Category: Middle East & Africa 2009
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When Things Go Wrong, How Do You React?
My six days in Khartoum had been somewhat surreal, to say the least. Barging through the dark, dusty, unpaved back streets in a big white United Nations four-by-four, passing observers would have assumed me and my host to be rushing to assist in some nearby international crisis, unaware that we were actually trying to find the district’s only Chinese restaurant to get some fried noodles and a bowl of tofu soup… In a quiet health club studio, incense candles burning, I giggled in embarrassed discomfort as a Thai woman inserted her elbows deep into my aching leg muscles. (My mirth was partly… Continue reading →
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Hard Days in the Sahara
“Four days”, I said to George when he asked me how long it would take to ride to Khartoum. “Depending on how hard I ride, but I think four days is about right.” I had met a rag-tag band of other travellers in the small hotel in Dongola — from Austria, New Zealand, Singapore and England. They’d met on the boat from Egypt a week after I’d made the same voyage. That had been yesterday, and they’d taken the overnight bus to Dongola, covering in a few hours much of the ground through which I’d spent 8 days crawling. Continue reading →
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Biking The Nubian Desert
I rode out of the tiny outpost of Wadi Halfa into the fading light and into the Sahara desert of northern Sudan. I had no map, no guidebook, no sun cream, no insect repellent. A lone man stopped me on the outskirts of the village, his head and body robed and wrapped in loose white cotton which flapped in the brisk evening air. “There are wolves in the desert”, he warned me. “Wolves!!! Do not stop! Do not camp!” Continue reading →
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Along the Egyptian Nile to Luxor
The direction to ride after Cairo was uncertain. I’d been juggling the options for weeks. Previous attempts at the Nile had resulted in police convoys to ‘safer’ places. The Red Sea Coast route didn’t appeal to me after the ugliness and monotony of its opposite shore, and the Western Desert route, beautiful, quiet and remote, would constitute a long, if tempting, detour. But in the end, it wasn’t ’til I was weaving through Cairo’s downtown traffic, Sudanese visa stuck firmly in my passport, that I made my choice. Despite the previous failed attempts, I would try and ride the Nile. Continue reading →
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Cycling To Cairo, Egypt, And Into Africa
I woke at dawn in a drainage channel beneath a main road. It was 90 kilometres to the port in the south of Jordan, from where I would take an overnight ferry the short distance across the Gulf of Aqaba to Nuweiba, on the Sinai peninsular of Egypt. The outside of my tent was crusted with ice. I packed my things and struggled up the bank to the road. It was 6:30am and I pedalled hard to warm up as the day broke. Then the wind began. Continue reading →
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Jordan, The Dead Sea and The King’s Highway
From the Syrian oasis settlement of Palmyra (known locally as Tadmur) I faced 260km of empty desert to Damascus. Resisting the temptation to turn left for Baghdad, I pedalled furiously for two days, with only a couple of French motorbike tourists breaking the monotony, and arrived in the outskirts of Damascus early in the morning on the third day. I didn’t really feel like getting lost and stressed in a big city so soon after leaving Istanbul. There was nothing of particular interest to me there; I knew I would find another cosmopolitan environment to contrast the simple, conservative living I’d… Continue reading →
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Across The Desert To Palmyra
I’ve spent several days struggling southwards through Syria on the highway near the coast. I had picked up a cold and fever, and the constant headwind and persistent rain were making riding a real chore. Add to that the fact that my legs are still getting used to their new exercise regime, and it is easy to understand why I chose to turn off the main road and head inland. I soon left the dark clouds, rolling hills, red soils and olive groves behind me, and the skies began to clear. A mild tailwind and the thankful diminishing of my… Continue reading →
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My Conscience-Free Kebab in Aleppo
A while back I posted on the merits of vegetarianism. While not becoming a strict veggie, I decided that drastically cutting down my meat intake was probably a good thing, having the bonus effect of making occasional meaty treats more enjoyable. I said I was looking forward to eating a kebab for 50 pence without feeling guilty afterwards. And I’ve just had that kebab in Aleppo, a historical city in the north of Syria. Continue reading →
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Hitching from England to Istanbul
Facebook has managed to almost entirely replace email as a form of electronic communication amongst friends. While I dislike the immense waste of human energy that is poured into it, I decided to use it to conduct a small experiment. I would allow my Facebook friends one chance to directly affect my life in the midst of this enormous virtual shouting match. Should I: a) Wait 6 days for a guaranteed lift aboard an articulated lorry heading across Europe from Kettering to Istanbul, or b) get up, shoulder my bag, walk out of the door, stick out my thumb, and… Continue reading →