Tim and I had the pleasure of speaking on a panel of "travel experts" last night at Boston's Meet, Plan, Go event! It was a nationwide conversation with meetings taking place in 12 other cities with a goal of not only encouraging more folks to take a career break and travel the world, but to show them it can be done!

We've written before about the virtues we see in traveling light. Well, lately we've been taking that to an extreme. As hard as it is for me to write it, since we've so long described ourselves as backpackers... we will probably never travel with anything as big as a backpack again.

So you've read about the Ellora Caves, you've got your bags packed, and you're keen on seeing them yourself. Now the only question is how exactly do you get to the Ellora Caves? In particular (because you're a savvy do-it-yourself type of guy or gal) you'd like to know how to get to the caves via public transport.

Located a bit more than 200 miles northeast of Mumbai, the Ellora Caves are actually a collection of 34 different rock-cut temples, carved out of the stone of the Charanandri hills between 1,000 and 1,400 years ago. Among them is the mighty Kailasa Temple, one of the most astounding things we've ever seen in any of our travels.

Welcome back for the final installment of the Golden Hedgehog Awards for Lodging, wherein we recognize the finest and most spectacularly wonderful places we stayed on our round-the-world trip! After an unintentional delay of more than a year, it's finally time to unveil our grand-prize winner!