Our Top Adventures in Asia

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In Six Days we will be in India.

This past week has been a whirlwind. While we thought that we were very well prepared, there is still so much to do to get ready for an extended trip.  Many things cannot be done until the last few days and we have been scrambling and out of control busy.  While it is drawing closer with every minute, it doesn’t even feel like in less than we week we will be on the other side of the world.  We are too worried about checking everything off of our long to do list.

So instead of complaining we want to share with all of you the adventures that we are most looking forward to in our upcoming travels.  To daydream about what we will be doing over the next few months is exciting and overwhelming.  We may be starting in India, but we have a lot of countries on our itinerary and we can’t wait to visit all of these destinations.

1. Mongolia

Riding a horse through the steps of Genghis Khan

Following the trail of Genghis Khan, we are so excited to ride a horse through his old stomping grounds.  To live as an nomad, riding from Yurt to Yurt is a long time dream of ours.  It is the number 1 adventure on our list, but you are going to have to wait until the end of the trip to hear all about it.

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2. China

Trekking the Great Wall

Trekking the Great Wall of China is on everyone’s bucket list and we are no exception.  We are hoping to visit and trek along some more remote portions of the wall and really explore the walls great history.

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3. India

Yoga Instructors Training Course

India is renowned for its yoga and we plan on taking a month long intensive to study and get ourselves back into shape.  What better way to kick off the trip than to put ourselves through an extreme physical workout.  Not only that, by the end of the month of 10 hour days, we will be certified instructors and be centred, at peace and ready to take on the next leg of our Asian Adventure.

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4. Nepal

Trek to Everest Base Camp

In 1996, we read Into Thin Air Into Thin Air by John Krakauer for the first time and we have wanted to visit Mount Everest Ever since.  There is one adventure that we want to make sure that we do while we are in Nepal and that is to trek to it’s Base Camp.  We just love climbing and trekking through mountain ranges.  There is something about pushing ourselves to our limits that makes us feel alive and to witness the beauty of the Annapurna Range is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

5. Mongolia

Safari in the Gobi Desert

There is something about a desert.  In the most barren of places is where we feel the most alive and find true beauty.  The Gobi Desert in Mongolia is a place of legend and an important stop on the Silk Road.

Can you imagine finding a herd of the rare camels that were featured on Planet Earth with your own two eyes.  We hope that we have that chance.

6. India

Camel Trek – Rajasthan

My friend Angie was in India a couple of years ago and fell in love with the poor misunderstood camel.  One thing that we are looking forward to is trekking through Rajastan on a camel ourselves.  We love camels too and we are looking forward to stepping back in time and living the life of a true Desert Nomad (for a couple of days anyway)

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7. India

White Water Rafting the Ganges

I know what you are thinking.  The Ganges? Why would you want to white water raft that dirty river?  Well up north in the Himalayas the Ganges is pristine and wild.  There is nothing more thrilling than riding rapids down an untamed river and to do it on this legendary body of water is a must for us!

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8. M

8. Sri Lanka

Mountain Biking in Sri Lanka

We love to cycle, but we really love to mountain bike.  It is one of our favorite hobbies and when we found out that Sri Lanka has excellent mountain biking, we added it to our list of adventures.  Ride through tea plantations, rubber trees, jungles and mountainous terrains.  This is going to be a blast checking out their trails.

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I know what else you are thinking, there are many other great things to see, like the Taj Mahal, Varanasi, The Three Gorges… the list can go on and on.  These are the adventures that we are looking forward to the most, but I am sure that we will change our list on a regular basis as we explore more, find out about other great things to do and meet other travelers that have experienced awesome travels.

For now, with the limited research and preparations that we have done for our trip, these are our favorite upcoming activities. We love to wing it and I am sure that we will end up off the beaten path traveling to a remote destination taking part in an obscure adventure that we hadn’t even thought of.  Will Dave be wrestling in Mongolia or will we find ourselves taking part in a Pilgrimage?…Most Likely. We just can’t wait to get this adventure started!

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Your Own Two Hands

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Today’s post comes to us from Adrian Reif from Friendly Planet.  He is doing wonderful things combining his two passions, travel and making the world a better place.   I love this post so I won’t make you spend any more time reading my words. Enjoy what Adrian has to say.

Your Own Two Hands

“I’m gonna make it a brighter place. I’m gonna make it a safer place. I’m gonna help the human race…with my own two hands.”
- Ben Harper, With My Own Two Hands (listen if you haven’t heard it before)

“Will we in the West realize our potential or will we sleep in the comfort of our affluence with apathy and indifference murmuring softly in our ears?”
- Bono, in foreward for The End of Poverty

Let’s start with a quick thought experiment. It’s simple. I want you to stop reading for 15 seconds and pretend that you were born in another country, somewhere less developed – Peru, Bangladesh, Zambia, Haiti. Now, imagine what your life would be like today.

• Would you have the same comforts?
• What would your education have been like?
• Where would you be working? In the family shop? Roaming the streets?
• Would you be alive?

I wasn’t born in Bangladesh. I was born in a developed country as a member of the racial majority. I’ve had amazing parents and friends who have always supported me. I’ve received educations among the best in the world – both practical and academic [not that I exhibit it ]. I have the opportunity to travel! And I’ve realized at a young age that happiness stems from being a good person, not making stacks of money. I humbly say all of this, but I say it to point out a basic assumption – that I’m one of the luckiest people in the world. I’ve lived a life a sheer joy. I have everything I could ever want (or reasonable access to it). If you ever hear me complain, slap me – hard. Life is good.

A sad reality is that billions of people face the consequences of bad luck – they don’t have the same opportunities you and I have. Should ‘luck’ continue to determine how their life plays out? As Bono says in his foreward for Jeffrey Sachs’ The End of Poverty,

“We can be the generation that no longer accepts that an accident of latitude determines whether a child lives or dies – but will we be that generation?”

My Basic Argument

Consequently, my fortunate life leads me to believe I have a responsibility to help others seek the same. I want them to have what I have, to experience what I’ve experienced. That’s it – I have no great ethical or philosophical argument to prove my point. It just feels like the right thing to do. And it feels good.

The Beginnings of a Lifetime Wanderer

In 2005, I traveled to Guatemala as a member of my university’s Alternative Spring Break for a week of volunteering. It was my first international trip – an eye-opening and addictive one. We swam in volcanic lakes and hot springs and survived on cheap, delicious foods. The main goal of the trip was assisting Primeros Pasos Medical Clinic, a clinic giving basic health care to rural, impoverished school children. We repainted a building, built makeshift soccer goals from 2×4s, taught a lesson on brushing and flossing teeth, and played lots of soccer with children. Here I began to realize that everyone has the same basic needs, but not everyone has access to them; and to opportunities that could improve their quality of living.

Children Playing in Laos Village

The adrenalin of immersing in a foreign culture, receiving the warm hospitality of the people, witnessing miraculous landscapes - it was addictive. And I was hooked on travel. But my interaction with the children helped me take my new wanderlust mentality a step further. I knew I could not consciously continue to travel without returning the favor. I set out to design a way to travel that was not only enjoyable, but also helps to enrich the lives of the people who would enrich mine.

Launching Friendly Planet - The Intersection of Passions

Friendly Planet was a tangled web of thoughts for many months after leaving the States in January 2009 to travel. While fighting for sleep one night, the ideas swirled so intensely in my head that I finally sat up at 2am and mapped out Friendly Planet. It seemed like I’d finally found a way to combine some of my passions: being a responsible global citizen, wanderlust travel, and entrepreneurship. Its a chance to share my travels, but also give back while I travel. Similarly, I wanted people back home to be able to give half-way across the world while raising awareness for issues we rarely give thought to back home. In the spirit of Ben Harper’s song, it’s how I use my own two hands, but I hope it also shows that each of us have a unique way to give back.

At Friendly Planet, we talk about:

• Being responsible global citizens
• Wanderlust travel stories, tips, and advice
• People, companies, and ideas changing the world

Here’s the cool part – and most rewarding for me. We give 50% of ALL revenues away to non-profits or needing souls each month in the countries traveled through. It’s a small ‘thank you’ – thank you for allowing me to experience your culture and landscape, for pointing me in the right direction when I was lost (which happens a lot!), for opening your home, for teaching me how to smile.

Another goal is to build a small business that does good while making money, in turn flipping the assumption that capitalism and being a responsible corporation are opposing ideas. They are not. In the future, the most successful companies will see the world around them not as something to fight against, but as a partner that will fruitfully give back the more they give to it.

The Fruits of Travel

Tsering Family in Manigango, Sichuan, China

At the beginning of August, I made the first donation from Friendly Planet. I had just spent three grueling weeks working my way down western Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, near the Tibet border in China. While strongly controlled by the Chinese government, the Tibetan communities and villages provided an immense experience different from the rest of the country. The landscape was captivating – snow-capped mountain peaks, lush river valleys, and endless grasslands pocked with nomads’ tents and shaggy black yaks.

The only thing more captivating is the greeting smile of a Tibetan. Thanks to them, I learned to truly smile.

During a random and supposedly short stop in Manigango, a half-kilometer long Tibetan town, I was invited to home of three Tibetan boy monks after a chance acquaintance. There, their father, Gongga Tsering, and his wife welcomed me with open arms and stuffed my belly with endless bowls of home cooked food. We could only communicate through a small Tibetan-English schoolbook I had picked up a few days earlier and hand (and body) gestures. We spent hours pouring through that book pointing at phrases. One night after dinner, one of the boys pulled out an old Michael Jackson DVD and put it in. Gongga attempted an impersonation and one of the boys tried to moonwalk. Here I am in a remote village in western China sharing the joy of MJ’s tunes and energy! Yet, I had to somehow communicate to them that sadly, MJ’s heart had failed not to long ago – news they hadn’t received.

Later, Gong Ga insisted [by pointing to the phrase "Don't refuse"] that I stay with them instead of the hotel. I ended up staying in their beautiful Tibetan home for 2 nights. The boys took interest in learning some English. Each morning, they’d grab the book and begin practicing, consulting me when they needed help with pronunciation or reading, and would end the night by practicing phrases in their bedroom. By the end, they could say “good morning” and several other greetings, which I could return in Tibetan. Gong Ga wanted to buy the book from me for his sons, so when I left, I gave it to them as a gift. It was the least I could do…

Clicking on Donate

After an experience like this, I wanted to give so much to the Tibetan people. Thanks to Friendly Planet readers, we were able to donate over $50 to Machik.org, a non-profit that works to empower people on the Tibetan plateau through education and job training. Even though $50 is a small amount, clicking the “Donate” button was met with a rush of adrenalin knowing that we could, in some small way, improve life for someone. It amplified the joy of my time in western China.

Over the last month, we’ve also been able to give $60 to Green Watershed, an organization based in China’s Yunnan Province where I spent 2 weeks that deals with water management for ethnic tribes and has done wonders to fight the impending damming of China’s rivers. Their Executive Director is surveilled closely by the Communist Party, which let’s me know he’s doing something good. Recently, we purchased over $80 in books from Big Brother Mouse, an organization in Luang Prabang, Laos dedicated to making reading fun for Lao children and giving many children probably their first book ever. After spending a little time teaching English here and meeting with Sasha, a retired American book publisher and BBM’s founder, I purchased over 60 children’s stories to take with me during a 2-day trek into the countryside. As we stopped in the last village, school wasn’t in session so my trekking guide introduced me to the teacher, who dutifully inventoried the books with a few other parents and thanked me. Interestingly, other adults curiously picked up a book or two and began to intently read through, probably the first time they’ve seen a children’s story on a page! Also, the trek was guided by Tiger Trails, a local guide service known for its “sustainable tourism.” About 30% of the trek cost goes into the Village Development Fund for the rural villages we passed through and is only used for infrastructure improvements. If I’m going to hike through their back yards and rice fields and sleep in their villages, I’m going to make sure they get a good chunk of the money!

After China, I’ve spent the last month and a half in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. For August and September, Friendly Planet will be making donations to Green Watershed, an advocacy organization in China’s Yunnan Province, and Agir pour les Femmes en Situation Precaire (AFESIP), an organization working tirelessly to help women and children who’ve been or might be affected by sex trafficking in Cambodia.

After only 3 months, Friendly Planet has given away over $100 from ad-based revenue alone (i.e. readers clicking on ads to support the site). Another anonymous donor (even though I don’t solicit donations) has contributed $500 to be distributed over the coming months.

“Books for Laos” Campaign

Big Brother Mouse Books

Just like traveling, contributing to Friendly Planet continues to surprise and energize me. I recently learned about Big Brother Mouse, an organization that is increasing literacy in Laos by creating and distributing fun and educational children’s books. I’ve heard spectacular reviews of this country, but it continues to be one of the poorest in the region. Since I will be spending October in Laos and doing some work with Big Brother Mouse, I’ve decided to launch a small “Books for Laos” Campaign. For $250, we can sponsor a book party where Big Brother Mouse staff will go out into a village, teach 80-100 children how to use the books (probably their first ever books), and leave them with a small library. So, Friendly Planet will be giving all revenues for October up to $125 along with another $125 match to support this project. It’s an ambitious goal for such a small site, but I believe in the power of people.

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