The queue for Safi Air flight #248 from Delhi to Kabul looks like something of a loya jirga…

Baguio’s cool, and I don’t just mean the weather, though that’s significant at this altitude of some 1,400 meters, around 4500 feet.  It’s a nice place also, a true garden city in every sense of the term, complete with “orchidarium,” a term I was heretofore unfamiliar with.  The markets are replete with broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, beans, and all…

Manila is one of those sprawling mega-cities that somehow defines the modern era, somehow defines Southeast Asia, and somehow defines what it is to be human in an era in which quantity seems to have triumphed over quality.  We just may be victims of our own success—reproductive, that is—as the fruits of our collective loins threaten to overwhelm us.  The Philippines…

After a near panic-attack—or maybe it was claustrophobia, I’m not sure—from being in rooms without windows for six days straight, I get on the bus from Baguio to Sagada resolving to do better.  I even find banana bread.  That’s a good sign.  “You ever have before?” the lady behind the smile asks.  I smile back.  Does a hippie live…