I'm still alive...

Firstly, massive apologies for the even more massive gap in blogs. A combination of a dearth of internet cafes, laziness and wanting to experience more rather than write more is to blame. My time since Bhutan has been without camera (both the body and my favorite lens broke in India), so I don't have photos to post either. Fortunately I bought a new camera in South Africa, so blog and photos from Cape Town through Zambia will probably wait until after I get home, which is in LESS THAN A WEEK!!! That which follows is a brief summary of the last 3 months of my life:

INDIA

After my last blog posts, I acquired my first sickness en route. I thought I had traveler's diarrhea and was subsisting mainly on toast. After a few uncomfortable days, I realized that the toast was actually made with milk and my 'sickness' was merely my lactose intolerance. After healing and getting back on my bike, we made it up to Cochin where I decided to stay for a few extra days. [I almost came home for a 48 hour thanksgiving in NYC with the fam, but chickened out at the last minute.] I had a wonderful Friday night shabbat in the oldest synagogue in India with Indian, Israeli and Montreal Jews before heading up to Mumbai for a 3am flight to Ethiopia.

ETHIOPIA

I was relatively glad I didn't go home as my time in Ethiopia was like going home. I was supposed to stay with an American Jewish doctor who houses about 15 orphans for one night before transferring to the Mother Theresa's Mission. However, after falling in love with his children, I ended up spending my entire stay with the doctor and his family. Unfortunately, the doctor was back in the US with one of the kids who was having surgery and only returned for my last few nights.

There was another American traveler staying at the house and the two of us unintentionally (but willingly) assumed the roles of 'mom' and 'dad.' In fact, the kids had trouble pronouncing "Amy" and ended up calling me "E-ma" -- Hebrew for mother. I fell into a comfortable pattern of cooking American and Israeli food (some of the kids had been to Israel and requested salads and falafel), helping with homework, playing soccer, and dancing until bedtime.

We did take a 3 day mini-break to Bahar Dar to see the old island churches, bike around to some smaller villages and hang out with some rastas. After 3 weeks of espris, injera, and attempting to learn Amharic -- given that the word for 'thank you' is 'ah-meh-sah-geh-nah-lu' i didn't get much beyond the basics.

MAURITIUS/REUNION (the section formerly known as Madagascar)

After three full days of travel (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to Nairobi, Kenya to Johannesburg, South Africa to Mauritius), I arrived ready for two more days of travel to the village in Madagascar where I was supposed to be volunteering in a clinic. However, due to a combination of the political situation and the fact that the head of the clinic had decided to head off to the Philippines, which i only found out two days prior, I decided to make camp on Mauritius.

I spent two days on the romantic paradise of Mauritius before seeing the "Hiking on Reunion" section in my Lonely Planet. I immediately booked a flight to Reunion and ended up spending two weeks hiking around Reunion. Like Europe, the hut system is well-developed and I hiked hut-to-hut through 3 cirques and on an active, erupting volcano (Piton de la Fournaise). In addition to hiking, we passed through some really remote mountain hamlets where I leaned some creole slave songs, drank a lot of Dodo (the local beer), and sang the creole songs a little louder. Like the Metropole, no one actually speaks English (regardless of whether or not they know the language...they just won't speak it!), so I left Reunion almost fluent in French. I returned to Mauritius for a day on the beach before heading back to mainland Africa.

BTW:

The craziest thing about traveling is how ridiculously small the world is; the family next to me on the flight from Mauritius to Jo-burg actually knows my cousins (two different sets) from sleep-away camp and their town. The number of times I've met people to whom I'm connected by a single degree of separation are too numerous to list.

SOUTH AFRICA

I spent a week in Cape Town climbing Table Mountain, visiting museums, exploring the wine region and just relaxing before heading up through Namibia and Botswana to Victoria Falls on an overland truck. To be continued...