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Best backpacking spots in the worldInspiration is the start of your next memories

Backpacking is about freedom, discovery, and creating your own path — not following a rigid, day-to-day plan. That’s why this page isn’t filled with generic itineraries. Instead, I share personal stories, photos, and highlights from more than 80 countries I’ve explored across six continents. My goal is to give you the inspiration and insights you need to shape your own adventure. From epic hikes and cultural festivals to hidden gems far off the tourist trail, these experiences are drawn from real backpacking journeys — the kind that help you meet people, push your limits, and create memories that last a lifetime.
👉 Get inspired by world's best  cities |  hikes |  national parks |  beaches |  attractions |  festivals |  world wonders

Discover Destinations Through My Travels

Explore my personal collection of backpacking photos, organized by category. From bustling streets and breathtaking landscapes to wildlife and sunsets, every image reflects firsthand travel experiences, helping you uncover your next adventure.

My Backpacking Stories

Invited to a traditional Pakistani wedding

Invited to a traditional Pakistani wedding

Pakistan | I had no clue what to expect but changed my travel plans to be able to accept the invitation and just see what happens. Clearly from the start it was already different as in my country we would never invite a person who just happened to be in town that day. Also it wasn’t just one day but three, but I was up for the final day. I was told that the ...
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Climbing the non-forgiving Rinjani volcano

Climbing the non-forgiving Rinjani volcano

Indonesia | Indonesia, without claiming this is a unique poetic discovery, I would call the land of islands and volcanoes. From Gili Air, a small paradise island perfect for snorkeling, cocktails, and tuna steak, Mount Rinjani, a continuously smoking, sometimes active volcano, beckoned. One day, I looked from my beach chair at this mighty volcano, and the next...
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Taking the last leg of the Trans-Mongolian Express

Taking the last leg of the Trans-Mongolian Express

China | What is it that makes train travel so special for many people? I’ve never really felt that, but that’s probably because the sprinter from Heemstede-Aerdenhout to Leiden is a completely different experience than the Trans-Mongolian Express from Ulaanbaatar to Beijing. Just the sign on the outside “МОСКВА -- УЛААН-БААТАР -- БЗЗЖИН” makes the whole jo...
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A factory, the beach and a summer camp, seemingly all so perfect

A factory, the beach and a summer camp, seemingly all so perfect

North Korea | Shortly after, we were disrupted by an interesting visit to an old factory, where I hoped the emergency number didn’t contain too many 8s and 9s, as the emergency phone was an old-school rotary device. Our next stop was the beach, passing by a great-looking beach filled with local Koreans. Unfortunately, we were dropped off at a fenced and isolated...
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Integrating in Kyrgyz culture

Integrating in Kyrgyz culture

Kyrgyzstan | That evening, we went out. After pre-drinking in the hostel with vodka in Danone cups (which is quite intense for a shot) for 30 cents, Le Garage was the first on our list. In the basement of a completely deserted hotel, with six staff members and no visitors, we hoped to liven things up a bit, but it wasn’t enough for a fun night. We found that in...
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Surprise encounter with school kids

Nepal | After a full day of bus rides back to Kathmandu, I spent the next two days rafting on the Bote Kosi. It wasn‘t very exciting, so on my second-to-last day, I decided to rent a mountain bike one more time to cruise around Kathmandu (the most fun part of the entire vacation). Just an hour out of Kathmandu, we stumbled upon a school class in a forest. ...
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An intense entry into Ghana

An intense entry into Ghana

Ghana | Not even 24 hours in Ghana, I found myself in Cape Coast Castle, the place from which enslaved people were transported across the Atlantic Ocean. Everyone knows about this pitch-black chapter in human history. But when you’re standing there in the dungeons where enslaved people were “stored” for three months, waiting for the next ship to take them,...
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Six month backpacking trip through Bolivia, Peru and central America: update 14/14

Guatemala | Finally I entered ‘Guate,’ the final country of my South and Central America trip. I played tourist with an organized boat trip on the Rio Dulce. On that boat, there was a French guy I started traveling with from then on. His English was as good as my Vietnamese, so Spanish became the language of choice. We went to Tikal together. Tikal is like the...
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Setting a new tap-the-frog record in North Korea

Setting a new tap-the-frog record in North Korea

North Korea | During dinner, we experienced five power outages, but funny enough, the TV kept broadcasting lovely propaganda. After dinner, we went to a symbolic tower, a tower with 70 steps on the outside to correspond with each year of the leader’s life, and as a metaphor that everybody can reach the top through self-reliance. I can’t help but think it’s ironi...
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Making a cup of coffee in the jungle

Making a cup of coffee in the jungle

Brazil | Making a cup of coffee takes a little more effort in the Amazon than hopping by your local Starbucks. You go by boat in search for some nice peace of wood You cut it and try to not let it fall in the water (#failed) You make a fire and cook the coffee The finishing touch is by putting the burining wood blo...
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Not something you do everyday: driving a bicycle trishaw yourself

Not something you do everyday: driving a bicycle trishaw yourself

Myanmar | Our first day in Mandalay we found out that it’s a BIG city, mainly tricked by the enourmous size of the palace area. After a (too) hasty glimpse at the map we thought we could easily walk from our hotel to Mandalay Hill, being just at the other side of the palace. Still we decided to take a bicycle trishaw and only didn’t bargain about the 5000 si...
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From 10 buildings burning bodies to playing a real-life computer game

From 10 buildings burning bodies to playing a real-life computer game

Nepal | Wow, my first week in Nepal has been a blast! I couldn‘t have asked for a better start to this vacation. So, first things first, let me tell you about my little adventure at London Heathrow. I had to convince them that my tube of toothpaste, deodorant, contact lens solution, and sunscreen weren‘t terrorist weapons. Apparently, these extremely dange...
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How a non sea-worthy wreck still brought us to the Komodo Islands

How a non sea-worthy wreck still brought us to the Komodo Islands

Indonesia | Everyone was silent. Totally stunned. Early in the morning, we, a group of thirty people, stared at a rundown wooden shack. It floated, so you could call it a boat. Sometimes we looked enviously at the boat from the other group. Theirs had everything you‘d call a boat, or so we wanted to believe. Ours floated. The lifeboat, supposed to fit four out...
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The Friendly Faces of Ghana

The Friendly Faces of Ghana

Ghana | To close my stories about Ghana, I want to talk about the incredibly friendly people I met during my three-week backpacking adventure. It’s hard to fully capture the warmth and kindness of the people here, so let me share just a few of the moments that left me truly touched. The boy who let me score One afternoon, a 14-year-old boy invit...
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Police pursuit in bandit county

Police pursuit in bandit county

Madagascar | There we left our Pajeero for a few days rest and a technician could hopefully do some healing wonders. In that time, we got a new car, unfortunately with driver so we had to change our role into passenger, to continue our way to Tsingy National Park. We were warned that in this area there were armed robberies once in a while, so we should drive in...
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Six month backpacking trip through Bolivia, Peru and central America: update 4/14

Bolivia | Thought I’d have a nice extra hour to write this post, turned out Bolivia doesn’t do daylight saving time. So, unfortunately, this had to be a quick one. Since my last post, I’ve been through some stuff. I can finally check off the “armed robbery” from my list. But let me start with the laundry. In Cochabamba, it was time to take my entire wardro...
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Hiking the Peaks of the Balkan (Albania, Montenegro, Kosovo)

Hiking the Peaks of the Balkan (Albania, Montenegro, Kosovo)

Albania | The Peaks of the Balkans trail runs through Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro — a spectacular loop of mountain passes, remote villages, and unpredictable weather. It’s also a place where the clouds have opinions, the roads test your patience, and every meal feels like a small victory. This is not the story of how long it took or where we stayed, but ...
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Suddenly at the bottom of the backpacker ladder

Suddenly at the bottom of the backpacker ladder

Kyrgyzstan | In the Netherlands, I could get away with countries like Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia, but here I’m at the bottom of the ladder as a ‘regular backpacker’: an Englishman with a Vietnamese wife who cycled from Hanoi to Paris; a Dutch family who had been on the road for 5 years in a Land Rover; two Poles on a tandem bike, and a German guy who bought a hors...
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An amazing day with just 1 HP (horse power)

Kyrgyzstan | After climbing a small mountain with the German guy on horseback, his horse, and a lost Frenchman, I arranged for a car ride to return to civilization the next morning. Then, that evening, I suddenly heard a familiar voice—it was Azamat, one of the two sons from the homestay in Kochkor, looking for me. He had just brought two Australians on horseba...
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Being more famous than the Great Wall for a day and closing all factories to create a blue sky

Being more famous than the Great Wall for a day and closing all factories to create a blue sky

China | I had one full day left in Beijing: that meant the Great Wall of China. And now I thought the Great Wall of China was a pretty respectable attraction, but by the end of the day, I had been photographed more times than I had taken photos of the wall in between. The air was finally clean. It turned out that the government had ordered all factories in...
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Six month backpacking trip through Bolivia, Peru and central America: update 6/14

Peru | Napaykullayki kgochu! This might sound more like Nepali, but I’m still in South America. To add a cultural touch to my emails, let me disrupt your simple worldview that they speak Spanish or Portuguese throughout this continent. The above greeting is Quechua, and a few days ago, I ended up with a family on an island where it was the only language t...
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Staying alive on boiled potatoes, tea and joints

Staying alive on boiled potatoes, tea and joints

India | A bus and a horse-drawn carriage later, I met someone who called himself Alibaba. He had been eating only boiled potatoes for 39 years, drank only tea, and smoked only joints in his house carved into a rock. Every evening, he fed the peacocks. I have no idea how long the list of extremely extraordinary people will become, but India seems to have a ...
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Six month backpacking trip through Bolivia, Peru and central America: update 3/14

Bolivia | First off, let me explain why there are no tall Bolivians. The water here is heated electrically, and the showers are kinda low. Anyone over 1.75 meters (that’s me) risks getting electrocuted while showering. I’ve had about three shocks so far, but hey, I’m still kicking. Spent 10 days in Tupiza, basically the Costa del Sol without the Costa but w...
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Why I needed to ask a guy to become a Flores citizen to extend my own visa

Indonesia | I believe there‘s no meal in the world that can attract as much attention after a while as pizza made with local ingredients. And by pizza, I mean the kind only Italians can make. Usually, there‘s no Italian around at that moment, let alone the right original Italian ingredients. But this time we got lucky. We found an Italian guy, complete with a ...
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The true Mongolian experience

The true Mongolian experience

Mongolia | After this amazing time in Kovsköl, I set out to find the true Mongolian experience: crossing the country, away from the few real roads they have. For comparison: imagine you’re in Bordeaux and want to go to Milan, you wouldn’t go via Amsterdam unless... Amsterdam is the only way to get from Bordeaux to Milan. That was kind of the situation there. ...
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Sharing burgers with somebody traveling by a raft

Sharing burgers with somebody traveling by a raft

India | In the context of extraordinary travelers, the Pole I met that same evening certainly deserves an honorable mention. He always brings clothes, a tent and a paddle as luggage. He then builds a raft, usually from an old door and four large jerry cans, and floats down the river. In India, he wanted to raft the Ganges for a week. With him and a few of...
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Climbing Mount Fuji in a record time to catch the bus

Climbing Mount Fuji in a record time to catch the bus

Japan | After the mountains, I visited Osaka and Kyoto. What took me 10 hours for 250 km in Mongolia, I covered here in 1 hour. And it‘s almost unbelievable that those bullet trains depart every 10 minutes and zoom past at 250 km/h. On my way to Mount Fuji, I could once again enjoy the absurdly efficient transportation system. I covered the first 360 km on...
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Six month backpacking trip through Bolivia, Peru and central America: update 5/14

Bolivia | I’M STILL ALIVE!!! I believe I ended the last post by mentioning that I was going downhill mountain biking on the world’s most dangerous road. Even back on the bus, I survived. After the mountain biking tour and three days chilling in a mountain village (Coroico), I took the bus to Rurrenabaque. Even though Rurrenabaque sounds like a first-class m...
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Don’t try this at home | escaping the hotel in North Korea

Don’t try this at home | escaping the hotel in North Korea

North Korea | That evening, the four of us (three others and myself) wanted some time without our ever-present security guard and decided to see how far we could venture from our hotel. Surprisingly enough, we were able to walk out of the hotel (which is normally guarded) and pass through the first AND second security checkpoints without being noticed (although ...
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Spending the night in the gers of a family in the mountains

Spending the night in the gers of a family in the mountains

Kyrgyzstan | Next on the agenda was Lake Song-Kol. Don’t be alarmed by the word ‘agenda’; it’s more like a list of places you want to visit that need to be done in a certain order because they are too far apart to visit at the same time. Armed with offline Google Maps, I embarked on a three-day ger trek into the mountains. Even though I initially took the wrong...
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To the top of the most dangeours mountain of Slovenia

To the top of the most dangeours mountain of Slovenia

Slovenia | Still don’t know how I did it but climbed this monster today. When I saw the mountain I was pretty sure I was not able to reach the top. But thanks to my personal superguide Blaž Lovenjak (who I met in Iceland last year) we made it. He even showed me the largest waterfall of slovenia. #fakenews: it wasn’t today but yesterday but already started wr...
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Getting to a valley completely closed off in the winter

Getting to a valley completely closed off in the winter

Kyrgyzstan | The next two days were dedicated to crossing a mountain range to a village that was cut off from the outside world all winter and where only about one car per hour went in the summer. While I didn’t have much luck on the road to Osh, this day went beyond the point of bad luck. The car I chose as my victim broke down six times, each time with a diff...
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Trying to control the most difficult horse

Trying to control the most difficult horse

Mongolia | The guide was extremely cautious. The German guy wasn’t allowed to ride freely and was led on a leash by the guide (which led to a small explosion at the end of the second day, more on that later, and I promise to wrap up the current cliffhangers before opening new ones). I turned out to have the most difficult horse and had to keep the reins super...
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Christmas in a Hindu country, almost turning India into a second North Korea

Christmas in a Hindu country, almost turning India into a second North Korea

India | Christmas Eve was on the agenda. I had no idea how to celebrate it in a predominantly Hindu country. But with a few others, we found a local fireworks shop that sold the most gigantic firework packages. We decided to keep it simple and bought a package for five euros. However, these rockets exploded so loudly that you could feel the explosion in y...
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Bali, more than Australian surf dudes and beer pong

Bali, more than Australian surf dudes and beer pong

Indonesia | Indonesia started with a culture shock, but then it felt like returning to the Western world. I arrived in Kuta, Bali, which is like Scheveningen for Australians. But even the Germans were abundant here. There was nothing else to do but play beer pong for two nights. Something in me told me that there must be more Indonesian culture to discover tha...
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Six month backpacking trip through Bolivia, Peru and central America: update 2/14

Bolivia | I actually want to write to you every day because I keep experiencing strange things here. However, I promised you, after seeing the fearful faces when you heard that you were also on Johan’s-in-Bolivia email list, that I wouldn’t bombard you with daily emails full of uninteresting and then-and-then-and-then stories. But hey, I’m the author here, s...
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Drinking beer and eating frog with the son of the designer of the Nissan GTR

Drinking beer and eating frog with the son of the designer of the Nissan GTR

Japan | The last stop was Tokyo, the ultimate culture shock. Millions of people effortlessly maneuvering from their own point A to their own point B with the same Japanese politeness and orderliness that I had experienced so far. The weather, on the other hand, was chaotic. Due to two strong typhoons passing over Japan, there was constant rain. The second ...
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Six month backpacking trip through Bolivia, Peru and central America: update 7/14

Peru | I’ve had some more adventures: Rafting on the Apurimac River In Cuzco I did an insane four-day rafting trip. Now, the issue was that our guide was really into surfing (with a raft). That means you raft in the same spot in the river while the river flows super fast underneath you, WITHOUT PADDLING. So, we thought that was fun too, only he di...
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Intense story from a Tsunami survivor…

Indonesia | My buddy from the sunset hangout last night gives me a lift to the airport (an hour on the back of his motorbike). Along the way, he tells me about losing two sisters and how he had to flee the tsunami. At first, he saw folks panicking, telling him to run. But he didn‘t get it. Then he saw people soaked or covered in mud. Together, we hit up the ts...
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Visiting the North Korean library

Visiting the North Korean library

North Korea | Our next stop was the library, where some students were zealously interacting with computers. However, upon closer inspection, it seemed that their only goal was to interact. They would right-click to get a quick menu, close it, move the mouse up and down, and right-click again to get the same quick menu. When a new person came to a computer, they ...
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Meeting Siberian beer hunters, world jugglers and oil tanker captains

Meeting Siberian beer hunters, world jugglers and oil tanker captains

Iceland | Iceland: how I met Siberian bear hunters, world jugglers and oil tanker captains... After my five day hike (see previous post) I was up for a 10 day drive all around the island. To earn some credits back for the numerous times I had been picked up before in my life, I had decided to take a bunch of hitchhikers on the way. But soon that seemed the ...
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Even more extreme backpackers

Even more extreme backpackers

Kyrgyzstan | I thought that in Bishkek, I had already encountered the most extreme forms of travel, but now my backpack coolness was completely frozen. One Japanese guy cycled from Canada through South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia back to Japan. The other Japanese guy walked (WALKED!) from Japan to Paris. To thaw my self-confidence a bit, I cooked a meal w...
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Losing a wallet made me some new friends

Indonesia | Now, heading over to Banda Aceh, I find myself back in Binjai. But guess what? Binjai‘s showing its totally opposite side today. I‘m at a restaurant, just chatting away with this guy for like half an hour. And then, boom, he‘s suddenly gotta dash. I figure I‘ll follow suit, so I ask for the bill, only to find out the guy paid for my whole meal! Cou...
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Praying to Buddha for some sunshine

Praying to Buddha for some sunshine

Myanmar | On my way from one pagoda to the other i was stuck in a taxi which seem to have a maximum speed of 40. Until it started to rain ..... After a three times “no good no good” and trying to clean the condensed front window with the newspaper it dropped to an even lower 20. Time enough to let a police car pass by on high speed (well over our original ma...
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Six month backpacking trip through Bolivia, Peru and central America: update 8/14

Peru | The last 3 days in Peru have given the concept of ‘car’ a whole new dimension. Things a car definitely doesn’t need are (a) the starter motor and (b) the gas pedal. First, I was in a bus without a starter motor. Not a big deal as long as you park the bus on a hill and can start the engine using gravity. The problem arises when the only way down is...
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Getting to Mole National Park with only two gear box break downs

Getting to Mole National Park with only two gear box break downs

Ghana | After traveling around Ghana for a week, I realized they don’t have any kind of annual vehicle inspection here. I once saw a car lose a wheel while it was driving. The minibus I was in, following behind, honked furiously to warn the shopkeeper on the side of the road about the wheel heading straight for them. But everyone else seemed to think it wa...
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World Cup qualification | Kyrgyzstan vs Australia

World Cup qualification | Kyrgyzstan vs Australia

Kyrgyzstan | The next day was finally the moment to resolve all the cliffhangers: watching the World Cup qualifying match between Kyrgyzstan and Australia at the Bishkek stadium was an absolutely amazing experience. When Kyrgyzstan scored their first goal in the last minutes (1-2), the crowd went wild (even though there was no roof on the stadium). The team did...
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Six month backpacking trip through Bolivia, Peru and central America: update 12/14

Nicaragua | In Nicaragua, we visited the only island-in-freshwater-with-two-volcanoes in the world (!!!) (Isla Omepete). It depends on how you want to market your island to tourists, but we fell for it. During our hike with a local guide, we encountered a whole family of howler monkeys. The first time you hear them roar, you think there’s an orangutan right be...
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Scrolling through my friends on Facebook to find somebody in Sudan to enter the country

Scrolling through my friends on Facebook to find somebody in Sudan to enter the country

Sudan | WOW, I got him. Some are harder to conquer than others, but this one played extremely hard to get. My journey started about 4 months ago.... Visiting the website of the Sudanese Embassy in The Hague was my start. It seemed to me that this website should cater, a.o., for Dutch people wanting to travel to Sudan. The entire website however was in Ara...
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A few days in paradise (Busua, Butre, Dixcove)

A few days in paradise (Busua, Butre, Dixcove)

Ghana | After an intense start in Cape Coast and Elmina, with horrifying insights into the history of slavery, I was ready for some relaxation. And boy, did I find it in the fishing village of Busua. The beach was lined with palm trees, and fishermen were busy either repairing their nets for the next trip or pulling fish from their latest catch. Some were ...
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Carnaval in Rio

Carnaval in Rio

Brazil | Woow. Carnaval in Rio! Not sure where to start. Rio was a concatenation of epic events. At one moment I found myself in the middle of some happy football hooligans supporting Flamengo (luckily they came back from 0-2, otherwise the ending would not have been happy), another moment you ask yourself why you decided to hike the steep trail to Christ t...
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Funniest but also most chaotic bus ticket system

Funniest but also most chaotic bus ticket system

Ghana | Okay, this was hands-down the funniest, yet most chaotic, bus ticket system I’ve ever experienced 🤣. But the whole thing started out like I’d stepped straight into Great Britain. When I arrived at Takoradi bus station, I saw a big, orderly queue of about 100 people. It was for the Kumasi bus—exactly where I needed to go. Perfect, right? Wrong. T...
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A Lesson in Sri Lankan Opportunism

Sri Lanka | We ordered a tuk-tuk for 1,300. When it arrived, the driver immediately informed us that the road was closed because of rain, which meant a major detour and, unfortunately, a doubling of the price. Having taken that exact road the day before — easily one of the best roads in Sri Lanka — I suggested that it might still be passable. After a brief ...
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Last week in Mongolia

Last week in Mongolia

Mongolia | The last week in Mongolia had begun. In the beginning, it took some getting used to the vast distances and the often monotonous nature in many places, but it was the ultimate freedom that you can experience in this country and the fantastic places that break up the endless plains like oases in a desert that stole my heart. The last week started at...
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The Orange Ball!

The Orange Ball!

North Korea | The next morning, one of our group members walked off the main path between a fountain and some statues of the leaders. Not even 30 meters away from the group, a uniformed guy stepped out from behind a tree and presented him with a small orange ball, after which our Mr. Li reprimanded him and ordered him to join the group right away. We’re still un...
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How a 4 hour conversation saved me 80 rupees

How a 4 hour conversation saved me 80 rupees

Nepal | Well, folks, my last day in Nepal has arrived, and I‘ve experienced way too many bizarre things once again. There were so many of them that I had to make a choice between organizing them chronologically or alphabetically, but in the end, I opted for a small selection. I think I left off my last message with a heavy negotiation over an alarm clock....
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Striking zebu’s and wearing a sweater with 36°C

Striking zebu’s and wearing a sweater with 36°C

Madagascar | The next day my travel mate and I had picked our 4WD to visit a next valley. A valley who had found a smart, though arguably correct way, of making some extra money. Each village had created a barrier across the road which they opened after paying 10.000 ariary (€2,5). After paying this toll, you would expect a perfectly flat rolled out layer of as...
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Trying to get some horses we could borrow for 4 days

Trying to get some horses we could borrow for 4 days

Mongolia | After this full day, the five of us were eager to get back on an animal. Since there were eight lakes at a considerable distance, we chose horses because if we had chosen yaks, we would probably still be on the way. The small concentration of gers where horses could be rented turned out to be fully controlled by the agencies. At first, the price fo...
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Six month backpacking trip through Bolivia, Peru and central America: update 9/14

Panama | Alright, as promised, I’ll pick up the chronology now. After 1 day in Lima, 4 hours in Bogota (yes, yes, got the Colombia stamp now), I arrived in Panama City. What a culture shock! A supermarket where you don’t have to stand behind a little gate to point out your products but can walk right in, and they sell EVERYTHING, including Gouda and yogurt!...
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Spying in a real North Korean supermarket

Spying in a real North Korean supermarket

North Korea | Next, we visited a bookstore with many books devoted to the leaders, portraying them in almost god-like proportions, and filled with anti-imperialistic propaganda (they don‘t seem to have a great appreciation for the US :P). I managed to sneak into a supermarket (not on the schedule, and since I was still under surveillance, I had to be quick: came...
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Traveling full day to end up in a ghost town

Brazil | Traveling can be tough sometimes. I was trying to make my way to Jericoacoara on a Sunday and that appeared to be not the best idea. In the first step-over town I had to kill 3 hours; ended up chatting with the owner of a pet shop and to kill some more time went to a barbershop to get my beard removed. Finally a bus arrived and brought me to the n...
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A little rafting adventure: trapped on a rock in the middle of the river

Colombia | Ok. Sitting in a nightbus for 12 hours with wifi: time for a little story. Yesterday i had a crazy rafting experience thanks to quiet an unexperienced rafting guide. It went all smooth until a rock appeared in the middle of the river (this does happen while rafting). We hit the rock and the water pushed the boat vertical. We climbed out quickly ont...
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Venice without tourists

Venice without tourists

Italy | While backpacking Slovenia i found out that Venice was just around the corner. Though it was hard to leave the rocky mountains and turquoise blue rivers behind for a few days, Venice without cruise ships was something i could not let pass by. Check out how peaceful Venice can be...
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Culture shock in Lahore

Culture shock in Lahore

Pakistan | After two weeks of mountain villages and snowy basecamps, there couldn’t be a larger contrast than Lahore. A 14 million people metropole, an alarmingly high smog level (you could smell it and even though there were zero clouds the sun could hardly come through) and with one of the most chaotic traffic situations I had ever experienced. That’s why ...
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A hike to a hot spring, crossing an overflooded river

A hike to a hot spring, crossing an overflooded river

Kyrgyzstan | In Karakol, which was supposed to be a charming mountain village but ended up being a perfectly structured grid of 8-lane asphalt roads with Soviet apartment buildings in between, I had my first, albeit unsuccessful, hope that my weather app was still asleep when it predicted three days of rain. This was so unusual that it made the news, and the mo...
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How to (not) learn a new card game without any English

How to (not) learn a new card game without any English

Kyrgyzstan | By chance, I met the German guy on horseback, and together we tried to learn a new card game from a boy who understandably didn’t say anything since we only responded with words that had nothing to do with Kyrgyz. So, based on how he played and whether he approved or disapproved of our actions, we tried to decipher the underlying rules. But since h...
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Tea with the queen of Ambalavero

Tea with the queen of Ambalavero

Madagascar | The next day the man surprised me when he wore shoes for a walk to a lower lying village. His explanation was so logical, though still contrary to western views. The hike yesterday was rocky and tough so shoes would wear down where today’s hike was easy so shoes wouldn’t go bad. The village at the bottom of the valley was going to give an even bigg...
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€70 for a bunkbed, excluding electricity for charging your phone

€70 for a bunkbed, excluding electricity for charging your phone

Japan | The mountain hut was also different from what I was used to: a massive building with space for 500 people. Breakfast was served between 5:00 and 6:30 am, as is customary in the Himalayas, so that you can start your mountain hikes on time, even though the longest climb there takes no longer than 2 hours. For just 70 euros, you could get a mattress o...
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Closing the curtains too early caused a visit by the police

Closing the curtains too early caused a visit by the police

India | That evening, we decided to finish Christmas Eve in style with lots of beer and beer pong (oh, and a quick fried chicken as a Christmas meal). When the first beer popped open, the hostel owner quickly closed all the curtains. She explained that except for 5-star hotels, no one in this city had an alcohol license because it had become unaffordable. ...
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Rope jumping without rope and a forest full of leeches

Rope jumping without rope and a forest full of leeches

Madagascar | It all started with the train ride from Fianarantsoa to Manakara. As this steam train only goes twice a week, it’s a happening in every village it passes. The whole village runs out to greet the train, and people try and sell the goods they produced during the days in between. And every time the train sets off for its next lag, the whole village wh...
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How telling what time it is, made me a Saint on the roof of a bus

How telling what time it is, made me a Saint on the roof of a bus

Nepal | Fortunately, we had a guide with us on our journey. The trek lasted for two weeks, circling the Annapurna Massif. The highlight was supposed to be seeing Annapurna-1 (an 8100-meter-high mountain). After 10 days of hiking, the guide finally pointed out Annapurna-1 to us. We were ecstatic and filled our camera rolls and memory cards until we reached ...
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How the succession to the throne works within the Ashanti royal family

How the succession to the throne works within the Ashanti royal family

Ghana | After a few days of extreme chill vibes in the little paradise of Busua, I had now landed in Kumasi (read how in my previous story as that was quite an undertaking to unravel the bus ticketing system)—a city of 3.9 million people if...
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Oops…. the train track changes width at the border

Oops…. the train track changes width at the border

China | Arriving at the border with China, an unexpected problem arose: the rails in China turned out to be 10 cm closer together than in Mongolia. The easiest solution seemed to be to switch to a Chinese train. It was decided to change all the wheelsets under the train!!! With all the passengers on board, the entire Trans-Mongolian Express was lifted 1.5 ...
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No breakfast, but sunrise at bed

No breakfast, but sunrise at bed

Kyrgyzstan | I had already spent a week and a half in Kyrgyzstan, and after Bishkek-Kochkor-Bishkek-Kochkor-Song Köl-Kochkor, it was finally time to explore the rest of the country. That evening, I slept in a ger camp by a lake after taking buses, hitchhiking, and walking. Rookie mistake: I forgot to roll down my ger door carpet, so I was treated to a sunrise i...
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United Arab Emirates: a country of shopping malls

United Arab Emirates | A country that definitely wasn’t at the top of my travel list — yet during a layover on my way to Sri Lanka, I couldn’t resist stepping outside to see just how bizarre this place really is. The whole concept of the United Arab Emirates, kick-started by oil but grown fat on finance, trade, and its strategic location as an airport hub between Asia, A...
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The most hospitable people in the world

The most hospitable people in the world

Pakistan | Pakistan surpasses all expectations. Only a good week into my journey, Pakistan and its people have done every effort to make it one of the best (if not the best) places on the globe I ever visited. Without doing any people I have met before a disservice and realising I haven’t met all Pakistanis yet, I do come to the conclusion that Pakistanis ar...
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Stepping up our game: 4WD time!

Stepping up our game: 4WD time!

Madagascar | After a first full week of driving the national highway, it was time to step up our game and bring our Mitsubishi to roads where he was made for: Tulear to Morondava. To be honest, I had no idea how roads could be even more challenging since the national “highway” already was a road with more potholes than asphalt where we could reach an average of...
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A German calling brrrr in vain to get his galloping horse to a stop

A German calling brrrr in vain to get his galloping horse to a stop

Mongolia | Time to cash in on a cliffhanger. The German guy had had enough of being led on a leash while we happily galloped through the fields. His pent-up anger exploded in one go, and he got off his horse and stayed put. A few hundred meters ahead, we also stopped. The situation: the three of us with an angry guide because the German guy was angry at him, ...
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Buying a train ticket in just 1.5h and getting to the station in a lawn mower

Buying a train ticket in just 1.5h and getting to the station in a lawn mower

India | Varanasi was an extremely intense start to what would prove to be an extremely intense country. It was time for the next destination: Agra. There is a direct train. No one could tell me where the buses went from and which route they took, so the train quickly became the only option. However, the train also had its challenges. Used to arriving at th...
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Climbing the Mount Everest in a T-shirt

Climbing the Mount Everest in a T-shirt

Japan | A day later, I was in the Japanese Alps. And the Japanese take them seriously, very seriously. Although the mountains there had peaks just above 3000 meters with a few scattered patches of snow and perfectly maintained hiking trails, every Japanese person was prepared to climb Mount Everest: helmet on, walking stick in both hands, climbing shoes, a...
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Welcome to Japan: self-spraying toilets and 3 bows for a yoghurt

Welcome to Japan: self-spraying toilets and 3 bows for a yoghurt

Japan | After Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, and North Korea, Japan was quite a culture shock: the third largest economy in the world and in many ways the opposite of my previous countries. Japan felt like one big amusement park. Let‘s start with the toilets: after two months of squatting above piles of previous users‘ excrement and throwing toilet paper in a bin,...
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Conquering some vertigo to reach that unique party place in the Dolomites

Conquering some vertigo to reach that unique party place in the Dolomites

Italy | Yet another average holiday: flight ticket bought for correct day but incorrect year 🙈, so jumped in my 🚗, to get to the dolomites in time, picked a mountain pass but there was a gas leak discovered in the village so the only road was closed for 3 hours, made it just in time to our starting point to hike the same evening to our first mountain but a...
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Entire village helping us out

Entire village helping us out

Madagascar | So far, our 30-year-old Pajeero was holding strong. But day 4 almost became fatal for him. With 40 degrees Celsius outside, his cooling system couldn’t keep up anymore. And in the middle of a dried-up river he copied the example of the zebu’s: strike. After the motor just came to a hold while driving, the start engine didn’t manage to get it going ...
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Six month backpacking trip through Bolivia, Peru and central America: update 1/14

Bolivia | I’ve only been awake for 3 hours in Bolivia, but I feel like I can already ramble on for 3 pages. What have I experienced so far? The journey On paper, it seems so simple: Schiphol - La Paz. But in reality, you first fly to Madrid. The plane was delayed by 2 hours, so we missed our connection, and they dropped us on the last flight to South...
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Mexico being different than my countries so far on my world travel

Mexico being different than my countries so far on my world travel

Mexico | After 7 months in Asia, Mexico took some getting used to in the first few days. In the city, I tried to stop the city bus, but the driver told me I could only do that at a bus stop and drove past. In a big tour bus with only three passengers, I had to sit in my assigned seat so I couldn‘t recline because the only two other passengers had the seats ...
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Meeting a fortune-teller for one hour in an empty bus

Meeting a fortune-teller for one hour in an empty bus

India | In Rajasthan, the province I was in, there are many fantastically interesting places. The next one was Jaisalmer, and at the bus station in Jodhpur, I found a willing man to show me the bus to Jaisalmer. He took me to an empty bus, and he sat next to me in the bus. Since I had never seen an empty bus going somewhere that same day, I asked when it w...
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Realizing I missed my calling, being a cowboy!

Realizing I missed my calling, being a cowboy!

Mongolia | The next day was possibly the most beautiful of my trip. We had earned complete freedom with our horses from the guide, and the English guy and I used it to first drive a young yak a few hundred meters away from its family with our horses (then he was allowed to happily hop back before we get the World Wildlife Fund on our case), only to realize an...
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Flat tyre at 5.000m high

Flat tyre at 5.000m high

Pakistan | After the wedding, back in the main valley, I asked if somebody could drive me up to the Chinese border, the highest border crossing of the world at almost 5.000m. Exactly the place where you don’t want a flat tyre, for sure not when the border is closed to Covid. The last km we walked up in the hope somebody at the border had gears to fix the flat...
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Don’t try and climb a waterfall – learnt it the hard way

Don’t try and climb a waterfall – learnt it the hard way

Indonesia | After all the effort to extend my visa for another month, today marked the first day of these hard-fought extra thirty days in Indonesia. It would also be the last day I‘d see anything of Indonesia other than the inside of a hostel or hospital. While walking to a waterfall, I slipped, twisted, and fell several meters down. Just as abruptly as I ha...
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Cuba: unique, frustrating, inspiring, unexpected, special, cheap, expensive, and everything all at once

Cuba | Cuba is like no other place - it’s unique, frustrating, inspiring, unexpected, special, cheap, expensive, and everything all at once. Now the challenge is to somehow make sense of it on paper. Extending my visa: yeah, that always gives me plenty to write about, and Cuba didn’t disappoint in that regard. I was prepared, so I knew I needed about 20-...
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Trekking 21km barefooted through desert for one photo

Trekking 21km barefooted through desert for one photo

Brazil | Some photos require a little more effort than others. This one didn’t come cheap: 21km trekking barefooted through the desert, 35 degrees, in a burning sun without shadows for the full day. How rewarding was the swim in this little rainwater-filled laguna in between those beautiful endless sand dunes!...
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Six month backpacking trip through Bolivia, Peru and central America: update 13/14

Honduras | After 5 countries and 4 months of only Spanish love songs on poorly tuned radio stations, finally here in Honduras, it’s ENGLISH love songs. Just 3 more weeks to wait, and I’ll have Gigi d’Agostino back on my eardrums. Celebrated Willems’ birthday in the metropolis of Danli. Other than that, we haven't seen much of Honduras. We went to the Bay Isla...
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Eid Al Etihad, UAE national day

United Arab Emirates | Just arrived in Abu Dhabi, I figured I’d take a casual little stroll along the beach. You know, stretch the legs, breathe some air, mind my own business. Turns out… I was not alone. Hundreds of thousands of people apparently had the exact same brilliant idea. When folks around me suddenly started spraying each other with coloured string and sham...
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The mausoleum for Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il

The mausoleum for Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il

North Korea | On August 15th, Liberation Day, a big and important day where Korea celebrates its liberation from Japan 70 years ago, we had a busy schedule. We started the day with the usual cold spaghetti bolognese for breakfast in the non-revolving restaurant at 6:45 am. After an extra half hour to make our way down using the elevators, we were all dressed up ...
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Avoiding airport taxi mafia by a simple walk to the bus

Avoiding airport taxi mafia by a simple walk to the bus

Mongolia | After landing and the joy of seeing that your debit card can convert a PIN code into a stack of local currency in this country, the taxi mafia comes into play. But I can proudly say that, thanks to a short side note in the Lonely Planet, I managed to avoid them for the first time after arriving in a new country by walking straight to the bus stop 5...
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Start of my 1.5 year travel around the world

Start of my 1.5 year travel around the world

Kyrgyzstan | Still at Amsterdam Lelylaan station, I faced my biggest challenge, almost jeopardizing my trip. I didn’t feel like carrying my public transport card around the world for a year, so I left it at home, thinking I could make the short journey to Schiphol Airport without checking in for this unique occasion. However, it turns out that my home station i...
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After 2.5h traveling to Adanwomase finding out the only guide left in the village didn’t work today

After 2.5h traveling to Adanwomase finding out the only guide left in the village didn’t work today

Ghana | What was supposed to be a simple morning expedition turned into one of the bigger challenges of this trip. To start with, let me give a quick summary of how we managed to arrive in Adanwomase: Started with a hike to a specific petrol station. Got sidetracked by loud mus...
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Crawling our way back to Tana

Madagascar | And with a magical Tsingy National Park, being an arisen seabed shaped by acid rains into a bizarre landscape, worth all the risks we had taken, our trip came to an end. What was left was a drive back with our “repaired” car to Antananarivo (‘Tana’). “Repaired” meant we could drive 50km/h maximum and mountain-up was truck speed. And topping it off ...
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A sudden frisbee ban in the mountains

A sudden frisbee ban in the mountains

Kyrgyzstan | After a night and a kind of porridge with horse milk for breakfast, I headed to the next ger where we spent the evening playing frisbee brought by two Israelis. The children quickly caught on to the game, but at one point, their father came out to show us how a real man does it. Clearly dissatisfied with our lackluster frisbee throwing, he used all...
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Peaceful yoga changed to a showcase of military propaganda

Peaceful yoga changed to a showcase of military propaganda

North Korea | On the morning we were about to leave the country, the big TV screen in the hotel lobby suddenly showed military parades, missiles being fired, soldiers shooting, bombs exploding, and aircraft attacking instead of the usual happy scenes of healthy Koreans doing easy fitness exercises in peaceful mountain places. Rumors started to spread that North...
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Google Maps in China makes you get lost so often

Google Maps in China makes you get lost so often

China | And it‘s true: Facebook is blocked. But frustratingly enough, they still let the notifications come through, so you‘re constantly reminded of how many messages you‘re missing. Google Maps is even more annoying: they let the map data come through but with a deliberate offset of a few hundred meters in a random direction. This made it a bit challengi...
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A bridge almost ruined our planned boat trip to Bagan

A bridge almost ruined our planned boat trip to Bagan

Myanmar | Continuing our road from Monywa to Bagan we were aiming to catch the local ferry from Pakkokku. When we asked for departure time and where to buy tickets we received a “no time, no tickets, only one boat”. At the ferry place we found the river (so far so good) but no boat. After an hour of waiting with many Myanmarese people our tuctuc driver (who ...
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Reaching the highest point in my life

Reaching the highest point in my life

Nepal | A village later, in Manang, the trek got serious. We were now at 3540 meters, and they had hired a Norwegian doctor to scare us about the dangers of altitude sickness. If you exhibited one of the symptoms (no sleeping, loss of appetite, headache, etc.), you weren‘t allowed to continue and had to acclimatize for a day. Unfortunately, it wasn‘t an op...
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Joining a mass dance of 15.000 people

Joining a mass dance of 15.000 people

North Korea | Later, we stopped to take a picture of a gigantic Las Vegas-style hotel that had been under construction for 25 years but was still unfinished. Since the best shot was in the middle of the road, a police officer closed the road for us so we could all get our perfect shot. Finally, the big moment arrived: the mass dance. When we entered the square,...
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Meeting the village’s wrestling champion

Meeting the village’s wrestling champion

Mongolia | After drinking the noodle soup in the grass in front of our ger and as it started to rain lightly, another family felt sorry for us and invited us into their ger. And that completely changed the evening. We talked a lot with hand gestures, both sides took many photos of each other (they took even more of us than we did of them) until we found out t...
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Meeting the entire North Korean national football team U19 on the train

Meeting the entire North Korean national football team U19 on the train

North Korea | On the train, I met the North Korean National Team for boys under 19. It was super interesting to talk and play cards with them since it was one of the few opportunities I had to “freely” interact with Koreans. One boy had bumped his little toe during a match and had a small wound. The team doctor, Doctor An, took no half measures and applied every...
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One of those days…

One of those days…

Kyrgyzstan | Some days just don’t go as planned. This was one of those days. Waiting too long for every seat in the car to be filled on the way to Osh (given that there were as many cars as passengers, it also meant that you had to choose the right car to make it on the same day), someone approached me asking to see my passport. He showed his ID, but with my ne...
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Bumping into Akwasidae festival where the village chief heads honour the Ashanti king

Bumping into Akwasidae festival where the village chief heads honour the Ashanti king

Ghana | Next stop after this ‘easy morning trip’: the Akwasidae Festival. This is when all the c...
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A town where we wished we were more local

A town where we wished we were more local

Myanmar | Monywa is a town not very familiar with visitors yet. We arrived late (in Myanmar perspective at least, still before 21.00) with the very very last seats of the actually sold out bus (it took us more than half an hour in Mandalay bus station to convince them that we foreigners are able to sit on a small plastic chair in the bus’ corridor as well) b...
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Finding freedom in a country where being retweeted can get you to jail

Finding freedom in a country where being retweeted can get you to jail

China | And after this series of top attractions, I listened on my last day to the do’s and especially don’ts of my next destination: North Korea... But before I introduce you to the secrets of North Korea, I will first give a small bonus on Beijing because this time I let keeping countries together prevail over chronology. A little flash-forward, if you w...
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Fooled twice in a row by Baba

Fooled twice in a row by Baba

India | That evening, I met Baba further down the Ganges. He had visibly never washed his hair, wore a long robe, and claimed to be holy. I dared to doubt that and poked his shoulder twice to debunk it. He laughed and invited me to his house. We followed the Ganges, and a few minutes later, he said, “we’re here.” ‘Funny’ enough, he was homeless, and his ‘h...
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How yoghurt can feel like heaven

How yoghurt can feel like heaven

Mongolia | After many instant noodles with applesauce (serving as breakfast, lunch, and dinner), sardines in tomato sauce, and the sheep skull with innards, you should have heard our stomachs when the next day we saw the other ger residents enjoying fresh yogurt with real pieces of apple and raspberry. Hmmm, so there was actually a really good side to organiz...
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Needing some negotiation skills to just enter the bus

Needing some negotiation skills to just enter the bus

Indonesia | I‘d been to some islands in Indonesia before, but this was my first time stepping onto Sumatra, the northwest one. You‘d think I‘d strut in like a pro, all “I got this,” but nope, my Sumatra newbie vibes were in full force when I landed in Binjai. I was on a mission to reach Bukkit Lawang, which, by the way, is like a 2-0 score against me already, ...
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Six month backpacking trip through Bolivia, Peru and central America: update 11/14

Costa Rica | Costa Rica (and Panama) is by far the safest country in Central America, and in line with Murphy’s first law, that’s where my big backpack got stolen (from under the bus, on December 31st). I’ve been traveling for a few weeks now with just my small backpack, and it’s actually working fine, but it’s a real bummer that I lost so many belongings. Murp...
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Writing a letter of recommendation yourself to extend your visa

Writing a letter of recommendation yourself to extend your visa

Mongolia | Feeling tired from a super funny night of club hopping, it was a good day to extend my visa. In Mongolia, you can roam around carefree for 30 days, but for the 31st day, you’ll have to face the bureaucracy. I took a number and waited until it became clear that those who waited for their number to be called only got their turn after everyone who jus...
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Getting to see a glimpse of the life of a 14 year old boy and his family

Getting to see a glimpse of the life of a 14 year old boy and his family

Ghana | While I was sitting on the edge of the high stone wall surrounding the fortress, I heard a faint hissing sound from below. I looked down and saw a boy looking up at me, as if asking for permission to toss a small stone wrapped in paper. On his second try, I caught it and read the note. He explained that he went to school but didn’t have enough mone...
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Using compass and counting steps to find my hostel

Using compass and counting steps to find my hostel

Kyrgyzstan | The next day, I arrived in Bishkek, where the second challenge awaited me: “find your hostel!” My biological clock was still in the Netherlands, my iPhone was still on Turkish time, and in Bishkek, everyone thought it was three hours later than it actually was. Soaked in confusion, sleep, and jet lag, I was dropped off by the taxi at the hostel. We...
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Meeting the most hospitable woman in Mongolia

Meeting the most hospitable woman in Mongolia

Mongolia | On my last day in UB, I was alone again. There was a forty-meter-high statue of Chinggis Khan on his horse nearby. The bus would take me halfway, and then I would have to hitchhike the last twenty kilometers. In the bus, I met a girl in her late twenties who turned out to have built and sold 25 factories already. She was now going to one of her fac...
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Noodles with soap

Madagascar | That evening we were wandering around town to find some restaurant. As both our intestinal systems had been put to the test before, we tried to go for a safe option, not an easy task in Manja where meat was displayed in the outdoor markets the entire day at 35°C. Till we found a shop with instant noodles and a staircase leading to the roof of the s...
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Lady boys trying to earn money by singing off-key

Lady boys trying to earn money by singing off-key

India | After a mandatory night in an insignificant big city that didn‘t even get a tiny section in the Lonely Planet, we could continue our journey the next day by train. Halfway through the few hours journey, a random man stood blowing his whistle as we passed by. Apparently, he blows his whistle for every passing train. I couldn‘t help but think of how ...
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Surviving a forest run without decapitation

Surviving a forest run without decapitation

Mongolia | After fifteen minutes, the German guy claimed he couldn’t walk any further because his knee couldn’t handle that kind of distance, even though I distinctly remembered him asking me the day before if he could join me for a two-day hike in the mountains in case horse riding didn’t work out. Anyway, the English guys and I preferred being on the horses...
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Something else than your average holiday destination

Something else than your average holiday destination

Palestine | Palestine is something else than the average holiday destination. And I think I can say it’s the country which has made the most impact on me ever, even more than North Korea. In North Korea the situation may be worse but there they only show you what they want to show whereas in Palestina you are free to move around and explore. And the situation ...
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Checking off Beijing top-10 in 8 hours

Checking off Beijing top-10 in 8 hours

China | The following days, I checked off the tourist top 10 in no time. There‘s just too much to see within walking distance of each other. While I would spend 12 hours on a bus just to see one individual temple, here they are thrown at you in dozens, side by side. Since this update is not intended to compete with Beijing travel guides, I will skip the f...
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Buying fruit to get the directions to the secret lake

Buying fruit to get the directions to the secret lake

India | Hampi was both the final destination of this trip and of my journey in India. It was a fantastic village where we would zoom around on mopeds during the day, which would lose in terms of speed to a lawnmower, and gather with all the backpackers from the village on a series of rocks for sunset, joints, and hippie music in the evening. On one of thos...
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Wrestling, horse riding, archery, ankle archery, shooting dominoes and yak polo

Wrestling, horse riding, archery, ankle archery, shooting dominoes and yak polo

Mongolia | Now I understand why Mongolia rarely wins Olympic medals or qualifies for the World Cup in football. The order of importance for sports is: wrestling, horse riding, archery, ankle archery, shooting dominoes with a pebble, yak polo, then a long time of nothing, and finally basketball and football. The evening after Naadam, I practiced for next year...
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How to pretend that you like Kymys when it resembles the taste of puke?

How to pretend that you like Kymys when it resembles the taste of puke?

Kyrgyzstan | After four days in Bishkek, I headed to Kochkor with the German guy who had stabled his horse there to buy a new saddle blanket in Bishkek. In Kochkor, he hopped on his horse, and I went to my homestay: a super nice family with two funny sons who spoke brilliant English. Later, I would go with one of them to the World Cup qualifying football match ...
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Pajeero on strike

Pajeero on strike

Madagascar | And indeed. The journey had been too much. Pajeero was up and couldn’t deliver anymore. To underline this, he puffed some black smoke into the cabin, saying “don’t even try….”. So, we hooked up our car to the one who was following us. This turned to be a more challenging tow than expected. I’d expected they would have some experience here in towing...
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Milking our own cow milk

Milking our own cow milk

Mongolia | As night fell, we stopped at a family and asked if we could eat and sleep there, and it was a bullseye. Freshly picked blackberries, raspberries, and wild strawberries (in a country where I had started to think that vegetables and fruits hadn’t been invented yet), playing Mongolian durak, volleyball, soccer with goals so big that even I could score...
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5 year old youngsters competing for the prestigious Naadam horse race trophy

5 year old youngsters competing for the prestigious Naadam horse race trophy

Mongolia | For this, I traveled to a small village (Kharkhorin) to watch the preliminaries and later returned to UB (sounds cooler than Ulaanbaatar) to see the finals. The kickoff, even before the opening ceremony, was the horse race. When I asked if women also participate in this event, the answer was an indignant “no, of course not. It’s very dangerous, and...
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The one and only true yak festival

The one and only true yak festival

Mongolia | A few days later, the day had come: the mountain yak festival. And because I had enthusiastically promoted this festival everywhere I went, it turned into a complete reunion: the Dutch guy with the VW van, an Israeli girl, a French girl, the English couple, an English guy I had met on the first day in UB and later promoted this festival via WhatsAp...
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A strange man in my bed

A strange man in my bed

India | In Agra, the city of the Taj Mahal, we checked into a hostel less than five hundred meters from the Taj Mahal. At least, that was our goal, but the person who was supposed to check us in was in a coma. The cleaner tapped his shoulder, shouted, screamed, shook him, and eventually kicked him, but the man remained in a coma. A little later, someone el...
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Making a hostel reservation for 15 cents and sleeping in the desert

Making a hostel reservation for 15 cents and sleeping in the desert

India | Jaisalmer won the prize for the cheapest hostel of my entire trip with an overnight stay for one euro. I should have made a 15% deposit on Hostelworld to secure my arrival with these 15 cents. After confirming that I understood that I wouldn‘t get the 15 cents back if I didn‘t show up, the reservation was made. Traveling is taking risks! However, I...
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Learning a new game, ass-attack

Learning a new game, ass-attack

Mongolia | The last evening of our own four-day horse riding tour was probably unprecedented. First, we plundered almost the entire beer supply at a nearby ger camp. Then, we played the Mongolian version of the Russian card game Durak with our guides. And finally, the evening ended in “ass-attack,” a game invented by our guide where you had to unexpectedly pu...
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Unexpected clubbing in a mountain village

Unexpected clubbing in a mountain village

Kyrgyzstan | And there I was in Arslanbob, a village where the only two tourist attractions, the waterfall and the big waterfall, were clearly marked with signs. But what made the village truly unique, apart from the breathtaking view, was stumbling upon a disco in the middle of the mountains at one o’clock in the afternoon. “I’m sexy and I know it” echoed loud...
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Meet Charly the elephant, Mole National Park

Meet Charly the elephant, Mole National Park

Ghana | How we ended up surrounded by wild elephants after building a bridge to cross a river in search of a herd. But first, let me tell you how I met Charly, one of the oldest and strongest elephants in Mole National Park. Since lions haven’t been spotted in Mole National Park since 2004—and if we conveniently ignore the cobras, hyenas, and crocodiles...
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Naadam yearly festival, grand finale

Naadam yearly festival, grand finale

Mongolia | After the preliminaries in the small village, the final rounds in UB were waiting: an opening ceremony on the level of the Olympic Games, raising the question of whether the North Korean mass choreography will surpass it next month. Everything here was bigger, stronger, faster, and more beautiful, but also much less intimate. Now I was sitting in r...
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Two visits to the holy Taj Mahal and a 9 hour train ride for the price of 7

Two visits to the holy Taj Mahal and a 9 hour train ride for the price of 7

India | Finally, the day had come: the Taj Mahal. An indescribably beautiful “building” made even more unique by the story surrounding it. The emperor was so in love with his third wife that he had the Taj Mahal built around her tomb. When he decided to build an identical but black Taj Mahal on the other side of the river for himself, his son imprisoned hi...
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Two pile of tomatoes for 5 cent

Two pile of tomatoes for 5 cent

Madagascar | On our way back, out of this valley, we stopped at a local market where we clearly were the only tourists for a long long time. Staring eyes from all sides. At the edge of the market, there was a young lady having laid down piles of small tomatoes on her rug. I wanted to buy one pile of tomatoes and guessed a modest 200 ariary (5 cents). The woman ...
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Little Las Vegas in Sri Lanka

Little Las Vegas in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka | After a day of whale watching, it felt oddly perfect to end the evening at a party on the roof of an old, abandoned, crumbling building. The cutest part of the whole thing was the “casino” in the back: two school desks pushed together, instantly transformed into a high-stakes gambling table. With printed A4 sheets, you could bet on under or over...
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Ultimate chaos, burning bodies for €400 a piece

Ultimate chaos, burning bodies for €400 a piece

India | After four weeks on crutches and two weeks in a cast, I was finally free. The doctor said I needed six months of recovery time, but when I asked if I could continue my world trip during that time, he could only mutter a surprised “yes”. A day later, I had my visa and ticket for India, and a week later, I was on the plane. I couldn‘t wait to exchang...
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Just arrived, but where did the capital go?

Just arrived, but where did the capital go?

Myanmar | I seem to have found here an unprotected access to internet so let’s connect to the world for a small travel update from Myanmar. Started in Yangon of which i thought it was the capital, only to find out that the government had decided a few years ago to promote some arbitrarily small town in the middle of nowhere to be the new capital (Nay Pyi Taw...
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Least densely populated country

Mongolia | Mongolia! The least densely populated country in the world, sandwiched between the two largest non-Western countries on Earth, always had an indescribable allure for me. Hard to say why. Was it the Donald Duck-like name of the capital city, the fact that it’s the complete opposite of my own country in terms of population density (outside the capita...
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7 tattoos, 7 world wonders

7 tattoos, 7 world wonders

Brazil | Nailed it! I actually didn’t realise I would complete the seven world wonders this trip until I met a guy with all seven tattooed on his arm, half of them with dates. Checking his full arm brought me to the conclusion that I only needed Christ the Redeemer. Well buddy, here I am! Collosseum*: May 1994 Machu Picchu*: November 2003...
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Our horse escaped, giving some extra hangover recovery time

Our horse escaped, giving some extra hangover recovery time

Mongolia | Mongolia is not a morning country. With a super cool English couple and a bizarrely strange German guy, we were about to start a two-day horse riding trip at 9:00 am. We were supposed to gather between 9:00 and 10:00 am, which already made us suspect that we wouldn’t be on the horses at exactly 9:00 am. In the end, we left at half past twelve, as i...
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Don’t try this at home

Don’t try this at home

Slovenia | Slovenia turned out to be a don’t-try-this-at-home episode of my life. A few tips how to avoid this from happening to you. Never drink in a place where it’s also possible to sign up for paragliding Rule 1 is especially important if you are afraid of heights In case you did ignore rule 1 and 2 don’t pick an instructor sma...
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Off the beaten track

Off the beaten track

Netherlands | As you may or may not know, I like to travel to some of the more unknown countries in the world. This time my eye fell on this little undiscovered gem, easily overlooked due to its impossibly small size. They don’t have supermarkets here: cheese is sold in portions of 11kg at a time by haggling about 2 cents more or less in an outdoor market, they ...
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Six month backpacking trip through Bolivia, Peru and central America: update 10/14

Costa Rica | Besides encountering quite a few Bolivians, Peruvians, Panamanians, and Costa Ricans, I occasionally run into Americans. They’re easy to spot. If someone extends their hand and shouts, “Hi, I’m Jim!!!” the very second they see you, even if they’re still 50 meters away, they’re definitely American. With an American, everything is always “all right.”...
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Off the beaten track

Off the beaten track

Pakistan | Walking at 3.500m high in a desolated valley high up north in the mountains of Pakistan, 5km away from the Afghanistan border, surrounded by immense 6K high peaks, disowned from any network signal, yes, this must be the most remote place I have ever been. It took a 14 hour bus ride from the capital, followed by another 2 hours in a minibus, 6 hour...
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Empty highways, reserved for government and tourists

Empty highways, reserved for government and tourists

North Korea | As we made our way back to Pyongyang, the most remarkable thing was the lack of cars (since nobody could afford to buy one, the only cars on the street were gifts from the government for good labor), which created completely empty highways, while the little side roads were full of pedestrians and bicycles. When we visited a small village, which ha...
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Hiking the Himalaya’s on flip flops

Hiking the Himalaya’s on flip flops

Nepal | The next day marked the beginning of my Himalayan trek. Since there was no legroom on the bus, I decided to spend the journey on the bus roof. The driver was afraid of villagers throwing stones, so he‘d stop before each bend, walk a few hundred meters ahead to check if it was safe, and then drive the bus that short distance. This made the bus ride ...
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A 4cm high wall separating North and South Korea

A 4cm high wall separating North and South Korea

North Korea | The first full day started with a visit to the demilitarized zone (DMZ), the border separating North and South Korea. Contrary to what I expected, the wall was just a 5cm high and 15cm wide threshold in an ironically peaceful-looking green lush surrounding, full of trees and chirping crickets. According to the northern part of Korea (as with anythi...
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Ordering my first meal in fluent Russian (but no clue what I ordered)

Mongolia | It was time to leave UB and Naadam behind and head to Kovsköl, a gigantic mountain lake that holds 2% of the world’s drinking water supply (do whatever you want with that information). Halfway through the fourteen-hour bus ride, my previously invested time in learning the Russian alphabet became crucial: I could order food. The menu was hanging on ...
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How North Korea defeated the entire US army

How North Korea defeated the entire US army

North Korea | After a satisfying lunch at PFC (Pyongyang Fried Chicken), we visited the war museum, where we learned how the North Korean army defeated the entire US army in just a few days after the US tried to invade the north. Until, of course, the US added some new soldier groups, which was a bit unfair since everybody who has played RISK knows that you’re n...
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Another yak festival

Another yak festival

Mongolia | Slowly but surely, on my way to the promised yak festival in the mountains, it turned out that there was another yak festival in Tariat the next day. However, leaving the hostel seemed impossible because without drainage, the large field in front of the hostel had turned into a big lake, reaching up to the doorstep. We managed to get outside throug...
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A school for 35 pupils

A school for 35 pupils

Ethiopia | Couldn’t believe it at first sight, but this is a school, for 35 pupils, each having their own little rock to sit on....
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Why there is beer hidden in the ocean?

Why there is beer hidden in the ocean?

Indonesia | So, I‘m on Pulau Weh, taking a breather. Chillin‘ on a coral-white beach, enjoying tiramisu by a cobalt-blue sea, Eva, the boss lady at the restaurant, spills some tea. She tells me about these fancy cruise ships that roll in and change life for the islanders for a day. Next morning, bam, a 5-star cruise ship docks, 1,000 passengers flood the place...
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Becoming an honorable guest on an Indian wedding

Becoming an honorable guest on an Indian wedding

India | In the next city, Jodhpur, I stumbled upon a wedding taking place in the middle of the street. I was invited, and soon I, or rather my height and skin color, became the guest of honor and had to walk alongside the groom and take photos of everyone with my iPhone (by now, I had learned not to ask why in this country)....
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Meeting the Chief General Manager and our personal private guide

Meeting the Chief General Manager and our personal private guide

North Korea | And here, I learned that Koreans love titles. Besides Doctor An, there was also the Chief General Manager on board. When I asked about the responsibilities of a Chief General Manager, she weightily answered that she arranged the food for the team. A few moments later, I was considered part of the team too and had a beer in one hand and dried fish i...
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Hiking the Laugavegur

Hiking the Laugavegur

Iceland | Why should a 4-day trip be a road trip? Before our Wacky Wheels adventure in September, I decided to go for a trip on foot: the famous Laugavegur track in Iceland. The odd thing of this trip is that the entire route is known at the start, even before solving a single puzzle. Basically the only puzzle there was, was following the blue GPS arrow on...
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What happens in Kovsköl stays in Kovsköl

What happens in Kovsköl stays in Kovsköl

Mongolia | In Kovsköl, I was greeted by a super diverse and cool group of travelers who had celebrated Naadam there and were now waiting for the rain to pass, which meant two days of card games. Here, I discovered that the cardgame I had learned in Kyrgyzstan turned out to be a real Russian card game called Durak, which came in handy a week later when we had ...
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Jumping in wave pools, what is real?

Jumping in wave pools, what is real?

North Korea | Probably the most fun part was the wave pool, where a small group of foreigners introduced the concept of making noise when you’re having fun. Within minutes, the normally silent Koreans were jumping and shouting with every wave. One boy happily held my arm and showed it to his friends as a big trophy. A few waves later, it was a jumping grandma wh...
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Scuba diving gear on a mountain in the rainforest, really?

Scuba diving gear on a mountain in the rainforest, really?

Colombia | Tought i had seen all kind of hostels but this one was from another planet. Located in the middle of the jungle, on top of a hillside providing views to the ocean and the closest bit of civilisation (one hour moto bike ride away), having a pool, and the largest hammock in the world (36m2). Done a canyon tour through the jungle climbing up a waterfa...
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A bruised rib after some more mandatory wrestling

A bruised rib after some more mandatory wrestling

Mongolia | That same afternoon, we reached our final destination: the largest of the eight mountain lakes. We had to swim in it. Around noon, we returned to the family where we had slept, and it quickly became clear that we couldn’t move on until we had wrestled each of the men one by one. It provided a lot of spectacle and laughter, but also a bruised rib th...
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How a smelly towel does the trick to smuggle anything into North Korea

How a smelly towel does the trick to smuggle anything into North Korea

North Korea | North Korea! Or should I say just Korea, since, as I learned, Korea is actually one country where the southern part still needs to be “liberated”. It’s an interesting way of looking at the world, for sure. As we reached the last Chinese town, there were only two bridges separating us from Korea. Or maybe it was more the river separating us, and th...
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Dancing skeletons and horny chickens

Dancing skeletons and horny chickens

India | Christmas Day turned out to be just as special. We visited a local festival where we saw people dressed as skeletons or horny chickens dancing together. After many similar local dances, we tried to get a tuk-tuk back to the city. We quickly found one, and the driver quoted a price that was close to the local price, unfortunately with a reason: the ...
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Opposite from any expectations

Madagascar | Sometimes you end up in a country where nothing is what you expected. Madagascar is definitely winning that league. Armed with expectations of dancing lemures, talking giraffes and lions & zebras being best mates, there was not much needed to fall short of this expectation. But also, from an ecological viewpoint, my three weeks weren’t living up to...
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Black mambas, double breakfast and some politic lessons when crossing border from Ghana to Togo

Black mambas, double breakfast and some politic lessons when crossing border from Ghana to Togo

Ghana | After a flight, taxi, minibus, shared taxi, and a motorbike ride, I had traded the hot north for the east: the Volta Region. The idea was that it would be a bit cooler here since we were in the mountains. But the mountains don’t go higher than 900 meters, which weren’t enough to scrape some degrees of. So, just like in the north, it was mandatory s...
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The biggest off-the-beaten-track surprise

The biggest off-the-beaten-track surprise

Mongolia | And off we go. And what a fantastic horse I had this time. He just wanted to gallop. My guide initially wanted to lead him by the reins, but I didn’t want to be a second German. After a while, I trained him so well that I only had to move my feet to the side, and he would start galloping even before I had to poke him in the belly. That evening, we ...
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A local bus ride from Goa to Hampi taking two days

A local bus ride from Goa to Hampi taking two days

India | In Goa, the top tourist destination, it was not difficult to find a direct non-stop air-conditioned tourist bus to one of the highlights of the Lonely Planet, Hampi. However, immediately after New Year‘s, these buses were expensive and full, so we were left with only local transportation, which was the opposite in both respects: six transfers, incl...
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Failing Brakes in a Tuk-Tuk (Mirissa, Sri Lanka)

Sri Lanka | After an hour of turtle snorkeling, we climbed back into our tuk-tuk for the ride home, still feeling heroic and slightly salty. That’s when we discovered the brakes had quietly opted out of the journey. We came flying up behind the car in front of us, realizing a bit late that slowing down was no longer part of the plan. At the last second, the...
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A glacier-cold river blocking my way back home

A glacier-cold river blocking my way back home

Kyrgyzstan | The next day, I hitchhiked to a national park nearby. After a beautiful hike to the end of the main canyon (in 35-degree heat in the morning and now at the snow line), I returned to find that the river I had crossed on the way had doubled in size due to the glaciers higher up unable to withstand the sun. So, I took off my shoes and waded through, e...
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Left alone, hoping to get some food

Left alone, hoping to get some food

Mongolia | And then we were in front of our ger. The guide was nowhere to be found. We were starving because we hadn’t had lunch yet, and it was already 7:00 pm, watching another family emptying a sheep’s skull (oops, why are my cliffhangers still open?). “Where are we?” our eyes spoke to each other. After a few aimless rounds of card games, we decided to app...
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Suddenly in the middle of a private Eagle Hunter show

Suddenly in the middle of a private Eagle Hunter show

Kyrgyzstan | After hitchhiking to a nearby red canyon and the usual “where’re you from? -aah Holland, Robben, Gullit, van Persie”, my second ride back stopped halfway, and suddenly I was face to face with an Eagle Hunter sign: 400m straight ahead, 10 meters to the left, 200 meters straight ahead, and 100 meters to the left. So, with my pedometer on, I arrived a...
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A restaurant without food and a hotel without WC

A restaurant without food and a hotel without WC

Kyrgyzstan | Down in the valley, the restaurant didn’t make much effort to earn its first Michelin star, serving only soup and tea. And the hotel next door didn’t quite live up to the Lonely Planet’s “top choice” mark either: no toilet in the hotel. So, I left with an empty stomach but full intestines, guided by my lingering jet lag, at 5:00 am to make my way ...
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What is faster, a horse or a bus?

What is faster, a horse or a bus?

Kyrgyzstan | Before taking the bus back to Bishkek on Sunday, a few of us quickly visited the animal market. The most expensive horse (US$4,000) was showcased for sale by galloping at top speed through the crowd, with the sales pitch that this horse could gallop non-stop to Bishkek in three hours (425 km...). By the way, there are police checkpoints every 10 k...
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Taking a Mongolian haircut, to prepare for Naadam, the Mongolian Olympics

Taking a Mongolian haircut, to prepare for Naadam, the Mongolian Olympics

Mongolia | After two days in the country, I thought I had been in Mongolia long enough to get a Mongolian haircut. Her English was as good as my Mongolian, so I had to indicate the desired length of my hair with mixed success: after an hour, I looked just like a local! With a 35-day visa and a Mongolian haircut in my pocket, I was ready for Naadam, the annua...
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Elevators programmed like gold fishes

Elevators programmed like gold fishes

North Korea | The hotel, like everything else, was special. It was fully set up for Western visitors, located on an island to make escaping difficult (more on that in a minute), and had all the amenities we foreigners would expect: a marble entrance with a large aquarium, eight elevators, a snooker center, a ping pong area, a bowling alley, and, how could I forg...
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