Hi everyone, thank you for joining us today. This is our weekly live stream. If we are meeting for the first time, my name's Habiba from the trekking pals. And today I'm very excited to be joined by Laura from Adventures After You. She's one of my favorite adventure travelers out there. And Laura had inspired so many of the clients that I've done in the past. So I'm very happy for you guys to meet her. And I'm very happy to be talking to you today, Laura. Thank you so much for that intro. Yeah, I'm excited to be here and just chat with you. It's always so fun for anyone that's done something similar that I've done, or is interested, or if I can inspire, or if I can answer questions. Oh my gosh, it just makes me so happy. Awesome. So we will be talking today about Kleinbin, Kilimanjaro, and Mount Meru in Tanzania. But before that, we want to get to know you more. So if you want to go ahead, Laura, and introduce yourself. What are some of the things that you do? How did you get into traveling? And we'll take it from there. Yes, absolutely. Hello. Again, my name's Laura. Yeah, I am Adventures After You 75. A lot of my account is travel. A lot of it is hiking.  A lot of it is grief. A lot of it, if anyone's lost someone, my heart goes out to you. I did lose my husband almost five years ago, very tragically, in front of me. So I wouldn't say that grief has been something that, or traveling has been something that necessarily has been an outlet, but it's just been something made me look forward to life again. And that's just been very, very exciting. And that's kind of been one of my loves for traveling. But I always will say I did love traveling, and I was this crazy adventure person prior to that. So if it's deep in you, it'll come out eventually. So yeah, that's a little bit about me. I've traveled to over 40 countries, most of those by myself. I always say, I eat a lot of fried foods when I'm on these random trips. Gotta work it off somehow. So hiking's been a great way, but also a great way to see a new country and to challenge yourself. Awesome. So it's always amazing to see how travel, I don't wanna say that it helps us heal, but it allows us to have a positive view on the world, whether it's through hiking or just adventure traveling in general. So Laura, you are Canadian, which I just knew last week and I'm so surprised. That's funny. Yeah, I'm totally Canadian. Have a Canadian passport with all my lovely stamps, but at the age of 18, I actually was a javelin thrower track and field. And I moved down and got a scholarship in Texas. And then I stayed and I met my late husband James there. And that's where I come into still living in the United States, plan on staying here. But yeah, that's why I'm Canadian actually. Awesome, that's really cool. And you are currently living in the United States while working and traveling internationally really. You said you're traveling all around the world, so many new countries. Every time I'm watching your stories, you are someone new, which is amazing. Thank you. Yes, I currently reside in California is my address. I would say four years ago, I had no address basically. I was just very nomadic and enjoyed traveling around Europe and Asia a lot. I feel like with the pandemic, most people know, definitely made it more difficult to travel, but just kind of when I eased off, I definitely enjoyed jumping into some countries that weren't as strict with some things and just absolutely enjoyed it and gave me like a new appreciation for traveling to those places. And those people just being so welcoming and excited to see a new friendly face. Awesome, so with the hiking particularly, how did that start? When did you get there? So I did grow up, like I said in Canada, but I grew up in British Columbia, Canada, which is a very mountainous area. So I definitely grew up with mountains all around me and definitely doing some hiking. I would say I've always hiked probably whatever since I was very, very young.  So I definitely have always hiked, which I'm very fortunate for. And then I would say I wasn't until probably 2017 that I was in Scotland for the first time on my first like longer solo adventure. And I was like, I should do the tallest peak here. That'd be really cool. And Seth and looked that up and went out in my runners, probably just threw a few like kick cats in my bag or something like that and then put my backpack on and went and tackled it. And I just really, really loved it. And then when I was traveling around Europe, it just became kind of this thing that I wanted to do. I just like, where could I hike in this area? I don't, because I've never been, I always find like all large cities in my eyes look a little bit alike. I love those like smaller villages, but also the mountains. So it's just always been something that I look forward to with my travels is something that I can look forward to in general. Awesome. And the majority of the hikes that you go on when you're traveling internationally are those guided adventures or you go solo most of the time? Yeah, it would definitely depend in which kind of country. If I'm in North America, I would say almost all are gonna be by myself or just with like a friend or just like a loved one or something like that. And then same with Europe, I would say for the most part. In South America, I would say it's primarily with a guided group. And then like when I was in Africa for Kilimanjaro and Baru, that was all guided. So it's a little bit pitchy-fifty. Sure. I guess it makes sense with just safety. There are areas that are safer than others, especially when you're traveling as a solo female traveler. Absolutely.  But it's just all about like keeping your wits about you, understanding that. But also like I'm okay to not only support someone in their goal to be a guided person, but I mean, that's like you're supporting that country as well, especially if they're kind of more of a third world country. It's just something that I get to learn more about the country. They're way smarter than me about their surroundings. Oh my gosh. And a lot of those trails also might not be as well marked. But I just think something like, you know, them being able to tell me about the birds or the plants or anything like that, that I wouldn't have known any. Otherwise you get so much, you're just more educated once you actually get to kind of do it with someone else. Absolutely. So recently you climbed the Mount Kilimanjaro, which is the peak in Africa. But you've done all of other climbs around the world. I know that you have attempted a concagua in the past. I didn't. I attempted it the first year and we did not get a weather window. So you just, you stayed after a couple of weeks of climbing, you stayed at like the summit day and just nothing opened up. Your time was up and you had to go down and that's a very, very hard pill to swallow. But I went back the next year and I did summit, which is very, very exciting. So that's definitely been like the largest accomplishment in my outdoor life to date. That's amazing. Congrats. Thank you. For folks who are not familiar with the Mount Aconcagua, it's one of the seven summits and the highest peak in South America. And it's really like Laura was mentioning. It's a very difficult climb, very time-sensitive when you are in the mountains. So that's a great accomplishment. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah, Kilimanjaro, it's just everything's just so different. I love that about the mountain. Like even if something were to be an easy or a hard climb, you just never know what the weather, you never know what the people you're meeting. You also never know with how your body is going to acclimatize. If it's going to be like, yes, like you're working with me body, good job. Or it's like, why do I feel like crap? So you never fully know. But yeah, I feel like I'm fairly lucky with my body. Does fairly well with acclimatization. So yeah, but every body per sure is different. Awesome. So with the Kilimanjaro, how did you decide that you wanted to go after Kilimanjaro? Is it because it's one of the seven summits? Obviously you like going after high peaks. How do you go about planning and choosing tour operator? Do you want to share with us a bit more details for people who might be interested in climbing the mountain to future? Absolutely, yeah. I know it's such a, like it's funny because I feel like so few people know about Akincagua or so many of these kind of peaks. I was on the way to Africa and I was listening to this song and they had the word Kilimanjaro in it. It was like, it was, it's like a goal. I don't even remember the song at all, but they said Kilimanjaro. And it's just like, I just feel like I've always known what Kilimanjaro is. I'm not even sure why it's like, it's so, so popular, but I'm excited for Africa. And I'm excited for people that have done it that it is so popular. So for me, it's just always been something that I would love to do. I knew that like winter season is a lot more busy, or sorry, sorry, is a lot less busy and you're probably gonna get more rain and that didn't seem super appealing to me. And during like the Christmas months, I actually, I do have a full-time job and I'm a social media manager for different companies. And during like the Christmas season, I normally can get a lot more time off and can play hooky a little bit more. So that's always, that's kind of been why I've gone to South America so much. It's a little bit easier to get to than flying across the world to Africa, but also when I've gone over there, it's just like, it's just been easy for me with work. So that, and then when I found out that I actually could climb around the time that I, it would be awesome. It's a very year-round mountain. I was like, let's do this. I was in contact with a friend who referred me to someone. And I know I watched one of your videos. You might be getting into more helping people. So either you, you can always message me asking for a referral as well, but he was really, really helpful. And I, yeah, I kind of was just in contact with him. I went over there kind of having a game plan, but kind of like being like, I'm just gonna be here for five weeks straight and I'll do Camel Manjaro and a safari. I have to work while I'm over here. We'll see what else I do. So that really, I don't have a lot of game plan when I enter a country. It's don't do it, don't be like me, but that's always kind of been my goal with traveling that I kind of can feel out the country and I can see like whereabouts I'd actually wanna head to. I just don't do a lot of research beforehand. Awesome. It's fun sometimes when you just go with a spontaneous plan.  Exactly, yeah, I'm always like, yeah, I just never know like what I'm gonna enjoy when I'm there. Also like sometimes I'm just like, I just honestly feel like, especially when I'm by myself, it's kind of, I actually feel like just sitting in a coffee shop for a couple of days and reading a book. And if I'm by myself, why the heck not? So yeah, when I just, I just feel like I like that flexibility and that freedom when I'm by myself. Awesome. So you flew from California, we landed in Tanzania and then the first thing you did was climb the mountain. Which routes did you pick for your climb? So I actually first did Maru and that was really helpful for climatization and just something fun to do. I actually say I enjoyed that hike more than Kilimanjaro. Just I met a bunch of just like wonderful people. I met so many really fun people that I ended up like connecting with and staying in touch with the rest of the time when I was in Africa and that's just, that one's just very straightforward. And then when I actually did Kilimanjaro, which I only came back and took two days off. So it was quite a climatized going into Kilimanjaro. I just did like kind of the fastest route. So I got up in four days and then down in one, up in four days, yes, sorry. I had three nights and then like that last night, you're of course leaving just after midnight. So a little bit confusing there. But yeah, I got to sleep in hats the whole time. If you're someone who is a little bit better with a climatization or you're like, I just sleeping in a tent doesn't sound fun to me. I know there's lots of people out there like that. So if that sounds like you, yeah, it's a good route. I guess it makes sense since you did Mount Meru, you allege your body enough time to acclimatize. And plus you have experienced climbing higher mountains in the past. So for Mount Meru, how much time did you need to go up and down the mountain? It was, so it was two nights and that second night, again, you leave at midnight and summit right around six a.m. When the sun's peaking, it was very beautiful. It was a lot more, I wouldn't say it's a technical mountain, it's just more technical than Kilimanjaro. So there's quite a few like rope sections in it.   And it was just beautiful. It was a chillier experience, I would say, than Kilimanjaro as well, just with the wind really was coming at us. And then I summited on technically Christmas morning, which was really cool. So I had gone around Arusha in Tanzania and found I had someone find a Santa hat and was able to wear that at the summit as well. That's the best way to spend the holiday. Absolutely, 100 percent. That's so awesome. I'm a little bit jealous because I will see in Meru from Kilimanjaro. I was like, oh, I wanna go there. Yeah, the first morning that we were at Meru, you actually could see there was like this little area for where you were having breakfast and we got the most beautiful shot of Kilimanjaro. And that was honestly probably like the most clear I'd ever seen it, which was really, really cool. But yeah, you totally can see the both mountains in the distance on a clear day from so many different areas. That's so awesome. You get to see Kilimanjaro from Meru and then you see Meru from Kilimanjaro. Yes, very cool, right? That's so awesome. So the hike on Kilimanjaro, you sleep in the hut, which is convenient for people like you said. You don't wanna sleep in a tent and you still had porters with you or you needed porters. Yeah, yeah, you still had every setup. So literally, I felt like it was very lush for me. I think there's always someone carrying everything I carry just like a day pack at all times. And that was like larger than a day pack just so that I could put more rain gear or anything like that that I needed within my bag, some snacks and stuff, some water. And that's it, that's all I had to carry and I would just leave my large bag with all my stuff at my door at the beginning of each morning and someone was there to carry it all to the next. I was very grateful for them, very nice. And that's gonna be anywhere on Kilimanjaro for anyone that's actually taking any of the routes. It's a very, very nice way to hike. It's definitely helpful when you don't have to to drag a heavy backpack on top of the elevation, top of long distance. Yeah. So what are some of the tips that you have Laura? For someone, I know that you have a lot of experience and for someone who's wanting to climb the mountain average hiker, they want to do it for the first time. What are some of the tips that you have to share with them? Absolutely. I think a lot of times it might seem overwhelming or kind of scary. There are so many different kind of things that you can download for getting ready. One of the things that I always say, it's really popular to say like, I barely trained and I did Kilimanjaro. And to me, I'm like, that sounds really terrible. Like I want to go there and have a wonderful experience. So probably the climatization already isn't going to be super fun. So if I can take like the physical aspect out of it, that's wonderful. So for me, it was just kind of all about training and making sure I was in shape for doing it. It wasn't a goal for me to be like, I'm going to not enjoy myself, but I submitted. I want to enjoy myself the whole time. The first couple of days were just gorgeous. Like you were going through just so much different terrain and every single day was a different kind of terrain. And every day was kind of like four or five hours and then you're there and you're eating great food and wonderful time. So when you're back wherever you live across the world, even if you live beside the ocean, so you're not in any kind of elevation, you still can be doing things. Like even by me, there's a hike. There's a couple of hikes that, you know, you're gaining 2,000 feet of elevation. And if my legs say we're as strong, I might even do a weighted carry. A lot of times that ends up being my dog. Put them in my backpack and hike. So there's always, I always recommend all trails for things like that and seeing anything by you or if you're visiting an area. So it's just all about kind of gaining those longer days. I also really like, I enjoy running. Some people might not, but I enjoy running. So those running days kind of build my cardio, but those aren't long days, of course, cause I'm not going out running for four hours. So kind of just switching it up between maybe some longer hikes. So they don't need to be a ton of elevation, but that will put those miles under your feet, kind of getting yourself ready in terms of your boots, but also just having a bit longer of days, like a four hour day. And do you do a bit, I'm curious myself, do you do running or, you know, are you running in the gym? Okay, I would hate running in the gym. I think I would punch myself if I had to run out of treadmill. No, I normally will try to find, like beside me now, it's exactly one mile away and it's a lovely little path by a creek. And I enjoy it going there very, very regularly, but I enjoy the gym. Do not enjoy any machines. All right, no running on the treadmill. No running on the treadmill, oh my gosh. Awesome, so training is obviously very important for climbs like this, just so that you're having a pleasant time on the mountainy scenes. Yeah, I think it's part, so that you have a pleasant time on the mountain.  What hike would I enjoy in the area? And that's gonna help me to get to that summit in the future, but I'm actually gonna enjoy it this weekend. Awesome, that makes sense. So I'd hope that people out there do enjoy hiking if you're planning on doing Kilimanjaro. And if you do, I hope that you just kinda do some preps with some different hikes. Absolutely, so you got there, you're hiking with the team, how many people were there in your team on Kilimanjaro? It was just me as a hiker, just yeah, it was very small. I think just with the pandemic, just very few people kinda were there. I originally was gonna summit on January 1st, and actually my guide was like, just a heads up, there's gonna be a couple hundred people at the summit because everyone does it on January 1st. I was like, let's do it December 31st. And then it was very, very few people were up there. So I was very happy that he said that. He was even like, because of course you can't stay up there too long because your body will start to notice the lack of oxygen. And he was like, if we had been there January 1st, he probably wouldn't have gotten a picture by the sign because it just ends up being a line, which sounds terrible to me. So I'm very happy that I did go the day earlier. Awesome. So it really just you. It literally was just me. I stayed in like my hut, I would say with other people that also came in, but yeah, it was just me, a cook. He was wonderful. He made me pizza at the end of every summit day, and who doesn't want pizza? And then a guide, and then he was also like training someone else. So he came too. So there's just like this large group in me. That's awesome. You really get all the time to yourself to. Yes. Do whatever you want. It was all about me. Yeah, 100%. It was a great experience. And yeah, always, always very helpful. Very nice. Did you get to sing the popular celebration song? 100%. Yes. I did that for five weeks straight, and I appreciate it. It made me laugh for your post there on me coming, me coming on this live, and that's which one you use. So it made me laugh. That's wonderful. Ah, yes. Eats out on the mountain sounds incredible too. Yeah, I definitely, I enjoy soup. Just it's like gonna hydrate you and also just yummy. Good for your stomach when you're in elevation, but then when I came down from both Maru and Kilimanjaro, I was like, oh my goodness. And then when I was coming down actually from Maru, I was dehydrated, not like terribly or anything, but it was like, okay, I need some calories in my body now. And I was coming down and like the chef that was there, he like was coming in to go into the tent and he saw me there on the way down and he had like on a tray two large glasses of like orange juice or mango juice, a combination. And I just kind of looked at him and I was like, are you bringing these to the tent for me? And he's like, yes. So I just like grabbed it, chugged, put it back down, grabbed it, chugged. I was like, thank you, you can go. You don't need to bring it to the tent. I am so tired and need calories. That's awesome. That sounds like incredible experience.  I guess it was that your first time in Africa? That was my first time in Africa. So I was very, very excited that it was my first time in Africa. It was definitely one of the, of course only continents I haven't been to. I would normally love to go to a couple of different countries over there, but just traveling within countries made it difficult at this time in the world. But it was a very cultural experience. I absolutely loved it. I love different foods. I love experiencing the different cultures of foods. And that was just, that always is just like fun to me. Also like hearing what you think that I might want an American is fun. And yeah, I would definitely say that that was just like, I don't know, it's just, also like the way of life over in Tanzania is just so much like slower in a good way. Like it's just like, well, what's the rush? What's the rush? And it's just like, well, cause I need to go do that kind of thing. And it's just always like a what's the, kind of a kuna matata technically, but yeah, it's just always just, just enjoy it, get there when you get there. And I'm just not used to that. So it's just, those things are really fun to me. That's the, it's really interesting to hear you say that because I had the same experience. You feel like here in the U S everything is fast to a point where you don't even know how to rest anymore. When you go to a new country and you have to take everything slow, it's, you know, not frustrating, but like, well, let's go. And it's my name because in my mind, if I'm traveling somewhere in my mind, like those are four hours wasted to get to that place. But for them, it would almost be like, yeah, but those four hours, like you could have this experience for four hours. I'm like, I just want to get there. And for them, it's just like, let's make this like a thing for four hours. So I definitely didn't pick up on that at the beginning. I was just like, why is everything so slow? And then, and then just kind of learning, learning more of the customs and just appreciating that about them. Just absolutely wonderful. And I love that. That's awesome. So for folks who are joining us, we're still talking about Kleinbein, Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru. If you have any questions about Kleinbein, the mountains, feel free to leave a comment and we will be tackling them. But in the meantime, other than Kleinbein, Mount Kilimanjaro, you went on a safari as well. Yes. I had such a good time. Oh my gosh. It was just so cool. So I partly was in Serengeti, which is a beautiful, beautiful area for seeing wildlife. And it was already like off season, but there were so few jeeps. So it was just like, I was sitting there with just like my driver with eight different lions or N lionesses just sitting there looking at them. And they're a couple feet from me. And it was just, it was a very cool experience. I've just definitely never experienced that. I think animals are absolutely amazing. So it was just, it was so cool. Like it was just, it was so cool.  And the night that we did stay in Serengeti, you were in this like glamping tents, which is amazing.  So you're like, if you don't know a glamping tent, it's literally like a tent, but you'll have like even a shower, a bathroom, and then like a king size bed even in it, but you would have kind of like, I wouldn't say blinds, but like rolling things. So you could feel like you're outdoors. So it's like my back is happy in the tent in the bed, but I get like the like mental happiness of being outside.  And then I heard like a bit of a roar, but it was kind of on the show I was, I was watching. So I was like, is that outside or is that on my, on my phone right now? So it was just, it was such a fun experience. 10 out of 10 recommend this party. Really nice to work very hard for the mountain and then just have the safari right after. So before we continue talking about the safaris, we have a question from Angel and she is saying, for those of us clueless people regarding who to go with, how to choose a company, group or a Sherpa, I believe they're talking about climbing the mountain. How do you even, when it comes to picking an operator? Yeah, I would actually love for you to explain this as well, just I think you have more experience on this one than I do, but mine was just I have a really good friend and she had been there. And so I just asked her and she was like, I know someone who enjoyed working with this company. And that was literally my only experience and I'm happy with who I chose and I had a great experience, but mine was just kind of a word of mouth for anyone who had been there asking them for their experience. Okay, so just to add to that, I think getting recommendations from someone that you know and trust is all always helpful, but there are usually two types of tour operators. There are those that are local to Tanzania and then there are those that are operating in the UK or the US. So usually with the, with local companies, they are a bit more affordable compared to high-end companies and it really just comes down to reading reviews online, hearing from people who traveled with them and make sure it's a solid company. Yeah. Yeah, and like I think the thing is, is I definitely normally am a lot more pro working with a local company. With that said, I did wanna make sure that they could speak decent English. So making sure for me on any of my treks, I actually made sure of that and I hope that doesn't sound bad. I just wanna make sure that I could communicate if I was feeling like death on the mountain. And so I think that goes back into why a lot of people might choose like an American or a UK guiding company. A lot of, like, I think most of those guiding companies will still just outsource into, like they're not bringing their own guides over there. So I'm an advocate of working with local guides. So I would just find a company that can have, if it were me, English-speaking guides, but it's a local company. Absolutely, yeah. You would want someone who will understand you if you are stressed or you need to be rescued. That's an important point. All right, so going back to the safari, when you did this safari, how many days was the safari? It was four days. Four days. And you were by yourself again? Yeah.  I was supposed to be with a couple other people and they ended up canceling last minute and not getting on their flight with the latest world stuff. So they didn't actually get on their flight.  But I also, they did whatever the heck I felt like doing and that's wonderful. And I just got more of a front seat feel. I think it would be a little bit overwhelming for my stomach. I think four rows back or something like that. Because they definitely passed some people and it was a pretty full Jeep. So I got it all to myself. I had such a good time though. Everyone was super, super nice. I experienced my birthday when I was on the safari and like the place that I stayed that morning, it was like non-alcoholic, but it was a champagne. They opened for me at six a.m. before I started. And everyone was saying, happy birthday. And then that night we stayed somewhere else and they brought me a cake and saying happy birthdays. It was just such a nice, loving experience. That's wonderful. Laura, you create content about your adventure travels over on your Instagram and you're well, right? Okay. Yes. So for folks who are watching us, do you have content out there from the safari and the mountain that they can refer back to? Thank you. Yes, I absolutely do.  Probably what I'm basically here as. And I have a lot of Kilimanjaro videos I vlogged every single day, which is really fun just for me going back and seeing every single day and seeing kind of me give a tour of every single camp and how I was feeling and probably swearing throughout it that I felt tired. And then I did also for the safari, which was really, really cool showing like the lines up close. Awesome.  I'm looking forward to seeing the videos. We have a comment from Steel Angel. She says safaris are amazing. I did one in South Africa best experience. That's wonderful. I love that. Yes, yeah. South Africa I know is so amazing for safaris. So many people, if they were on like their second one in the Serengeti, they said their first one was there. So I'm so glad you experienced it. Yeah, it's just, I mean, being from North America, you just don't even like fathom seeing that or anything. So definitely cool. And technically Lion King is based out of Serengeti, which is really, really cool. So yeah, just little things like, I was on my way back home to the US and watched the Lion King because I was like, I need to see it now again. And like it's like Simba is technically Lion and Swahili.  And yeah, those just made me laugh. But yeah, it was, it's like I've said, it's just a very cool experience, a beautiful area. What were some of your favorite animals to see in the Serengeti? Yeah, I would say baby elephant. I really enjoyed the giraffe. I thought it was just, it's just this friendly, big friendly giant, right? Super cool. For some reason the skin sound weird. The little bums of the zebras, just the cutest little bums you ever did see. But I mean, I know I've talked about like the lions. I just thought like, and then like we saw when they were migrating. So it was like, I'm literally looking at like a hundred thousand zebran and like just different animals as they're just walking. And I'm just here with the Jeep up and just being able to watch this. This is just a very cool experience. Wow, that's wonderful. I saw some of your photos, Laura, with some of the tribes in Tanzania. Do you want to share that? Yeah, it was just, it was so cool.  And I know like, if anyone's like traveled and you've suddenly, you're suddenly just in a backpack and I even find myself not using a quarter of the backpack. And it's like, you realize how little you need to keep yourself happy and just to do all these amazing things. And that was just a really nice reminder. Cause once again, I was like in a backpack but I just felt like my backpack was the biggest backpack in this tribe kind of thing. And they just, they were all very happy. I think a lot of humans, you know, we crave a community and that's really what we love and that support from other people. And I think a lot of these tribes, that's what they have and you know, lean on each other. And I just, I just loved it. And I got like a tour, the house was a little small for me, not trying to be bougie. But it was so, so cool going through there and seeing that and just seeing like the experiences that different people grow up with and just their experience, I love that. Awesome. It's definitely nice to see different culture and experience it from the eyes of the locals who live there. So we have a question. This is a, I think it's broad questions. They're asking coffee time, what country you suggest for beginner travelers? I guess the question would be, would you suggest Tanzania as a country for someone who's traveling for the first time in Africa? Yeah, so I would say there were, so I always say like a country, if you're from North America, you're speaking English, I'll just assume. And it would probably be best to go to a country if you're just gonna go solo travel, that also speaks English. So that's why I chose like the UK and that area for like my first solo, I went through all through Ireland, I went through Scotland and I went through England. It was just the, you know, super easy. The worst thing is like getting on the bus on the wrong side of the road, like, so easy. Obviously for Tanzania, they're speaking a different language, but I will say most people spoke English that I was ever working with or they're kind of working with you to figure everything out. And of course, like day and age now, there's Google Translate and it makes it super, super easy. But I don't know, for me, I just, I looked for those countries that wouldn't be this insane eye opener, but like I could get there. I would get off the plane and I wouldn't feel super overwhelmed.  So that's kind of why I've chosen those. I've actually heard like New Zealand is a really good place to start because it has good hiking, but also again, English speaking, but also it'll depend on your budget and it depends like on the things that you wanna do. So yeah, I feel like it's definitely not a bad place. It just depends how I have friends. So that's where they started. I'm like, good for you. I think that would have been very overwhelming for me, I'll say. If I started over there, it would be a huge eye opener, but I definitely could have done it. I guess the takeaway is it's just different from one person to the other. If you feel like a person who needs to ease into a different environment, then go that way if not, you know, go for it if you have another. Yeah. Very nice. So this is on Africa or on Tanzania, were there any other experiences outside of climbing the mountain and the safari that you went on? I did actually start maybe the second day, something around there. I did a really pretty waterfall hike and that was really, really fun. That's one of the times where I danced with one of the tribes, which was just very, very fun. My guide actually was a woman, so that was really nice. And she just kind of talked about herself and her life and that was lovely to see. I love seeing that. That was, yeah, and then it was a beautiful waterfall who doesn't love a beautiful waterfall. And then kind of was able to, and I was staying in Arusha a lot of the time, so it actually was to and from Arusha and you could hike just from the town. So that was really, really fun. That was one of the experiences. And then when I was coming back after the safari, we stayed an extra couple of days and again, a glamping tent and just more in the smaller villages. I had said, if I were to replan, I definitely would have gone with the smaller villages more. I think in my head, I had to work still quite a bit and I needed perfect Wi-Fi and I was really scared that I'd go to a smaller village and they'd just be like, no Wi-Fi and I'd have constant outages and I'd be like, this is how I'm paying for this trip though and stuff and I'd freak out. But I definitely had fine Wi-Fi everywhere. Oh my gosh. I don't really even know why I was concerned about that. So I think just the smaller villages are so fun and they're so much more cultured there. You can go through the market and I was just grabbing the most random things and just like, this is a different fruit I've never tried before and just all these awesome, awesome things like that. And it's also incredibly cheap to be going through something like that. So awesome. And about safety, you mentioned that you were traveling with guides for most of these, you know, the climb and then the safari, but did you feel generally safe for folks here who are traveling solo? Great question. I have really, wherever there is wood, knock on wood. I've really never had a bad experience like I'm saying. It definitely can happen but it also could happen in your own country for sure. Have your what's about you. I never stayed out after dark and I was told not to just as if I'm being by myself. I also could take like a little, if I wanted to and I wanted to go out, I'm not like a partier. So I just like, okay, I'll just go to bed by eight 30. That's just me though. But like they just said, if you do, please just take a cab back to where we're staying and just be safe with that. Don't walk past dark. And that's just what I went with and I never, I just kind of would always get back to the house by like 7 p.m. And then that's when it was getting dark and it just worked out really well. So I never had any bad experience. I was like I said, working with a guide and then I would just meet people along the way. And also like I said, for Maru, I had such a great experience and met some other people from Europe and stuff. So I would kind of spend the day with them once I was back as well. Awesome. So that's Africa and I'm so glad I met you and I was really happy to see your photos on, you know, top of California. Thank you. So what are some of your plans or future climbs for the future if it's something that you'd like to share? Yes. I don't quite know, sorry to say. For two years straight, I've had Nepal booked. So now with the world open, I think I'll get to go to Nepal in 2022, which is very, very exciting. If you've heard of Annapurna Circuit, it is like 17 days, but basically you don't even really have to carry very much. You stop when you're tired in little villages and it's a little tea hut. You can just stop to grab some lunch in another village and then continue on your way. So really, that's just always been one of my, like just top of my list. That would be amazing to do. So I'm really, I've had, like I said, I've had it booked for two years and that's not even gonna be with a guide. A lot of people just like start out and enjoy themselves and it's quite high elevation. It does get to around 17,000 feet. So nothing to see is out there. So that's very high on my list. I think a lot of, I've done a lot of what I'd love to with mountaineering and I wouldn't say I'm taking a step back at all. I just love backpacking so much and those like really intense long day hikes. And I'd love, I'm just continuing to train for those for like this summer and anytime like I have a long weekend for work, I'm always out there for three or four days and enjoying myself. So I'm planning on doing that again all summer. We're in North America and then Nepal for sure. Awesome. Nepal sounds like an amazing adventure. I hope that everything falls into order for you. Thank you. Have you looked into Nepal at all or have it on your list? I don't know about it leisurely but we don't, we don't have a solid plan yet. Absolutely, yes. And sorry, where, I was in Arizona. Do you live or do you say that? I live between Mesa and Queen Creek near the regional airports, Mesa gateway. Yeah. Okay, okay, okay. And I knew you were like in the Phoenix area. Yes, yes. And I know every time I'm like coming through there since we've actually like met online, I'm like, I'm literally here for less than 24 hours. I'm so sorry.  No worries, would love to meet you and even hike or something together but. Absolutely. Absolutely. So in the United States or in North America, do you have any climbs that you really wanna do? I know that there are so many beautiful mountains here and all of the mountain ranges that we have. Yeah, yes, absolutely. So I did like Mount Whitney. I've done it twice. I did it last year as a day hike and that was just like a goal of mine and it was a very, very long but I did it day. There's a couple that are just kind of two days and I really enjoy like the mountaineering style. I think a lot of people don't like snow. I really like snow. I like ice. I like putting crampons to ice. I don't find it that part scary at all. So like there's Mount Shasta which is actually only four hours, four hours from me here. So I've talked about that. I mean, when you have all the gear and you just kind of have to, you could go into a group. It's a lot more affordable of course. So once you have the gear, it's amazing for those kind of things. Anywhere around like Tahoe, there's just so many places I think on the West Coast. I haven't explored Utah too much yet but I have definitely, I lived in Arizona as people know for a couple of years. So I explored the Arizona area and I love Flagstaff and I love that area. You climbed Humphrey's Peak before. Yes, I've done it a couple of times. I actually did it in the winter and this is like a weird story but I had gotten fake lashes like a couple of days before when they were just like starting to get in and they just like completely froze and I couldn't even like hold my eye because there was so much frozen snow on it. And I was like, I don't know what to do. I got up there and then I've done it in the summer and it was beautiful. It's a good height. It's not crazy hard and it's just, it is elevation but it's just that we're 10,000 but it's just, it's very straightforward hiking. That's so funny with the eyelashes. I don't know what to do with them anymore. I probably have a fixture somewhere where I'm like, what do I also have to do after? I'm like, what do I do right now? I can't see. That's... So yeah, I'm amazed that Whitney twice it's an incredible mountain for people who are joining us. It's the highest peak in the lower 48 in the US outside of Denali. You have plans to climb Denali in the future. Denali is my world, my life goal. Denali is my life goal. I originally was considering trying to like save for it and do it this coming summer. If I do it, it will be next summer and after that, I will be over it for my goal. But it's my ultimate goal, I think. To me, it has such a low probability of summoning. The weather is just super, super volatile. I don't think like the elevation there is crazy just the way that earth is. It's not crazy, crazy high but the air hits you differently there. But I mean, when I did Akankagwa, you literally couldn't leave your tent for like three days because we were just in a storm. And I know for Denali, you can be there for like a week or two and can't and just sitting in a storm. And it's just, it's exhausting. Like I can't explain like, and it's like you might, such a TMI.  So it's just, it's just a lot and the thought of that for Denali. But Denali, it's just this absolutely amazing mountain. You also like just pull sleds for most of it. So you just really have to be physically fit for it. And I think it's just, it's such an amazing goal. Anyone that even thinks they want to attempt it, my hats are definitely off to you and I'd love to. I would love to though, one day. Awesome. I was gonna ask you, Laura, you mentioned earlier about Akon Kaguay. Tried the first time in Summit, second time in. I wanted to hear more about emotionally, how do you deal with the stress, you know, you put all of this time and effort into training and planning and it's a lot of money because all of these climbs are not cheap and then you get there and you're working your ass off to make it to the peak and you have to turn back with, you know, without Summit saying how do you deal with that? Yeah, it was one of the sadder moments I feel like of my life just like not even getting an attempt of it was just like even though like you've just put in all, like you're saying time and money and just kind of sitting there and you're less than a day away and just, and you now have to do the exact same route back even if you did or didn't Summit and stuff. So it's a very kind of overwhelming emotional day and couple days for sure. I think it honestly just drove me more into the following year being like you were getting this, you were gonna sit on that mountain for as long as it takes has like here's my credit card just put sit me here and I will make that something kind of thing. It ended up being a wonderful, we got it on the like the first attempt to like go up. It just was a lot better weather that next year but yeah, it was just, it was a lot. Truly for me, it really just drove me to train and like I'm saying, so it's kind of like how I was saying before with Kilimanjaro, I feel like Kilimanjaro for the most part weather isn't a super big issue but being acclimatized is. So for Akankagawa, it's a climatization plus weather. And so for me it was like I am taking athleticism out of the equation. Like I will be able to hike that thing three times if I need to, that's what I'm gonna be able to do. And then the other ones are out of my control but what's in my control?  That's awesome. That's the right way to put yourself into it. Yeah, I do think I put myself up for success at next year for sure. Wonderful. We've been going for 15 minutes. We have some time. I wanted to ask you more about mountaineering because with hiking and back, like you said, you start small. You start with trails that are nearby and then you learn. But how did you get into mountaineering? How did you build all of the skills to just go for these mountains that require solid skills? Yeah, I would definitely say that's not something that I grew up doing. It's not even something that I knew was a thing. Like in any way, if it's something that you want to do, I would just like any, first of all, anywhere in South America will basically have mountaineering and it won't be as tall. It'll be tall, but like getting a good guide. That guide, if you're receptive to listening to them and just understanding them, it will just be amazing. My first experience with mountaineering was in Bolivia and they spoke zero English. And I was receptive, but looking back is like straight comical because like, yeah, I had no idea what was going on. Glad people give me hearts. And Seth and from there, I think it was once it was in Chile and I remember I just had the best guide. He was just so helpful and he was just explaining to me why I wouldn't do this or why I would do this. And he wasn't in any way talking down to me. He was just like, she wants to learn, I'm gonna teach her. Then I think basically from there, I was like, I don't wanna travel, travel as much. I want to train for something. And that's where I signed up for Accincagua and I still traveled a bit, but all of it revolved around the school in my head. And once I was up at Accincagua, I had just a wonderful, wonderful guide and the entire time, I just think I was very receptive because I found it just such a cool experience that I just learned so much. And so every single thing that you're doing, you're learning. And I think if I was out on the mountain right now and I saw someone that had was attempting to put on double boots for the first time and said, wow, these are really uncomfortable. I would be like, good for you. And you've got this kind of thing. It's just, it's an environment that it's not competitive because I want you to make the summit just as much as I hope to make the summit. It's not a competitive nature in that, but it's a bit of a competitive nature within yourself. And it drives you like an inner you to do those things and you'll just learn along the way. And I can promise you, I don't think that I learned up learned like much online going into things, you just learn on the spot. And when you're just constantly asking a guide and you see that they're a good guide, they will be so open with you and explain things to you and helpful for you. And they want you to learn and they want you to succeed. So just start somewhere and you'll rock. And like you said, being assertive and observant when you see your guide doing this, I'm sure that they would need someone who can take care of themselves on the mountain instead of always being a rock, a liability. Yeah, exactly.  Just a little, I think it's just being self-aware and aware of what they're doing. And then I think from there, honestly, mountaineering isn't cheap, but it's also kind of like what I said, once you have the stuff, most stuff is actually somewhat affordable from there. I went over to Kilimanjaro and I didn't have to rent a single thing and I had great gear and stuff. But I think even from there, like I just remember looking up thing after thing for what's the best thing and then just tracking it on like eBay and tracking a lot of secondhand gear if someone who tried Denali and said, I hate mountaineering, here's my boots. And that's how I come across all my gear because it can be expensive, but make sure to get good stuff and it'll last. Awesome. So, Laura, before we wrap up for today, you have any thoughts or any other tips that you wanna share with folks watching us today? Yeah, I think that, and I know I did just touch on this, I think that hiking and mountaineering, any of those two things, they're just very, I mean, there's no in my eyes, there's really no better feeling than getting to that summit and that feeling of accomplishment. I know different people hike for different reasons. Mine is just training for something and having that excitement inside of me.  I would never skip a training day because I'm like, this might mean I don't get to summit and why would I not wanna summit? But that's just kind of, I feel like a weird mentality, but I think starting off small, and I wouldn't say small, but if you're in Phoenix and you're following or in Phoenix, having camelback as that great goal, the highest peak in Phoenix, from there being within a year, I wanna go to Flagstaff and do hump freeze and sleeping at the trailhead and getting that done. It's just a one day hike, but it's just putting one foot in from the other and there's been a couple of hikes that I've been like, I just don't feel like going anymore. And it's just like, but could I take two more steps? I was like, yeah, I could take two more steps. It's like, then you're not over. Like then why would you, and I don't turn around ever, but it's just one of those things. It's a one foot in front of the other and knowing kind of how extreme you also wanna go with it. If it's a situation of I just want to, my goal is camelback, just knowing that about yourself and that's a wonderful, wonderful goal and you're gonna get some great pictures. Please bring lots of water and drink lots of water, but just having a goal out there, I think it's great for your mental health. It's great for your physical health and you will get it. Awesome, I love it, love it, love it. Thank you so much, Laura. It was so great to meet you and I want you to know that you're inspiring so many people out there. Thank you. Time I see you at the top of a big peak. It's always inspiring. So thank you for your time today and for folks who don't follow Laura already, be sure to check her out on Instagram and her YouTube channel and I wish you the best of luck with your upcoming adventures. Thank you so much, you too, and we'll chat along the way. Awesome, thank you so much for your time today. Take care, bye. Bye.


That's what you live for as a player. Big game on Sunday, first place on the line, all that. Yeah, I mean, it's the next game of the year. We've been talking about it for the past few weeks, man. I think I said two games ago, I think this was kind of like the turning point of, we're talking about the good and great and all that different stuff. I think we have an opportunity to be great. But we still had to take it one game at a time. And it's a big game, it's the vision of the game. We know that we need this one. We can't focus or worry about anything beyond this one. We just had to focus on trying to beat the Houston Texans. What's changed that's made them so much better? I mean, honestly, I can't see a lot. I mean, I think those guys are really just rolling. I think they're executing a lot better. The offensive line's playing better. I think Dary Henry's getting a lot of carries. He's running the ball well. Tenon Hill's firing the ball downfield. AJ Brown's playing well. I don't think it's like a secret formula or anything like that. I think guys are just executing a lot better than they were before. I mean, I think he's a great receiver when it comes to he's running really good routes. I think he has probably the best, if not the best hands in the NFL. Guys, he gets a ton of targets. So he's getting a ton of targets. He's been the number one guy. He makes big plays down the field. And I think another good thing about him, he understands that guy's going to try to press him and try to disrupt routes. And I think he does a great job of fending guys off and still getting open and making plays when it's quarterback scrambles. So it's pretty good. It's incredibly huge this week. I don't think we've played our best red zone defense this year, period. And that's something that has to improve immediately. And especially dealing with this team, I think late in the year in December, December football, you want teams when they get in the red zone to kick field goals. Cause I mean, honestly, I think our field goal block team is probably one of the best in the league. So if we can force them to kick field goals, I think, you know, they're going to miss it or we're going to block it. So that's kind of the way we think in our team locker room.


I'm Kevin C. Miller with DAV out of our Washington headquarters and joining me here today is my colleague, Assistant National Legislative Director John Retzer. Last August, thanks to the groundbreaking advocacy efforts of DAV, the Honoring Our Pact Act was signed into law. Among its many impactful provisions, the Pact Act reduced bureaucratic obstacles for an estimated 3.5 million veterans who seek VA benefits due to burn pit exposures during the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other hostile locations. The law added presumptive conditions related to burn pit exposure, meaning veterans who served in overseas locations with active burn pits no longer have to prove their exposure or establish direct service connection if diagnosed with elements listed in the law that are known to cause such conditions. Thank you for joining me today, John. Good morning, Kevin, and thank you for having me. John, since we just mentioned presumptive conditions, could you let everyone know what it means when the VA considers a health condition to be presumptive? Yes, the way VA in general defines presumptive is related to a chronic, a tropical or a prisoner of war related disease or a disease that's associated with exposure to certain herbicide agents or a disease associated with exposure to contaminants would be considered to have an incurred or aggravated by your military service, even though there may be no evidence to such disease during your period of service, the VA has the ability to recognize that. Great, thank you for elaborating on what presumptive means. The Pact Act also created a special enrollment period for veterans who served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other combat zones, an opportunity to enroll directly in VA health care without first applying for VA benefits. Can you let us know who is eligible for the special enrollment period and how they can apply and when they need to apply by? Yes, it's really important that our veterans who are deployed to combat zones that they take this opportunity to right now to look at enrolling into the VA health care, so one, like I said, you have to be in a combat zone, deployed to a combat zone, never enrolled in VA health care. And then the periods that they're looking at is that you left active duty after September 11th of 2001 and before October 1st of 2013. And then you are eligible to enroll directly into VA health care without first applying for disability compensation, which a lot of veterans were used to the idea that we have to file for compensation benefits to get to health care. So this is the one time that you can apply for the VA health care first. The deadline is coming up in that September 30th of 2023 just right around the corner. What I'd like to do is also articulate why it's so important for our veterans to go ahead and do this if you meet the eligibility requirements here is because however, veterans are needing this care, the care that is provided is from the VA is a high quality care, a very veteran-centered care that they've earned and they should apply right away. They shouldn't wait till later to do this, so they should apply today. But one of the things that we want veterans to know is that when they enroll into the VA health care, VA health care has proven to be better health care than the private sector on average. So we want to ensure that the veterans take advantage of this high quality veteran-centered care that we most deserve and earn. And VA hospitals had dramatically outperformed a lot of the non-VA hospitals and overall quality ratings and also patient satisfaction ratings because the fact that VA is centric to veterans needs and have an understanding of the military culture in which we come from. So I do want to encourage our veterans out there to have the confidence that they're going to walk into a health care system that is ready to take and take care of them. Great, thanks for explaining that, John. And like John said, folks, make sure you apply for your health care as soon as you can. And that leads us to our next question is, John, can you let folks know how they can contact their nearest DAV service office to help apply for VA health care disability compensation? Yes, our DAV benefits advocates, and we also call them as national service officers are located throughout the country. And what you can do is go to benefitsquestions.org. That's benefits with an S, questions with an S.org. And when you go to that site, you plug in your zip code and you will be provided the contact information, the address, the telephone number, and even an ability to send an email. And we highly encourage the email because when you do that, you are able to send it directly to the office that you're targeting to provide you the service. At the same time, I do want to also encourage and to share with the veteran population that they can also go to va.gov backslash-packed, P-A-C-T, to be able to reach out to VA for assistance and or call the 1-800-M-I-VA-411 to learn more about how to sign up for VA health care before the deadline of September 30th. However, I highly encourage that you take advantage of our DAV benefits advocates. Our national service officers are trained and provide free service to navigate the forms that's going to be needed to apply for the health care and to direct you on how to advocate for yourself when you have to work with the patient advocates at the VA Medical Center to make this happen. Great, thanks, John. And then can veterans who did not meet the criteria for special enrollment apply for VA health care? Yes, definitely. One of the things I want to share is that we had defined what presumptive is. One of the things that we need to know is when we go after a claim with the VA on the presumptive level, even though we may not be found to be eligible, one thing that is going to happen with the VA is no matter what occurs, as far as the outcome of resumption, the VA has a responsibility to process a claim and develop a claim to address direct service connection. So it's very important to all veterans when you're doing this process to go ahead and do what you think you're eligible for and let VA develop it properly. So yes, veterans can go ahead and apply for health care. And one of the means that they do this is by your income based on your income that you can get into health care without ever applying for benefits. And the other way is a reminder is when you are granted benefits through the service connection of your compensation that would also provide eligibility for health care. Great. And then the last question for the day is, do you need to be a member of DAV to utilize the benefits advocates to help apply for VA health care or VA disability compensation? No, the DAV benefits advocates are national service officers are there for all veterans who are needing assistance, even their dependents to be able to file claims, appeals and any other benefits questions with regards to the Department of Veterans Affairs for free. Great. Thanks, John, for explaining this today. And like John said, we're just gonna reiterate, make sure you go to benefits with an S, questionswithanS.org to contact your nearest national service office and get in touch with a DAV benefits advocate. They can answer any questions you might have and applying for VA health care or disability compensation. And on that note, thank you everybody for your time today and hope you have a good day.


Good morning everyone. Today I'll be talking about running an API gateway on Istio, our pitfalls and learnings. My name is Karim Lakhani. I'm a senior staff software engineer at Intuit and I'm the technical lead of Intuit's API gateway. So our agenda today is talking about Intuit API gateway, why in-house, why we migrated to cloud native technologies, our architecture and the pitfalls and learnings that everyone's here for. So at Intuit we're leading the way in building an AI native development experience using cloud native open source technologies and this is some statistics on our scale. I'll call out $560 billion of money moved and some more stats on this on our developer environment that's built on cloud native technologies. We're running at peak over 1 million cores, CPU cores, 2,000 services, all of which have multiple APIs, one or more APIs, over 16,000 namespaces and over 1,000 teams and the API gateway is the front door to all this infrastructure. So the Intuit API gateway at a glance, what is the role of it? So as I mentioned it's the front door to all the requests coming in and it also serves for a lot of service-to-service communication. Before, recently in the last few years we've adopted Istio service mesh but before that there was a need for service-to-service communication and we actually used our API gateway for that as well. So it provides routing, security, authentication and authorization of both the client application as well as the user metrics and dashboards including our golden signals which provides availability latency metrics for every service on API gateway, very detailed access logging and quality of service features including rate limiting and traffic dialing. So the benefits and stats of our API gateway, it's highly scalable, we run over 30 billion requests per day at peak and over 1 million requests per second and we scale up to about 6,000 pods across all of our environments at peak. It's highly available, there's no room for downtime really so we have four nines of availability at the minute level. It's highly reliable as I mentioned it's the source of the golden signal metric so it can't be wrong when it says that a service has a certain error rate or certain latency, it has to be trusted, it has to be a low latency so we look at targeting 30 milliseconds at the P99 for our overhead and it has very deep self-service management through our developer portal, the onboarding experience as well as the configuration management experience is all integrated into there. So why in-house development? Our API gateway started about 11 years ago and when we were still in into a data center at that time we had a need to move towards microservices from our monolithic architecture and so at that time there were not too many open source options, the ones that were available were not highly performant as we needed and so we felt that we could build our own and we saw a value in being able to customize it to fit our needs so we built our own API gateway and then over the last 11 years we've made a lot of customizations as we anticipated including deep integration with our identity providers, we do a ticket exchange and as well as a lot of features to support different business use cases such as fraud detection and traffic capture so our approach is very similar to Netflix Zool2 and AWS API gateway, we use a non-blocking and asynchronous architecture which is written in Java and one of the differences is that it has partitioning built in as a first-class feature so our partitioning is really key in the control plane we have partitioning logically in the data and then in the data plane we have partitioning in the compute and the network so that way we're able to isolate workloads such as QuickBooks, TurboTax, MailChimp, Credit Karma into their dedicated infrastructure and keep all the data separate as well as the compute and then compared to AWS API gateway we have more relaxed quotas so we allow longer timeouts and larger request and response payloads so as I mentioned we started in the data center and then we did a lift and shift into AWS cloud and then after a few years we started considering should we move to cloud native technologies and so I'll talk about why we decided to do that the first step the first reason is Istio so we wanted integration with the service mesh right the service mesh came about three years ago and our API gateway was standing alone from that it wasn't really connected to it and this put an extra burden on the service developers to support traffic coming in from gateway and from the mesh as well as us implementing special mechanisms to establish trust between our gateway and the mesh so we wanted to have a deep connection between those technologies and that would improve our security reliability and observability it would also reduce our data transfer costs because we are relying on public internet to move these bytes and with Istio we can go through a private networking and additionally we are looking to enable network abstraction which is our way for the client developer that regardless of whether they're calling an API gateway endpoint or a mesh endpoint it's the same experience so before this you would call a gateway endpoint using a .com using a certain authentication protocol and with mesh you would use a different one so we wanted to unify that experience next we wanted to improve our observability now we had metrics we had logging however there were gaps in it and we were using some legacy technologies which were causing quite a lot of overhead development wise and deployment wise so we saw an opportunity to improve that with Prometheus and other cloud native technologies additionally we had our cost analytics were rather complicated it was built all custom the the charge back model that we have and how we report on that so we saw an opportunity there with better isolation of workloads with Kubernetes clusters with namespaces to get clarity on that and then finally we wanted to take advantage of Intuit's modern SAS platform which in the last few years we've been building on so you know we want to take advantage of these cloud native technologies such as Argo CD Argo rollouts Argo workflows and Istio service mesh which is built on Istio Intuit service mesh which is built on Istio and admiral so we were seeing issues you know with our custom scripts our custom deployment it was hard for new team members to join and get on boarded we saw an opportunity there to improve so that we could be on the same technology stack as other services at Intuit at Intuit we believe deeply in open source and open collaboration so we're the recipient of the end user award in 2019 and 2022 and we also have various open source projects that we've created and we maintain including pneumo flow admiral Argo and we're the end user of multiple open source and cloud native technologies including Kubernetes, Istio and Envoy so there's a link here for our open source community if you'd like to join so quickly I'll go through our API Gateway architecture before I get into the pitfalls and learnings on our journey to migrate so it all starts with our mobile applications our web apps our users and they make requests to various APIs as I mentioned there's 2000 plus different APIs at Intuit not all user facing but that all comes through our API Gateway and so our API Gateway will have multiple APIs that it's serving it's in Kubernetes and Istio enabled now we use admiral which is our open source multi cluster service mesh solution to inject all the configuration for all the different clusters at Intuit so that API Gateway knows how to route the request to the right cluster and to the right service so from there we're able to route the request to the API that was it's supposed to be meant for and then from there the services can talk to each other through the service mesh so that's a high-level view of our architecture and as I mentioned admiral provides the automatic configuration and service discovery because we have a multi cluster architecture and a little bit deeper look at that so in our control plane which is Istio based we have Istio D which has the Envoy config and Kubernetes config we use Argo for our rollouts and then we have admiral which is pushing all this multi cluster config into Istio and we also have a certman component which is responsible for the certificate management and then in our data plane we are a separate quest both from a public load balancer and Istio ingress gateway and the request come into our API Gateway through our Envoy proxy we have an MTLS agent which is managing the MTLS certs and then we are able to use MTLS to call out to our back-end services very securely and through using private networking and that way we're able to have a very secure and reliable communication so now moving on to our pitfalls and learnings I'll list them out here and go into more detail so I'll be talking about Istio sidecar in hybrid mode graceful shutdown configuration overload outlier detection and auto scaling and resources so starting with Istio inside car mode so in most Istio deployments traffic comes into the cluster through the ingress gateway which does a TLS termination and then a MTLS is established between the Istio ingress gateway and the Istio proxy itself now our API gateway supported a ALB ingress as well and we wanted to continue supporting a ALB ingress for that's where all our certificates were installed so we wanted we didn't want two different envoys we wanted one envoy that can do both MTLS with the Istio ingress gateway and TLS with the ALB and that wasn't supported so we worked with the Istio team to make an open contribution to the sidecar API with a new property TLS that's allows us to support both TLS termination on the Istio proxy as well as MTLS all on one port so for more details I have here listed this Istio RFC which goes into the configuration but it's just a few configurations needed to set that up next we have graceful shutdown now this is not exactly purely an Istio problem but we faced a more complication with Istio so as we started rolling out our API gateway with Kubernetes as we were scaling down we saw errors sometimes and we found out okay there's a lot of different settings that have to be set up exactly correctly to have a graceful shutdown so in our case we had idle timeout on our load balancer we had a pre-stop on the container which could sleep we had a termination grace period on the Istio proxy we had a termination grace period on the container and we had a target group deregistration delay so we had to do a deep dive and understand what all these configurations do how to configure them correctly and this is what we ended up settling on we have a max timeout on our gateway of about five minutes on most of our workloads on some of our workloads we do allow longer timeouts but this is what we ended up settling on so this way the request stopped coming to gateway when a when a pod is being deregistered and we give enough time for request in-flight request to finish before we start terminating the workload like the pod and the containers next one is configuration overload so as I mentioned we have a lot of services and into it api gateway has a lot of clusters and we have partitioning built in to our data plane but not in the istio in the istio world so without partitioning in the istio world all the configurations are delivered to every single gateway but every single gateway doesn't exactly talk to every single service so this was an area of improvement for us we were getting a lot of data transfer from istio d to istio proxy it was going cross az and even during a scale up we saw a cpu spike because of this so to resolve this we started implementing a partitioning logic into our admiral so that way the api gateway only gets the config that it needs to so our admiral knows about the partitioning of the data in our control plane in our registry and it's able to use that to make sure that gateway doesn't load all the config for every service in the mesh next we have outlier detection so in istio there's a nice feature called outlier detection which is a circuit breaker which tracks the status of every host and how that host is doing so that if it becomes unhealthy you can stop talking to it however in our gateway we are talking to 500 different services on one pod so every service that we talk to might only get a few requests and so it's hard to set a certain number of our failures that will trigger this circuit breaker and so what happens is a certain host on the back end might be unhealthy but we don't know about it we continue sending it requests now this is something that we still need to work on so it's a work in progress but we need to extend this and optimize it to work with this workload we're exploring active health checking or some type of global circuit breaker type of implementation because you know obviously when a back end is unhealthy we want to stop talking to it next auto scaling and resource limits again this is a common problem with kubernetes and we face more issues with istio proxy here so first of all our gateway has to be rapidly scaling to handle surges of traffic load tests we can't really control the traffic coming in so our hpa has to be very optimized and we originally went with our hpa implementation but saw that it was either over overscaling or oscillating and scaling and we also saw challenges with the we were using the average cpu of the containers on the pod and that wasn't really a great metric to scale on because istio cpu is fairly low while our application cpu is fairly high and so the average wasn't there to trigger the scaling so we were basically scaling on the average which was the default in our workload so the solution is to understand the metrics understand which metrics you want to scale on whether it's the application cpu the pods average cpu istio cpu on your workload and in our case we use now multiple metrics so we use both the average and the pod level cpu and another thing is we we weren't happy with the hpa implementation for our workload so we actually have extension of that called step scaling which basically generates a synthetic metric based on how much we're above the target cpu so if we're for example here i have you know if we're more than nine to 13 percent above the target cpu then we actually scale up our what we say is our cpu by 25 percent higher or 50 percent higher so that way we're scaling more aggressively but not too aggressively based on how much we're actually over the target so with this implementation we had a lot more control over our scaling and we're able to scale just as much as we need and not have it scale up and down now the last thing is our cpu throttling so we deployed this api gateway with istio kubernetes production serving all these requests overall everything was going good except for two of our clusters had a problem and things were basically slowing down latency was being added we weren't sure what's going on and then we found out it's because of cpu throttling so we didn't have that visibility so we had to get that added added to our dashboards and understand you know why is cpu throttling happening why our requests are on our limits not set for this workload correctly and we had to test different setups to see what's the best setup and we're still kind of going through that process right now so and part of this again is with how do you set the limit on istio proxy right that's another it's challenging enough and now you have another container and so far we haven't seen cpu throttling on the istio but it's something that we're keeping an eye on and in some workloads we did see higher workload on istio proxy so we did have to increase the request and the limits on that specific cluster so an overview is of the pitfalls and learnings on our istio cloud native journey is the hybrid mode graceful deregistration configuration overload our liar detection requests and limits correctly and our auto scaling and with that I will open it up for questions please follow our open source community we have a booth which we're have a swag and as well on the right hand side I have a qr code for a feedback on this presentation and also a link here to our open source admiral for more details on our multi cluster service mesh solution so any questions yes yes I'll repeat the question so the questions around our certificate management and our for mtls or it's like how do we do that so we do have an in-house certificate provider and we also have an in-house agent like a container that communicates with it as well I think it's turned off I think we are using I believe it's IP mode or it's is it IP mode yeah it's IP mode yeah that was always like that thank you how is that journey looks like what are the things that you kind of like you know looked into and what are the kind of tools that you might have used to figure out that things are safe to kind of like transition to I'm sorry I didn't hear the whole question so can you hear me no yeah I can do so from the in-house the api gateway to the new istio based api gateway what how was that transition like what was your experience in terms of like moving to the istio one what are the different things that if you elaborate on that like you know the new gateway is in production and you are safe and confident enough with this yeah yeah so I mean just to clarify right we're using we moved our gateway to kubernetes and we're using istio in collaboration with it so overall our journey was fairly smooth aside from these you know issues that we faced we did a slow rollout across all of our workloads across pre prod it was a multi month migration and you know I think pretty much now we're at a place where we have a much better security with our back end services we're able to use tls rather than a custom jot authorization or trust that we built earlier and now one of the great benefits is we have the istio metrics and logging on the destination so a lot of times the destination services would come to the gateway and say hey my service is not working is it because of the gateway and we wouldn't really have much insight on what's going on on their end they would have to kind of show us and then we would say well look your service is unhealthy so now with the istio metrics we're able to have a uniform way to understand what's going on on the service and troubleshoot those issues liar detection on one of your slides yeah you talk about circuit breaker patterns and things like that can you go a little bit into how you're achieving like multi tendency and isolation and yeah for the different services definitely yeah so the question is around how do we achieve multi tendency and isolation so we have isolation at the cluster level as well as the namespace level so we as I mentioned we have multiple clusters multiple namespaces now within a namespace we do serve traffic for multiple services up to maybe five six hundred services in some cases in some cases only five services depending on the workload so there is some risk for a noisy neighbor there but you know we do have that level of isolation and we basically have thread pools and connection pools set up to help isolate some of the traffic there however you know we have seen issues where if one service is unhealthy it can kind of spike the cpu and cause an impact on other service so that's also something that we're continually working on improving thanks for the question and with that I'm out of time so thank you everyone