If you’re ever in Cape Town, you can drive an hour south to Table Mountain National Park.

You can stop and take photos.

You can get all of your bearings.

You can hike miles of up and down, up and down.

(Maybe even in flip flops.)

But most importantly, you can stand at Cape Point, look across two oceans, and feel as tiny as a sailboat on a dark sea.

Robben Island is a short ferry ride from the Cape Town waterfront, and that physical separation of land by water is one of the most significant symbols of the city’s Apartheid past. The island is synonymous with oppression, race, politics, resistance, and of course, Nelson Mandela, but what hit me the most wasn’t the prison itself–where Mandela spent 18 years–but the tragic landscape around it.

To pass through the gate and into the prison, click here, and scroll through.

In Mauritius, I finally got a chance to put my camera down. I spent one day practicing my French at an old movie theatre* and finding the best coffee in Port Louis. The next, I packed a bag with freshly-bought books and rode a hot bus north to the first place I felt truly alone–just the quiet African coast and me.

*I saw my favorite Sherlock Holmes again, I know, I know… but couldn’t resist Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law dubbed in French. So funny.

View on Vimeo.

View on Vimeo.

For photographs taken before and after these moments, click here.

In Varkala, even the beach dogs stop to watch the sunset.

For a short video taken 12 hours later, during an early morning hello, click here.

My all-time favorite Wes Anderson film is Darjeeling Limited, so it comes as no surprise, that when I had the chance to travel from Chennai to Cochin, India by train, I took it.

View on Vimeo.

View on Vimeo.

*For reference, my story would be called, Trivandrum Mail.