Back in Fredericton. I’m still lagged a bit, but I will recover from that before I acclimatize to the fact that it was below zero when I woke up this morning. I think I understand why my friend Gary mostly visits warm climates. Pulling my down jacket out of my carry on pack when I stepped off the plane was a bit of a surprise, but then again, it is November in Eastern Canada.

So, I now get to reflect on the last few months. This trip has encompassed more time away than I’ve ever done, more connected flights, buses, vans, and I’m having a bit of a hard time remembering where it all started, and what I did months ago. I really bucked against the idea of bringing my laptop with me this time, but in the end I am glad that I did because I doubt that I would have written as much about this trip without it.

It is nice to be home. There’s a lot to like about coming home. It’s been said that there’s nothing better than leaving, nothing better than going home again, and I think that’s mostly right. Epic time, I saw lots, did lots, but my own bed and a hot shower were both welcome things. Once I turned the hot water tank heater back on.

You don’t miss it ’till it’s gone away? Indeed. Were there things I really liked having back? Yes, absolutely.

• Drinking water from a tap. Being able to turn a tap and get water that you can drink is a huge luxury that many people in the world do not have.
• The ability to eat fresh fruit without having to peel it. I have probably eaten six apples, a whole mango with the peeling, and most of a bag of plums today. Don’t get me wrong, I love bananas, but eating a half dozen of them a day every day for two months wears on you.
• Humidity. I started getting nose bleeds in continental Europe, and they continued when I was in the Middle East. I think this was part of the reason why I got really sick in Berlin, but more on that in a minute.
• A quiet night’s sleep. If you’ve never been to the Middle East (or Vietnam, I suppose), you have not experienced what I call “horn traffic”. People here in Canada mod their cars with mufflers, spoilers, window tints, and what not. People in Egypt get louder horns, horns that play songs, whatever, and they use that horn everywhere, all the time. Cairo has recently won top honours for “the city that never sleeps”, and I think they really mean “the city that you will never sleep in”. Having no traffic by my house last night was miraculous.

There are also things that I miss already:

• The food in the Middle East. The vast majority of my vegan munchies comes from Lebanon and Egypt. It was an eye opening experience to really see, to finally understand, how it is supposed to look and taste and be served. I will probably never enjoy falafel here in Canada again.
• The people. Everyone who hears that I just spent most of the last two months in the Middle East tells me I am either crazy, or tells me to be careful. I have never felt more safe in my life than when I am in the Middle East. I love the people, their way of life, the way they welcome you into their lives, their homes, and share their culture. Seriously, you need to go.
• So much to see. This also applies to Europe. You could spend months in Berlin alone, and years in Egypt, and not see everything. Technically, this point should also be in my previous category, since there is a ton of stuff to see in Canada also. I need to become a tourist in my own country.

So, was the trip without bumps? No. There are always things that go sideways, and this trip was no exception, especially because of it’s length. The notable things:

• I got really sick in Berlin. I pushed myself like a mad man when I got there, rode every morning with a local bike shop, and spent the day touring the city. Everyone was sick at the conference, and by the time that was over I had the worst cold I’ve ever had. It was like some insane Teutonic plague. I actually went to the hospital, had an ECG done, blood tests, etc, just to make sure it wasn’t really serious. I was given prescriptions for things, spent the first week of October trying to get better, and was mostly over it by the time I went to Dubai and on to Jordan. It was so bad that I actually considered coming home. I am glad that didn’t happen.
• In a previous post, I mentioned that an ATM in Egypt ate my bank card. That was pretty unnerving, and dealing with that was pretty stressful.
• I found out what would happen if I ate dairy products again. I had hummus in Jordan, but I didn’t realize that it was mixed with yogourt. I was ridiculously sick for about 12 hours. Man, never again. I do not wish that on anyone.
• As I sit here, Egypt Air is struggling to find my checked bag. As a rule, I do not check luggage when travel. I pack light, even with camera gear, but this time I had the conference and needed decent clothes so my bag was bigger. They have no idea where it is. This happens to me almost every time I check luggage.
• More frustrating is the fact that my very nice tripod is now gone, for good. When I was in Lebanon I had a bus transfer. The baggage handlers assured the passengers that our stuff would be moved over. Well, the tripod didn’t make it. I was out of the country before it was found, and a friend living in Beirut had it shipped to Cairo, to my next hotel. Well, the UPS driver who delivered it would not take VISA (despite me arranging this a week in advance), it was Saturday, everything was closed, and he wanted almost 3000 Egyptian Pounds (a about $600 CAD) in cash. The fee alone is ridiculous — it was $300 USD to ship it from Lebanon, and paying $600 more would have meant that I probably could have just purchased a new one. Why pay $600 in customs for something you own? Anyway I am back in Canada, and UPS has declared my item abandoned and has scheduled it for destruction. I am super pissed about this, but there is nothing I can do at this point.

Anyway, the point is that things do not always go according to plan, but that is the nature of travel. Good times were had by all.

Main musical influences on the trip were Agalloch, Woods of Desolation, Iron Maiden, Queens of the Stone Age, and Satyricon.

Books for the Kindle included a whole lot of Jo Nesbo and Peter Temple.

I’m going to go and eat another apple.

I have returned to Cairo after spending a few days in Luxor, followed by another night train back to Cairo and then a bus ride onto Alexandria, and then a few days there, and then a very long truck ride into the Western Desert to Siwa, an Oasis about 80 km from the Libyan border. After Siwa, I headed south to Bahyria, and spent a lot of time in the White Desert National Park. The White Desert is called such because it has these most amazing formations of limestone that jut up from everywhere. Some are named, because they resemble the things they look like. There is the mushroom, the chicken, the egg, and so on. To get to the White Desert, you have to travel through the Black Desert, where the sand is almost completely black because it was once an area of high volcanic activity and is mostly basalt. There are dormant and not-so-dormant volcanoes everywhere.

I loved the Western Desert area of Egypt. You’re not in a city, there is no ‘hassle’ from people trying to get you to by trinkets, and the lifestyle is laid back and everyone is truly, genuinely friendly. Now that I am back in Cairo I find myself wanting to go back there. I miss it. A lot. While the cities in Egypt have been an experience, I didn’t find myself enjoying my time in most of them. They are, for the most part, very dirty. There is a lot of garbage, it is piled up in the streets, and there are millions of flies everywhere. I don’t want to put a negative spin on my time in Egypt because I really do enjoy it here, but that sort of infrastructure and education needs to be put into place. I suppose that priorities need to be set, and perhaps things like elections, better governance, need to come first. Perhaps the other things will spring forth once those basic criteria are met.

In other news, NaNoWriMo has started again. I am obviously not participating this time since I just don’t have the time to write, but I am pleased that my short story has been worked on while I’ve travelled. I have a fairly clear idea about how I want it to finish up, and will probably finish it before I get home. Then I have a week before I get back to work and I will do some revisions during that time. I would really like to submit it to Asimov’s Science Fiction, but I am probably kidding myself.

Anyway, I think it’s time to finish up the post with two photos and perhaps a track of music. First, the track. I’ve been on the road a while now, and Wasted Years, by Iron Maiden, has to get the nod. The lyrics are incredibly powerful and mean a lot to me. I grew up listening to this track and every time I go back to it there are memories that come flooding back.

From the coast of gold, across the seven seas
I’m travelling on, far and wide
But now it seems
I’m just a stranger to myself
And all the things I sometimes do
It isn’t me but someone else

I close my eyes and think of home
Another city goes by in the night
Ain’t it funny how it is
You never miss it ’til it’s gone away
And my heart is lying there
And will be ’til my dying day

And now, the photos. Two photos. The first is a sunrise photo I took when I was in Sinai, in Eastern Egypt. The sun is rising over the mountains of Saudi Arabia, across the Red Sea.

The other photo is the obvious one when people think of Egypt, the Sphinx and the pyramids. While they are cool and you should probably see them if you visit, they were not the highlight of the trip for me so far. But still, here we go. The pyramid in the back is the ‘middle’ pyramid of the big three in Giza. It is smaller than the great pyramid, but is on a higher hill so it looks taller. It still has some of the original limestone cap.

Greetings from Luxor, a city about 700 km south of Cairo. I’ve been in Egypt for about a week now, and I haven’t updated much since internet has been quite poor. So, a quick update is in order. When I last posted, I was in Aqaba, waiting for the ferry. Well, that happened, and I arrived in Egypt at about 11 pm that evening. After a rather eventful trip through customs where the officer who I ended up with couldn’t read the english on my visa made some other ferry passenger translate it, and then decided that I was in the wrong line so I had to start over again, I wandered through a very dark dockyard full of military personel, tanks, armoured troop carriers, until I found the bus stop I needed to be at.

Anyway, there’s more to that whole drama, but it’d take too long to type it into a blog post. Suffice to say, the story also involves a bank ATM eating my bank card at midnight, and me still having to catch a bus so I had to take a cab back from my hotel two hours away the following day to get my card back. So much fun, but that is life on the road.

Alright, so I spent two days on the shores of the Red Sea in Sinai, visited St. Catherine’s monastery, climbed Mt. Sinai (second tallest peak in Egypt), and then took a 9 hour bus ride to Cairo. To get to Cairo I had to cross under the Suez canal, via 1600m long tunnel. Very cool. The canal splits the divide between continental Asia and Africa. Cairo is a zoo. It is a loud, insane zoo. I was there for two days and I will be back there in a few days so I will talk more about that later on. Obviously, I did the pyramids and the sphinx. Cool, and yeah, if you’re here you should see them, but honestly, not mind blowing. Abu Simbel was better. More on that in a second …..

Long night train to Aswan after that, 1100 km away. Spent two days there, visiting some of the temples in the area, and especially Abu Simbel. Abu Simbel is a Ramses II temple complex that was in danger of being submerged when the new high dam was built, so the government dismantled the temple block by block and moved it to a new spot on higher ground. The whole process took four years. The temples are amazing, and worth seeing if you ever visit. Went sailing on the Nile (it is how I spent my birthday, actually), and this morning I drove for three hours to get to Luxor. In about 20 minutes, I’m going out to see the temple of Karnak, and then visiting the Valley of the Kings tomorrow.

So, in summary, crazy busy so far, but worth it. I have a lot of photos to go through, and maybe I’ll get a few up tonight if I have time. Tomorrow night I am back on a night train to Cairo and then an early morning bus to Alexandria (yes!) to finally see the Library. It’s been on my list of Egypt things for a long time. Can’t wait.

I’ll include one other photo from Jordan, since I don’t have any Egypt pictures ready. This was taken on a high mountain pass and shows some of the very dry, sparse landscape that is Jordan. The body of water on the right is the Dead Sea. Behind it is Israel.

More coming. Perhaps later tonight if I can get some time.

Well, a ferry actually. I am in Aquaba, a city on the coast of Jordan, on Jordan’s tiny little 27 km worth of coast line. It is here that I will catch a ferry across to Egypt and start my travels through that country. I’m looking forward to it, although Jordan seemed so small that I wonder if I saw everything I should have seen. Probably not. You could spend weeks or years exploring Petra or Wadi Rum and not see everything. I’ve taken a ton of photos of those places and will go through them when I get a chance. I’ve been lucky with wifi the last few days — right now I’m just in the lobby of a hotel I booked a day room in. It made sense — I had a whole day to wait for the ferry so why not? I had a nice meal of foul (pronounced ‘full’) medemes and falafel, with soft pita bread and lemon tea flavoured with mint for 2 Jordanian Dinar, or about $3.50 CDN. Epic street food in these countries. I’ve had absolutely no problems in Lebanon or Jordan as a vegan. I expect Egypt will be similar, with kosheri, the iconic lentils, rice, macaroni, and tomato sauce dish served on every street corner in every town.

Anyway, Aquaba is a nice little place. It’s a coastal city, so there is a breeze, although right now it is 31 degrees outside and you feel like dying when you walk anywhere. Tons of banks, modern shops, and restaurants, intermingled with old souks, gives it a really unique sense of self. Reminds me a lot of Fes, in Morocco.

The photo for this post is a sunset over Petra. I took it a few nights ago on the way into town. The red red red sky is caused by the tons of dust and sand that get kicked into the air by the wind each day. It is hard to see in the photo, but on the top of the highest peak to the right, there is a small building, a shrine to Aaron, the brother of Moses. It is 2200 years old.

Track for this post is Regular John, by Queens of the Stone Age. I’ve been listening to their first album a lot on this trip.

open up your eyes
open up your room
open up your arms
open up your door