AK Monthly Recap: September 2025

September 2025 is one of the most adventurous months I have had in years! My long-awaited trip to Mauritius, Réunion, and Madagascar took place — and this trip had the highest highs and lowest lows of the whole year.

This is a BIG monthly recap and quite a bit happened, so get ready for a lengthy read!

Destinations Visited

• Prague, Czech Republic
• Flic en Flac, Tamarin, Chamarel, Bois Cheri, Curepipe, Port Louis, Pamlemousses, Cap Malheureux, and Grand Baie, Mauritius
• Saint-Gilles, Saint-Leu, Cilaos, L’Étang-Salé, Langevin, Saint-Philippe, Saint Joseph, and Saint Pierre, Réunion
• Antananarivo, Antsirabe, Lac Tritiva, Maromandray, Miandrivazo, Anosinampela Waterfall, Begidro, Tsaraotana, Belo Tsiribihina, Mahajanga, Bekopaka, Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park, Kirindy, Morondava, Betania, Nosy Be, Nosy Sakatia, and Nosy Tanikely, Madagascar

Highlights

Good times in Prague. My friend Mike, one of my oldest friends from the world of travel blogging, came to stay with us in Prague for a few days, and we got to show him the absolute best that Prague has to offer.

Altogether, there were meats at Kantýna, a wine festival on the edge of Prague Castle, a burger festival, a brewery stop, and just enjoying the incredible place that is Prague in the month of September. And OF COURSE Charlie and Mike got along like a house on fire!

Finishing 75 Hard. I haven’t mentioned anything about it on the blog yet, but from June 24 through September 6, I completed 75 Hard — a fitness and mental toughness program.

Each day, you must do two workouts of at least 45 minutes each; follow a diet of your choice (I did no sugar and no junk food); read 10 pages of a personal development book; drink absolutely zero alcohol; drink one gallon (3.8 liters) of water per day; take a progress photo; and ZERO CHEATS WHATSOEVER. If you miss anything, you start over.

I wrote about it in a post on the Adventurous Kate Facebook page, and won’t reiterate what I said there. Here’s a quote about why 75 days is so much more transformational than 30:

30 days is not enough for a challenge to be transformative. I’ve done a LOT of 30-day challenges over the years: Whole30s, sober challenges, fitness tune-ups. 30 days sounds like a lot when you’re getting started. It is not. 

This time, I didn’t actually hit my groove until 40+ days in. I didn’t start looking different to my friends until the 50s. And 75 days of social engagements gives you a lot more practice not drinking around drinkers, which you need.

Overall, this has been a tough year for fitness for me in part due to my hip injury in March, but 75 Hard helped me turbo-charge my health and get back into quite decent shape.

Also, the guy who created 75 Hard, Andy Frisella, is a homophobic and transphobic right-wing nut job, so I made sure to donate $75 in his name to the Metro Trans Umbrella Group in his hometown of St. Louis.

The challenge may be over now, but I’m sticking to 90 minutes of working out per day, sticking to the same diet 90% of the time, and I haven’t had a single alcoholic drink since. I plan on only drinking on special occasions going forward.

A taste of Mauritius. For my trip to Madagascar, I had just enough extra time to do a few days each in both Mauritius and Réunion. They are each about the size of Rhode Island, the smallest state in the US. While three days isn’t enough for either destination, I thought it would be enough time to get a taster and see if I wanted to go back for more.

Mauritius is an interesting place — an island in the Indian Ocean that was uninhabited until 1638 (!!), and today has a population descended largely from Indian guest workers and enslaved Africans (not unlike Guyana, minus their Indigenous population). The island is a lush paradise, with waterfalls, craggy mountains, and pretty beaches.

I enjoyed traveling around the island and seeing the sights — I especially loved the waterfalls, the giant tortoises, a fascinating Hindu temple on a sacred lake, and the bustling market in Port-Louis. The beach in Flic en Flac was lovely.

Mauritius is ideally explored by car, but because they drive on the left side of the road and I was flying overnight (i.e. a sleepless night), I didn’t think I would be a safe driver under those conditions. But I was able to find taxi drivers for 83 euros that would take you on tours for around six hours or so. I did that on two days.

That said — Mauritius and I didn’t really vibe. It felt a bit shabby overall, public spaces were poorly cared for, most attractions were a bit underwhelming, and I found the Indian-influenced food pretty bland despite begging everyone to make it spicy, local spicy.

I’m happy I visited Mauritius, and enjoyed what I saw, but I don’t have the need to return. I consider my visit a success. Not every destination has to be a home run.

A whirlwind visit to Réunion. Réunion Island, technically part of France, absolutely blew me away. I found the island spectacular in its natural beauty, exceedingly well maintained (the roads were LIKE BUTTER), covered with fresh flowers, and full of friendly people who thoughtfully helped me find the right French word instead of rolling their eyes and switching to English like the typical Parisian.

And frankly, I barely saw a fraction of what the island had to offer. My big day trip was a private tour to Cilaos, an almost unspeakably beautiful little village set amongst the mountains.

The scenery was so stunning, it nearly made me cry. (And well worth costing four times what I paid for a day trip in Mauritius — yikes!! You are very much in France here!)

So yes, I am quite eager to return to Réunion and see MUCH MORE! The active volcano and the other cirques of Salazie and Maïdo are at the top of my list. I’d also love to spend several days in Cilaos and use it as a base for hiking.

I’ll be writing more about my time in Réunion, so stay tuned for a bigger post!

The adventure of a lifetime in Madagascar. And then came the BIG event — my Madagascar trip with Rock My Adventure. The most adventurous trip I’ve had in years, and one of my favorite trips EVER.

Madagascar has been high on my list for years — but it’s a bit of a rough destination with limited infrastructure, even by African standards, so I always knew I wanted to visit Madagascar on a group tour. And as soon as I saw the itinerary covered ALL the places I wanted to visit in Madagascar, I knew I had to do it!

Yes, Madagascar is very much a challenging place to visit, but it’s also full of stunning natural beauty and wildlife, and home to some of the warmest, most wonderful people ever. Additionally, there is zero overtourism here, which is refreshing.

So what were my favorite parts?

A three-day journey down the Tsiribihina River. This was very rough — we camped, our boat did not have a toilet, we went days without showering, and when we needed to pee, we pulled over to shore to pee behind a bush (and sometimes MORE THAN PEE). But this was such a fun adventure. We swam in waterfalls, sang songs around the fire, and stopped in towns along the way.

Hiking in the Grand Tsingy. The Grand Tsingy is an intimidating rock forest, and exploring it was one of the most intense hikes I’ve ever done. This is the first time I’ve done a Via Ferrata-style hike where you wear a harness and clip in to cables throughout the route. Despite that, it actually wasn’t scary at all!

Experiencing the wildlife. We got to see SO many lemurs! And in Kirindy, we got to see some unusual animals like the foussa, mouse lemurs, and some cool chameleons.

Island time in Nosy Be. We finished our trip with time in Madagascar’s most touristy area: the northern islands. We got to snorkel with enormous sea turtles, and lemurs actually crawled on our heads!

And the people of Madagascar were an absolute highlight. The warmest, most welcoming people. The kids were fantastic and adorable, always wanting to hold our hands. We randomly stopped in a village and the women introduced us to a baby who had been born only a few hours ago!!

But this tour was SO great, and I can’t recommend it more highly. The next Madagascar tour is taking place in October 2026, and you can learn about it here.

Stay tuned for much more about Madagascar. I can’t wait to write about it.

For now, you can get £100 off any Rock My Adventure tour with the code KATE100. And I had so much fun on this tour, I’m already picking out my next tour for 2026!

Speaking French for three weeks. Despite visiting Paris annually, I don’t get to speak French very often — in part because if Parisians sense you’re foreign, they automatically switch to English. But BOY, DID I SPEAK A TON OF FRENCH during this trip!

In Mauritius, you can get by easily with English, but many locals only speak French. In Réunion, French is the one and only language. And in Madagascar, most Malagasy people learn French for “official” communication and English is a lower priority, so we usually defaulted to French in our conversations.

I actually rescheduled a canceled flight on the phone entirely in French with Air Austral. I took a private tour with a guide who only spoke French in Réunion.

I took over communicating with the French-speaking staff of our guesthouse when we were stuck in Antananarivo and Helen was at the airport trying to get us new flights. I made local friends in Madagascar that don’t speak English.

I’ve always wanted to use my French skills more on my travels, and I’m so delighted that I got to speak a ton of French on this trip. Lesson? If you want to speak more French, go to francophone Africa!

Challenges

Unrest in Madagascar. I’ve talked about this more extensively on Facebook, but I’ll give the basic points here: on the day we flew from Morondava back to Antananarivo, protests began in cities throughout Madagascar. People are protesting power cuts, water shortages, and a corrupt government.

Let me be clear: I fully support the protestors. They are asking for very basic things that we as westerners take for granted.

I’ve been in areas with unrest before, and it’s usually pretty easy to avoid. But this time, our hotel was right in the middle of the fray — so much that we were herded inside in a panic, basically barricaded in our hotel, and the police tear gassed the neighborhood, which hurt our eyes and throat even within the hotel courtyard.

Our flight to Nosy Be the next day was canceled, and we moved to a small guesthouse in a safe area in a gated community. By this time the city was under curfew and all shops were supposed to be closed (we found a few that were open).

Our flight the day after that was canceled once again, but we were finally able to get to Nosy Be two days later than scheduled.

On top of that, once I got to Nosy Be’s airport to leave, my flight was canceled for the next two days. Boy was I happy when I finally made it out of Madagascar.

So yes, it was a lot to deal with — particularly the scary arrival day in Madagascar when we were surrounded by violent clashes — but ultimately, it was just an inconvenience. My heart is with the Malagasy people, who are living this every day.

Our rent went up. By a LOT. Charlie has lived in our apartment since 2009, and our neighborhood of Karlín has gentrified enormously since then. As a result, our rent has been below market rate for quite some time, and only raised a bit at a time.

But this year they raised it a truly shocking amount, which hit me hard as the former renter of a subsidized apartment in New York whose rent never went up more than $50 at a time. YIKES.

That said — we can work with this. It’s not as bad as it could be.

(No, we’re not going to buy a place in Prague. We do hope to buy a place in Italy in the next few years.)

What I Listened To This Month

I’m listening to all 500 of Rolling Stone‘s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, which I am enjoying immensely. I am loving discovering new artists and listening to albums I’ve somehow missed my entire life until now!

In September, I listened to albums 249-228. Here are the highlights:

Favorite Discovery: Anti by Rihanna. I’ve been a fan of Rihanna’s music since the beginning, but I’ve never sat down and listened to Anti start to finish. And now I realize how Rihanna fans lose it over this album.

This album is sexy and futuristic, robotic and intense, and has such a clear point of view. The production is on point and everything is perfectly attuned to Rihanna’s unique voice.

Yep, this is an album I’ll be blasting for a long time.

Other Favorite Discoveries: Discovery by Daft Punk, American Idiot by Green Day, Love Deluxe by Sade, Little Earthquakes by Tori Amos, Heaven or Las Vegas by the Cocteau Twins.

Favorite Revisited Album: Everything was new to me in September — I had hoped I would get to #218, CrazySexyCool by TLC, but that will have to wait until next month!

Favorite Songs: “Kiss It Better” by Rihanna, “Voyager” by Daft Punk, “Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)” by De La Soul, “Enter Sandman” by Metallica, “Holiday/Boulevard of Broken Dreams” by Green Day, “Jingling Baby” by LL Cool J and Marley Marl, “Naima” by John Coltrane.

Get the playlist: I’m creating a playlist of my favorite songs from the 500 albums — maximum one per album — on Spotify. You can listen to it here.

Lowlight of the Month: I do not understand the point of Kraftwerk. Their album Trans-Europe Express is very “bleep bleep, bloop bloop, I’m a computer and I make music.”

Random Music Thoughts: This month I had perhaps the best combination of destination/experience and music, as I listened to Daft Punk’s Discovery while driving around Réunion Island.

WHAT AN EXPERIENCE. Listening to immaculate French dance music while driving those buttery-smooth roads curving around volcanic hills, with the most perfect gentle warm weather and big fluffy clouds up in the sky? FANTASTIC.

It is the best driving I have done since the Loire Valley last year, and perhaps the best driving I have done, ever.

This was my first month really listening to Patsy Cline, and I found her voice so compelling. She really has a different quality, so modern, that is unique in the world of country.

And finally, it was interesting revisiting Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak this month. I listened to the album back when it came out, and like all Kanye fans at the time (I’m not a fan anymore, his behavior is reprehensible), I was shocked at how strange this album was. Autotuned, vulnerable, melodic rap. “I miss the old Kanye,” indeed.

But this album has since become the blueprint. EVERYONE in hip-hop today sounds like this album, from Drake to Kid Cudi (granted, a Kanye protege) to J. Cole and Travis Scott. This isn’t Kanye’s best album by far, but I’d wager it’s the most influential.

What I Watched This Month

The Righteous Gemstones. This is a Danny McBride-created HBO series I never got around to watching until now, about a family of televangelists in South Carolina and all the wild things that happen behind the scenes. The cast is amazing, each character is as fascinating as they are vile, and the show is a lot funnier than I expected it to be!

(Also, no new season of Below Deck to report on this month, but my Madagascar trip was FULL of Below Deck fans!! We kept saying things like, “Captain Jason gives me the fanny flutters.”)

The Emmy Awards were earlier this month, and I am so pleased that The Pitt, so many actors on The Pitt, and Jeff Hiller of Somebody Somewhere won Emmys! Those shows are both MARVELOUS and I highly, highly recommend them both.

What I Read This Month

I got through three books this month. Let’s take a look:

Woodworking by Emily St. James (2025) — Erica is a 35-year-old teacher in South Dakota — and she’s trans. She’s told no one. But then she can’t hold it in anymore and comes out to Abigail, an out trans girl at her school, and the one trans person she knows. They develop an unlikely friendship that soon attracts the scrutiny of the community.

Emily St. James is a TV critic and Yellowjackets writer whose work I’ve long enjoyed, and her first novel is a fantastic debut. The characters are so richly drawn, and I appreciated a story about trans people taking place in rural America rather than a big city (one reason why I love Somebody Somewhere).

Though honestly, I had so much dread throughout the book as I knew a close friendship between a male-presenting teacher and female student would NOT go unnoticed.

All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation by Elizabeth Gilbert (2025) — When Elizabeth Gilbert’s best friend Rayya Elias was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Gilbert had a realization: she was in love with Rayya, she needed to leave her husband, and she needed to make the rest of Rayya’s days wonderful. But that’s just one part of the story.

During her cancer journey, Rayya returned to drug addiction, and Gilbert realized she herself was a sex and love addict who was causing a lot of damage to Rayya in addition to her previous partners.

There isn’t much that HASN’T been said about this book — especially the part where Gilbert contemplates murdering Rayya. A LOT of people hate Elizabeth Gilbert, no matter what she does, and I think some (but not all) of that is rooted in misogyny.

That said — I don’t think people are talking enough about the accountability Gilbert goes through later in the book, discovering how far her sex and love addiction has hurt people, and her excruciating efforts to get sober and stay sober going forward.

(I mean, most of us have done some crazy things for sex and love…she’s got some good tips in here.)

Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama by Bob Odenkirk (2022) — Bob Odenkirk has had quite an interesting career in entertainment, rising from the comedy clubs and improv shows of Chicago to writing for Saturday Night Live, creating the strange niche comedy show Mr. Show with David Cross, getting cast as Saul Goodman on Breaking Bad, and getting tons of Emmy nominations for drama on Better Call Saul.

I really enjoyed this kind of memoir because Bob has been slightly or moderately famous for most of his career — it wasn’t really until Breaking Bad that he became super well-known. And I loved reading about his community with comedians of the 90s, especially the wonderful things he says about Janeane Garofalo.

As an SNL superfan who would love to see Bob host one day, this book sadly made me realize that it’s probably never going to happen. Bob didn’t love working at SNL; he kind of phoned it in and secretly worked for Second City in Chicago simultaneously and had his friends cover for him. Lorne holds grudges. The fact that Bob put that in print means Lorne is never going to let him host.

Coming Up in October 2025

We’re heading to Piemonte! Charlie and I actually haven’t been to Italy yet this year, which is wild (we usually visit three times or so), so we had to squeeze in a long weekend trip before the year ends.

This month we will be visiting Piemonte for a few days. Piemonte is in the north and home to some of the best food and wine in the country. While we’ve visited Piemonte a few times before, this time we will be visiting a few different areas that are new to us.

And yes, this will be considered a “special occasion” and I will be ending my 100+ day sober streak and treating myself to a glass of Barolo, my favorite wine in the world.

Any plans for October? Share away!