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(Dana)  Druk Path Trek in Bhutan.  5 days.  63 kilometers (37.8 miles).  32 walking hours.  Elevation from 2200 to 4250M (14,025 feet) and back to 2100, with several ascents and descents in between.  As reference, our peak was over 2.5 times higher than Denver. Camping every night.  No showers. It was supposed to be five days […]

(Dana) 70% of the population of India lives in villages and towns. That is 900 million people living outside the cities. We are sitting in our bus passing countless villages along the way. Images fly by. Each seems like a National Geographic photo waiting to be taken. But if we stop each time, we’ll never […]

(Dana)  Sometimes expectations are so high that reality never reaches them.  How many times in life have I been disappointed by the “must-see” or “must do?”  On this journey, there have been a few destinations with the potential for disappointment.  After all, could the pyramids or Machu Picchu or yesterday’s destination – the Taj Mahal […]

(Dana) No way.  I can’t imagine.  Subjugates women.  Not for me.  These are just some of the thoughts that I – and probably most of my female friends – would have voiced about arranged marriages.  But spending time in the villages of India has given me an appreciation of why 99% of marriages in this […]

(Dana) Sometimes on this adventure, we get lucky… lucky to be in the right place at the right time. March 2nd is the annual puja (ceremony), celebrating the wedding of Lord Shiva at the Jageshwar Temple in the Himalayan hills. Arriving in Jageshwar, a town of maybe a hundred families, we are quickly swept into […]

(Dana) Unsure of whether outgoing media is controlled in the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, I opt to delay this post until we leave the country.  The people of Viet Nam are very kind.  The one-party government is far less warm-and-fuzzy. In Hanoi, the imposing Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum is a stark reminder that Viet […]

(Dana) The Holocaust. Apartheid in South Africa. The annihilation of 25% of Cambodians by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.  Three almost unfathomable human tragedies perpetrated by human beings against other human beings. Three atrocities for which I had limited historical context before this trip.  Three incredible history lessons for the 6Explorers through visits to […]

(Dana)  As advertised, the Balinese are lovely, smiling people who welcomed us warmly to their island.  Some thoughts from our 12 days: * Rice fields still dominate the landscape and still represent a major part of the economy and food.  Growing rice remains a very labor-intensive process as terraced rice paddies do not easily support […]

(Alex and Emma) Today all six of us are wearing new sarongs and sashes for a traditional Balinese wedding. We had asked our driver, Wayan, to bring us to places not too many tourists have been, and he offered to bring us with him to a wedding in his village. The ceremony this morning is […]

(Dana) 30-day trip around Antarctica. The crowning mid-point of our 6explorer adventure. But from Day 1, the unpredictability and challenges of Antarctic exploration become apparent. In our first 7 days, we cannot board our ship in Stanley; we cannot make our first zodiac landing due to wind; we cannot land on wildly remote Peter I […]