Posts/Entries
All posts/entries, for now, from over two decades of global travel. And a few colourful tags, too.
Suez Canal, Egypt
The fact that Suez is about half way between Alexandria, where we just came from, and Dahab in Sinai, where we're headed, is convenient because we both wanted to come here to do a spot of marine train spotting. Yes, for some reason the thought of sitting by the Suez...
Alexandria, Egypt
Alexandria, Egypt's second city, is a true waterfront city. When Alexander the Great wrested Egypt from the Persian empire in 332 BC at the age of 25, he decided against Memphis, the ancient capital, in favour of building a new city linked by sea to his Macedonian...
El Alamein, Egypt
As soon as we got off the 3 hour bus from Cairo in Alexandria's bus station this afternoon we set about chartering a taxi to take us the 106 kilometres west along the northern Egyptian coast into the desert of El Alamein. Our guidebook says the El Alamein War Museum...
Cairo, Egypt
A pictorial look at Cairo, Egypt, the greatest city in the Islamic world and the capital of the world’s most populous Arab country.
Giza, Egypt
Today we paid a visit to the Cairo suburb of Giza to see those ultimate monuments of antiquity, and arguably the most famous monuments in the world, the Great Pyramids of the Giza Plateau. All things dread time, but time dreads the...
Luxor, Egypt
It's hard to know what to say about Luxor in Upper (southern) Egypt's Nile Valley. It's the latest location on this my first trip to Egypt that seems happy to live the complacent life, happy to grab, grab, grab all it can, happy to live for today on the back of the...
Cairo, Egypt || An Introduction
I'm finally getting use out of the Lonely Planet Middle East guidebook I bought way back when. I've flipped it open countless times since but when I flipped it open a few days ago in my hotel room here in Cairo it actually meant something. That was shortly after...
Dubai, United Arab Emirates (2008)
Dubai, the jewel of the Arab world, is one of the 7 emirates that make up the oil-rich Persian Gulf country of The United Arab Emirates (UAE). The tiny emirate, twice the size of London, is a kingdom built on the profits of its oil reserves and so one shouldn't be...
Muscat, Oman (2008)
I won't say too much about our flight(s) from Mumbai to Muscat apart from the fact that they required us to get out of bed at 4:00 a.m. yesterday morning, the earliest we've dragged ourselves out of any bed thus far. Although the flights themselves were relatively...
Mumbai (Bombay), India
It is true that travelers tend to regard time spent in Mumbai, in the Indian state of Maharashtra, as a rite of passage to be survived rather than savored. And it is also true that you need more than the one day we had at our disposal in the city in order to fully...
Palolem Beach, Goa, India
It's April 3, 2008. We've just left Palolem Beach in Goa, India, after a rather relaxing & rather eventful 6 night stay. We didn't intend to spend 6 nights doing nothing here. It just happened and we rolled with it. This is how it went....
The Taj Mahal, Agra, India (2008)
It´s still 750 rupees to get into the Taj Mahal, just like it was 5-and-a-half years ago. That´s over €12, a lot of money in India. My guidebook calls the price `galling´ (good word) but it does go on to say that most foreigners don´t actually mind paying the fee once...
Chandigarh, Punjab, India
I'm in a place called Chandigarh, the capital city of the Punjab region of India, northwest of Delhi. Yep, we're definitely still in India, even if this place doesn't look or feel like the India we've spent the last 8 days dealing with. We got here yesterday morning...
Delhi, India (2008)
It seems to be all about timing here in Delhi. Some good timing, some bad/unfortunate timing. The unfortunate timing list reads as follows: · Pat waited until he got to Delhi to get sick, meaning we've had to stay near a toilet, in case of 'emergencies', whenever we...