Egypt Day 17: the house that Alexander built...

i've always had a quiet admiration for Alexander of Macedon... and not just because because his grandfather and my grandfather came from the same part of the world. where Louise will be coming back from Egypt with pile of Ramses II swag big enough you could bury her in it, Alex always gets a not of respect from me. he was followed by men twice his age, fought his away across the known world and won and died before he turned 30. he's history's embodiment of "life fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse".

somewhere earlyish in his career he wandered into Egypt and kicked the Persians out with (from what Soobie was saying) about as much effort as it takes to slap a mosquito that makes it into your 6th floor hotel room late at night and keeps you awake with its buzzing. i can imagine the conversation now... or at least how it would have played out if Egypt was Brunswick St in Fitzroy:

"So wheresa capitala dis place? LUXOR?? Wassamadda you? I'm not gunna rule from fucking Luxor! Youse all can get fuck mayte. All get fuck! I'm not gunna going up anna downa Nile all de time. Call my cousin Christos anna his mayte John an Stef. I wanna new capital closera to home. Youse can call it Alexandria... yeah, i lika that. Get going! I gotta polish ma Monaro mayte!"

or... well, proably nothing like that, really. still, you get the point. from the capital in Athens Luxor is a long, painful way away. shifting the capital to the coast of the Mediterranean made sense, even if just in travel time. Luxor was the capital of Upper and Lower Egypt, so its location vaguely central made a good compromise between Memphis in the north and Aswan in the south... kinda like Canberra in Australia. Everything in the Middle Kingdon of Egypt was about that balance between north and south. the crown of the kings was "the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt". the temples are covered in a synergy of papyrus and lotus - papyrus being the symbol of the north and lotus of the south. north and south, east and west, life and death, the ancient egyptians liked to play things in pairs.

meanwhile, Louise and i are running late for our meetup with Mohammed... or he's early. i'm not sure, but we get a call from the concierge while i'm throwing my showes on to tell us he's here already. when we get down we find a kindly man with a beard who looks like he may be in his early 40's... which around here means he's at least 50. he leads us out to his car - a late-model Hyunday Verna (Accent in Australia) and we're off up the Alex Desert Road. cars in Egypt are... intersting - Cairo especially. the standard taxi you see in Cairo is a 20+yo Fiat, Peugeot or Lada (the Egyptians did well out of their treaty with Russia... or maybe Russia did well outof Egypt. everywhere you go there are Ladas, the Air Force use MiGs and the police use AK's), painted black and white and looking like they've had every side patched and straightened at least once or twice. most of the cars i see don't have a straight panel on them and if it's clean it means it was washed this morning.

the Alex Desert Rd runs almost straight out of Giza north and west through the Nile Delta. it has 4 marked lanes, which makes it 5-6 lanes wide and surface i'd go so far as to say is "decent". you'll pass a mosque every couple of kilometres in case you're travelling at prayer-time... in fact, they seemed more frequent than service stations (got to love a country where religion's more important than petrol). over the course of 200km you gradually make your way from desert beige to farm green as you go deeper and deeper into the rich soil and and abundant farmlands in the north, then swamp and marsh-lands and then suddenly the blue-green of the Mediterranean. the city was originally built along a natural bay with a couple of small islands across it, which was altered over time to become a calm, enclosed harbor. the Lighthouse (one of the 7 Ancient Wonders) on Pharos Island is long gone and Pharos Island is now an indistinguishable part of the mainland, near enough to where the Citadel of is now.

we haven't spoken to Mohammed much. i'm in the front passenger seat with Louise sitting behind me in the back. it's a habit we got into on taxis if only because i can fend them off if things get nasty, and it means i'm a buffer against potential leering. it's important to note that this hasn't been an issue. at all. even in the slightest. Louise gets a lot of looks from both blokes and ladies. i get more than a few myself we're a novelty and there's no taboo in this culture about staring. regardless, sitting in the front it's mainnly my responsbility to keep the driver entertained, but when Mr Sayed mentioned that Mohammed's english wasn't the greatest he wasn't kidding. he gets by amazingly well though, it's just some of the concepts he doesn't follow our words for. this means that while Louise sits in the back sleeping with her headphones on, or playing with her DS i'm stuck up front not wanting to be rude by pulling my book out. Mohammed's our driver, but he's not a taxi. we're paying him, but he's not our servant. we need to be a little more respectful, so my book doesn't come out until WAY late on the way back to Cairo. it's not too bad though - he's having a fun time trying to explain things to me and teaching me new words in Arabic, little of which sticks. by the time we crest the last rise and are looking over the sea i'm getting well and truly ready to go for a walk around and not have to think too hard about how to say what i mean in simplified english.

one of the first things i notice about Alexandria is how much cleaner it is than Cairo. in fact, that statement is way too much of an understatement. it's Cairo's supermodel younger half-sister. same mother, different fathers, smaller and without the soft middle and saggy boobs, sporting a perfect smile and a better tan. in the 30's it was a slice of Europe-in-Africa - more French and Greek than Arabic. over the last 70-odd years the Arabs have reclaimed it, but kept most of the good habits. the streets are startlingly clear of litter, and because it's insulated by 100km of farmland and marsh it's nowhere near as dusty. i don't see a single tour bus in the entire time i'm there, so i'd guess that it's pretty far from the usual tourist routes. in the rest of Cairo when someone says "Welcome to Egypt," or "Can I take your photo?" i've learned to ignore them. i have to stop ignoring them here because Alexandria is the only place i've been in Egypt where no one. NO ONE has asked me for money or tried to sell me anything i didn't tell them i wanted to buy first.

Mohammed drops us off at the Citadel first up after skirting the bay. it looks like a fucking sand-castle - limestone walls which have been repaired and rebuilt recently from the looks of things, a squat boxy little fort with crenellations and arrow-slits, murder-holes and stout walls that i'd not want to lay siege to with weapons less recent than the last century or a ridiculous number of expendible mampower. we do our standard wander around, but here we're two of the few non-Egyptians in the place. it's full of school groups and Arabs on holiday. it's refreshing like a cool breeze, as subtly different from everywhere else we've been as a feather on the end of a sledgehammer.

exploring the passages and hideyholes in the Citadel i find out that in Alexandria i'm a superstar. i keep getting besieged with high school lads who want to take photos with me, they all want to be my friend, practice their english... i'm not sure if i look like someone famous or what the story is, and Louise is copping a bit of it too: catching shy glances and furtive smiles from the girls. i see one of them whip a phone up out of nowhere to get a photo of her before blushing and making a run for it. i'm a little wierded out by it all, but i'm learning to cope. it's kinda fun, especially when a group of lads blocks traffic on both sides so that i can get a nice photo of Louise while they wait for their own photo op. Louise isn't particularly impressed and doesn't think it's particularly appropriate - i shouldn't be encouraging them, she says. me, i'm just happy they're not trying to hit me up for cash or buy their shit and what the hell? if there's one thing in this world that puts a smile on my face it's making people happy without trying and the number of times i hear "Thankyou thankyou! You're a good man!" makes me think that if this is all they want of me then i'll give it twice.

we finish taking photos and looking around after an hour or so and eventually find Mohammed in the carpark so that we can get on to his next recommendation - the Library or Alexandria. there used to be a Great Library of Alexandria and at the time it was the greatest collection of written works the world had seen, but that mysteriously burned down somewhere back in Roman times. rumour has it that the most important, rare and interesting pieces were squirelled out in the hours preceeding, but i wasn't there so i couldn't tell you. it's only down the road, but it takes a while to get here because we have to wait for the diplomatic convoy to go past. "A Big Man is coming," Mohammed tells us as the armoured cars and trucks full of guns roll by. i spot the flag of Cyprus on the bonnet of a car, but that's all i know.

the Library is a massive, stadium-sloping building with rack after rack of books extending up 12 levels, each with a reading area. there are a couple of exhibitions on the middle floors, and a massive datacentre hosting the Internet Archives. it's a grand building, awe inspiring. its a temple dedication to the worship of accumulated knowledge and the written word. after looking around for a bit we head for the door, dodging the official party who've arrived at the Library since we're come in, so i walk up to part of the diplomatic entourage and ask who's come to visit. "Mr , El Presidente of the Republic of Cypress!" is the grinning response of a woman who's absolutely excited to be asked. sweet fuckery... we just walked within 10 metres of the guy.

Mohammed's looking for somewhere for lunch. he's got somewhere in mind but he can't remember where it is and it's obvious he's got his heart set on something specific because he's asking the same question over and over of every taxi driver we drive past. i don't understand the Arabic, but i CAN pattern match when i hear variants of the same phrase repeated. eventually we pull up in a vaguely-legal parking spot and sit down to some of the best, sweetest charcoal chicken i've ever had. it's been lightly marinaded, and roasted with a covering of onions and tomato. there's so much food that we can't get near to finishing it all and Mohammed gets some of the leftovers to go. it's a cool, dim little place we've fetched up that seems fairly clean, considering the woodchips strewn across the floor. there's even a basin with soap so we can wash out hands before and after tearing half a chicken to pieces and devouring it.

we stock up on water from a cheap-arse little supermarket. the other thing that Alexandria seems to lack is "tourist pricing". we've been here for something like 4 hours now and no one's tried to sell us anything, begged us for money or coax us onto a camel or horse. i'm loving the vibe more and more as time goes by and i'm starting to realise that if i had to live anywhere in Egypt it'd probably be here. back in the car and we find out that the greek ampitheatre is closed, which is a bit of a shame. we make up for it by getting Mohammed to park near the harbor and wandering along it for half an hour or so. i try to explain the concept of "beach" in a mixture of simple english and pantomime but it's not going anywhere so we call on Mr Sayed to help. at a little piece of beach at the eastern end of the main bay i get to dip my toe in the Mediterranean for the first time and celebrate by pulling out my poi and going off on the sand. when i stop 5 minutes later there's applause - everyone's come to watch the crazy white guy with his tennis-balls and streamers at the end of some string and for the first time in something like 6 years i get to bow to an audience of more than a couple of people and while we climb back up onto the footpath i'm grinning so hard i could break walnuts on my cheeks.

we're out of ideas and it's 3:30PM. with a 3-hour drive ahead of us we skip out on finding coffees and shisha and opt to head back to Cairo, getting back on the highway and into the insanity of Egyptian traffic. driving in this country is something of an experience. overwhere you go in the city there are cars squeezing through gaps i wouldn't have rated as such. the ends of wing-mirrors everywhere are scratched and cracked from where they brush regularly. even the open roads are ridiculous - on the coach on the way back from Abu Simbel our driver's going at least 30km/h over the limit, passing 2 or 3 of the other coaches at a time like they're standing still. our driver on the way to Dahab is regularly on the wrong side of the road playing chicken with trucks, and despite pulling over seconds before impact neither driver seems to blink. it's Situation fucking Normal. Mohammed's pretty relaxed. our taxi driver from Tuesday was one of the most skilled collision-avoidance drivers i've ever seen. i'm not sure i could have predicted traffic as well as he could, and i'm not shy about rating my own skills. Louise passes out in the back seat again and as we roll back from the delta to the desert i finally relent and pull my book out for a while.

i'm a little pissed off by this point - if i'd known how nice Alexandria would be i'd have tried to get a night there and see more of it. of everything on this trip it's been the biggest surprise. i love the genuinely friendly atmosphere of the place. i've been hearing "Where you from? Welcome to Egypt!" before a hundred times, but this is the first time i've felt like they're really pleased to see me as someone different rather than as a walking wallet that bleeds cash if they hit me with the right-sized stick.

nearly 12 hours after we left and we're back at the hotel finally, still stuffed from our excessive lunches. my appetite's slowly fading into a shadow of its normal self, so tea's skipped. Louise parks herself in bed and plays with her DS while i crank some tunes and i get to work blogging again - a little over 3 hours wearing the keys of my Eee smooth and i'm still nowhere near finished, so i keep going until my brain melts and i need to sleep. there's not long to go now before we head back to London... the days trickling away and i'm edging towards looking forward to it. there's only so much of this i can take, i think, before it starts to seriously do my head in but i'm in my stride and i think another 2 days are easily surviveable.

Egypt Day 16: it's not what you know that matters around here, it's how many men called Mohammed...

sitting on the balcony again tonight it was so murky i couldn't even see the Pyramids. other nights i've been out here i've been able to see at least the outlines. tonight: not so much. air quality's not exactly what you'd call "good" here. a lack of regular rainfall means that stuff hangs in the air for quite a while before settling and between traffic (many to the taxis run on gas rather than petrol, which is good. most of the buses run on diesel or low-octane petrol and belch smoke which cancels out a lot of the benefits), cooking fires, burning rubbish which is heavily plastic and... did i mention dust? regardless of the reason, you can see a noticeable line in the sky from the pollution. looking down from the 6th floor it looks like the aerial scenes from Blade Runner (but without the rain) - the green lights in the nearby mosque's spire and the finished-before-they're-done buildings adding to the cyberpunk tinge.

Mr Sayed's in the hotel foyer this morning as promised, with Louise's chain fixed up as good as new. he's also brought along a pair of ear rings she'd asked to look at - little hollow cartouche's in silver, inscribed with the name Ramses II (Louise's hero). she loves them, and suddenly they're a gift. he REALLY didn't have to do that. just when he can't get any more awesome, he's also come through on another favour we asked on Monday morning: his friend Mohammed will, for LE400, will take us to Alexandria tomorrow and show us around for the day. 200+km and 3 hours drive each way, a 12 hour day. what a bloke. Mohammed's english isn't great, but Mr Sayed has a day off on Thursday so all we have to do is call him and he'll translate for us. i REALLY should have bought more stuff from him. he heads on his way, good deeds done well and truly up until next Ramadan, and we hit up the Taxi-Pimp for a ride into the Egyptian Museum. it was the first thing we were taken to on the official tour, but we really didn't get to do it in enough detail so we're heading back again with Mr Samir - a lovely bloke somewhere in his 40's with specs, a tweed jacket and a 2003 diary filled with notes written by grateful passengers.

we knock the museum over in DETAIL today - catching everything we missed the first time round, and a lot of the stuff we didn't. we spend the extra LE100 to see the mummies, including Ramses II and his father Seti I. Louise manages not to squee, but you can tell she's excited to finally meet her hero, even if he's been dead for 3000 years. we cruise the ancient jewellery, even the exhibit of mummified pets. some of it's world-class in its presentation. some of it's jam-packed in wherever there's space with even less rhyme or reason than the rest of Cairo. we saw the site for the new museum which is going up near the Pyramids and i'm really hoping they sort it out a bit better this time... or at least build it with some space to add anything the find later. there's just too much stuff with too little order to understand half of what you're seeing, but we're loving it anyway. Louise and i have been to so many museums together in the last 6 months that we've got each other's pace almost right so that neither of us is too fast or too slow and i'm more than happy to keep her company through the artifacts until my knee or back gives out, whereupon she's more than happy to sit and let me rest.

we kill the rest of our energy wandering around central-Cairo, meandering along the Nile until we find a street-bazaar and wander around with the locals. we're on their turf now - out of the tourist areas with their touts and walking amongst people who are just living their lives, where a couple of foreigners are an oddity to be stared at, not marks for a quick buck. finally getting sick of the idea we flag down a cab, agree on a price written in my notebook in Arabic (i know the symbols now, but not the words) and take the most convoluted route i've seen so far back to the hotel. this is the 4th time we've been brought this way and we've not used the same route twice.

Louise hits the room for a lie down and i hit the street for a reccie, looking around for potential places to eat tonight. i find a couple of convenience stores, some cafes i want to hit for shisha when i get the chance, and get a recommendation for a good restaurant which later proves to be too expensive. when we head out later we keep rolling past after seeing the prices (take THAT you "thinking i can't read any Arabic motherfuckers"! sometimes i can't be bothered to haggle over the price of my tea and just walk away...) so we roll down the street market a kilometre or so until we get sick of the idea. all the food-places are take-away and with the only english in sight being on the labels of our shoes we're not really sure what the hell we're ordering. it's interesting, and i'm enjoying the local colour, but we're also hungry so we wind up being boring and get room service.

i'm really digging all this at the moment. the abundant availability of sleep, cruising through the days at my own pace... there are worse places to be. i've just about got Cairo sussed. i wouldn't go so far as to say that i'd want live here, but i've accepted it and managed to get my finger more or less in the groove. it's almost a shame it'll all be over in another couple of days, but there are plenty more adventures to have in that time. i think we did well booking 3 weeks - it's been short enough to never feel bored, but long enough that i don't feel like i'm missing much or that i should be rushing. meanwhile, it's time for more sleep, glorious sleep. Mohammed will be here at 7AM so we need to be up at 6 and i've no interest in following the Way of Soobie and only allowing 4 hours to rest...

Egypt Days 13-15: i could have sworn i had more stamina than this. did i leave it all in Dahab?

i'm sitting on the 6th-floor balcony of my (questionably) 4-Star hotel room sipping a beer while i gaze out on the Pyramids of Giza in the late-afternoon and i can hear the call to prayer echoing from the minaret a couple of hundred metres away. the dust and smog create a glow in the air which softens the sunset and gives the buildings a sepia tinge. the Hotel SIAG Pyramids advertises its rating behind the concierge desk, but i'm starting to realise that the stars in Egypt... they do not mean what i think they mean. much of the foyer is painted gold, with marble floors, a spiral staircase and red-upholstered chairs that look rather grand when you walk in the door, but you don't have to go far before the cracks appear in the facade. for starters, marble's cheap here. it's fucking everywhere, so i'm not impressed. the gold paint on the chairs started rubbing off years ago and it's well on its way now. the pool is an empty blue crater with brown sludge in the deep end (so much for our idea of sitting by the pool, chilling out). of the 3 lifts, i've only seen 2 work and even then they don't like coming up to the 6th floor (they're ok with the 5th though. maybe they got in a fight with the 6th and now they're not talking? who knows...) and the wireless internet in the foyer seems to actually be for the hotel across the road or something, so you need to sit just inside the doors to get a connection... and even then it drops out every few minutes which is hugely frustrating when you're trying to send a 3 meg attachment by email. it's not all bad here though. Louise and i have a queen-size bed each and true to the advertising the balcony does in fact have a great view of the Pyramids that we've spent a lot of time sitting and and looking at. the air con works which is good, not because it's particularly hot but because otherwise we'd have no fresh air. open the sliding door in the evening and you'd better have your mozzie repellant on otherwise prepare to be eaten. i've had my jabs, but typhoid is a nasty little disease which turns your blood to poison and is therefore not your friend.

a couple of days ago i was on the public coach from Dahab to Cairo. heading there we were crammed into a smaller tour bus which went direct. thanks to the extra night in Dahab, GoBus booked us onto the public coach which was surprisingly comfortable - better than the Mccaffrey's buses i used to take from Canberra to Sydney. it takes a more circuitous route, however, cutting across the Sinai peninsula to the west-coast and going through Sharm al Shiek and a couple of other places with immemorable names on its way to the capital. we had a 8:30AM start, but somehow were more shattered by the time we arrived at 5:15PM than we had been leaving at 7AM nearly a week previous. Louise slept most of the way, her head falling and snapping back every couple of minutes, while i drained most of my Eee's battery trying to make some amount of sense out of the days just passed.

Wally was at the bus stop to meet us and say goodbye - he was meeting his new group in a couple of hours, but still took the time out to see us off to our last tour-arranged hotel personally. i can't rate the service of the tour company highly enough - they've looked after us, kept everything tight, made sure we were always sorted and the moment we wanted to change the plan they accomodated us in a heartbeat. i was sad to see Wally go, just as i was sad to say goodbye to Soobie a week before. Soobie was our guide and our shepherd. Wally was our fixer and our friend. at the same time i was glad to be off the tour and off the map. now i do this thing My Way... Louise agreeing of course. i like to set my own pace and choose my own path. being on the tour grated a bit, but the reality of the situation is that i could never have completed as much as they did anywhere near as efficiently or cheaply, even given twice the time to do it, and even if i'd tried 80% of the detail would have been lost because they have the local-knowledge and know-how.

we get an early night in the Holiday Inn after finding the supermarket Soobie had shown us on the second day of the trip (conveniently, located just down the road from the hotel) and grabbing some fast food for tea, eating in our room and chilling out. we're met in the lobby by our jeweller Mr Sayed at around check-out time. he'd met us in our hotel in Luxor where he has a regular hookup through GoBus as their "trusted source" for jewellery which meant that when we ordered customised pieces he was guaranteed to deliver. we'd picked up our shipments on our second stint in Cairo, on our way to Dahab but my silver bling-bracelet had been too small and needed adjustment, and Louise'd necklace had broken in Dahab and needed repair. he came out to our hotel to pick her necklace up and promised to have it back to her at our next hotel in 2 days time. no mess, no fuss, no arguement, just an apology for the inconvenience. he didn't have to do that.

the business of the morning sorted we haggled with the concierge and arranged a taxi out to Giza and the hotel we'd booked ourselves for the last week in town. an hour later we were sitting on our balcony enjoying the view.

feeling appropriately chilled out, we hit the street in search of adventure, exploration and food. we've landed a bit of a ways off the beaten track here in Giza - the hotel is a kilometre or so off Pyramids Rd, opposite a new freeway overpass which is under construction. we've got no idea where the fuck anything is around here and no direction looks particularly obvious so we decide "fuck it" and head right, spending the next 2 hours doing a bog-lap around and through a mixture of suburbia and strip-malls, eyes of the locals tracking us (mostly Louise) as we pass through back-streets where english is something that generally happens to other people. it's hot and dusty but our limited Arabic successfully buys us cheap-but-delicious felafels and no one gives us any lip. i'm liking this - away from the tourist traps and the bazaars, seeing how these people live in the real world. a bit of a rest back at the hotel and we're out the door again. the hotel's Taxi-Pimp introduces us to Omar who will take us to the Pyramids Sound & Light Show, wait around for us then show us somewhere to get a bite to eat. the show's just as cheesy, lame and overly dramatic as advertised... but it's fun. i don't even mind when it loses the plot half-way through and goes off on a wierd tangent because at least it's interesting and tells stories i've not heard before. it IS actually worth going and paying to see, even if just to see the pyramids light up in pretty colours with lasers tracing out patterns on the flat wall of the Embalming Temple. true to his word, Omar takes us not only to an Egyptian fast-food place (FelFela - a greasy snack-joint selling felafel sandwiches and Shwerma Kebabs for LE1 and LE12 in that order. at that price i get Omar a felafel sandwich for being such a good sport. tipping is a big part of the culture here and i want to try something different) but a hole-in-the-wall grog shop where we stock up for the coming week.

Cairo's a dusty, dirty, smelly hellhole of a town. don't let anyone tell you otherwise, but don't take this as criticism either. areas like the one i'm at here in Giza are only a couple of kilometres from the Western Desert and therefore dustier than an octogenarian's lingere collection. rubbish arrangements are both serendipitous and democratic - anywhere that isn't currently being used has a pile blown in by the wind, then people just use that. they seem to get cleaned out every once in a while, but not until every man and his donkey has a pick through for anything of interest. the only clean cars you'll see were washed this morning, and spent most of their time since covered up. i've seen cars under bridges with a coating of dust so thick i couldn't tell what colour they started out, but now they're brown. the rubbish in this place makes me despair sometimes. i swear Bangkok was cleaner, although with the lack of humidity Cairo wins on smell. dry shit don't stink so much (although with the impressive donkey population even in the centre of Cairo there's plenty of donkey-shit around). seriously though? fuck it. that's just the way it is. YOU try keeping shit clean when the desert dust whips up and and a new load settles in the stillness of the night. it rains here so rarely it barely even counts and it'd take at least a week of downpour to give this place anywhere near the cleaning it needs.

this is what the PC-crowd like to call a "developing country". for every rich person is Cairo or Alexandria there are hundreds of peasants living a rural life up and down the Nile. the average Egyptian earns less than LE1000 a month. that's ~AUD$250, or ~GBP£100. and that's the average. i've been blowing something like that each week i've been here. for every dole-bludger sitting on their corpulent arse in Lakemba whining about how hard it is in the current economic climate, all i can say is come meet Mohammed. he works a field of garlic and carrots on the edge of the desert. he sleeps in a mud-brick hut with his wife and 3 kids. his 10 year old son just started working in a carpet factory and he's glad for it because the money Amir earns means he can take english-classes in a couple of years and maybe get a job in tourism as a tout selling dodgy-papyrus, driving a taxi or maybe even as a guide if he's lucky. the daily live of these people is dust, dirt, prayer and hard fucking work and if you still think your life is hard after seeing the gratitude in his eyes after you hand him the equivalent of a quid when you need to pull your head out of your fucking arse because it's completely full of shit.

there's not the money for garbage trucks in the burbs - they're focused on keeping the tourist sites clean (and they don't even manage that very well half the time) because that's what important here. Australia rode the sheep's back to prosperity before climbing on the Haulpak and hitching a ride with the resources boom. Egypt's riding the international tourist and the money we spend visiting the monuments and museums, shopping in the bazaars and the restaurants, taking tours and paying guides means freeways, water you can drink from the tap without catching dysentry, power with only the occasional brownout, hospitals and medicines, education and trades. i'd love it if they could keep the place tidier so that they didn't have to live in filth, but i understand why they can't. each day i come back to the hotel dusty and dirty and i don't want to know the colour the water'll turn when i wash my clothes back in London, but it comes with the territory. at least i know in a few days my clothes will be clean, and stay that way for a while.

Tuesday rolls in and we've both had something like 9 or 10 hours of sleep but we just manage to get down to the buffet in time to snaffle some chocolate-covered croissants and a sweet danish, along with a couple of mugs of the muddy water that passes for coffee in this town. it's either Turkish Coffee (WIN!) or Nescafe (FAIL!) around here, and the hotel doesn't do Turkish. shit together, we find the Taxi-Pimp and our new friend Mohammed agrees to take us around for the day. first stop is the Citadel of Salah Al-Din, perched over the city on a hilltop with a stunning view - a medieval fortress from back in the days before gunpowder when thick walls, a few thousand men and a decent stockpile of arrows could hold off an army. when the Turks and the Arabs finally took Egypt back from Napoleon and crowned Mohammed Ali (where do you think Cassius Clay got the name?) as the new king he had a grand mosque build at its peak: a majestic, but subdued place of worship. Ali and his dynasty ruled for the next 147 years, but the Mosque of Mohammed Ali remains.

i've been in churches galore - growing up with a quietly Roman Catholic mother and a father who dabbled in a few different christian sects before coming back to Orthodoxy with a religious fervour that would bring a tear to an Inquisitor's eye, i've seen the inside of more places of worship than i have Macdonalds restaurants. Catholic, Uniting, Baptist, Angligan, CoE, Orthodox (Greek or Russian), Buddhist (a couple of flavours), Hindu, Ancient Egyptian... throw in a Synagogue or two, Latter Day Saints and Scientology and i'll just about have the full set unless you want to get nutty and go Davidian (oh yeah - that burned down. shame). i've seen them big and small, grand like St Pauls in London, small and humble like St Margaret's (i need to check this) in Edinburgh Castle, sombre Orthodox churches full of gold-leaf ikons, colourful Hindus ringed with statues, halls with folding seats, converted warehouses and even an ancient brick temple overgrown by a Budda-Tree, tended by modest, peaceful buddhist monks. my first mosque was something new. light coloured stone walls a storey high giving way to dark coloured domes above, lights hung low on chains from a ceiling done in dark-olive green, deep brown and black, silver inscriptions and filigree and carpets on the floor for the believers to sit, pray and contemplate. a whispered story i overheard was that some local Jewish artisans were roped into the construction and decoration and when no one was looking they painted a Star of David at the top of the central dome around the mount for the main chandelier in gold, thumbing their noses at their Muslem task-masters. if you look up you can see it there to this day - apparently Ali could take a joke and let it stay.

it's peaceful and restful... none of the grotesquerie of the crucifiction, fire and brimstone, "do this or else", bleeding eyes or hearts. of course, i can't read Arabic so for all i know they inscriptions could be screaming "Death to the infidel" but somehow... i don't think so. we wind up sitting there for at least 10 minutes enjoying the serenity. even the american and Italian tourists near us take their shoes off and pay respect. back outside in the blinding sunlight we're back to our normal "get a photo of me in front of the " habits, but i'm starting to develop an inkling of why Islam spreads faster than an 18yo's legs at a toga party. later in the day we visit the Mosque of Sayyidna Al-Hussein near the Kahn Al-Kalili and i see people sitting, talking, praying, sleeping. fall asleep in a Catholic church and you'll be shoo'd out. sit on the floor and you'll be rudely prodded. here sitting on the floor is what you do. it's dark, cool, and thick stone walls provide a sanctuatry from the midday sun. seats? you sit on the carpet, fool! that's what it's for!

i'm not really sure what the Citadel's all about. we spent an hour or so wandering around it, following the circut of the somewhat-interesting (but poorly organised and a little pointless) Military Museum which had considerably more replicas and models than it had actual artifacts, skipping the Police Museum completely and generally enjoying the view of Cairo. like so much of Egypt, it's got a "thrown together" feel to it and i almost wish i'd had a guide to point at the interesting stuff i know i missed.

back on the street i give Mohammed a call to come grab us from the pickup point and we're off, but only after climbing into the wrong taxi and having to jump out 10 metres down the road. we're dropped off at Sayyidna Al-Hussein and after having a look around we cruise the markets for a while. Louise wants to look at jewellery. Louise wants to haggle for a shisha water-pipe. Mr Raven wants to gut-punch the next person who yells at him "Sir, Sir! How can I take your money?" walk softly, carry a big stick and pray i only break half your fingers. the first time i thought it was refreshingly honest, after which it got old really fast. Kahn Al-Kalili is Cairo's BIG tourist market. think of anything stereotypically Egyptian and/or Pharaonic, you name it: you'll find it here. two main streets linked by cross-roads and alleyways. keep your wits about you or you're getting lost. the unwary should carry a compass in their hand and their money in an internal body cavity... or maybe another set of trousers. which they left in another country. we don't get anywhere near into it on account of being tired, thirsty and in desperate need of a sit down. it's tourist-ville, so we even bargain down the price of our drinks and cocktail-shisha and enjoy a nice half-hour sipping sweet cold hibiscus while we watch the world go by, walking away with that contented feeling that too many things are right with the universe and anything that isn't is welcome to wait until i care again.

meanwhile we've lost Mohammed. i've burned through most of my remaining phone credit trying to work out where he is. he's in the carpark of the nearer mosque (there are 2 in close vicinity). no, he's on the street. wait, we'll meet him out the front of the farther mosque. we're going back to the car park? no, there you are! it's getting late and we've managed to hit rush hour on the freeway. oh. sweet. fuckery. somewhere in the middle of i-have-no-fucking-idea a 5-lane freeway hasn't just slowed to a crawl, it's stopped. people are getting out of their cars to see what's going on. after 5 minutes i'm sitting in the window of the taxi waving at the kids in the back of the truck ahead wishing i had my poi with me, otherwise i'd have given this Cairo Freeway an impromptu performance before running around the cars with my hat out asking for tips. turnabout is fair-play, after all. i'm SO pissed off - i'm never taking them out of my bag again. Louise is happy i left them in the hotel - she hates it when i make a spectacle. in the end we wait until the traffic mysteriously starts moving again and amuse ourselves by learning to read Arabic numbers (which came in useful today when we walked into a restaurant with an english menu but prices in Arabic. WIN!) by reading off licence-plates (they have both Arabic and Western on them, so they're like mini-Rosetta Stones). Mohammed gets in on the game and seems to be having a ball schooling the white kids. i get to the point where i can read all 10 numerals and say to him i can read numbers in Arabic! now i'm as good as an Egyptian 5-year old! and he loses it laughing. eventually we're dropped back outside the hotel. the bill? LE200 - the equivalent of AUD$50 for 6 hours and fuck-knows how many kilometres.

we celebrate in the restaurant next to the hotel which has an english/arabic menu and no other customers but us. the food's good, the staff hover around as if their heads are on the chopping block if we aren't completely satisfied and we while away our evening watching the Egyptian Top-40 and smoking apple-shisha while mosquitos mistake my legs for a free buffet.

Egypt Days 10-12: now i just need to learn to fly...

walking down the market street in Dahab i can hear the call to prayer, and i'm now officially a PADI-Certified Open Water Diver. three days, 7 dives, 4 quizzes, 2 videos and an exam. with the shiny card that should come through the mailbox at basecamp in London in a month or so i can now hire kit, grab a buddy and plan my own dives down to a depth of 18 metres without requiring a Dive Master. i wasn't going to do the Open Water Course. i wasn't going to dive at all due to the expense, but on the first day in Dahab Wahil from Orca Dive Dahab came to talk to us and as he went on Louise and i met eyes across the table and nodded. after the first day in the water what started as a SCUBA course (2/3 of the full course load, max-depth 12 metres, Dive Master required) turned into the full Open Water Diver.

3 days spent, US$350 gone, it was worth every cent. the first time i got out there in full kit to swim around was just incredible - breathing easy, the mask correcting my vision nicely (i'm -1.25 in each eye and the perspex mask naturally corrects between -1 and -2 under the water so i'm sweet), fish having a contemplative look at my fingertips. rolling onto my back and looking up at the surface while a school of Scissortails passed overhead, flipping into a St Peter's Cross and watching the Clown Fish dart around Mohammed (our instructor, veteran of over 7000 dives), it's one of the few things i've found in the last couple of years that compares to motorcycling as a sport, although on reflection it's probably no less expensive when you get into it.

everything went smashingly through to the end of the first day. there's a required video to watch which we covered off the night before (after returning from Mt Sinai) and by the end of the day Louise and i had decided to extend an extra day in Dahab so that we could finish off in full. Mohammed grabbed me and Louise while everyone else was distracted washing their kit and told us that we were by far and away the best divers in the group. we headed off down the street grinning like hyenas, laughing like drains, loving life and having the time of ours. day two, for me did not go so well. i wasn't feeling particularly great to start with after waking every half-hour or so through the night when an exercise half-way through the second session left me gasping for breath under 3 metres of water, then after a bit of a fun-dive we had to practice taking our masks off underwater, then putting them back on again. welcome to a book i like to call "Things That Freak Mr Raven Out For Fun & Excitement". the list is short and simple, although i shan't be explaining it all to you today. 2 things that bear mentioning at this point are thus, however: i cannot fucking stand getting water in my eyes, including opening them underwater, and i have massive problems with getting water up my nose. you might think that this would get in the way of swimming and watersports, but i've developed techniques so that i can surf or swim or whatever, even in a big swell. for starters, i always look where i'm going and what's going on around me so that i don't accidentally catch a wave in the back of the head. i swim with my head up for the most part. it's not great, but it's adequate, and if i have to go under or through a wave i'll take a deep breath, scrunch my eyes up before diving under and exhale through my nose to keep it clear before rubbing the water out of my eyes on the surface. now you want me to fill my mask with water, open my eyes, try to keep breathing without water shooting up my nose then put my mask back on and clear it? you've got to be fucking joking.

i tried. i gave it my best shot. then i breathed water, choked and jumped straight to the surface (it's ok - we were in about a metre and a half of water) coughing, spluttering and gasping. that was the end of the dive and i staggered away gutted. i didn't feel better until much much later after Louise and i snapped at each other, rode camels off into the sunset and subsequently apologised. we'd had to rush from the dive centre back to the hotel because we were late for the evening's camel ride down the beach to see the sunset over the mountains. i'm loving camels; from their oft-joked-about toes to their teddybear-ears. i've seen enough people riding them in the last couple of weeks that i've picked up a few skills, one being that if you cross one leg over the front of the saddle then cradle you opposite knee with your ankle it's FAR more stable and comfortable. we didn't hang out particularly long - out on the beach the group sat taking photos and drinking bedouin-tea (a lovely, sweet herbal concoction brewed on an open fire) until the sun was nicely down then headed off again, loping off back to the hotel and i finally started to feel a bit relaxed.

another night of sleep and day 3 brings us from a group of 5 to a group of 3. Deano and Kim have finished at SCUBA and they're now out. it's down to Mike, Louise and me. the rest of the skills are demonstrated without issues, but i'm nervous as an arachnophobic with a Huntsman on his face when it's time to get my mask off again. the methodology preferred by PADI is to let enough water into your mask to cover your nose, then breathe a little, then repeat at just below the eyes and then with a mask full. i'm having none of this. the only way i'm passing this is if i can get a solid hold on my nose so it can't try to breathe through it and when it's time i take a deep breath, close my eyes tight like i'm about to die, rip my mask off my head in one quick motion and grab my nose tight. i'm kneeling on the ocean floor under 2 metres of water blind and desperately staving off gasping panic, my inhalations coming in ragged and fast while i struggle for calm. i get the pat on the head and i repeat the procedure in reverse, alternating between grabbing my nose tight and using it to exhale and clear the mask.

5 minutes later i have to do it again. half an hour later i have to do it again under 6 metres of water. i got through and i passed, somehow managing the highest score in the group for the exam. i copped flack from Mike for the rest of the day and i think Mohammed might have been going easy on me but i didn't care. the last of the practical skills over, a practice dive through the reef near the Lighthouse and the rest was a foregone conclusion. i ate my lunch while i flew through the exam and you couldn't have wiped the grin off my face with metho. walking out at the end of the day with out last practical dive done, kit washed and stowed, temporary certificates laminated and stowed in our wallets, we walked off down the market street with a massive feeling of achievement. it's such a simple thing that anyone can do it, but we weren't caring. we're both already thinking about where we can go diving now that we've unlocked access to most of the world's recreational dives. Greece or Spain in the summer is tempting, but in the back on my mind is the little island in Fiji i sat on for 3 days a year or so ago where the water was warm, the beers were cold and Rhianna sung "Umbrella" every hour on the hour. there was a little PADI dive shop i never got to try at the time and i feel like i missed out on something there. Louise keeps using the word "we" when discussing future dives. we made good buddies down under the water (PADI uses a buddy-system for safety. i'll watch your back and you keep the sharks off mine) and i'll happily partner up with her again... i'm just not assuming anything about the future at the moment.

still, it's something i'm remarkably glad i've done. after 3 days of suiting up and getting out there the movements and procedures have second-nature. a few more dives and i reckon i might start getting as comfortable as i am on a bike. now i just need to see if i can learn to fly a plane...

Egypt Days 8-9: from the mountains to the ocean (the Red Sea isn't red. i call "false advertising")...

it's an intriguing aspect of human nature that we seek out the high places of the world. we live generally live low, near water if possible, or something else useful otherwise, but in our cities we build up and when in the wilderness we go high. it's joyous to be able to stand somewhere and see for miles around, but it seems to be more than that somehow... as if the higher people go the closer they feel to something divine. something else i've noticed over the years is that for some reason i'm still yet to fathom; if out see a lonely cluster of rocks somewhere out in the wilderness someone will have come through there and made a stack. i've seen it in the red nothing-ness of Australia, i saw it walking through northern Scotland, out bush in Thailand and in the middle of fucking nowhere south of Aswan in the crisp light of a desert dawn. now i'm seeing it on the way back to Dahab from Mt Sinai. 3, 4, sometimes 5 or 6 flattish rocks piled one atop another for no obvious reason.

Dahab's a sleepy little shithole (compared to other beach resorts i've been to out in the world it's ratty, dirty with uncomfortable rocky beaches, but compared to the rest of Egypt, Louise and i both agree it's a jewel) on the Gulf of Aqaba. the Red Sea forks at the bottom of Sinai - a triangular landmass connecting Egypt to the Middle East with the Gulf of Suez on the west and Aqaba on the east. from a maximum elevation of 2285m, the broken-tooth mountains of sun-baked granite meet the sea and continue to drop down to around a 1000m depth on either side. Dahab sits around half-way down the east coast staring across the deep blue waters at Saudi Arabia. it's a happy little holiday destination, restaurants on the rocky beach, dive and surf shops and peddlers selling trinkets and tshirts. after Aswan and Luxor the touts seem relaxed and easy-going. walking down the main road i hear the occasional call of "My shop is here!" my shop is in Australia, mate. yours is real nice though... and "You want lunch? Fresh seafood!" fresh when? last week? and so on. there's less of them walking in front of you or trying to drag you bodily in to look at plastic statues, and for this i'm incredibly grateful.

we're staying in the Oricana Hotel, comfortable, clean, a pool in the courtyard and a 10 minute walk to the beach down the market street. i've been looking forward to Dahab in part because i know i'll be spending 5 nights in the same place for once and so the first thing i do is empty my backpack and take stock of my washing situation. i've been doing my washing a bit here and a bit there in the shower when i've had the chance. it's not great and my clothes aren't the cleanest but it's keeping me in fresh underwear and making sure my shirts don't get TOO manky. we eat on the beach for most of our meals. the restaurants have their kitchen across the footpath in the real buildings. seating is on the sand and enclosed by semi-permanent walls that block the wind, and windows that let you look out over the surfers and snorkelers. it's nice here. the tourists are relaxed and are smoking shisha while enjoying the security of knowing that we can actually sit here undisturbed for a while without having to worry about when we'll be whisked off to our next exotic location. we've been REALLY getting into the shisha - tobacco flavoured with fruit pulp and smoked out of a large ornate bong. currently my favourite flavour is apple/mint, but strawberry's growing on me and grape was also quite good. whenever we have an hour or so to spare someone will call out "It's shisha time!" in a bad american accent, a reminder of the four yanks who didn't join us in Dahab. they'd have fucking loved it here. there's shisha EVERYWHERE.

i'd love to be chilling out for hours on the beach, but i have to get a couple of hours of sleep in the early evening if i can. this is the last of the Sleep Deprivation part of the tour. tonight is something kinda special. after an hour or so of nap Louise and i are up and loading up into a bus at 11PM for a 2 hour drive. we manage to get a little more sleep on the ride, squeezed into the second-to-last seats on the bus with no leg-room to speak of. Kim's laid out on the back seat, Derek lying on the floor and when were stopped for a passport-check by the Tourism Police and had to wake him up we could all hear and sympathise with his plaintive, shattered "Whyyyyyyy?"

there's excitement running through the tourists as we form up in the monastery of St Catherine, tempered by an air of "what the fuck have we got ourselves in for?" what the fuck we've got ourselves in for is a climb up Egypt's tallest and most famous mountain at 1 in the fucking morning. our bedouin guide Souphi takes us up the Holy Valley, then the switchback paths, then the 772 Steps. 8km of walking, a kilometre or so of it being Up. it takes 3 hours and 6 rest-breaks. nothing i can say can adequately describe what it's like. it's dark, but you can see the rocks in your path by the starlight when the Canadian behind doesn't blind you with his headlamp. it's quiet and still but for your own labored breathing and shuffling footsteps. the mountain looms ahead like a shadow on an inkblot and it's tiring. you're sweating from the exertion, otherwise it's freezing cold with the wind cutting through your clothes like bayonets. it's properly tiring. no-conversation-because-i-need-that-breath-to-live tiring. finally at the top we stop and buy expensive tea from one of the 6 cafes (i call them cafes. what they are is huts built on a flat piece of rock, thin wooden walls covered in rugs and blankets with benches inside, running a roaring trade in selling drinks to exhausted pilgrims) while we wait for the stragglers to show up. 30 Egyptian Pounds rents me a thin mattress and a blanket that smells faintly of donkeys and dust and we find shelter in the lee of the church so that we can sleep under the stars in the still and silence of the top of a mountain in the middle of a weathered, battered range in the middle of a desert and the arse-end of nowhere. when the bedouin boys stop trying to sell blankets to people already sleeping UNDER blankets it's so serene that i pass out watching shooting stars and satellites before i can really start to enjoy it.

that serenity's broken an hour and twenty minutes later when the fucking Colombians put music on and start singing. Mike and i wake bolt upright, thinking i'm being attacked. Louise was awake a little while before us and gave us a nudge, the false-dawn brightening the horizon and i desperately want kill every fucking christian in sight. one minute we have peace and quiet and beauty, the next it's hymns greeting the sun in Spanish and an extremely angry Australian who's about ready to start throwing them off the side. it takes me a couple of minutes to pull myself together and start bouncing around the rocks taking photos of everything in sight. finally the Colombians decide to Shut The Fuck Up and stop ruining it for the rest of us, and it's still and quiet again, the sun rolling its way up the sky and the crew sitting around enjoying the warmth as it slowly seeps through our clothes and sleeping bags. it takes a while, but we eventually get Kim and Derek out of their sleeping bags and make a move for Down.

down is much quicker than up. seeing some of the steps we'd climbed, Louise and i were starting to wonder how we'd gotten up in the dark without falling. Mt Sinai doesn't sit alone - it's in a vast range and view of the valleys in the cool shadow of early morning takes your breath away... which is ok because i don't need so much of it going down. 3 hours up becomes 1 hour down and we reconvene in the cafe at the monastery (recognisable as a cafe this time) while i sip on a coffee that i need like oxygen. St Catherine's is an Orthodox (Coptic or Greek i'm not so sure. it's covered in Cyrillic but i'm not familiar enough with Coptics to be able to tell the difference easily) monastery built around (what they claim to be) the fabled burning bush from the biblical story of Moses (i've seen it and touched it. it wasn't burning and surprisingly neither did i. i kinda worry about spontaneously combusting when i walk into churches. it's paranoid i know, but still). the top of Mt Sinai is where he supposedly went later to retrieve the 10 Commandments. with that sort of religious kudos you expect pilgrims, but luckily most of them don't really want to be getting there at 8AM and the Colombians have burned up their energy singing and fucked off into the distance. while this doesn't quite mean that we have the place to ourselves, it IS less packed than it could be.

we have a bit of a look around the monastery when they open the doors. it was rebuilt as a fort in the 5th century after being sacked by angry Romans, but while the stones still stand it's been modernised inside... to a degree. running water and plumbing aren't so shithot in the middle of buttfuck-nowhere, but you make do. it seems a peaceful way to spend a life you'd waste anyway - nestled away in a deep valley, the rock walls stretching overhead past narrow turrets and thick defences, a chapel that's seen the love of 1600 years of monks, all of who's bones are stored in a small gated alcove - 6-odd cubic metres of skulls plus more of what look like femurs mouldering and gathering dust in the cool of the basement.

i passed out almost the moment i curled up on the bus. there were two tour groups on the bus and when we'd got on the night before they had first-on advantage and spread out, squashing the GoBus mob into the uncomfortable seats in the rear. being used to a quicker pace than them (thankyou Soobie) our crew dived in and made ourselves comfortable early, massively pissing off the stroppy older couple who proceeded to complain about being stuck in the same seats they'd been happy to let us get squeezed into. we couldn't help but laugh with evil satisfaction, our group bonding against a common enemy.

2 hours of sleep doesn't sound like much, but it lasted me through the day and on into the night. how Louise stayed out dancing until 3:30AM i have no idea. i was gone and in bed 2 hours beforehand. somehow we pushed through the day, the hour on the mountain and the 2 on the bus leaving me refreshed and grooving, the hard knife-edge of fatigue in view, but holding off from opening a vein. we met up with the rest of the tour group in back in Dahab and organised to have a group dinner, then head off to The Treehouse - Dahab's hippest night spot - for drinks and frivolity. it was good, it was fun, Louise and i played the Arab boys at pool and she danced around while i ran out of steam. these sorts of places are more her thing than mine anyway and Wally was there to make sure everyone got back to the hotel safely (he gets paid for this shit - i don't).

today's been my first really peaceful, relaxing day in weeks. slept in until 9, met people in the foyer of the hotel, loaded up into a couple of jeeps and headed off-road to one of Dahab's best and most accessible snorkeling spots called the Blue Hole. picture this: the mountain greets the water in a long, sheltered, 300 metre arc wide enough to leave 40-odd metres of flat rocky sand in between. curve it in a semi-circular bay and line the shore with 2-storey restaurants. now look in the water and see the reef stretching 5 or 10 metres out to sea as a strip of light blue-green which ends abruptly in a semi-circular gap of the deepest blue. that's the Blue Hole - nominal mid-tide depth of 1 metre dropping almost straight down to 110 metres, a vertical reef falling into depths that have your brain dribbling out your ear, full of fish and incredible for floating above with some flippers and a mask. we swim until we get too cold (deep water is seriously cold) then laze around drinking cold Hibiscus Tea while we work on our tans on the top deck of the restaurant we're using as a base of operations. it's lovely - off the beaten track enough that we need a jeep to get out there, busy enough to be interesting, quiet enough that you don't notice. Louise and i head back out into the water for a bit just before food, but mostly i'm happy to lie around and work on my tan which i manage to do without getting burned. a few of the guys have started to peel after days without shirts on although they're getting results, i must admit.

i'm really liking Dahab. after a week of bouncing around Egypt like a bunny on meth this is exactly what i needed. gentle walks, no rush, very little hassle from the shopkeepers (some of them have big signs up advertising the fact, then go to great lengths to convince you that they won't hassle you. the irony is not lost of me) and plenty of good food to be had. i'm recharging and i'm loving it, although my reserves are gone - lost along with the last of my beer-gut. i need to get into something fatty and horrible when i get back to London so i can put on a little more padding. i'm running out of steam far too quickly for my taste.

either way, i'll have to enjoy the quiet while it lasts - tomorrow's going to be an awesome, but tiring day.

Egypt days 7-8: a birds-eye view in the still of the morning in that moment before the fall..

sitting on a small 25-seater bus rolling under the Suez Canal and i'm finally starting to see clearly again. a minute or so in the tunnel and we're back out in the sunshine and into Sinai which is the (comparatively) little chunk of Egypt that connects to the Middle East. it's around 550km and 7 hours drive in total, and in another couple of hours we'll climb over a mountain pass and come in view of 4 countries: Israel to the north, Jordan to the east, Saudi Arabia south-east and of course Egypt under our feet.

two days ago i was being woken up at 4AM and ushered out of the hotel under cover of darkness. a short boat-ride across the Nile in the cold of morning where joyously i was provided with coffee, and as the sky began to lighten the pilot kicked off the burners and the hot air balloon i was standing in began to rise off the dusty ground, in time to get a hundred or so metres altitude before the sun crested the horizon through the smoke of the fires along the west-bank. we're not up for long, but it's long enough to see the sun rise and brighten the dawn into day. not to high, but high enough to see the beige desert become lush green become cool water become brown city become beige desert again. my brain's dribbling out my ears and my camera's strapped securely to my wrist, rattling off photos of anything, everything. i needed to be sleeping now, but wild horses couldn't have kept me from this. after almost drifting into the river we land in an angry farmer's paddock. i understand about 5 phrases in Arabic, all of which are friendly, and he wasn't using any of them. we seem to have come down in his garlic patch. bugger. we've been back on earth for all of 5 minutes, our pilot calling in an evac on his 2-way, burning gas to stop the balloon from draping any more on the plam tree we've landed in/next to, and the kids of the village think this is the most awesome thing they've ever seen since Achmed fell off his camel and into the dungheap. they're practicing their english on us, and at the age of 6 or so they already understand the concept of "you take a photo of me, you give me money" which the older English gent with a shitty Minolta faux-SLR finds out to his disgust.

the rescue crew shows up, running through the fields like a soccer team coming out to play and i can't help but laugh. soccer's big here. turn on the TV, and you're guaranteed to find a game on at least one channel, i've been told. i don't want to know what'd happen if the call to prayer came out in the middle of the final, but i can imagine people tearing themselves in half out of indecision.

the balloon's salvaged, the farmer's paid or fobbed off, we're on a bus down the road and meeting up with the rest of the crew for today's big activity. back at the beginning we rode camels for 15 minutes. today we're touring 2 different sites on the backs of donkeys (vegans, you can skip ahead a page or so now). donkeys are a major part of the regular Egyptian's life. bear in mind that much of Egypt is still peasant-class, and donkeys are strong, hardy animals you'll see them everywhere out in the country being put to all sorts of uses - pulling carts, tilling fields, carrying people where they need to go, eating grass and shitting cooking-fuel. you even see them in the cities, altough not as often. they're funny creatures to look at. a horse's head on a fat body and legs that look like they've been cut off short, dopy eyes with a resigned look and big bunny-ears flicking every which way. the donkey i've been assigned as a stocky little bastard and i decide that since we're going to be friends for something like 5 fucking hours i shall give him a name, and that name is Abdul. he's a strong little bastard. he's also a fucking sociopath. the only time he wants to move quicker than a stroll is when he's chasing another donkey. Abdul loves to bite ass (hee hee) and gets kicked in the face a few times for his troubles. he's not taking orders either (you say "yalla yalla" to go fast, say "hassssshhhhh" and pull the reigns back to go slow. Abdul mush have been asleep or got a sick-note for that day at donkey-school), so i generally let him do his thing unless he goes for humans. he likes Kim (Kiwi) and Angie (Aussie) for some reason and i manage to keep him clear most of the way to the Valley of the Kings. yeah, that's right. riding donkeys up the Valley of the Kings. i've got a grin on my face that threatens to unhinge the top-half of my head.

the Valley's like the Pyramids. you've heard of it unless the rock you're living under's particularly massive. Tutenkahmun's there, Ramses II, IV, VI and IX are all there. Seti I (father of Ramses II) has a tomb, and so do over 50 of their mates. it's just beyond the west bank of the river in a mountain range that looms out of place in a land of soil-erosion. the ancient egyptians believed in having their temples on the east bank to greet the sun and their tombs on the west bank to bid it farewell. it's dry, rocky and forbidding, but very well organised. of the 60 or so tombs discovered, there are generally 6 open to the public at any given time, plus King Tut's which carries an additional fee and has the man himself under glass and a modest cotton sheet with head and feet prodruding. no photos are allowed in the tombs in order to protect the fragile paint from harsh light and the revenue stream of the touts selling postcards out the front. walking through the corridors cut straight into the rock walls i can't help but think that if these guys didn't know how to live they sure as fuck knew how to die. while the relics have been stolen or shifted to the museums, you can see the ledges carved into the wall that have been painted with the icons that scream in any language "there was treasure here". the paintings are incredible - being sealed under rock and sand for thousands of years for the most part, and in the dry of a desert that sees rain maybe once or twice a year, they've been generally conserved in incredible conditio where Coptic refugees haven't hadn't taken up residence in the times of the Romans.

Louise, Mike and i run around doing our now usual thing until it's time to put more sun cream on and head for the donkeys again. it's hot but not stupid in the sun, pale desert and sandstone under our feet, blue sky above. it's not the cobalt-blue of home, but it's the clearest i've seen in six months. between the felucca and the temples my tan's coming back and my arms are going golden again. my vitamin D levels must be through the roof, but i really don't want to be burning so we're getting regular protection on. Louise is doing a good job of not going too red, but Mike didn't listen on the felucca and wound up copping a roasting - tomato face, raw shoulders, chest and back. i DID tell him so.

i can't find Abdul. where the fuck have you gone, you nasty little prick? wait... all the other donkeys have riders apart from that one with a black saddle who's trying to run off. i'll grab you one then. i shall call you Mohammed and sweet fuckery you do NOT like being behind anyone, do you? i seem to have nicked Mike's donkey - it was unintentional, i swear. i keep trying to slow him down so that i can be sociable, but he's charging ahead like nobody's business, and he knows the way. i'm rattling off more photos and manage to get a couple of good ones of Louise on her even-shorter-than-normal little steed. he's well behaved though, unlike Adbul the psycho or Mohammed the speed-freak. riding donkeys is fun, i have to say. ignore the sore groin and inside-leg, give your donkey a bit of free reign and you make a happy pair. i'm kinda digging the low carbon-footprint aspect of this part of the trip. there were a few teething problems at the start of course - mostly fecal related. an unfortunate aspect of the riding position is that if you're not careful your feet are right in the Dump Zone for any donkey in front and to either side. donkeys, like camels, will piss and shit whenever and wherever they want, including on the run. Bo and Megan both cop shoefulls. in open shoes. miles from running water. crap. thank fuck for jeans at Steel Blue boots...

an hour or so later we pull up at the Temple of Hapshetsut, one of Egypt's first ruling queens. she took the throne off her nephew Demoses III who may not may not have been a bit of a dingbat and ruled nicely for a while before he turned the tables, knocked her off and defaced her temple. it's built up the side of the Valley of the Queen and was been extensively rebuilt back in the 80's it's 3 levels, sloping back up the mountain and it's pretty much all pillars and statues. there's not much of it to see, but there are plenty of opportunities for photos. it's beautiful and incredible but i'm getting templed-out. ever since the Temple of Isis back near Aswan, and Abu Simbel out in the middle of fucking nowhere, i've been getting less and less out of them all, and we still haven't done Karnak yet.

back on the road and on Mohammed's back and the race is on. Jr (the most... effervescent of the americans) is riding side saddle and wants a race. Mohammed snorts and charges off leaving him in our dust. good Mohammed. yes, you may stop and eat some of that farmer's wheat. we've been riding through some incredible countryside - dusty, rocky desert baked by the sun, laughed at and photographed by tourists in their coaches, lush greenery with crops and palm trees, our donkeys grabbing quick bites to eat, main streets of villages, being waved and grinned at by the locals. Salaam allekum brother! Soobie tells us we're experiencing what the locals do every day. petrol's expensive but grass is cheap. beasts of burden are the tractor of choice for the peasant farmer. coaches and tour buses encapsulate you from the world around you and while i love air conditioning as much as anyone else for a couple of hours i'm swimming in it. rock up on a coach and the locals go "yeah, whatever, buy stuff." roll up with a sore arse and a shit-eating grin on a donkey and you're one of the boys (PS - "buy stuff").

it's time to say goodbye to Mohammed and cross back over to the east bank. i can see a bridge a kilometre or two down the river, but hopping a boat's quicker and an hour later we're at the Temple of Karnak with a stomach full of Maccas (it was quick and easy and we were short on time - that's my excuse and i'm sticking to it). it's the biggest of the temples in Egypt - 1.5 square kilometres of structures, pillars and rubble. there was a major earthquake a few hundred years ago which laid waste to a lot of these temples. Karnak was inhabited by a tribe of miscreants a millenia or so ago and when they finally got moved along they opened the retaining wall and flooded the entire thing with water from the Nile. by the time the damage was complete there were barely two stones standing one atop the other and since then it's been rebuilt and restored as best they could. it goes on and on, fields of massive pillars open into courtyards which lead through arches into open areas into closes and more courtyards. there's no time to explore the whole thing. factor half a day minimum if you want to eyeball every stone and carving in the place. for hundreds of years every king who came to power added to it, expanding, installing their own monuments, statues and halls. a single-minded intent to not just maintain but improve. Ramses II and III played parts in its construction and it's that sort of fame that makes the tour. Louise and i are shattered and wind up just wandering semi-randomly through as much of it as we can before sheltering in the cool and quiet of Ramses III's hall of pillars. it's peaceful and quiet and solemnly mind-melting. we've been moving pretty much constantly for 12 hours now and it's starting to bite. Karnak's the last temple on the tour and i'm as relieved as i am disappointed. i want to see more, but my brain can't process it.

getting back to the hotel we have 4 or so hours to shower, repack and find some food before we're moving on again on the night train back to Cairo. a hot shower helps to restore my sanity a little, and i finish posting my pre-written entries downstairs and editing out some glaring mistakes i'd made the day before. due to the lack of available (by which i mean free) internet i've been writing as i have the time. 8400 words have just been broadcasted to the ether which is immensely satisfying and terrifying at the same time.

there's a storm brewing between me and Louise and the first lightning strikes while we're sitting in an Egyptian takeaway. nerves have been raw since the first night on the felucca and the constant lack of sleep has helped not a jot. we've both got issues with the other and while nothing's said, we both know that the moment we have some time alone it's going to be on for young and old. my food's out fairly quickly all told, but hers is still in limbo by the time i'm finished mine. we get it to go and while walking back to the hotel i finally tear into a peddler who didn't take us ignoring him as a signal to leave us alone and is chasing us down the road waving a shirt at us. i've bad a gut full - of sleep deprivation, of questionable food, of buying litre after litre of water because you can't drink from the tap, of feeling like shit but still trying to smile, of never having a moment to myself, of being chased down the road by fucking peddlers and the look of terror and shock on his face when i looked over my shoulder and said mate, FUCK OFF! almost made it worth it.

things are icy all the way to the train and the moment it starts moving i grab my shoulder bag and set up my Eee in the bar carriage, beg the bartender to let me stay there without buying a drink and try to do some writing. Derek joins me and we start to have a chat when Louise shows up all smiles with her bottle of vodka stowed in her sleeping bag-bag and in a moment of aggravation and frustration i say louise, could you please just Go Away for like, 20 minutes? to which she says chirpily "No!" and storms out.

it all blows up the next morning in Cairo. i've slept on the train in as much as i closed my eyes and time passed, but i couldn't tell you anything i saw out of the window on the bus to the hotel. Louise heads off to get some breakfast and i grab a quick shower in lukewarm water and read my book while i'm waiting for the jewellery merchant to show up. he'd met us a couple of days beforehand in Luxor with a range of samples and i ordered a silver and black-rubber bracelet with my name on it in heiroglyphs. when i try it on it's too small and i'm promised that it'll be adjusted by the time we get back from Dahab and i leave it at that. i'm booked in to go for a wander through Cairo Market and a Perfumery where they deal in pure essential oils, but i'm fucked. completely fucking-fucked. Annabel Chong-fucked. out of my mind and out of my tree-fucked. others in the group seem to be able to sleep happily on the bus or the train. Louise is particularly good at it - she's barely in her seat before she's out like a light. i'm climbing into bed when she comes through the door the get her stuff together for the tour and she finally explodes at me before storming out the door. 5 hours later she's back in the room and i've had a couple of hours sleep and a bit of a sober think. she doesn't want to talk to me, but she pays attention when i ask can we talk please, because i need to work out whether i should be trying to get on the next plane to London. it's not an empty threat, either. an hour of tensions flared, grievances aired and home truths shared goes by and in the end i'm not calling Air Egypt or arranging a taxi to the airport. we've sorted out a lot in that hour and it's a shame it took a Category 4 Shitstorm to get some of that out in the open. things aren't perfect, but they'll be OK and downstairs in the pub when i ask so, are we cool? she takes my hand and says "Yeah."

i'd complain about the wasted day but i'd be wasting oxygen on a lie. i needed a day to rest and recuperate. a lot of the other tourists have taken the chance to catch some sleep before the next, last big push. we say goodbye to Soobie who's off home for a shower and some sleep and hello to Wally who'll be showing us around Dahab for the next 5 nightd. he promises no early starts, no wakeup calls, plenty of fucking around doing very little but also plenty of diversions that'll ensure that we're never bored while our wallets continue to empty at a steady pace. Louise and i join in an expedition afterwards to grab Egyptian KFC before kitting out in our beds and looking through some of the photos we've taken on my Eee until around 11PM and when the wakeup call comes through at 5AM i don't mind so much.

now i'm most of the way to Dahab on the bus crammed into a seat over the wheel-arch with my Eee on my lap. i managed an extra hour or so of sleep on the bus this morning before our fuel-stop, but the bumpy roads have prevented me from getting any more. i had a bit of a chat with our new guide Wally when he came down and wanted to check out what i was litening to. i introduced him to "Romance is dead" by Parkway Drive, he gave me his metal-face and put up the horns. all around is desert. i actually saw a guy on a camel shadowing the road a couple of minutes ago. there's actually mobile reception out here, if you'll believe it. we're on a major highway so i guess it's not that surprising, but i'll admit to being a little shocked when Wally's phone rang a little while ago. this is the second last of the sleepless days because tonight at 11PM we're getting our shit together and climbing Mt Sinai - 3 or 4 hours to the top so that we can watch the sun rise, then visit the Monostery of the Burning Bush. i've got a few things to say about that, but right now i'm tired and emotional and feel the need to be sociable so i'm going to save my battery and talk about it once i've been there, worked on my tan, swum in the Red Sea and had a good seafood dinner instead.

Egypt Day 6: all aboard Soobie's Sleep Deprivation Train...

i wake up with a jolt when the Nubian captains tie the feluccas up and cast off so that they can drift us down the Nile a few miles while we sleep. i wake up properly later once we're docked again and as i scramble to get my kit together i can hear the call to prayer and i know in my my water (which a short time later i'm dropping into a dodgy toilet at the docks) that it's going to be another long fucking day.

i'm still groggy from the day before - we're off the feluccas before the sun's high or the chill's burned off but two cups of instant coffee can't burn the haze out of my head. the bus arrives and takes us to Komombo Temple, then Edfu temple. more temples, more carved stone, more photos, but the details don't stick. i'm overwhelmed by pharohs and gods and temples and carvings and paintings, but each temple we go to i charge around taking photos. the tour i'm on is jam-packed and in order to make everything fit sleep is the first thing that gets sacrificed. everyone's feeling it, and everyone's muttering about the string of early starts. sleeping on a sitter-carriage on a train overnight sucks, but we all do that sort of thing when it's expedient. having a 2:30AM start the next night, then shifty sleep on a boat, then a 4AM start directly afterwards is turning into murder.

Komombo and Edfu Temples are beautiful examples of ancient Egyptian architecture and excess in their worship. after seeing the painted engravings at Abu Simbel you start seeing these places in a new light - imagining them as they once must have been - covered in paint and gold-leaf, shining under the clear blue skies and the Egyptian sun. Edfu especially has hidden nooks and crannies, passageways to locked-off rooftops that beg to be explored. when Mike, Louise and i venture up one of them an elderly bedouin points out points of interest on the walls before putting his hand out to receive couple of Egyptian Pounds. up another corridor and a surly local makes way so we can get through. 30 seconds his hand's out too but we make the "we have no money" gesture and he grunts at us. you don't get a handout just for standing there, bucko. i find out that the Cleopatra i saw in the British Museum wasn't actually the famous one - that was Cleopatra VII, last of the Ptolemy line who were Greek rulers, but much loved by the Egyptians because not only did they allow them to continue practicing their religion, they participated, bringing with them new ideas on architecture, art and sanitation.

the last few days are a blur - i had to ask Kate and Andy (Kiwis) what we did afterwards before i could remember. keeping track of everything has been a battle against fatigue and depression, grabbing snatches of sleep whenever we're on a bus or sitting still for more than 10 minutes. getting to Luxor on the bus a few hours later Louise and i collapsed into our room, and i had a desperately needed shower and changed into clean clothes for the first time in days before we hit the street to find the Luxor Museum which Soobie recommended as being like the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, but better organised. a couple of wrong turns walking the streets of the old capital (the capital has changed location a few times over the millenia. Luxor was the capital of Ramses II, although i'll have to check whether it was him who moved it there. when the Alexander of Macedon showed up he moved the capital to the new city of Alexandria - he was a modest lad, after all - and Luxor was renamed "Thebes" for a thousand years or so. now it's Cairo, although that's a story i don't know) we found ourselves in the right place, but with not enough time to really get through it so we save our cash and move on. it was a little disappointing, but what do you do? in the interests of not wasting the last 2 hours we have in free-time i manage to get a free wifi signal for the first time in nearly a week and get online to post some blog entries and let people know i'm not dead (just dead on my feet).

6PM rolls up and my Eee's on the charge again upstairs. the tourists are footing it to the Temple of Luxor to see it all lit in the evening. i've been knocked out of my socks so many times this trip that i'm seriously considering not wearing them anymore and i'm getting sick of typing the words "beautiful" and "magnificent", but here we go again. Soobie's got the biggest grin on his face - he loves his country and he loves his job. ask him just about anything about ancient Egypt and he has the answer and he's getting a kick out of seeing the looks on our faces when he takes us to these places. the Temple of Luxor is one of two which were built in the actual city, and when Egypt was at the height of its glory it was linked to the Temple of Karnak 3km distant by the Avenue of the Sphynxs then the Avenue of the Rams. being the capital, it was the home of the pharoh and since that was a religious as much as a governance role he (or she a few times) needed to be close to the main temples so that he could easily take part in ceremonies.

we grab a feed at a restaurant where Soobie's organised a buffet dinner for us - at the cost of around GBP£4 we stuff ourselves full of good, healthy food before getting some of our devices charged and photos backed up in the hotel and crashing. we've got another early start the next day and it's going to be the long-day to end all long-days...

Egypt Day 5: the Black Dog attacks (some things are too good to last)...

waking up on the felucca on the west bank of the Nile i can hear the call to prayer. spinning while we drift in the current, the two boats lashed to each other while the captains eat and i can hear the to call to prayer. faith is such a big part of these people's lives and it intrudes itself into the core of the experience. everywhere you go there's a mosque. you can set your watch by the time that you hear the song over the wind. from what Soobie's been saying, religion has been a major part of the Egyptian mindset for over 4000 years. they had 3 seasons: the sowing, the harvest and the flood. without anything better to do in the flooding season they'd build temples - it was the national passtime. in ancient times they were worried more about their life after death than the one they were living. everything they did was about ensuring a good afterlife in the paradise-eternal which is why they put so much effort into their temples and burial, going to rest surrounded by representations of their belongings and servants. unlike to other regions, servants weren't killed and buried with their masters when they were buried. statues and paintings were gifts for the dead, like burning paper-money for the Chinese so that when Osiris took their souls they'd be set up and happy in the world beyond. it seems that the living-to-die mentality hasn't changed much - people still live in wretched misery with the belief that they'll be ok once their heart stops beating. me, my faith isn't that strong so i choose to live in the now... next week at the latest.

getting a bit of the morning sun, slinging my poi around on the bow of the boat with my shirt off i'm not sure what i'm doing or where i'm going, but i have motion and light and i'm going to go with it. the river is a road to ride and the felucca captains keep us drifting. today is idle-time. rest, relax, swim, don't think too hard, watch the palm trees slide by and work on our tans. i'm determined to go back to London with some colour and looking at the golden brown my Macedonian heritage has given me i think i'm going to be OK on that front.

the black dog's been chasing me since Aswan and when we're parked on the side of the river for lunch and a swim it catches up, rips a chunk out of my hamstring then tears my throat out. we've been horsing around, swimming in the Nile, the americans have their shisha pipe out and are going at it like troopers. the shisha pipe is never far away with these boys. every time we stop it gets pulled out and they've been playing with different mixtures in the bottle. it started with purified water, then sometime last night Jr got the bright idea of putting coke and bacardi in it (which worked astonishingly well). after drying off i was about to put my hat back on and realised that i'd been sitting there for 10 minutes with it in my hands, staring at it. 20 minutes later i was lying in the fetal position staring off into space with Parkway Drive screaming in my ears, shaking. keeping my eyes open seemed like too much of a chore so i closed them and lay there as alone as i could be on a small boat full of people while the captains pushed off and got back to sailing. in at shore, up the bank and down the little goat trail towards some trees convenient for toilet use it's dry and hot. in the middle of the river, tacking northwards the wind is stong and cold so i managed to reach over and pull a blanket over me and lay there, aware of my surroundings only peripherally. at one point i know that it blew off me and someone pulled it over me again while i stared at my hand. i'd have thanked them, but if i was in any state to speak i could have done it myself. some time later i slept. i must have done, because time had passed. the game of eye-spy was still going strong, but i'm pretty sure i'd lost time in there somewhere. somehow i was able to function through the rest of the afternoon, PSD in my ears while i read Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross, but after eating i was down again... i don't know how long for. In Flames was in my ears - one of my favourite things to listen to when i want to scream and pull my hair out and rip off my own skin but can't.

after a while i noticed that the bonfire was going and our Nubian hosts were singing and drumming and i pulled myself up and went over to join in... or at least, be there, but standing in the circle looking into the fire with the tourists singing and dancing along i couldn't find any joy in it. the Kiwi boys took their shirts off and did the Haka and it didn't grab me, although they did it convincingly and well. when Soobie tried to get some belly dancing going i cleared a space, pulled my poi out and flung them around to the shocked looks of the Nubians who seemed to have finally seen a tourist do something new, but once the adrenaline wore off i was back where i started so i wandered back to the felucca to write it all down.

this is not how you want to be on holidays. spending hours at a time semi-catatonic is about as much fun as it sounds. Louise is no help - i need someone who can sit with me and hold me through it and that isn't going to be her. she leaves me alone at least, which is the next best thing. now i'm lying here with a view of the dying embers of the fire wondering what the fuck i'm going to do. i've had a couple of these attacks in the last few months and i'm out of ideas. it's not my blood-sugar (i've been checking)... my mind's just shutting down and my brain runs rampage trying to fill in the gaps. Mike checked in on me a couple of times but i don't have it in me to explain it to him. his answer was to force yourself to have a good time and i couldn't find the words to tell him that if anything that's the sort of behavior that'll finish me off. i'm lost and adrift and the only solutions i can come up with don't bear thinking about... at least, not yet.

walking back to the felucca when i could hear the call to prayer drifting across the river, and it gave no solace. there are no answers to be had. i'm exhausted from the exertion of keeping my eyes open and my head up and i know as much as i know anything that i'll be one of the first to sleep tonight. will i feel any better tomorrow? who knows. it's going to be another early start and the end's far from sight. between now and then i'm going to go, stare at the stars and try to be sociable for a little bit but i don't think the drunken tourists will be of much help. i'm in no state to be drinking anything stronger than water and i haven't been. the thought of alcohol holds no attraction right now. i know precisely where i want to be right now and that's further away from here than Oz is from Kansas... and just as mythical. i'm surrounded by interesting people who are opening their homes and their lands to me so that i can see their way of life in a fairytale land on a boat traveling down one of the most whispered about rivers in the world and all i want is to be somewhere that no longer exists... and right now i can't think of anything more tragic.