Snowy Canada

I've been home for five days and I don't feel much closer to settling in. I have managed to retrieve a few necessities and my clothing from storage, the latter being painfully inadequate for the season. At least I have some warm coats and boots to get me through the winter - now if I could just find some pants and skirts!

My landlords (and wonderful friends) have been very hospitable and I am enjoying the comfort of my own space complete with satellite TV and every other imaginable convenience, including homemade meals next door every evening. I finally got some groceries today so I should be able to take the pressure off the pantry across the driveway.

The weather has been very typical Canadian winter fare, which has actually been a lot of fun. I guess some part of me really missed the snow, so I've enjoyed the recent storm and flurries. I'm sure the novelty will wear off before too long, but I'll revel in it for as long as I can. It feels really good to be breathing clean, crisp air, and I'm sure my lungs have already started to recover from the smog and smoke of the last year.

I have managed to visit a few friends and family members since I've been home, which has been lovely, and I look forward to more socializing over the holidays. In the meantime, I still feel like I have so much to do, and it's all made a bit more difficult without a vehicle. I have to focus on buying a car but am finding myself procrastinating since I consider that particular chore to be a fate worse than death. I'll have to bite the bullet soon, so I can stop begging for lifts.

On top of all the logistical issues I'm facing, I have to actually start some kind of normal life again. I have a meeting tomorrow with a potential client and will likely take a short-term contract in the telecom industry (assuming it's on offer). I would really rather not take that route, but it will bring in some much-needed income, and hopefully still allow time for me to pursue other projects. I really hope that I'll be able to leave the telecom industry behind me permanently in the not-to-distant future. In the meantime, I'll use it to pay the bills.

All in all, I'm glad to be home and am looking forward to starting this next chapter of my life. I likely won't be blogging again as I'm back in town and easy to find. I am still available on my travel e-mail address, so please feel free to stay in touch that way.

I wish you all a very happy holiday season and hope to see you all soon.

Surprise!

I spent my last day in Cairo wandering around to all the sights that I missed. I walked down to the citadel, built by Saladin, and walked all the way around its walls. I didn't go in as I was sort of burnt out and the guidebook said there's really not much to see there anyway. I made my way back up to the bazaar area, via a different and very scenic route. I have to say that my final experiences of Cairo have been largely pleasant, with the ever-present men offering advice that was actually helpful. My walk went past some lovely mosques, one of which was another "Blue Mosque" (the Ottomans put their trademark blue tiles on the walls) and was undergoing renovations. A gentleman walked me through and essentially gave me a guided tour, and also took me up one of the minarets to get a great view of the city. Naturally he wanted baksheesh, which I was more than happy to give him in payment for his efforts. I then passed through a lovely gate, one of the best remaining ones in the city walls, and on to the bazaar. Another helpful man took me on a tour through some of the workers' shops and I watched them making silk, cotton and wool yarns as well as backgammon boards inlaid with mother-of-pearl, camel bones and ebony. He was ready to continue his tour to other "factories" but once I realized he was hoping I'd buy something so he'd get a commission, I called a halt to it. Still, it was interesting while it lasted.

On the way back to my hotel I was able to pick up some reading glasses to replace the ones I lost in Wadi Rum. I had found some replacements in Aqaba, but they weren't the right strength so I was happy to find these at a street stall. I was attended to by several young men and the flirtations got quite ardent, but it was, for once, all in good fun and they knew where to draw the line.

I am now tuckered out and will spend the next few hours in my hotel room resting, packing, and showering before I spend the night at the Cairo airport. My flight leaves at 3:45 AM and I should be in Dorval by about noon. I have left myself several hours there to clear customs which will likely be a rather trying experience, and hope to be in Ottawa around dinner time.

I decided to come home shortly after my trip to Tibet. I wanted to keep it to myself for as long as I could as I knew that you'd all want to know what prompted the decision and I wanted to stay in "travel mode" as long as I could. Suffice it to say, I feel very ready to come home and am thrilled that I achieved everything that I dreamed I would on this trip. Much of it was very personal, and I didn't feel comfortable blogging about it but it's no great secret and I look forward to telling you all about it.

I hope to see you all over the holidays and am looking forward to being home. Having said that, I am questioning my timing based on what I've been hearing about the weather there :-).

I'll be staying with friends in the Chelsea area until I get myself sorted out. You can continue to use my travel e-mail address to find me until I get a phone number to give you.

Walking in Memphis (and Saqqara and Alexandria and Cairo)

We had a nice visit to Memphis and Saqqara. There's not much left of Memphis, even though it was the capital of ancient Egypt for so long. It is now a small, poor, rural town but has a small open-air museum with some interesting statuary including a huge statue of Ramses II (the egomaniac pharoah :-)). They are gradually buying-out the villagers in order to excavate under the village and are due to start their work shortly. Radar would indicate somewhere in the neighbourhood of 28 temples in the area.

Saqqara is interesting in that it is home to the oldest pyramid in Egypt (and the world). It is called the step pyramid, as it doesn't have smooth sides like the others. It belonged to Cheops' grandfather (Cheops being the owner of the biggest pyramid in Giza), and you can see Cheops' father's pyramid in the distance from the step pyramid. The father's pyramid is referred to as the "bent pyramid" because he experimented with a new angle which proved ineffective and changed the angle of the walls half way up. It looks quite funny on the horizon. I had another off-putting experience at the step pyramid with an over-zealous staff member who refused to leave me alone. It's such a drag when these things negatively affect your opinion and memories of an otherwise lovely travel experience.

I spent the evening alone in my hotel room, which was absolutely heavenly after almost six weeks of sharing quarters. Even though I had to get up very early the next morning, I had a great sleep. My hotel, which doesn't look like much from the outside, is a turn-of-the-century colonial hotel. It's beauty has certainly faded, but it still has a lovely charm and a wonderfully hospitable staff. I'm really enjoying it there.

The next day I walked the 45 minutes to the hotel where my ex-tour-mates were staying. Given the early hour, I didn't have much traffic to contend with, but I did have a problem of another sort to deal with. Egyptians don't use any of the lights on their cars, either headlights or turn indicators. Drivers in lots of other countries don't use turn indicators, so I have become somewhat accustomed to it. The headlamps are another story. Egyptians don't use them because they don't want to burn out the car battery. Apparently they do understand the concept of alternators, but that doesn't seem to factor into the argument. They are also preserving the bulbs in their headlights. Needless to say, this makes crossing the streets at night a bit hair-raising. It should be noted that crossing streets in the daylight isn't much easier as traffic lights are totally ignored. I'm not sure why they even hang them. The major intersections have traffic cops who help things a bit for the motorists, but pedestrians are always on their own.

After arriving at their hotel, I joined the others for the three hour bus ride to Alexandria. We had a guide there who walked us through the National Museum, catacombs and mis-named Pompeii's column (which was actually built by Diocletian). The museum, as might be expected, has a lot of stuff about Alexander in it, but also houses some interesting older artifacts as well. The catacombs were really neat and I thoroughly enjoyed my visit there. We had very limited free time after lunch and most of us opted to check out the library. Unfortunately, I virtually ran through it and saw very little. The library itself is huge and a spectacular work of architecture. It currently houses about 550,000 books but has room for eight million. There are a couple of museums housed in the library as well as some wonderful art collections. I could easily have spent hours there.

When we returned to Cairo, I took a cab back to my hotel and settled in for my first night in six weeks without a wake up call waiting at the end of it. This morning I lounged around in bed and finished the book I had been reading - another wonderful luxury. I spent a few hours wandering around the Islamic part of the city which is home to a myriad of mosques as well as the bazaars. I am actually warming up to Cairo a little bit, but don't think it's a place I could ever fall in love with. Like Delhi, the size of Cairo allows a certain amount of anonymity. Unlike Delhi, it doesn't smell of urine and cow dung.

Later this afternoon I found my way over to the American University book store. It was like taking a long cold drink on a hot day. After 15 months of reading whatever I could get my hands on, it was wonderful to have stacks and stacks of English books to choose from. I limited myself to three quite small, but not inexpensive, treats. It was very hard to drag myself out of there.

I am now headed back to my hotel where I will take a bath (my first since Australia)with one of my new books and glass of wine. I am so looking forward to it.

Impressions of Egypt

We arrived in Cairo early this morning and I went out for a walk to orient myself. I'll be staying in a different hotel here for the next few nights but didn't check in there yet. It is in the downtown core, so is well situated, but doesn't look that great from the outside.

Cairo is a decidedly ugly city, but is somewhat prettier than Amman in that it actually has some green space and of course has the Nile running through the middle of it. Still, it looks to be consisted mostly of greys, and is really filthy. A thick layer of smog lies over the city.

I enjoyed a fairly hassle-free walk early this morning so am hoping Cairo will be easy for me. I had a couple of unfortunate interactions with Egyptian men/teenagers in Aswan when I was walking alone there. They are also very persistent in their sales efforts and it all makes for a very exhausting experience. It certainly has made me realize that taking a tour was the right decision for me in this part of the world. Being in the company of other travellers, especially men, really makes things easier.

I am off this afternoon to visit Memphis, the former capital, as well as Saqqara where there is a large necropolis of tombs and pyramids. I'll spend tomorrow in Alexandria with a handful of my tour-mates and will blog again the following day.

Cruisin' the Nile (The Sequel)

Again, this will have to be brief...

When I last left off, we had arrived in Luxor and visited Karnak. The following day we got up fairly early and took a ferry across the Nile. We rode donkeys into the Valley of the Kings, which took about an hour. This was actually a lot of fun and the donkeys were very small and well-behaved so it was quite relaxing. We rode through the Egyptian countryside and got some good views of rural scenes. We visited three tombs as part of our tour and I opted to take in another two: those of King Tutankhamon and Ramses V/VI. King Tut's tomb is really rather unremarkable and it's hard to believe that all that incredible treasure was housed in such a small space. The third sarcophagus as well as his mummy are on display in his tomb which was pretty neat. The tomb of Ramses V and VI was spectacular - it's amazing how all the artwork on the wall has survived thousands of years.

After the Valley of the Kings we went to the Valley of the Workers, which is where all the artists and tomb-builders lived. There are some ruins from their town as well as their tombs, which are much less spectacular but no less interesting than those of the pharaohs. We donkeyed back to the Nile passing the Colossi of Memnon and ferried back to our boat for lunch and an afternoon cruise up the Nile to Edfu. I found the imposed relaxation of our sailing times to be quite lovely. There was nothing better to do than lounge on the sundeck with my nose in a book and a cocktail by my side while the shores of the Nile slid past. It was a nice respite from the rather frenzied pace of this tour. Sometime in the middle of the night we made our way through the locks and woke to find ourselves docked in Edfu.

After a fairly late breakfast (8:30!) we set out for the temple of Edfu. This temple is dedicated to Horus (he has a falcon's head)and is very well preserved. There are some beautiful statues as well as wonderful reliefs. In some places the colour is even still visible on the reliefs. Then it was back to the boat and a short cruise to Kom Ombo where we visited another temple in the afternoon. This is another magnificent temple in a similar design to Edfu. This one is dedicated to both Horus and Sobek (he has a crocodile's head) and the temple is virtually split down the middle with each of the gods represented on one side. As with many of the temples, this one has been badly defaced by the Coptic Christians, who used it as a refuge during the 600s or there abouts. It's heartbreaking to see the damage done to the temples and statuary by the Christians, as well as the graffiti chiseled into them by European explorers in the 1800s. While it still seems inexcusable to me, at least there was some (misplaced) rationale for the Christians' handiwork. Not so with the explorers'.

The next morning we got to lounge around in the sun while we sailed south to Aswan. We had some free time in the late morning, during which I chose to visit the Nubian museum. It was very well presented but unfortunately I really didn't give it the time it deserved. We spent the afternoon on a felucca ride (traditional Egyptian sailboat)and I got to swim in the Nile and later climb a dune/hill on the shore to enjoy the views. It was back to the boat for dinner and then off to see the sound and light show at Philae, yet another magnificent temple. It was really beautiful and made me wish I had had time to visit it during the daylight hours. This morning we got up at 3:30 and climbed aboard a bus convey down to Abu Simbel, our final temple on this tour. It was well worth the long drive and is a stunning temple built by Ramses II. There is a smaller temple nearby which he built for his favourite of 52 wives, Nefertari (although he figures more prominently in it than she does).

Interestingly, both Philae and Abu Simbel, along with about 40 (?) other temples have actually been relocated from their original sites. Much of the Nubian countryside was flooded out when they dammed the Nile, and they were able to move the temples to higher ground while they were building the dam. This was a multi-national initiative with UNESCO lending a strong hand. It's amazing how you would never know that these massive structures had been cut up into pieces and reassembled at new locations.

I am now enjoying a free afternoon in Aswan and we will take the overnight train back to Cairo tonight. I'll definitely miss the boat - I really liked this cruising thing. Some of the other boats on the river are really spectacular - we look a little bit like the poor cousin in comparison, but it was certainly adequate for me.

Even though my tour officially ends tomorrow, some of the others are continuing onto Jordan, essentially doing my last tour in reverse. They have a couple of free days and have planned some activities, so I'll join them. Tomorrow afternoon we'll visit Sakara (Saqquara ?) outside of Cairo and then on Monday do a day trip to Alexandria which I'm really looking forward to. After that I'll be on my own and looking forward to some downtime.

Cruisin' the Nile

I'm glad I don't have much time to write, because I really don't know what to say. Yesterday we visited the Pyramids (and actually went inside one of them), saw the Sphinx, toured the Egyptian museum (including King Tut's treasure and a dozen or so mummies)and then took an overnight sleeper train to Luxor (Thebes). This morning we checked onto our cruise boat and then went by horse carriage to see the Karnak temple. In the afternoon a few of us opted to cross the Nile and visit a couple of temples that won't be included in our tour of the Valley of the Kings tomorrow. We had dinner on the boat, which is lovely and has a small pool, bar, dance floor, dining room and private bathrooms - far more luxury than I imagined. The staff is also wonderful.

I have become painfully aware of how ignorant I am about ancient Egypt and all the information and sites from the last couple of days are swirling around in my head. It is really spectacular and I'm sucking it all up like a sponge although things are starting to spill over. It really defies description and even though I've read about much of it, it's really special to see it all with my own eyes.

Tomorrow we take in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Workers and then board the boat to spend the rest of the day cruising south on the Nile.

I have to run as I have to grab a shower and we have a very early start in the morning. I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to post again.

Sets of Three

Once again, this will have to be quick. My tours are moving very quickly now, and even though internet is generally available, there just isn't time to write.

We left Aqaba by ferry the day before yesterday. We could see Jordan, Israel and Egypt by simply turning our heads a few degrees, and once we got moving, we could also see Saudi Arabia. It was a very quick and uneventful crossing and clearing customs in Egypt was a cake-walk. We drove to the town of Dahab, which is a diving centre for tourists on the Red Sea. It is very small but really lovely, with a string of beautifully lit little restaurants and bars lining the shoreline. We had a great dinner, during which my headache came back. After dinner a few of us lounged in our hotel's restaurant on the beach and had a drink and some great conversation.

Yesterday we had a quick drive north of town to the Blue Hole, a beautiful reef and dive spot. Actually, there's not much to look at on shore, but the snorkeling was great. The reef is really beautiful and the fish plentiful and colourful. Unfortunately, many of the tourists are total idiots and spend their time walking across the top of the reef, which of course kills it. I expect the reef only has another five or so good years before it's all but dead.

We returned to Dahab and spent a few hours shopping and hanging out around the cute seaside town. We then hopped a bus and rode for a couple of hours to St. Katharine's where we had dinner in our hotel. There's really nothing there except a few hotels - no town to speak of. Our hotel was by far the nicest of the trip and we all pretended that we were travelling in style. We were wakened at 2:30 AM and bundled onto the bus which dropped us at St. Katherine's monastery. We climbed to the top of Mt. Sinai and were huddled at the top for the sunrise. It was a beautiful night for a walk - the sky was clear and the stars were out in full-force. It was quite cold, especially at the summit where the wind was quite strong. There were a couple of tea-houses along the seven kilometre route so we could warm up along the way. Camel blankets were also available for rent at the top, which we all took advantage of. The sunrise was really beautiful and well worth the climb. We descended by the steeper route which is a series of stairs, rather that the gentle camel track that we took up. We were unable to visit the monastery as it was closed to the public, but I understand that the burning bush has been extinguished anyway, so I guess we didn't miss much. Actually, there is still a bush growing on the grounds which is supposed to be a descendant of the original. There is apparently quite a spectacular library there, which would have been nice to see, but after a book was borrowed and subsequently sold, nobody is allowed in anymore.

After breakfast and a very welcome hot shower, we boarded the bus for Cairo. It was a rather drab drive, but it was very cool to take a tunnel under the Suez canal. Once in Cairo I left my tour group and went to join my new group for my tour of the Nile. Speaking of which, I have a meeting with them in 10 minutes so must sign off. I will continue to be very busy over the next week so posts may be sporadic.

Summary: In the last month I swam in the Med, Dead and Red seas, and stayed in Europe, Asia and Africa. How's that for globetrotting?

By the way...am feeling much better but am a little bit sniffly.

Busy at the Red Sea

Sorry I haven't been in touch and I don't have time to write now. I'm just leaving Dahab after a day of snorkling in the Red Sea and will be climbing Mt. Sinai in about 9 hours. No internet at St. Katherine's so will have to wait until Cairo to blog (possibly late tomorrow or the day after).

All is well and am having a blast. Weather is finally warm.