travels

Awamaki Tour

After taking the train from Machu Picchu back to Ollantaytambo, I had another few days before coming back to my hostel in Cusco, and after crisscrossing the town and climbing both the official “sanctioned” Incan ruins and the much better, higher, and less expensive “un-official” ruins complete with flimsy guardrails and a few areas where ...

Machu Picchu

Probably one of the highlights of my trip was Machu Picchu. I’ve traveled to a lot of places, but that first glimpse of the ancient citadel as the mountain was slowly emerging from the morning mist left me literally speechless. After being in Cusco (and trying to acclimate to the altitude) for a few days, ...

Cusco – Cooking Class

On my last day in Cusco, after eating my weight in food over the previous two weeks, I really wanted to see how at least some of that food was made, so I found a cooking class that included a tour of the San Pedro Market. There were a few companies offering classes, but only ...

Walking Around Cusco

A few days after I took the second of my two board exams after finishing my second year of medical school, I took off for a short vacation to relax and not think about anything school related before starting my first clinical rotation of third year. Applying the same principle to all my travels, I ...

El Salvador

More than a decade before joining the class of 2020 in medical school, I had a chance to spend about a week in the Dominican Republic on a medical mission trip. While there were definitely several aspects of the experience I didn’t like, most of them were organizational and political and, at the time, over ...

Namibia

Right after my med school interview, I spent about a month traveling around the southern part of Africa, spending time in Namibia, South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia. I made some amazing people from all around the world, visited Deadvlei in Namibia, which was, at least for me, probably one of the most beautiful sights ...

Victoria Falls

Victoria Falls is spectacular. What I didn’t know until I got there was that there were several different sections of the falls. On the Zambian side, where I was, it was a bit more difficult to get to a good viewing area of the falls. It was more “rustic” – less touristy, but a lot ...

Kruger

While in Africa, I spent a couple of days driving around Kruger National Park – one of the largest game reserves in Africa. Not only is it huge – about the size of Belgium, but it was basically a reverse zoo. Once I drove through one of the gates on the perimeter of the park, ...

Botswana

After spending about a week in Namibia, we continued east to Botswana, where we spent some time with the San people, who taught us how to find naturally occurring quinine to treat malaria, how to create waterproof bags for storing water out of animal skins, and more. We also spent some time in the Okavango ...

Pokhara in Nepal

While in Nepal, I had a few days to spend in my guide’s hometown – Pokhara. Situated about 100 miles to the northeast of Kathmandu, on the beautiful Phewa Lake and serving as the gateway to the Annapurna Mountain Range just north, it was great to travel by boat to the World Peace Pagoda, a ...