knew where to get “normal food, not this Vietnamese stuff.”

Well, brave new travelers can do better. Avoiding local food is just as egregious as ignoring any other aspect of the culture in which you’re ostensibly trying to immerse yourself.

Let Your Food Be Your Medicine

Staying healthy on the road is important. Dehydration gets most of the spotlight when talking about preventable health problems while traveling, but it’s very easy to load up on carbohydrates and fats while ignoring things like vitamins, protein and even salt.

If you’re only traveling for a short time, eating poorly won’t lead to long-term health problems, but it can make you feel low-energy and miserable.

Eating a wide variety of local cuisine is the best way to make sure that your body gets the nutrients it needs to function at an optimum level.

Eat Where The Locals Eat

Many guesthouses and backpacker restaurants, especially in Southeast Asia, serve local food right alongside omelettes and pizza, and for many travelers, that’s where the exposure ends.

But while the local dishes in backpacker restaurants may be somewhat authentic, they’re often altered to cater to western tastes. The people who actually live in those towns aren’t eating at tourist establishments, so you’re better off hunting down the street-cart or hole-in-the-wall where food is prepared to the local taste.

Follow The Crowd

The same general rule applies everywhere in the world: If there’s a crowd, there’s a reason.

Every town and neighborhood has its famous restaurants, but more than likely they aren’t written about in any English guidebook or magazine. The only way to find them is to cruise the streets around mealtime and ask for recommendations from locals.

Learn The Lingo

Learning a language on the road can be a rather involved proposition, but learning to read a menu only requires memorizing a few words.

Figuring out how to say basic ingredients like ‘pork’, ‘beef’, ‘chicken’ and ‘vegetables’, along with various methods of delivery like ‘barbecued’ and ‘soup’, can allow the hungry traveler to decipher at least a few entries on every menu.

A little menu-lingo can also help when shooting in the dark – if you’re looking for something new but you know you’re in the mood for chicken, you can often just ask for it and prepare to be surprised.

Go Grocery Shopping

Nearly everything you can order in a restaurant can also be found in a grocery store or market. While you might not have access to a decked out kitchen or boast the technical skills to whip up an edible soufflé, that doesn’t mean there aren’t cheap self-catering options available.

In places like Europe, Australia and New Zealand, the prevalence of kitchens in hostels is a huge boon. While this usually ends in chicken soup or canned ravioli, it can also be a great opportunity to try the local beer or wine without splurging at a bar. In France, staples like great bread and cheese are cheap, ubiquitous and require no cooking.

In Asia, a traveler is far less likely to have access to anything more than an electric tea kettle, but there are still opportunities for self-catering. Fruit is a great choice – not only is it likely to have been grown locally and taste much, much better than its western counterpart, but tropical countries tend to produce unfamiliar and delicious fruits. Prepare for a taste sensation!

In addition to fruits – and this is going to sound strange, I know – check out the instant noodle selection. In the West we’re generally used to a plastic wrapper with a flavor packet full of salt, but in Asia instant noodles are serious business. It’s not out of the ordinary for them to come with up to five flavor packets, containing such fantastic things as dehydrated vegetables, freeze-dried shrimp and chili oil to taste.

Don’t Be Afraid To Eat Alone

Markets and grocery stores are cheap, easy and authentic, but relying on them too heavily can be a mistake, because so much of local cooking depends on the preparation. Since we can’t always have the privilege of being invited into a kind local’s home, restaurants are sometimes the only viable alternative.

Many people (myself included) feel embarrassed walking into a restaurant by ourselves and eating a proper meal alone. But even when traveling in a group eating solo in a restaurant can be a necessity, as you may be the only one who is genuinely interested in trying some new sort of food.

Getting over the fear of standing out while eating alone is difficult, but the easiest way to avoid feeling awkward is to bring something to do while waiting for your meal. It’s a great time to read a book, plan your day or fill up that journal you’ve been neglecting for a week.

Try Everything…Once

This is without a doubt the most difficult hurdle when delving into foreign cuisines.

Concepts like “vegan” and even “vegetarian” have yet to catch on in most non-western countries, and even in some more conservative places in the West, so in order to truly sample local cuisine travelers may have to suspend a few of their ideas and preferences about diet.

Oftentimes, the issue that arises is not so much obvious chunks of meat as things like broth and flavoring.

“Vegetarian” soup in many places simply means no meat – not necessarily what it may mean at your local diner. Sometimes, only red meat is considered non-vegetarian, so poultry and fish are fair game.

There are arguments going every which way on this issue, but ultimately whether or not to suspend one’s dietary preferences is a very personal decision that every traveler must make for themselves.

So go, eat and be merry! Humorist Steve Almost calls good food “one of life’s most consistently attainable pleasures,” and I tend to agree.

Your trip will undoubtedly be improved by eating adventurously and often. The world is a buffet, and those who do not travel eat only one dish.

Ross Tabak is a student in Washington, DC and is continuously looking for excuses to return to Asia. When not studying, he enjoys playing guitar, riding motorcycles and making sandwiches with more than one kind of meat. After graduation, he plans to flee to the far-reaches of the globe and support himself as either a writer or traveling organ grinder.

But this image of sudden shock isn’t quite accurate.

In reality, culture shock is a much more nuanced phenomenon that can take months to develop and overcome. Culture shock will flip your emotions topsy-turvy. It will effect you in completely unexpected ways.

More than simply being surprised at unfamiliar social norms, weird new food or foreign modes of conversation, culture shock will impact you long after you become familiar and comfortable with the day-to-day customs of a new culture.

Culture shock tends to move through four different phases: wonder, frustration, depression and acceptance.

Of course, like all things that happen in our complicated little brains, it’s never really that simple or easy. Each of these stages take time to run their course, and how deeply one effects you is never set in stone. Even the order of these 4 stages can be unpredictable.

Jet-Lag and Wonder

The first stage of culture shock is often overwhelmingly positive and far from bewildering. This is often called the “honeymoon phase” – when you’re so fascinated with the language, the people and the food that the trip seems like the greatest thing you’ve ever done. You’re having an adventure!

On shorter trips this honeymoon period can be a huge boon, as the rush of foreign stimulation makes a vacation all the better, and having a set return date can ward off the less enjoyable aspects of culture shock.

Anyone who’s visited another continent has felt this rush of excitement the minute they got off the plane, and will no doubt never forget it.

Guidebooks about Southeast Asia play on this fairly often, inevitably starting with a vivid description of Bangkok – the overwhelming smell of fish sauce, the muggy tropical air, the traffic straight out of hell – all things that contribute to the sense of having touched down on another planet.

Settling In…To Frustration?!

This is a difficult stage of culture shock, familiar to anyone who has lived abroad or traveled for a long time. You don’t understand gestures. You get laughed at, you horribly offend a little old lady without knowing why.

The usual response is anger. I often tell people that culture shock is is walking out the door, being greeted by a neighbor and wanting nothing more than to shout obscenities at them.

It is a visceral reaction that permeates every part of the experience, from misunderstanding shopkeepers, to losing your keys or missing the bus. Frustration comes and goes, disillusion comes on like a monsoon and the pangs of homesickness can become debilitating.

The first time I went to Asia I got it bad. After a month and a half of backpacking and two months teaching in Saigon, I was ready to go home.

The city began to weigh on me in ways I couldn’t have forseen. Struggling against the smog and noise felt like trying to keep my head above water while wearing lead boots. The food, the people, the language – nothing was exotic anymore. I just wanted a hamburger.

Depression: Feeling Stuck

Ah, the big one. We’ve all felt a little down before, but rarely when we’re so far from home.

Depression on the road is a feeling of hopelessness and longing, like nothing will ever be OK again until you hop on that plane home.

The worst part about this brand of moping is that it’s difficult to see the link to culture shock – the feeling can sometimes seems disconnected from travel, and often even homesickness. It can take the form of simple, implacable malaise.

It’s hard to be so far away, especially if you’re all by yourself. Frustration can bring on homesickness, but depression adds the dimension of feeling like you just have to get out.

Acceptance: Home Away From Home

After weeks and months of blindly struggling through a thousand different emotional states every hour, acceptance finally arrives like a warm bath at the end of a hard day.

Acceptance does not necessarily entail total understanding – it’s nearly impossible to ever claim complete understanding of another culture – but instead involves the realization that you don’t have to “get” it all. You find what makes you happy and content in your new surroundings.

For me, this realization happened a few months after I moved to Saigon a second time. I began to find my place in the motorbike horns, cigarette smoke and other expats floating through the fray. When Vietnamese started sounding more like a language than a fax tone and I ceased getting hopelessly lost on the potholed roads, the whole experience began to feel like a coherent whole instead of a random collection of aimless madness.

And there lies the crux of culture shock: the bad stuff, like feeling lost, hopeless and out of place, will run its course no matter what happens.

Going The Distance

Even though you can’t avoid culture shock entirely, there are things you can do to make it easier on yourself.

The first step, of course, is to recognize that what you’re going through is culture shock. If you can come to terms with wild mood swings and sad times, and recognize they’re part of the inevitable process, it’s a lot easier to convince yourself that the bad feelings will pass. And they will.

Secondly, it’s crucial to learn the language as you go. Culture shock, at its simplest, is an inability to integrate, and the biggest barrier to that is generally language. The more able a traveler is to laugh, cry and seek solace with the locals, the easier it is to deal with ups and downs.

Though it can be one of the toughest parts of traveling, culture shock is just as integral to the experience as food, people and scenery. By recognizing it for what it is and doing your best to cope, you can easily prevent culture shock from ruining an otherwise fantastic journey.

Ross Tabak is a student in Washington, DC and is continuously looking for excuses to return to Asia. When not studying, he enjoys playing guitar, riding motorcycles and making sandwiches with more than one kind of meat. After graduation, he plans to flee to the far-reaches of the globe and support himself as either a writer or traveling organ grinder.