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Marrakesh

Got into Marrakesh last night and managed to navigate our way to our unmarked hotel deep in the maze of the medina, dragging our luggage through the crowded streets. We will poke around here for the next four days before we have to fly home

m'hmad and the desert at erg chigaga

We are really glad that we took the long drive oiut to m'hmaid to see the desert again. A nu,ber of people urged us to go to merzouga and see the dunes of erg chebbi instead, enough to make us worried, but the desert here is magnificent. We spent a couple of hours hiking around in dunes up to 150m high and were the only people out there that we could see. See pic; its awesome. Glad we're here in winter and not summer though, whren it gets up to about 55C or 130F

ourzazate

We took a very early plane out of fez this morning to Ourzazate in the mid atlas. Oddly enough, this town has turned into something of a film making destinatin and a lot of desert-y or middle eastern movies have gotten made here, like "kingdom of heaven", "alexander" etc. stopped in at the studios to seee replicas of what we saw in egypt, and then on to a nearby casbah (sort of fortified village - see pic) where a lot of berber people still live. Ended up with another sword and ranee with another neckless - I am sensing a trend here... we're planning on heading further south tomorrow to spend some more time in the desert after our great experience in siwa

Fes et al

We spent a day visiting nearby volubilis, a partially restored ruined roman city about an hour from fes, as well as meknes, like fes, an ex capital of morocco. Morocco has had a number of different ruling dynasties, and many of them saw the need to establish new capitals. The nesting storks at Volubilis and the lovely country setting made it the more interesting of the two places.

Spent the next day wandering around the medina on our own. Saw the potteries, belching black smoke, where tile mosaics, pottery and ceramics get made, and got comprehensively lost in the medina. Somehow I ended up the owner of a Berber sword and Ranee the owner of a couple of necklesses - I'm not entirely sure how that happened but there were some fast talking medina inhabitants involved

Landed in Morocco

Got into Casablanca about two hours late after an unsheduled stop to "take on more fuel"(???) and headed staight on to Rabat as soon as we landed. Overnighted in a R
riad (converted courtyard home in the medina, the old walled part of town) and saw the few sights (some roman and merenid ruins now mostly colonized by nesing storks, and a surprisingly beautiful tomb of the current King's grandfather) before quickly heading to Fes. he first pic is of a small fountain by the tomb. The riad we are in here, Riad Fes, is really spectacular (pic). Explored and got lost in the medina here this morning (discovered that the tanneries (pic) use pigeon shit to soften leather - not all that compelling a sales fact). We had lunch with a guy we met on the tain yesterday and his family at a delicious bbq place we would never have found otherwise where you select your meat from the butchers freshly killed carcasses and have the guys grill it up to order.

Last day in Cairo

Slept in today, hit the internet for 2.5 hours (yes there is something wrong with us - we go to Egypt to surf the web!) but also visited the Egyptian museum and the Khalili market. I think it may be the only time in recorded history that tourists at Khalili weren't beseiged by vendors as everyone was glued to the screen wathecing the soccer. Pic is a bit blurry but its a bread seller balancing his load of bread on his head as he pedals his bike down one of the lanes in khalili

Highlight was watching (on TV) Egypt win the Africa cup of Nations football tournament tonight. Egypt are the host country, so with the win the crowd both at the stadium and at the restaurant we were at went wild! Lots of happy people in Cairo tonight. Cars honking; people with painted faces smiling and shouting everywhere, more flags than you can poke a stick at; the streets are packed

Siwa oasis

Just got back from Siwa Oasis. Its a trek to get to but well worth it. Its about an 8 hour drive from Cairo, through El Alamein and Masa Matroud to get there. The Oasis is one the edge of the Eastern Sahara, near the Libyan border. We stayed at the amazing eco-lodge, Adrere Amellal, which has justifiably been writting up glowingly. Its a sprawling set of buildings built in the traditional manner of construction out of mud, solidified sea salt and palm trees (see top pic). The cavelike rooms have small windows to keep them cool in the hot summers and are furnished in a mixture of traditional furniture and high thread count super comfy sheets. There were only 3-5 of us there and dinner each night was in a different place in one of the many public spaces, sitting rooms, dining rooms, patios and hidden nooks around the place.

Siwa itself is an interesting little town. The people there are mostly Berber rather than Arabic, and it has a separate culture and language from much of the rest of Egypt. It has seen a lot of history despite its remoteness, from Alexander the Great coming to consult the Oracle of Siwa to confirm that he was of divine birth and hence able to be a Pharoah of Egypt, to Cleapatra and World War II. The town itself seems quite conservative. Whereas we've seen many women with headscarves in Egypt, and some with veils or even Burkas, in Siwa we saw some women who covered their entire heads with a black (presumably translucent from close enough) cloth, without even an eye slit, so that from a distance they looked like black dressmakers dummies wearing hoods, capes and robes.

The desert itself was the main highlight (see lower pic). We ventured out there a couple of times in an old Landcruiser with the desert guide Abdullah, visiting other oases and lakes, a hot spring, weird rock formations and miles of perfect dunes. It is breathtaking, and the photo really doesn't convey it. The unlikliness of coming over a dune top after driving for miles over nothing but sand and seeing a clump of palms surrounding a large lake is pretty incredible.

The second day the wind was picking up and the millions of tendrils of windblown sand a few inches of the ground made an amazing sight, impossible to caputure on film. So much sand was blowing over the tops of some of the dunes that I couldn't get my camera to autofocus and had to switch to manual - the blur between land and air was too blurred. We went fossil fossicking and found all sorts of sea shells fossilized and incongruous in the middle of the sandy desert.

Tried my hand at sandboarding and pretty much sucked at it - made one or two turns before invariably falling over the front of the board and sumersaulting into the (hard packed!) sand. Unlike snowboarding, the sand has a lot more friction, and so you need a steeper angle to get any movement, which makes learning a bit harder, and more painful. I ended up with fine gritty sand more or less everywhere.

Dina

Writing this at 4am. Just came from a bellydancing show featuring Dina. Dina is apparently the most famous bellydancer in the Middle East (and hence the world). She is one of these people who doesn't need a surname for people to know who you're talking about. She also had a Paris/Pamela type incident - apparently a few years ago she was having an affair with a prominent married Egyptian businessman who was under investigation for tax fraud or something. He was also secretly taping their trysts. When h was raided the videos of them together starting appearing for sale at the local markets and at traffic lights. At least she didn't answer the phone... She apparently quit dancing, took the veil, did a haj and has since started dancing again and is more popular than ever!

As you may be able to tell from the pic, Dina also has a statsitical similarity to Pamela Anderson that is quite pronounced (low light and she was moving fast, so its a bit blurry)

Abu Simbel

News has been dominated by the ferry that went down last night between Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Not looking good. It hasn't been a good year for accidents in Egypt - a bus rolled in January killing a bunch of Aussie policemen on vacation, and last week another bus crash killed a bunch of tourists from Hong Kong. Now this.

Notwithstanding, we did the quick in and out flight to Abu Simbel today on Egypt Air. See pic. Its pretty astounding - those stautes are about 30 yards tall. The four of them would sit overlooking the Nile, mostly to intimidate people coming up the Nile into Egypt's south that there was a seriously powerful king up ahead. Worked pretty well I imagine - its no mean feat. More recently, the whole temple structure (its cut into the mountain and extends back 50 yards into a number of rooms with carved reliefs, more statues and columns, mostly proclaiming Ramses II's greatness - he was not a modest man) was taken apart, moved to higher ground 200m above the original location and reassembled to beat the Lake Nasser flood waters from ther new dam. They did a great job - even recreated the original rock facades and landscape so that you can't tell at all.

Rest of the day was pretty relaxed; we head back to Cairo tomorrow

Aswan

Amazing. Egypt built their "high damn" at Aswan in the late sixties and it created the largest man made lake in the world. It would have flooded a lot of temples and other ancient sites but with UNSECO's help and about 40 countries, they MOVED about 20 of these sites to higher ground. Block by block. Took them apart and put them back together again. The temple of Philae is one of them and it isn't far from Aswan - they even rebuilt and relandscaped the new island its on so that it looks like the original. Thats ambition. Today we're taking things pretty easy, wandering throught the souk (market) which is a lot lower key than in other places we've been to, finally getting to use the internet after being on the boat for a few days, and maybe taking a sail on a "felucca" later this afternoon

Pic is of spices for sale in the souk

Cruising

Four nights is a very leisurely cruise up the Nile from Luxor to Aswan. The boat probably makes about 5 miles an hour. Stops thrice, at Esna, Edfu and Kom Ombo, each Greek or Roman age Egyptian temples (amazing how long the culture survived and was embraced by successive conquerers). Means lots of time for reading, napping and watching the banks of the Nile slide by.

Pic is of Esna - we were the only people visiting it which was a very pleasant change. This is one of the smallest and least important of the Egyptian temples to give you a sense of scale of the others. In good shape and retains its roof because it was buried under the sand for a long time - you can see the level of the current ground in the photo

More temples at Luxor

I thought Luxor temple was impressive - Karnak is something else again. The complex is huge. So are the crowds. Particularly liked the obelisks and the rows of sphinxs. Pix here of the Great Hypostyle hall (huge columns far as the eye can see) and of one of the ram headed Sphinxes

Nile cruise

Our cruise got off to a bit of a bad start because os some confusion about when we were supposed to show up and start the cruise. The website and Abercrombie and Kent's call center said noon, but our travel agent said 9am, and had organized a car to take us there at 8:30am. We suspected that he'd set up a tour of various alabaster factories, papyrus museums and other commission generating tourist traps that was going to waste our morning, so we set up our own trip for the morning, taking us to some of the West Bank sites that were not on the itinerary (Habu Temple, the Rammaseum and the Tombs of the Nobles).However, the guy was being totally straight with us, so when we showed up at 11am, we found out that the trip to the West Bank (Valley and the Kings and Valley of the Queens and Hatshepsut's temple) had left a couple of hours before... Our own fault for not trusting people. So we ended up scrambling and getting a private guide and car to take us to those sights.

Since my knowledge of Ancient Egypt mostly comes from Las Vegas casinos and movies starring the Rock, I didn't realize that there are not actually any pyramids at Luxor. The tombs are interesting but the temples are really impressive.

The first picture is of some guys by the outer wall or pylon of Habu temple - note the carved relief in the background of Ramses III smiting his enemies. Lot of smiting went on apparently. Scond pic is of colossi of Ramses II, of Ozymandius fame, from the aptly named Ramesseum, his funerary temple. Th4se guys didn't build pyramids, but they really went big on the temples.

Luxor

Just got in, visited the really impressive Luxor Museum (how do papyrus, wood and linen last 4000 years in a tomb?), the somewhat creepy Museum of Mummification and the pictured Luxor temple right in the middle of the smallish downtown, with a McDonalds in the background. Cruise leaves tomorrow - no internet for 5 days

Dinner with Seif and Mona

Chris Schroeder introduced us to some wonderful people on Cairo - we had a lovely dinner with them and got a much better insight from both them and Tarek and Jaline into modern Egypt beyond the touts and taxi guys

Faux security

I mentioned earlier the high apparent security at our hotel, and other hotels and most tourist sites. It is all a bit symbolic - people regularly walk through the metal detector, beep and keep walking, the guys wandering around the car with the mirrors on sticks aren't even looking at the mirror etc. Hmmm

Pyramids etc

Pyramids were awesome. These things date from 2600 BC - the ROMANS used to go there to marvel at the achievements of long dead civilizations!!!

Also saw the Citadel (see pic of Mosque of Mohammed Ali, founder of modern Egypt and an Albanian!) and some of the Mosques in Islamic Cairo, and some of the churchs in Coptic Cairo. Cairo is Mosquerama - in any direction you look its only a couple of blocks to the next one.

Trying to sort out travel for the rest of Egypt got stymied because its Friday so a lot of places are not open.

Had dinner with Tarek and his wife - they took us to a wonderful Egyptian restaurant. It was good to see him since its been almost 6 years since we graduated from the GSB

Cairo

We just landed in Egypt. Flew here from Delhi via Frankfurt - not the most direct route, but only Lufthansa of the Star Alliance flies here so we didn't have much choice of routing on our round the world ticket. Running the gauntlet of taxi touts at the airport here was an ordeal - even more so than elsewhere. Getting into the hotel was pretty high security - first the taxi was checked for bombs by a guy with a mirror and a torch, then we had our bags go through an X ray and we passed through an airport style metal detector. Not sure if this makes me feel safer or less safe

We'll try to figure out an itinerary for our time here tomorrow in between a visit to Islamic and Coptic Cairo.

Taj Mahal

The Taj lives up to its rep. See obligatory cheesy tourist photo taken by the obliging gardener why was very rarely stable.

Chitorgarh

The leaning tower of Chitorgarh. The dynasty who ruled here did so for over 800 years. The fort was taken three times in that period, each time because they got starved out so the men all rode out to die and the women all threw themselves on a pyre and burned to death. Honor was everything to the Rajphut warrior clans that lived in Rajastan. After the third time the relevant dynasty moved to Udaipur which was both easier to defend and also had more food options within the city.

Jodhpur

Also called the Blue City, inexplicably. Gave its name to the pants when the Maharaj of Jodhpur went to England and set a fashion trend with his polo pants

Jaisalmer

Did a little camel jaunt in the desert outside Jaisalmer. Good looking animals - maybe not!

Jaipur

Snack vendor at the Courtyard of the City Palace in Jaipur. Jaipur is known as the Pink City which I imagine might be a bit emasculating for the men there. ;-)

the POW train

Just got back from a week on the "palace on wheels", a sort of cruise on rails through Rajahstan. Palace might be a bit of an overstatement as the rolling stock is limited in size and showing its 25 or so years, but the service was excellent and it was all very comfortable. It was a bit of a splurge for us (actually a lot of a splurge) but we justified it because the train travels at night, so we got to see a lot more of Rajahstan than we otherwise would have. Sleeping on a rocking train takes a bit of getting used to though (Ambien helps a lot).

Got the full blast of palaces, forts, cenataphs and monuments in Jaipur, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Udaipur, Chittagar and of course finished up in Agra to see the Taj Mahal. Took a little camel ride (now that is an unattractive animal) and an unsuccesful tiger game drive and a more successful birdwatching rickshaw ride as well.

Judging from the palaces we saw, it was good to be the king, or the Maharaja as the case may be. Juding from the rest of what we saw, it really sucks to be poor in India. A couple of enterprising guys set up a shoe shining business and then proceeded to follow the POW train around for about 4-5 days by taking local overnight trains- by day 2 or 3 people figure out that it was the same guys and started giving them business - I think they cleaned up!

Of course, because it was an organized tour, we got a full load of commission generating shopportunities lined up with our sightseeing as well! The tour guides on the whole were excellent and really helped us appreciate the history and architecture of the places and palaces that we saw though. Met some super nice people on the train as well.

Delhi

Well we made it into Delhi but for a while there it didn't look good. It was looking like we cut the 7 hour drive back from Banghavgarh to Khujaraho a bit too fine when we got a flat tire on the way back. The car we were traveling in didn't have seatbelts but we were assured that "the road is very bad so you won't need them as you won't be traveling very fast". Its only about 230kms - 140 miles, but the road varies from good 2 lane blacktop to single lane blacktop with wide shoulders (you play chicken with each oncoming car) to really bad dirt road. One section is very odd - its bad and bumpy dirt road but its wide enough to take an 8 lane superhighway. After the flat, discovering that the spanner in the car didn't fit the tire, breaking the spanner of the good samaritan that stopped to help us, it wasn't looking all that good. But the next spanner worked and with some very speedy driving, and a delayed India Airlines flight, we made it OK.

Delhi hasn't been as crazy as we'd been expecting after hearing some stories from other travelers. We were prepared for a travelers nightmare, with rampant theft, beggars, congestion, filth etc. But it hasn't seemed any worse than other places we've traveled.

Pic of walls of red fort attached

eenie meanie minie mo

Catch a tiger by the toe. We saw three the first morning on our game drive at Banghavgarh National park! Then one on the evening drive, and three more the next morning (see pic). Also saw wild dogs (which are apparently very rare and not just wild dogs), jackals, spotted and chittal deer and, wierdly, vultures mating (other pic). Judging from the amount of wing flapping and cawing going on, it was a good time.

Death and Sex

Moving fast - a day in Varanasi and a day in Khujaraho. The Ganges river flows through Varanasi and is a sacred place for Hindus, many people come here to bathe in its purifying waters (see pic), or to die, or be cremated here. Fascinating boat trip in the evening and the morning. Can't take pics of the cremations of course, but we watched a few bodies getting burned on piles of wood before the ashes are poured into the river.

Khujaraho is known for the erotic sculptures on the temples. The British guy who rediscovered them described them as "warmer than there was an absolute necessity for" - you get the full range from Playboy through Hustler to Farmgirlsgonewild.com. See pic for one of the tamer examples.

Delhi is freezing

Got into Delhi on the 10th. its about 38 degrees F/3C. Not what I imagined India was going to be like! Glad we kept the cold weather clothes we bought in Sapa

Coastal Sri Lanka

Spent a couple of days at the beach in Tangalle, then overnighted at Galle on the way back to Colombo, where we are tonight. We're flying to Delhi tomorrow. The Galle Fort is pretty interesting - several hundred years old and dating from the Dutch period. Our walk around the ramparts was interrupted by a bit of rain, and as we sheltered under the eaves of an old building a rat that had the same idea decided to jump out of the roof, run down my backpack and leg, and then off somewhere else. Lovely. Our hotel in Galle was our favourite in Sri Lanka, and maybe of the whole trip so far - the 5 room Fort Printers. Its new and designed with a very boutiquey - asian influenced modern theme. Today we went shopping and replaced some of the clothes that have become more the worse for wear through our travels. A lot of factories here produce for Gap, Banana, Abercrombie etc, and it seems that not all of their output makes it out of the front door of the factory as most shops (including pretty reputable ones) seem to have factory overruns at amazingly cheap prices

No leopards...

unfortunately. Possibly due in part to our driver being under the misapprehension that he was competing in the Lisbon to Dakar. Oh well. Here is a photo of a sloth bar falling out of a tree though. It was up in a tree that was much too small to bear its weight, so the tree was swaying all over the place. Eventually the bear tries to climb down head first but its back feet lose purchase and it falls on its ass, sumersaulting forward and hitting the ground just as this photo was taken. Pretty funny to see!

Sore legs and sloth bears

Well I got up at 2am a couple of nights ago to climb Adams Peak. Its one of the most important pilgrimage sights in Sri Lanka, with the rock footprint on the top variously attributed to Buddha, Adam leaving Eden and others depending on your point of view. Started up the hill (its actually 5200+ , and lit at night, due to the volume of pilgrims) around 2:45am and reached the summit about 5:30am. Cold wait for dawn but the view from the top was amazing - really worth if (see picture). I hung around until about 7:15 then came back down, showered, and drove back to meet Ranee at Nuwareliya about three hours drive away (she opted to sit this one out!).

I've been paying for that hike for the last few days - still stiff and sore and suffering up and down stairs. We're at Yala National park right now. Did a safari drive last night and again this morning - about to head out for this evenings drive. Seen a few sloth bears and elephant, deer, water buffalo, peacocks, crocodiles, mongoose and lots of smaller creatures - are hoping to see a leapord if we're lucky. Tomorrow we're heading somewhere to lie on the beach for a couple of days - these early starts are getting to us!

Sri Lanka

Got to Sri Lanka just after midnight on the 28th. Its been much more of a hassle organizing travel plans here vs Vietnam and Cambodia, compounded by the fact that the Lonely Planet is woefully out of date for Sri Lanka. But we organized a driver for the next two weeks and took off later that day for the "Cultural Triangle" that holds most of the ancient capitals of Sri Lanka, dating up to 2300 years ago. Visited AnaradhapurafirstcapitalofSriLanka (it always seems to be pronounced as one word), Polonawaru and Sigiria (my favourite) over the last few days. After here and Ankhor, starting to feel a bit templed out...

In Kandy for new years and then off to the Hill Country where hopefully it will be a bit cooler, and less chance of snakes crawling up the drain pipes (we eventually figured out why there were rocks weighing down the drain lids in the bathroom!)