BenkyonoBen

Pirates and zombies

2012-02-03T07:44:00.001+09:00

Is that a 3 ton pirate ship in your backyard? Yes. Yes it is.

More zombies than you could shake a cricket bat at.

Reunions!

2012-01-17T02:15:00.000+09:00

So many people to see, so much time to see them in. How did we manage to make it seem difficult? I don't seem to have a single picture with James, Jonny, Bano, Emma or Iain in it either, which sucks.

Chris' birthday party in Canterbury, which was like hey, all the guys! And all their girlfriends and wives!

Neal and Charlotte in Deal.

Simon and Sam in Cambridge.

The newly wed and newly preggers Georgia and Paul in their Whitstable home. Paul isn't pregnant though, he just has that glow.

Dan and Boti in some fancy gardens near their plush London pad.

Naritaka, in a surprise visit to London.

A horrible picture of Kieran, just because.

Sian, in a rare smiling at the camera moment!

Totally failed to meet Hannah, Dougs, Sue and a bunch of other people because we are crap. No excuses, we suck. Oh well, it's not like that was our only chance in about ten years was it? Oh, yes, it was. Bugger.

And then we spent 6 months in the UK.

2012-01-17T01:28:00.000+09:00

I have no cultural commentary or observations to make here.

I was going to end the post there, but I suppose I should write a summary for posterity. Or maybe just upload pictures. Or even both, now that would be something.

Hozumi was nearly denied access to the country, as if she were some jobless vagrant. Oh wait, we are jobless vagrants.

We had fish and chips like any good UK tourist.

Skinny dad and skinny Hozumi. Dad is still skinny, Hozumi less so after 6 months of UK food!

Faversham is still old. Older.

Dover Castle has a bigger cannon than you.

Sian is a full grown personality and not a baby anymore. How time flies.

In 6 whole months I don't think I got a single nice photo of mum, so this one will have to suffice.

These 'grannies on boom-boxes' were hilarious, unexpected and awesome.

Only in the UK...

In fact, the Faversham Hop Festival as a whole was surprisingly not bad. Good times in the home town, unthinkable!

You know what, I'm going to have to do a few more posts on the UK. It'd be rude not to.

Tel Aviv and back, back in the U.K.K.K.

2012-01-17T00:39:00.000+09:00

That title seems dated and implies the UK is horribly racist. Perhaps I should have thought of a better one, but it is kind of catchy.

In Tel Aviv we met, for the first time, a Couchsurfer who had previously stayed at our place in Japan! Ketty and her sister took us in, but Ketty's husband was doing his doctor bit for the army in exchange for his tuition fees. That night we had our first experience of 'Western' sushi, very fancy, with all kinds of avocado and sweet potato wraps, sandwich-like layers and even teriyaki and spicy mayonnaise as dips! Very weird. Not as fresh or tasty, and there's no way each member of staff there slaved away for ~10 years as an apprentice to an overbearing 店長 to get that obsessive Japanese level of perfectionism, but they compensated with variety and colour.

Ketty told us how when she asked for teriyaki sauce in a Japanese sushi restaurant she instigated a confused huddle in the kitchen. Eventually a bemused waitress came out with a freshly-made sauce and asked hesitantly if that was really what Ketty had asked for?

We took a slightly strange tour of Tel Aviv university's sculpture and architecture, led by an old French lady with a Canadian woman the only other visitor.

Nanuchka for dinner, fantastic Georgian food.

The second free Tel Aviv tour was an evening walk led by a very entertaining bald guy who had all sorts of great stories to tell that I've completely forgotten.

The third and last free tour we took was a huge group led by a very ineffectual guide who managed to make the beautiful old town of Jaffa quite boring. The only good point was free entry to an art gallery home full of twisted metal sculptures and re-purposed items.

So, including Yuval's place we stayed at seven different people's places over 24 days, only staying for one night in one hostel. All that with no pre-planning, no organisation and a very haphazard schedule. Is Israel the most Couchsurfing-friendly country in the world? It certainly has been for us. In fact Israel spoiled us so badly that our half-arsed attempts to Couchsurf elsewhere have often lacked the necessary rigour and forward-planning.

In short, Israel is awesome because of the people that live there. Definitely one of my (our) favourite places in the world.

Haifa, Hadas and Sruli

2012-01-11T08:37:00.001+09:00

Our penultimate stop in Israel was an idyllic ten days at Hahotrim kibbutz with the wonderful Hadas and Sruli. The kibbutz isn't really a kibbutz so much any more, at least not in the traditional sense, with most of the people there working outside the kibbutz and just pooling some money for communal resources.

Highlights:

Hozumi getting acupunctured by Hadas in an attempt to cure her cold. Apparently the needles don't hurt but the burning does.

Danny the hyper-racist Russian next-door neighbour who claimed to hate everybody equally but was clearly biased in all the ways you'd expect. We spent a couple of days sightseeing with him, learning about all the different varieties of thieves, cheats and stupid people he'd encountered in his lifetime.

The Bahá'í gardens were quite beautiful, and I like the idea of a garden to represent a religion's most holy place instead of yet another monolithic structure. Their teachings seem pretty sound too, given that it is a religion, with all the associated baggage.

The Rosh Hanikra grottoes showed the sea at its most elemental. Pounding, crashing, spraying, sluicing awesome waves that carved out some beautiful shapes in the rock. The British-built railway through the rocks used to transport military material and later to exchange captives finally got blown up by Israeli soldiers in a covert operation right under the Brits' noses to eliminate a possible invasion route by Lebanon.

Cycling with Sruli, my first experience with a suspension lockout. Far from my first with gravel burn. Good fun.

Hiking with Hadas and learning about her hitch-hiking experiences as a teen. The guy who kept a mouse in his afro and Hadas' technique for weeding out suspicious would-be lift-givers: Ask to be taken to a place that doesn't exist, which in itself was a pun for 'non-existent-place'.

The beach.

A surprise visit from Hadal and Asaf.

Visiting the parents! Sruli's mum cooked up a feast, some of the best food we had all year.

Omar and Ein Hod, the artist's village full of sculptures. Homebrew stout and ale.

Eventually we had to say goodbye, as Sruli went off to his army reserve training and we decided to make Tel Aviv our last stop in Israel before, bizarrely, flying to England. All the overland routes to Turkey were blocked to us after we got Israeli stamps in our passports. The 'peace' flotilla fracas meant that we couldn't find any ferries to Cyprus at the time and a search for flights revealed that the cheapest destinations were England and Germany, with just-next-door Turkey being twice the price. So in the end England was an easy choice, what with me not having visited for eight years and some family reunions being way overdue.

Yed Vashem

2011-12-12T06:26:00.001+09:00

6/9

The last place we visited before heading North was Yed Vashem, the holocaust memorial. Almost as powerful as the first time I visited, and like then there just wasn't enough time to take it all in.

Most of the information is housed in this weird triangular prism.

The video testimonies are incredible, and I'll record a few things said that stood out for me.

One guy resolved never to make the same mistake again, the mistake of being 'moral', deciding not to take the bread crust hidden under his father's mattress while his father still clung to life. Next time he saw his father's corpse the crust was long gone.

The same guy spoke of fighting for the safer mid-rank positions in the morning line-up, as they knew the possibility of being singled out and killed for some imagined infraction was higher at the edges.

The same guy again spoke of being forced to stand between electric fences for eight hours in sub-zero temperatures after being caught wearing sack-cloth under his issued shirt.

The woman and man who survived the killing-pits, fainting and being overlooked under the mass of bodies, after a long time buried in corpses she made to move, but his hand stalled her and probably saved her life.

The man employed to drag the bodies from the smoke chambers to the pits, via the 'dentists' who searched for gold fillings. The corpses often gave long sighs as they were pulled out.

I had forgotten, or not really noticed, how reviled and persecuted the Jews have been throughout the ages, long before Nazism and virtually world-wide. So many countries denied access to the flood of people fleeing Germany and countries they invaded.

6,000,000 dead, mostly from Poland.

The other sites at Yed Vashem I hadn't seen before. The children's memorial was very dark and quite effective, with 1,000s of reflected candles like stars and the names of all the known children spoken on a very slow loop as you walk through half-blind.

Jerusalem quartered and layered.

2011-12-12T05:32:00.001+09:00

6/4 - 6/10

I tried to get a bunch of representative shots of the old city we spent so much time wandering around. The Jewish quarter seems to have more new buildings up and has the massive square by the wall as a focal point. The Muslim quarter is vibrant, noisy and full of activity, with the off-limits to us golden dome as it's focus. The Christian quarter is completely deserted as apparently lots of rich Christians around the world have bought property there but rarely visit.

Jerusalem has so many layers! This was never more apparent to us than when we took the tour of the Western Wall tunnels. The part of the wall that you can see is only the top half of the original:

This is the lower half, along with a ridiculously huge foundation stone:

So right below your feet as you walk around the city are the buildings, roads and structures that were built ~700 years ago. Go underground, as we did, and you can even see the excavations of the buildings that were built ~2000 years ago, directly underneath the 700 year old tunnels!

The tunnels lead to an underground waterway and cistern.

In order to make the tour a circuit, instead of having people double-back down the narrow tunnels, an exit was made at the other end... into the Muslim quarter. During the riots that followed about 80 people died.

Two escorts met us as we left to shepherd us back to the Western wall and the tour start point. I asked our guide why this was necessary and he said that at the end of one tour he had been pelted with stones before getting back to the safety of the Jewish quarter. The escorts were for him, not us.

Jerusalem

2011-10-25T23:02:00.000+09:00

6/2 - 6/10

Our first night in Jerusalem we spent in the Muslim quarter of the old city in a really grotty room in a really grotty hostel. Watching the owner painfully shuffling up the steps to show us the room was... painful. We had a beautiful view through wire mesh though.

Went to Lina's for humus, it wasn't as good as I remembered.

Yair, our first couchsurfing host in Jerusalem, was really friendly and cooked us a turkey neck stew one night that was a first for us. Like Assaf and Hadar he insisted we take his bed while he slept on the couch. Our second host, Guy, lived with a few other students and by sheer coincidence in the house across the alley. We moved from number 11 to number 12! Our third host, Gaal, lived in a tower block with a view of the Knesset. He really loved Japan. Even though Jerusalem is such a major tourist destination it was quite easy to find people willing to host us.

Turkey neck soup at Yair's.

A blogging moment at Guy's.

Falafel with Gaal.

So many things we saw and did in Jerusalem, but it's all about religion. Religious buildings, religious history and of course crazy religious people. We heard a lot about orthodox Jews from secular Israelis: The ultra-orthodox don't work or do military service but do receive tax money to support their huge families. They are poor and have to live simply as the government dole is often their only source of income, but they are viewed as parasites by many of the tax-paying populace. It's the orthodox influence that shuts down public transport and blocks certain roads on Saturdays, and their constant struggle to expand their domain and restrict Sabbath activities causes a lot of friction with other communities. One day as we walked back from our trip to the Muslim markets we saw a mob of furry-hatted black-clad thugs blocking an intersection, chanting 'shobbos' in a menacing baritone and lobbing water bombs at taxis and cars until they were forced to make a U-turn and escape. While aware that the situation was ugly and we were guilty of both handling money and using electronics on their holy day I couldn't resist taking a few pictures of the scene while they were distracted by an incoming taxi. There were about triple the number of people off to the left of this photo.

The mix of religions and cultures, all colliding and yet very definitely segregated, makes Jerusalem a uniquely fascinating place. One example that springs to mind is when we set off on a Saturday morning to buy some vegetables, and our hosts said 'wait, the market is closed, it's the Sabbath, you can't buy anything there', to which we replied 'oh, don't worry, we prefer the Muslim markets near Damascus gate, they're much cheaper', at which point they did a double-take. They had never, ever been to the cheaper, nicer market a kilometre down the road because the Jews shop in the Jewish districts and the Muslims in the Muslim district... probably with good reason. More on the actual sights we saw next post.

This sign is so wrong, and yet obviously necessary.

Lots of busy Christians around too, and nowhere more so than in the church of the holy sepulchre. A never-ending mass of people bowing to touch the slab where Christ's body was supposedly washed, and queuing to enter the sepulchre itself.

Playing dead in the Dead Sea

2011-10-25T19:57:00.000+09:00

6/2

Back to the Dead Sea. Not so weird this time, the sky and horizon seemed to be in the right place, the water wasn't completely still and there were lots of other people around. Still amazing though.

To the desert! Again! But in Israel!

2011-10-16T23:51:00.001+09:00

5/30 - 6/1

Couchsurfing requests sent and replies received we set off to the bus station. Not a hundred metres out the door we're hailed by a guy with a van who's going to the border and will take us there for about the same price as the bus. Bargain!

Tons of deserted beach resorts, from the grand to the straw huts. Israeli tourists must be thin on the ground.

The Egyptian border was slow, lazy and almost unmanned, you could walk straight through and some people did, only to realise they needed exit stamps and come back looking for some staff. The Israeli side was as organised as you'd expect with lots of questions for us, but friendly enough. We shared a taxi with a bossy Canadian woman and a very upright Japanese guy who was studying kosher food.

No-one wanted Egyptian pounds, everyone being worried that the Egyptian economy could crash at any time, so we got a crap 2:1 rate for shekels in order to pay the taxi driver, who kindly left the meter running while we ran around looking for a decent exchange rate.

'Welcome to Israel', with the taxi driver before the

bossy Canadian turned him into a tetchy bastard.

The only other people on the bus were teenage soldiers with their big guns. The rich have cars, the poor hitch-hike and the soldiers use buses. A friend of mine doing her stint in the army once got picked up by the military police when hitch-hiking, the reasoning being hitch-hiking soliders are easy targets for anti-Israel types. Doesn't stop soldiers hitching, of course, but that might explain why everyone on the bus was enlisted.

The view from the bus stop when we got off wasn't very promising.

We met Assaf and Hadar at their place on midreshet Ben Gurion, a university dedicated to desert and environmental studies, a kibbutz and a memorial for their much-loved Prime Minister. I'd been here before in 2005, on my last visit to Israel. They insisted we take their bed and they the couch, despite our protests. Assaf never stopped yoga-ing, climbing and chin-upping, a really healthy and active guy.

Hadar, Assaf and friend. Love the way people just drop by

unannounced and stay for dinner. Nice community.

Ben Gurion's memorial, with the desert views he loved.

The Ein Avdat national park starts at the end of that valley.
About a 3km walk.

Ein Avdat begins.

Lots of brash young Americans being guided around the park so we overheard one talk about erosion and a later one about the presence of tropical trees indicating a much greener period in a previous age.

Interesting strata.

View from one of the caves that Byzantine

monks lived in, hauling up water from below.

These guys are the Israel Nature and Parks Authority's

symbol and mascot.

From Ein Avdat we walked along a dry riverbed all the way to Avdat, another national park but this one a historic city on the incense route from South Arabia to the Mediterranean, Petra to Gaza. This place had a little visitor centre with an introductory video and kind lady who was very concerned about our water intake. Actually everyone we met in Israel seemed concerned about our water intake, I suppose dehydrated tourists are a regular problem. Anyway, Avdat, an important stopping point for the incense trade from the 7th century BCE (or BC, take your pick) up until the Romans started using sea routes in the 1st century (CE/AD) to bypass the ridiculous number of middlemen taking their cut from every caravan. Agriculture and wine pressing took over from trade until an earthquake trashed the place in the 7th century.

On the approach to Avdat.

The 3rd century CE bathhouse was quite advanced,

with ceramic heating tubes under the floor.

The rebuilt arches were a nice touch. The caves behind here

refreshingly cool.

I think our camera must have died around here, because we don't have any pictures of the city itself. Nice place though, as this image of the temple complex shows.

We were totally knackered after all that hiking so we hitched back to the midreshet. Hozumi's first time hitching so she was very nervous, but we were picked up by a just-married woman in a beat-up car who's husband was bedridden on their honeymoon. Hozumi was very relieved.

The party that evening demonstrated that post-graduate parties in the middle of the desert aren't that much different from undergraduate parties in Coventry, there's just less puke.

Hiking the next day was really weird. I'd done the hike 6 years ago, but even while we were walking it I couldn't remember anything of the 8 hour long slog through the mountains. Only three images, like photos, were burnt into my brain and the rest I'd edited out completely. I'm guessing that that was because those three images were photos I'd taken and I only remembered them because of the visual reinforcement.

The first image was of the initial ascent from the valley.

The second was this beautiful white wave-form rock face.

The third was about 90 degrees to the right of this, of a ledge

from which guys were jumping into the pool.

The last two sites were pretty much the only reason to make the hike, so that could be another reason for my selective memory. No, that's not entirely fair, there were some other views to be had:

The spring was deep and freezing. Very refreshing.

I can't believe I forgot to mention Assaf and Hadar's cooking. It was fantastic, and just what we needed to keep us going for the long hikes.

A wonderful return to a wonderful place, and a great introduction to Israel.

Dahab and diving. Way too many pictures.

2011-10-09T03:50:00.001+09:00

5/18 - 5/29

Overnight bus to Dahab, tickets sold to us by the surliest and most unpleasant man in Egypt.

Again we were the only foreigners getting off the bus at Dahab. Far from the only tourists in town though, I suppose most people came from Cairo or Israel. We got a lift into town from a tout, but the hotel he was touting was pretty grim so I decided to have a look around.

Hotel hunting was interesting. The place I finally settled on fronted onto the sea, had modern air-conditioning, a TV and fresh water - a rarity in Dahab. The owner said he'd been at the bus station with the other touts, but had decided not to even bother approaching us as we looked... what was it? Tired? Frazzled? Like cheapskates? I don't remember. He also said he'd subsequently seen me going from hotel to hotel and knew I was going to be a hard sell. He actually went on for ages in a similar vein, but we got a single room at a fraction of his usual rates so it worked out well for us in the end.

According to the Japanese guys we met there, Dahab is said to be a place where people 'sink' (沈没), meaning, come to visit and end up staying much longer than they expected, or never leaving at all! Indeed, we seriously considered a quick trip to Sharm El-Sheikh or Cairo just to extend our visa and our stay, but eventually decided to move on when Hozumi expressed an interest in visiting the Dead Sea.

Hozumi did a try dive after some persuading and I did a check dive since it had been about ten years since my last one. Very busy dive spot called 'the Lighthouse', but still in good condition. Beautiful coral wall.

Hozumi enjoyed the dive, but didn't feel like getting qualified. I decided to go on three boat dives near the famous Thistlegorm wreck.

A 3am start, dozed on the minibus to Sharm El-Sheikh. Met Shuji, three other young Japanese, Luisa and Ivan on the boat. Most of the other divers were fat Germans who kept to themselves. It was Shuji's first ever post-certificate dive so I got assigned as his buddy, being the only person who could efficiently translate for him. This turned out to be very lucky indeed as he had borrowed a dive camera from his instructor so I got my first ever underwater photos!

Japanese threesome.

Ivan, Luisa, Shuji and me, post-dive.

Fat Germans.

The first dive we circled around the wreck. It's a WWII wreck, big and deep. There were strong currents, very little silt, but visibility wasn't as good as it usually is. Highlights were the ammo plaque that had been cleaned off, showing the date: 1929, the huge propeller at the stern and the winching mechanism and tank car on the foredeck. Shuji expended too much energy trying to take photos and ended up sucking down all his air and breathing from the dive master's tank for most of the dive. He was acutely embarrassed and actually got quite a scolding from the dive master. Fortunately he handed off the camera to Ivan, so we had great pictures and no air problems for the last two dives.

The second dive through the interior was quite challenging, with narrow passageways, doorways and low ceilings. Tons of old bikes, trucks and jeeps. Fascinating to see objects that I know the real size of, as usually everything looks bigger and closer than it really is - those tiny old 1920s bikes looked huge!

Unfortunately, without fancy lighting equipment underwater photos all turn out blue and yellow, so you get lots and lots of blue photos. This is probably the only visual record of diving I will ever have though, so I'm going to post a whole heap of pictures.

Gun.

The captain's bathtub.

We surfaced at someone else's boat, so they kindly gave us a lift back to ours.

The last dive was the best, at the famous Yolande/Shark reef at a shallower depth with better visibility. Ivan played with the record function so I'm going to try and embed a video or two here too.

A big ol' turtle.

A moray eel on the move - quite rare to see these guys go.

A lot of life.

The turtle.

In full colour, this looked like a cross between sledge-hammered Student Union toilets and the insides of the fridge from that Cowboy Bebop episode.

Luisa takes a dump.

Underwater ballet.

Going through a mini coral 'cave'. I'm in front, then Shuji, then Ivan filming.

I got in one more dive at Dahab, at the Blue Hole, but it wasn't very exciting. I think our Dive Master was hungover and/or bored. Hozumi probably saw a lot more just by snorkelling around the area. The sheer number of camels we saw on our way back surprised me. At its peak Dahab must be a very busy place.

We moved away from our original hotel (Jasmine) to the place Ivan and Luisa recommended (Yasmina), it was a bit cheaper, had worse air-conditioning, no TV and salt-water showers, but it was naturally cooler, had a pool, a fridge and no "Come, eat! Why don't you eat at our restaurant?" hassle. At 45 EGP a night we could have stayed a long time indeed...

Our last adventure in Dahab was some snorkelling at 'The Islands'. A long walk in the heat, past abandoned and lonely-looking beach-hut resorts and unfinished constructions. When we got there I found my mask-strap was so rotten it snapped as soon as I tried to put it on. Luckily a local businessman got another guy with a box of masks for rent to loan us one for free. The coral and fish on display were really stunning, perhaps the best I've ever seen. Towering islands of coral with mazey channels between them. Hozumi described the experience as 'flying over different world', which I like. One massive shoal of brown fish displaying occasional dazzling silver flashes is still quite vivid in my memory. Glittery tiny crystal fish and big colourful fish and... I really should remember some of the marine taxonomy I've learnt, but I never do. The swim back to shore was tricky, over a very shallow reef table covered in sea urchins and sea cucumbers.

When we got out, Hozumi's hair did this crazy static thing. Even viewing it at full resolution doesn't really do it justice, it was really cool.

Luxor, not the one in Las Vegas

2011-10-07T02:11:00.001+09:00

5/12 - 5/18

You know the first four entries returned for Google on Luxor are for Las Vegas? In fact, it's only thanks to Wikipedia, Wikitravel and touregypt.net that Luxor is on the first page at all.

Tourists aren't allowed to take any trains from Cairo to Luxor except for the luxury night train, priced in dollars. The people we asked wouldn't sell foreigners tickets in advance for any other trains. We decided to ignore the restriction and boarded the 1st class daytime train without tickets. No-one batted an eyelid, and we bought a scrap of paper with some illegible scrawl on it from the conductor without any trouble.

Many hours later we only got off at the right stop by pure chance as we were thinking of buying food or water from the station. We were immediately accosted by a bunch of hotel touts since we were the only foreigners on the platform. One seemed a little more honest than the others and a little more closely affiliated with the hotel he was touting so we took advantage of the lift he offered.

Lots of desperate touts and horse-and-carriage drivers in Luxor, hit hard by the political turmoil.

The missing obelisk at Luxor temple is the very one we saw the Place de la Concorde in Paris about two years ago. Apparently both obelisks were gifted to France by an Albanian/Ottoman/opportunist empire builder in 1829 just after the short-lived French occupation, but to us the empty plinth next to its mighty neighbour seemed like the most striking example of European theft we've ever seen. The remaining obelisk just looks so lonely!

The sphinx-lined road is said to have continued all the way to Karnak, a few kilometres North. The alley is quite far below modern Luxor though, so only visible where it's been excavated.

Our camera doesn't take night-time photos very well, but this is a shot of the Roman(?) ruins to the side of the temple.

Karnak was really awe-inspiring. We got there so early that even the huge square at the entrance was totally deserted and we had the place almost to ourselves for an hour.

The great hypostyle hall lived up to its name. The massive pillars covering 5500 square metres represented a papyrus swamp, and I can only imagine what it looked like during the annual flood, fully roofed and lit only by torches... Did coracles ferry people amongst the pillars?

The tallest obelisk in Egypt survives here, thanks to Hatshepsut's stepson walling in the obelisks erected by her in an attempt to erase her from history and thereby, ironically, preserving them.

The tip of a fallen obelisk gave us a good perspective on just how large these things are.

The temple of Khonsu featured some red, blue and white striping that looked pretty tacky to us with our jaded modern sensibilities, but I'm sure it was the height of fashion 3400 years ago. It even had some graffiti for that hip Roman touch.

I like maps. The numbers represent roughly where each of the Karnak photos above were taken.

To explore the West bank we haggled and shopped around Luxor until we arranged a driver for a day named Mohammed. On the day itself, after crossing the Nile, it turned out he wasn't actually planning on driving and handed us over to another guy who couldn't speak a word of English. I suppose we got what we paid for, even if a later stop 'for tea' turned out to be a closed-door sales pitch opportunity for a stone carving studio. At the end of the day we were rejoined by a despondent Mohammed who had failed to drum up any further custom. "Business is slow" he said, while pitching boat tours and other sights.

The Valley of Kings. One ticket gets you into three tombs, of which about half are open at any given time. With little information to go on we picked Ramses IX, Merenptah and Ramses III.

Ramses IX's tomb: Wide, short, well preserved.

Merenptah's tomb: Long tunnel, pit, fake burial chamber, flood damaged but featuring a granite sarcophagus.

Ramses III's tomb was the most impressive, beautifully preserved with a wide variety of inscriptions including blind harpists, pottery tribute and all the usual suspects (gods).

While we were looking around a young, amiable guy latched onto us and wouldn't leave us alone. Eventually he took it upon himself to 'lead' us up the valley side for a view. In other words as soon as we started walking up the valley side he walked ahead and chatted away as if he were guiding us. Before we got to the top he hurried back to us, asked for baksheesh, accepted a bit of loose change most Egyptians would sneer at and ran off. Mystified, we kept walking until we rounded a corner and saw the squad of soldiers about 100 metres away who were walking towards us. He'd seen them before they saw him and had decided to cut his losses and scarper. Thinking of the 'off-limits' signs we'd passed earlier we rather nervously continued along the path until the boss soldier hailed us. We could tell he was the boss because his fatigues were a fresher shade of khaki, he wasn't wearing a cap or carrying a bolt-action rifle and he was wearing aviator shades. He asked us what on earth we were doing up there since there was nothing to see and no reason to be there. He was friendly enough though, and perhaps even enjoyed the chance to show off his English in front of the rank-and-file. To our surprise he made no attempt to stop us and we went on our way and they on theirs.

We did actually get a great view of the West bank and the Nile, along with the Habu and Ramesseum temples.

The Habu temple featured vivid inscriptions depicting scenes such as scribes counting piles of hands and penises from defeated soldiers. Why both?

The Hatshepsut mortuary temple reminded me of Serious Sam (sorry!).

At the Valley of the Queens we were treated to some low-grade scrounging. The ticket vendor effusively praised me as a gentleman while forcing me to ask rather awkwardly several times for the remaining change he owed me in ever smaller increments. Let me clarify, as I don't think this has happened to me before. The two tickets were 70 EGP, I think I handed over a 200 EGP note. He gave me 100 EGP and told me what a gentleman I was. I stood there for some time until I realised he wasn't planning on giving me the remainder, so I asked for the change and he handed over a 20 and told me what a gentleman I was and how lovely my wife is and that we should enjoy Titi's tomb. He looked at me, I looked at him, the moment stretched on, so I asked if we could please have the remaining 10. He handed it over and asked if we had perhaps a pen we could give him...?

Anyway, Khaemwaset, Ramses III's son, had a tomb covered with inscriptions of him being introduced to all the gods by his father. Titi may have been one of Ramses III's wives. Amunherkhepshef was another of Ramses III's 13 sons and had the best preserved and most vivid tomb of all that we saw, and featured a mummified foetus.

On the way back we saw the big ol' Colossi of Memnon.

We forgot to take the camera with us.

On our last day in Luxor the a guy who seemed to always hang around in the hotel smoking sheesha offered to take us around town to buy a netbook for Hozumi. Me being the suspicious guy that I am I established up front that we didn't need a lift on his motorbike and would happily walk if it was money he was after. We were reassured that by taking us he could curry some favour with a shop owner and perhaps get a discount on future purchases or something. Fair enough, thinks I, and what followed was an hour or so of shuttling about town to dusty little shops that had nothing we could use. Finally he took us to the big, modern store which we had wanted to go to from the start. A waste of all our time, and of course he demanded money at the end of it.

I seem to have spent most of this blog writing about money and how stingy I am but that not really the impression I want to give. It's just quite interesting to me how different people react to a 'rich' foreign couple and how my own expectations of transactions should work often clashes with the local norms, so it's something I give a lot of space to. The photos will have to do a lot of the work when it comes to recording the good times we've had, as there's only so many times and ways I can write 'this place was beautiful'. Still, Luxor? Beautiful.

To the desert!

2011-09-16T06:51:00.000+09:00

5/9 - 5/11

We barely made it to the bus on time, running through the streets after we were given a new and distant departure point just as we were leaving the hotel.

The Pyramids in perspective

The first night we spent at the Badr Safari Camp with its African-style huts, panoramic view and flies.

In the evening two Bedouin guys drove us out to an oasis where they shared some hashish. They had a funny little set-up with the spliff impaled on a stick and held between two little shot glasses. Whenever the glasses were full of smoke they opened them a crack and sucked it out. I guess it was pretty efficient, with little 'lost' smoke? After a little sightseeing the more stoned of the two turned round in the jeep and said

"Are you OK?"
"Yeah, we're good."
"I am not OK. I need some tea!"

So we went to a hot spring, way too hot to do anything other than dip our feet in, and sat around as a few other guys appeared from nowhere, a fire was lit and the tea was boiled. Bedouin tea is even sweeter than regular Egyptian tea, which is pretty damn sweet, and really minty.

The tea drunk and the munchies satisfied we watched the sun go down and headed back to camp for dinner.

The next day we went for a spin on a huge sand dune, then headed into the 'black' desert, where every peak has its own personal shadow.

We then headed to a cool, natural spring bath that we shared with a bunch of French tourists. Very refreshing.

Apparently a couple were supposed to join us for the afternoon and we waited around until two o'clock, but the couple became three and since six wouldn't fit in the jeep and the eight-seater had broken down some time last night we had the jeep to ourselves. The swarthy little guy who was our guide for the day was hilarious. We'd been waiting in the inn for a bit and he just flat out asked me how many times a I can go a night, then how long for, "20 minutes? 10? 5? 6? 7?", then how many times a week. He laughed at all my answers then proudly announces that he, or 'Bedouin men' can go 3-4 times a night with a European girl, 10 times after smoking hashish and for 30 minutes a pop. That's 5 hours a night, or 35 a week by my reckoning. He also passed me his mobile and asked me to text a girl from the Netherlands that he'd slept with on one of his desert tours.

"What should I write?"
"Anything."
"No really, what do you want to say?"
"You know, anything."
"Er, OK."

The inn was naturally cooled.

Anyway, after spending so long waiting for the couple that never showed up, he was in a hurry so we wolfed down some lunch and off we went to the 'white' desert. First impressions were uninspiring, with a sort of dusty white look in places and a 'crystal mountain' that was neither a mountain nor very crystalline. I expect a steady flow of souvenir-taking tourists achieved the latter. Suddenly we swung off-road, crest a ridge and bam, this amazing vista.

The jeep is waiting for us in the shadow of that central pillar, which gives you an idea of the scale of the place.

After a while here we headed off to the 'old' white desert, which had presumably become popular before the 'new' white desert that we had just enjoyed. Our 'guide' obviously loved driving, in much the same way that our Giza 'guide' loved horse-riding. He was never happier than when was slewing the car around and tearing across the desert, but whenever we stopped he basically said we could get out of the car 'if you like' and look around 'as you like'. No mention of sights, names, or even a suggested direction to explore if we left the car, and he of course had the common sense to stay parked in the shade. Luckily we did stumble across some very picturesque spots, though in the weird mushroom-y landscape I suspect there were no shortage of them around.

He picked a spot and set up our camp for the night. Some rugs, two screens and a table. Another driver and a Netherlander came by from a nearby camp and our driver suddenly and dramatically perked up. Hashish, bread, chicken, beer, jerry-can drumming and good cheer made for an excellent evening. The desert foxes, sunset, and utterly still, silent and insect-free environment made for a perfect night.

Our final day in the desert I saw the sun come up. Wonderful private moment. Then I went back to sleep. The screen was perfectly positioned to protect us from the morning sun.

This rock is supposed to be something.

This rock is supposed to be something too.

We drove to some guy's house where they all shared a bong without offering it around, then off to some other guy's house where we took a dip and partook of some excellent home cooking. The Egyptian women didn't eat with us.

In conclusion: The desert is awesome.

This marks the end of my first travel diary, dated 2010/8/6 to 2011/5/10.

Talkin' 'bout a revolution

2011-09-16T02:27:00.000+09:00

5/6 - 5/9

Tahrir square was busy every night with lots of flag-waving marching groups, locals out taking pictures and earnest political students. The students I spoke to expected the 'silent' (ignorant) majority to elect an army general for president in 6 months time, and seemed pretty depressed about the prospect, considering army rule a major step back for Egypt and potential disaster. Another guy, a very angry man, bemoaned the average Egyptian's political ignorance and all the unthinking cries of 'freedom!' "These people don't even know the value of the Suez canal!" he cried. Most people there were just really happy and full of hope.

While I was having these political discussions Hozumi was being pulled in several directions: First led away by burqa-wearing women who didn't speak a word of English but who seemed to want to introduce Hozumi to everyone in the square, then by young guys who wanted to pose with flags.

One lazy day while we were recovering from horse-riding a mob of white-uniformed police flooded into the streets below our hotel and the bustling street cafes suddenly cleared out. All the chairs and tables disappeared in an instant and the usually-blocked thoroughfare became clear, for a few hours anyway. I really should have taken a few pictures for comparison, but while we were there the streets in every direction were always packed with tables, chairs and people smoking sheesha. The area was even more popular in the evenings and you could barely move for all the people crammed around every TV, watching the football. The hotel manager told us this exuberant atmosphere was unusual, and the cafe owners were taking advantage of the revolution to ignore the rules for a while, hence the occasional crackdown by the police.

One last thing that caught our eye in Cairo was the fateer. These guys had some mad pancake skills.

Giza, Saqqara and the revolution

2011-09-09T08:40:00.002+09:00

Visiting the Giza pyramids can be a harrowing experience, if the tales of other travellers and guide books are to be believed. It all depends how much you value your money. If you try to go in on foot and haggle for everything you'll have a rough time of it. On the other hand, one Japanese guy we met told us how lucky he'd been that a local had showed him round, treated him to lunch and been really kind, only asking for about 800 pounds. To put that in perspective, that's double what we paid for a driver for the whole day, all the entry tickets, a tour of the Giza pyramids on camels, the Saqqara pyramids on foot, lunch, dinner and an evening horseback ride on the plateau. He was happy at his good fortune though, that's the main thing.

Our driver was a pleasant, laconic bloke by the name of Mohammed. The main thing I remember about him is the story he told us about respect. A rich Indian tourist in his car was being very rude and making unreasonable demands and when Mohammed explained that he had to treat him with respect the Indian guy basically said "shut up, I pay you money, now drive!" Mohammed dumped him out of the car. His employers supported his actions 100%. This kind of summed up a lot of our experiences in Egypt. You could pay people to do stuff for you, and they would, to an extent. You couldn't really complain about their service, even if what they did for you wasn't really what you'd expected or asked for. They would do whatever they did well, and generously, and it was better all round to smile, nod and enjoy the ride.

The stables were interesting. Any animal-lovers would find a lot to complain about there. Actually, one conversation I had with a former stable owner demonstrated how differently affluent westerners can see these things. The story went like this: He thought that many Brits were unfairly demanding and unforgiving. He'd been sending this group of Brits out on horseback and camel-back tours for a day or two, had built up a good rapport and everything was really friendly and going well. The third day some stable-boys were supposed to take round some horses to their hotel but he couldn't personally oversee things. Some crossed wires meant that the stable boys took the horses in poor condition, the bad horses, not the ones marked out for this tourist group (So he claimed. I can certainly see him sending the crap horses on a sure thing and using the good horses for new custom, but anyway) The Brits were furious, swearing black and blue that they'd write up his stable as a terrible place and him a terrible person. What he couldn't understand was why they wouldn't be placated. He'd give them the use of the good horses, apologised profusely for the mistake, even offered them refunds. Those Brits! He cried. Totally unfair. I couldn't bring myself to try and explain where he'd gone wrong.

Anyway, Hozumi's camel was very good-natured, while mine was a foaming-at-the-mouth, choking-on-its-own-tongue, eye-rolling, angry motherfucker with a shaven head and attitude.

Happy

Oo-er!

And we're up.

You can actually see the Great Pyramid in the background there, behind the wall.

There was almost no-one else out on the plateau, and only when we started to near the pyramids did we see any other tourists. Our guide remarked on this a few times "Look, no tourists!" "See! no tourists!" so I'm pretty sure that wasn't usual. Our guide was another interesting character, missing a thumb on his left hand and nearly all the function of his right side, he loved horses, hated camels and rode like he was born to it.

The only other dude out there. He tried to sell us fizzy drinks later.

This was where the tour deviated from what we'd asked for. He told us the Great Pyramid was closed. Why? "The government" he shrugs. This unnecessary lie soured the whole tour slightly, as I hadn't yet learned my lesson about nodding, smiling and going with the flow. Later on when I explained my grievance to the stable boss, at first he said "but the Great Pyramid is just the same as Menkaure's pyramid but more expensive. You didn't want to go there!" Er, yes, we did. "No really, it's just the same, only bigger." Even so. "But there are limited tickets each day" I know. "OK, OK, you can go back in, I'll get you the tickets. You want that?" Eh, no, not really, after 3 hours in the sun bouncing around on camels we're knackered and need a lie down, but thank you for the offer.

We have so many pictures of this area it's not funny. That's not going to stop me posting an excess of them here though.

The Pyramid of Khafre. No touching! Oops.

The Great Pyramid or pyramid of Khufu. We didn't get any closer than this.

The pyramid of Menkaure. Very spartan and simple inside, the steep narrow tunnel leading to the exact centre the main interest.

Moar photos!

The best picture of all was when we borrowed this dude's donkey.

Actually, Hozumi was in more danger from the rabid beast I was riding than I was. I was quite worried it would take a chunk out of her leg at some point.

The Sphinx is a lot longer than I thought it was, and looks directly onto Cairo city proper. Taking us out the long way round the plateau was a very clever bit of mood-setting.

Kushari lunch in the car, onward to Saqqara. The museum there was dedicated to Imhotep, the builder. Some interesting titbits there like how early builders couldn't design columns. Crazy hot walking around.

Note how all the fake columns are actually joined together or to walls.

Taking pictures in the tombs is apparently forbidden. One guy caught us and tried to extort some baksheesh to let it go.

The pyramid itself was under heavy repair. The tunnels beneath it and the maze of tunnels beneath the tombs strictly off-limits, unfortunately. The deep shaft down to those tunnels is something I really should have taken a picture of.

Back to the stables, we dozed, played a bit of Hive. As evening rolled around we got on our horses and round around the Giza necropolis fence. Cantering hurts your balls, galloping takes your breath away. Horses are great.

Kofta dinner and the very cheesy 'Queen's English' narration of the evening light show. Our promised vantage point turned out to be the rather low stable roof, from which we couldn't see or hear much at all, but it didn't look like we were missing anything to be honest.

A fine day out and we were both absolutely shattered. The stable owner and another guy shared the car back to central Cairo with us and they had quite an animated discussion about the revolution, but more of that in the next blog.

Cairo, mosques and citadels

2011-09-09T06:39:00.000+09:00

Walking through town we were again struck by how hospitable and welcoming Egyptians were. So many cries of "welcome!" everywhere we walked. Whenever we told people this later they inevitably said "oh, they only wanted to sell you..." or something similar. That really wasn't the case. Total strangers walking down the street or driving by in cars with absolutely no desire to sell us anything were just shouting greetings as they passed by. It was weird, but nice. Of course we did meet some really persistent touts, and some stall owners would even go as far as grabbing my arm and not letting go for quite some time, but as long as you took it all with a smile it never became wearing.

We came across two giant mosques that I first mistook for the citadel we were looking for. Massive crenellated walls, imposing structures.

The first was all soaring arches and high ceiling, dark and quiet. Quite beautiful. A robed guy called us over and led us through several locked doors to various ornate tombs. He seemed very scornful of the tip we left him.

The second was equally large, more famous but not as impressive to my untrained eye. It featured a large open courtyard and four adjoining prayer/teaching spaces.

Koshari lunch, cheap and filling. I just noticed I spelt that differently from my last blog. There's no 'correct' English spelling for anything in Arabic, and official and unofficial signage throughout the region reflects this.

The Citadel of Salah Al-Din is right next door, but it was a surprisingly long, hot slog around to the entrance. The first entrance we tried seemed to be a prison, but at least they let Hozumi use their toilet.

The central mosque has the highest minarets, visible from all around the city, and a blobby structure that doesn't look quite right.

Inside, we sprawled out on the carpets and admired the dome ceiling and chandeliers. Lights are strung all across the room in circular patterns that must look quite amazing at night if all of them are lit.

The military museum was dull, but interesting in a strange way because so much of it was roped off and unlit. Whole rooms of complete displays skipped for no reason we could discern, except maybe in order to keep a huge number of people moving along in a single direction. The fact that the whole place was deserted made it even weirder.

That evening Hozumi tried her first sheesha and pronounced it good.

Egypt! Well, a bit of Cairo anyway.

2011-09-09T05:37:00.000+09:00

4/29 - 5/3

The overnight bus was less than fun, but not as bad as we had anticipated. We were unceremoniously dumped on the outskirts of Delhi though - I should have confirmed the exact destination. An hour of laid-back haggling while we woke up and sipped on chai got us a reasonable taxi price, but we got taken to a real shit-hole of a hotel. Luckily I recognised the area so we paid off the driver and found ourselves a reasonable place to stay nearby.

After checking in and showering the water cut out and remained off all day as the temperatures soared to 41C. We eventually got a trickle of water at around 11pm, then about 3 hours sleep. At 4am we were wandering the streets trying to wake up auto-rickshaw drivers until we found one to take us to the airport.

All this should have left us exhausted, but by the time we got to Cairo I was feeling OK as we trudged about looking for accommodation. Everything we found was in the region of 90-150 Egyptian Pounds, so when an old geezer promised us a 40 pound room we followed him through the streets and ended up at a really fancy place for 100 pounds. Figure that out. Actually, despite the dodgy start the staff were really nice. The hotel was a brand new venture they'd started just weeks before the revolution cleared the streets of tourists and replaced them with people running and the whiff of tear-gas. We arranged trips to the Pyramids, the nearby desert and some decent restaurants through the hotel, and although they weren't the cheapest option around they protected us from the worst of the scams and did their best to ensure we had a good time.

This is the ridiculous bed of the 'honeymoon suite' they gave us on our return to Cairo from the western desert.

So, things to do in Cairo: Visit the museum, the citadel, the grand mosques, the Pyramids and Tahrir square where revolutionary fervour still ran high.

Talking about the revolution, it affected us in only a few ways. Prices were cheaper, hotels had rooms, people passing us on the street cried 'welcome!' all the time and more than a few people had interesting tales to tell and opinions to opine.

First stop: Food. Good shwerma, OK fuul and cheap kushari filled our bellies, and along with falafel, pita, feta and chicken that's pretty much all we ate in Egypt.

Second stop: Books. Guide books may be useless for finding accommodation and restaurants, but to get a decent grounding in a country's culture, language, food and attractions and provide a bunch of maps there aren't any better options.

We were impressed by the book market, with dozens of stalls like the one below and a few more organised ones. We offloaded our battered old Rough Guide of India and picked up the newest edition of the Lonely Planet with just a touch of mould for less than 5% of the price listed at high street stores.

On our return to Cairo we passed the same stall, where the inevitable had happened.

The Egyptian museum was fascinating. History from 8,000BC, achievements 1,000s of years ahead of other civilisations. Mummies were a highlight, of course, but a few things stood out for me, stuff I hadn't known before.

The oldest surviving boats in the world are there.

The really rich Pharaohs, like Tutenkamen, could end up with all their wrappings, amulets and trinkets, a massive funeral mask of gold, then a solid gold sarcophagus, then a gold leafed wooden sarcophagus, then an outer wooden or stone sarcophagus. That's a whole lot of layering.

Most people know about hooking the brain through the nose, and all the guts through the waist. I didn't know the corpse underwent 40 days of desiccation with sodium bicarbonate, that the heart was often left in, or that later embalmers often replaced the dried organs into the chest.cavity. Oiling and wrapping took another 30 days. Stones or onions replaced the eyes!

One of the mummies was 180cm tall, a veritable giant for the age.

Regular folk were supposed to have their heart weighed in the afterlife and depending on its weight it'd either be eaten or they'd be admitted to paradise. Pharaohs might not have had to go through that, but they had to go on a 12(?) hour night-time journey with the sun god, and hopefully defeat the serpent and its minions to ensure another day dawns. Quite a responsibility, and entire walls and rooms were decorated with inscriptions describing this journey and how to prepare for it.

Holy animals - unusually large or coloured - were afforded as much respect when being mummified as a Pharaoh They were considered gods in their own right.

Incestuous marriage was the norm, a Pharaoh would marry his sisters, his mother.

The Valley of the Kings and other sites were looted and raided by farmers, locals or the guards themselves as the Egyptian empire crumbled. Priests rescued the mummies and artefacts they could and often piled them all on top of each other in more secret locations. Imagine that, the poor wrapped corpses, gods in the minds of those that protected them, stripped of all their jewellery and stacked up like firewood.

The museum exterior. Note the burnt out building in the background.

Northern hill stations, Shimla, Manali and Vashisht

2011-09-09T00:52:00.000+09:00

4/21 - 4/29

CC trains in India, wow. Five seats in a row, yes, but tea, water, food and newspapers all served with a smile and included in the ticket price. Way more 'civilised' than the air-conditioned sleeper trains we'd been on, though for my money I prefer to have the option of going horizontal. Arriving at Kalka at noon we transferred to the 'toy train', another single-gauge tiny train that seemed somewhat overloaded when nearly everyone from the spacious CC train piled on.

Just look at that railway, just look at it!

Above: Looks just like the old British Rail trains to me.

Below: Out of focus, but you can see the passenger list printed out and tacked on to each carriage.

We met this Persian guy who didn't like to be called Iranian. He told us of his childhood years with his family living under a cloud of suspicion as political agitators. When word came that they could expect a midnight raid on their house at any time he was smuggled out of the country with a forged passport. After living as a political refugee in several countries he eventually found asylum and citizenship in Britain and was very proud of that country, saying it was the best country in the world to raise his kids in.

The Punjabi kids in this out-of-contrast shot roped us into playing Indian bingo for petty cash. We lost, naturally.

Shimla is the town for rich Delhi people to escape the heat, far enough from the capitol to feel like an escape, but not far enough to put it out of reach for a weekend. We planned to stay one night and move on to somewhere a little less developed, but hotels near the transport hubs were full or way overpriced. A long slog up the ridge through back-alley stairs avoided the touts, but we got targeted once again when we emerged onto the scenic ridge-top tourist streets. We got an excellent deal out of it though, and decided to rest for a couple of days.

The 'semi-deluxe' bus to Manali was surprisingly comfortable, but the roads were so awful it didn't help much.

Now that's one way to make your ride more comfortable... or are they to prevent the seat overheating? I may never know.

Love these trucks, plying the mountain routes.

It was already dark by the time we got to Manali, but we got an auto-rickshaw to Vashisht and found a nice, if smelly, room and decided to make this our last stop in India.

Manali, and more specifically Vashisht, are well-known traveller favourites. Clean air, mountain views, lots of hashish, pizzas, shakshuka and hummus. The main draw for us was the promise of a hot spring bath in an ancient Hindu temple, though we also partook of plenty of pizza, shakshuka, hummus and second-hand hashish smoke.

Now, I know that bathing practices differ greatly from culture to culture and place to place. Failing to strip naked and scrub up would cause great offence in Japan, while doing the same in British pool would probably get you arrested. I was careful to ask the hotel staff what was normal practice in Vashisht, and whether or not people got naked to bathe. He said 'of course', I was surprised and repeated the question and he said 'yes'.

The temple itself was very atmospheric and the open-air bath with it's four high walls actually felt quite familiar to me. Japanese-style I stripped, hung my clothes on a nail, washed myself sitting down at a crotch-height pipe then soaked in the bath. The water was filthy, and only lukewarm. The former I can forgive, but the latter was a disappointment. As I sat there I realised that all the guys entering after me were wearing their pants... One guy strayed a little close, his friends laughed and said something and he quickly moved to the other side of the pool. I was the source of much amusement.

Fully-clothed tourists and photo-taking, two things you'd never find in a Japanese bath.

The main use of the spring seemed to be for clothes washing.

After the temple closes the public pool is very popular. No nudity here, either.

That night there was a raucous festival that passed us by on the street below our restaurant. Trumpets either announced or challenged the palanquin with its multi-faced silver goddess and a group of drummers. It was really loud, and completely atonal, with everyone bashing or blowing whatever they carried in a non-musical way. Very Indian.

At that same restaurant one of the staff told us a sad story of his marriage to a Japanese woman. He was mad keen on kids, as all Indians seem to be, so when time and tests revealed she was incapable of giving birth she split up with him and moved back to Japan. He still wants her but she's depressed and convinced she's no good for him, telling him to divorce her and remarry. Crazy Japanese.

Hiking around the back of Vashisht, looking for a hospital, we found more great views and a roof full of sleeping bags being aired out.

On a whim, we booked a spot of paragliding at this place. Hozumi loved the dog.

The next day we went by and the shop was locked up, with no-one around to pick us up. A helpful local made a couple of phone calls and a jeep took us to the extreme sports valley. We were handed off a few times to different guys, then told we'd have to make our own way up the mountain by lift, horse or on foot! The horse ride was bumpy and fun. Very steep, with surges of speed whenever the handler got aggressive. The last stretch was covered in snow and too dangerous for the horses so we slipped and slided to the launch site. I noticed a horse skull on the way.

Ready to glide!

...and they're off!

Now the astute reader will be wondering how I managed to photograph both Hozumi's take-off and landing. Hozumi soared high and far and loved every minute, describing it as one of the best experiences of her life. My guy barely cleared the trees and we plummeted straight down in under three minutes. Disappointing!

That evening we went to a Japanese restaurant where we served seriously the worst rice I've ever tasted. It was inedible and the rest of the food was pretty bad too. Since the Japanese are famously picky about their rice I wanted to confront the Japanese woman and ask her what on earth was going on, but we just left our food, paid and slunk out in a very Japanese manner. More disappointment!

Re-reading this it all sounds really negative, which is weird because I really liked Vashisht. It was a great place, with wonderful views, some good homely Tibetan food, and a really laid-back atmosphere. I'd love to have seen more of Kashmir and the North of India but unfortunately we'd booked our flight to Egypt before we'd left Delhi. That left only a 15 hour overnight bus back to Delhi and one more night left in India to look forward to.

New Delhi and two varieties of entrepreneur

2011-09-07T17:55:00.000+09:00

Our first impression of New Delhi was of a metro station in the middle of nowhere. A policeman under a street lamp had a thick cloud of mosquitoes circling over his bare head. We stumbled about in the dark until we found a stall with a phone we could use, called Sidd and waited for him to show up. He surprised us with long hair, smart clothes and a motorbike - quite different from the backpacker we met in Malaysia!

Sidd was really hospitable, offering us his bed, good food, a lift around town to go shopping and tales of his entrepreneurial childhood. As a kid he secretly kept the bus fares his parents gave him, and used that money to buy and sell trading cards and goldfish. When his parents found the goldfish farm in his room they threw them all into the river! He later kept the money he was given for a private tutor to finance micro loans to local shopkeeper at rates lower than the average loan shark. He made some good property deals and these days his only income is from an apartment he rents out in an expensive part of town and his investments. Frugal living means he doesn't need to work and can afford to travel fairly often. We were very impressed by his entrepreneurial drive!

Leaving Delhi was interesting. They have luggage scanners to enter the train station, with police sitting by and staff feeding the luggage through. A young guy asked us for our ticket as we put our luggage on the conveyor. We didn't have one, so he directed us to the 'OTTDC' ticket office nearby. Through some smooth talking he persuaded us to take an auto-rickshaw, and even haggled the price down to something more reasonable for us.

Only after we had been in the rickshaw for a suspiciously long drive did I consult our Rough Guide and find the 'common scams' entry that described scenarios exactly like the one we were experiencing. I told the driver to take us back to the station twice, but he continued to the OTTDC place regardless. A guy was waiting there to greet and reassure us "look, other people are buying their tickets here now. What is the problem?" We refused to get out of the rickshaw, reiterated that we had no interest in their scam and repeatedly demanded that we be taken back to the station. They finally gave up, and while making several phone calls the driver took us to the rear entrance of the station, presumably to avoid us kicking up a fuss or making a scene in front of the tourist police.

This clarified a conversation I had had with a fellow Brit in Varanasi. I had mentioned how civilised and (relatively) swanky the foreigner-only air-conditioned ticket offices were in the touristy northern areas and he had agreed but lamented the higher prices. Hozumi and I had never paid anything extra for transit in India and considered that another significant difference between India and other countries we'd visited. The conversation got a bit confusing and we both thought the other mistaken and left it at that. Only after experiencing it did I realise that he must have been scammed in Delhi and had never realised that anything unusual had taken place. That's how smoothly they operate.

The official ticket office for foreigners was past the luggage scanners with their lazy, blinded by cash policemen. It was well-hidden, clean, spacious, air-conditioned and totally at odds with the rest of the mammoth building, which we must have crossed at least twice while looking for it. We got ourselves tickets to Shimla the next day and found ourselves a room for the night.

Agra, home of the Taj Mahal

2011-09-05T21:39:00.000+09:00

Met two Brits on the train, Warren and Joel, and chatted about our travels, bad air and asthma, filth and food. Restless night with an incredibly noisy family who moved in after dark to occupy all the lower level bunks and floor space.

After finding a place to stay in Taj Ganj with wi-fi we had our first view of the Taj Mahal from a rooftop restaurant. Note the bed in the foreground.

We decided to avoid the Sunday crowds at the Taj Mahal and visit Agra fort instead. A big red sandstone fort with a mess of halls, mosques and fortifications to explore. The mini-mosque made from pure marble for the harem was quite pretty. There was said to be a thick gold chain that stretched from the battlements to the street, made for any petitioner to rattle and guarantee the king's attention.

Above: The harem mosque

Below: Can you see the Taj Mahal?

Camels crossing! The shifty-eyed fellow in the foreground is the rickshaw wallah who was supposed to take us back to Taj Ganj, but dropped us off in some car park and tried to foist us off onto another rickshaw wallah who presumably had permission to approach the Taj Mahal. Since we hadn't asked to be taken there and all our protests fell on deaf ears we gave him 1/3 of the fare and walked back.

No electricity or wi-fi in town all day, which made our choice of hotel pretty pointless.

The next day, as we approached the Taj Mahal we were confused by the fact that no-one tried to sell tickets, check tickets or stop us. Even when through the gates we were uneasy with the feeling we had somehow slipped in, and would get held up for baksheesh when someone eventually asked us to show a valid ticket. Only after we left did we discover that we had chanced to visit on one of three days a year that India's World Heritage Sites were free to enter. Lucky! Not only that, but compared to the previous day it wasn't crowded at all.

The morning sun gave a nice glow to the marble. Our initial impression was that it wasn't as large as we had expected, which seems silly now looking at the scale in the photos.

The calligraphy around the entrance arch made quite an impression and isn't something I'd noticed about the building from all the photos I'd seen previously.

Supposedly built by Shah Jahan in memory of his third wife, her tomb is centrally located but you may notice his is considerably larger.

The flanking buildings would be quite impressive in their own right if they weren't overshadowed by the Taj Mahal itself.

The sun came out for our final views of the place in all its pearly whiteness.

The very same day we said goodbye to Agra and got on a train to Delhi to meet Sidd, our friend from Malaysia.

Varanasi, hanging out with Japanese backpackers

2011-08-16T22:38:00.000+09:00

4/4 - 4/14

Jalgaon to Varanasi, the place where all those pictures of the Ganges come from. We found our seats and sat down despite the hostile young madam next to us who tried to convince us we had the wrong carriage! Not the best start to a 22 hour train journey. Luckily I had spotted a Japanese name on the passenger list before boarding, so partly just to be sociable but also to avoid the icy atmosphere in our cabin we spent a lot of the trip chatting with Makoto and Miisha further down the carriage. They turned out to be fun and interesting people, so we stuck together as we made our way to 'Baba's' hostel in Varanasi.

Varanasi was a bit overwhelming at first, as we'd arrived on the night of a huge festival involving lots of light, fireworks, dancing and bushy moustaches. We also had to navigate the winding, tunnel-like back-alleys that I couldn't believe would get us anywhere worth staying, but Baba's was a pleasant surprise.

I don't know whether all Japanese tourists flock to Varanasi or what, but we met at least two dozen Japanese at Baba's during our stay. You know how the Lonely Planet and Rough Guide recommendations always double in price and plummet in quality after featuring in those guidebooks? Well, the Japanese guidebooks usually have a very limited selection of recommendations geared very specifically to their market and there isn't a lot of crossover with the big name English guides. This seems to keep their guidebooks relevant for longer, and results in a lot of Japanese tourists congregating at what are often very good places to stay and eat. One crazy thing about them while I'm on the topic though, I read an entry about India that went like this: "In India there are no fixed prices so many people will try to rip you off, quoting prices way above the going rate. Haggling all the time can be very wearing and may ruin your experience so we recommend simply paying whatever anyone asks of you."

*boggle*

Early morning on the Ganges:

A boatload of tourists from a more salubrious part of town:

Almost every night there was some kind of ceremony taking place at the ghats:

And plenty of people just doing their thing. This guy didn't move an inch for the 20 minutes or so I was in the area:

We also saw the rather grim spectacle of this site where we couldn't take any pictures. Imagine that scene at night with half a dozen shroud-wrapped corpses burning on top of stacked log pyres. Chanting and music blasts at ear-splitting volume from the balconies of the buildings where hundreds of people are waiting to die, some of whom had travelled across India to be there, so they too can be burned on the banks of the Ganges. It's hot, dark and you're breathing in corpse smoke. Pretty intense.

Just walking around Varanasi is really entertaining. Squeezing past cows in narrow alleys, with food being fried and cooked in black pots on either side. Strange religious observances going on at all hours... just a lot of tradition, history and energy in a cramped space.

We celebrated my birthday with a fancy curry that we could barely eat a third of, and later in a(n illegal) rooftop bar with friends:

The Hive set I'd been carrying all this time finally saw some action, and many evenings were spent playing that and chess with Makoto, Ryo and Kazu:

Varanasi is also famous for causing the shits, and we weren't immune. I survived for two days on nothing but bottled water and rehydration salts, and our departure date kept being put back because we were in no condition to travel. In the end we figured we had to leave in order to recover so we said goodbye to the tangled chaos and calm of Varanasi and all the friends we'd made there.

Lots of love for Varanasi and our time spent there.

Daulatabad citadel and Ajanta caves.

2011-08-12T22:13:00.000+09:00

4/1 - 4/3

Daulatabad seems to be overlooked by guide books in favour of the caves nearby, so we almost didn't visit but I'm so glad we did.

Thick stocky walls three deep encircle a huge area that includes a victory minaret, reservoirs, temples and a prison for kings. The main castle covers a mountain that has had its sides sheared away to create a vertical face that plunges into a 15 metre deep moat-chasm across which only one tiny narrow bridge provides access. Get across that bridge and you enter a pitch-black winding tunnel with hidden smoke-holes to pump fumes in and a fake exit that drops you into the chasm. With only our feeble torch to light our way we got a good sense of just how bewildering it would be for any would-be invaders. The invincible reputation of the defences made the place an attractive location for security-conscious empire-builders but it never once saw a battle.

Climbing all the way to the top gave us a breathtaking 360 degree view of... not a lot, but a lot of it.

The prison for royal captives.

The fruit-juice vendors out front helped us flag down bus back to town and were really chatty and friendly.

Getting back to the hotel in the evening we found ourselves kicked out of our room! The owner had someone coming in, presumably willing to pay a higher rate, and we had only thought to ask for 4 nights initially, not expecting to spend so long in town. They did help us find another place that wasn't too shabby for one night, but we decided to check out, see the Ajanta caves and find a place to stay in Jalgaon to the North.

The Ajanta caves are famous for their 5th century artwork, but there was nothing as outstanding as the Kailash temple at Ellora. We hurried round, keeping a step ahead of the masses of schoolchildren.

Arriving at Jalgaon we stayed at the pristine white Plaza hotel with its helpful and informative owner, who gave us a detailed breakdown on how to use the waiting list system and baksheesh/bribes to get on trains without waiting too long for seats. We ignored all his advice and opted to book a seat and wait two days in town. Good food, friendly juice vendors and a network of weird internet cafes that couldn't connect our notebook computer.

A straight razor haircut and the Ellora caves.

2011-08-12T20:44:00.000+09:00

3/28 - 3/31

Took a train to Sholapur, met a friendly Sikh who was surprised to see foreigners in such a place and enthusiastically invited us to Nanden temple. We took a bus to Aurangabad anyway, arriving around midnight to have various awful or awfully expensive hotel rooms aggressively pushed at us. We eventually haggled a fancy room down to less than half the asking price.

Head shave on the street! Got lots of attention from passers-by, lots of painful nicks on my head and a great head massage that featured hard blows to the head and worrying crunching sounds from my neck.

The only real reasons to visit Aurangabad are the Daulatabad citadel and the nearby Ellora and not-so-nearby Ajanta caves, which are huge Baddhist, Hindu and Jain temple networks hewn out of mountain faces. First up was Ellora, with 33 'cave' temples, and one 'bloody amazing' temple.

First, the cave temples, from the very simple early Buddhist efforts:

To increasingly elaborate designs as the Buddhist and Hindu craftsmen tried to outdo each other:

It all culminates in the ridiculous Kailash temple. The thought that picks, wooden wedges and water could be used to dig out the negative space of the temple is mind-blowing. This was most clearly shown when we climbed up behind the temple and saw how much rock had been cut away.

We had a shockingly awful excuse for nan and a watery curry at the on-site cafe and I got into an argument with the owner and sick the next day, which soured the experience a little.

The India vs. Pakistan cricket match happened that day too, so everywhere was closed and there was much celebration in the evening, but we were too busy feeling ill to join in.

Golgumbaz's whispering gallery

2011-08-11T21:11:00.000+09:00

3/25 - 3/27

On the train leaving Hospet we opted to sit on the luggage racks, which was much roomier and more comfortable than the crowded seats.

We only got as far as Gadag Junction, which was clearly a place where tourists don't usually end up. Gadag hotel was the only place to stay, but the staff there were so much nicer than we were used to. Towels, soap, toilet paper, a morning newspaper quietly slipped under the door, all luxuries we weren't used to receiving.

Train to Bijapur. Again, didn't seem high on the tourism list despite being a walled town with plenty of history. The walls were thick enough to have withstood the test of time, but severely eroded. The rubbish-filled moat would deter invaders more surely than any mere water moat. It may have been the first town where every kid tried greeting us and everyone wanted to practice English.

We got up really early to visit Gol Gumbaz. Huge. Really huge. A single chamber bigger than the Pantheon in Rome, topped by a dome second only in size to St. Pauls cathedral. We were the first tourists to arrive, after the crowds of locals doing their daily thing, so a guard unlocked the gates and showed us up the 100 or so steps to the whispering gallery.

Wow.

Every syllable said up there clearly echoes at least seven times and up to twelve. The dome interior is about 38 metres across, and we were able to have a conversation while sat at opposite sides whispering to each other 38 metres apart! The guard even sang beautifully for us in Arabic to show off the acoustics.

There aren't any great audio recordings online, but this YouTube video isn't bad.

We spent an hour up there marvelling at the place. As we left the whole place erupted into an ear-splitting cacophony, like a human zoo, as bus-loads of Indian tourists arrived to shriek, whistle, clap and yell in what is supposed to be a mausoleum.

We also visited a pleasant mosque...

note the guy sleeping there.

...and the stupidly fat cannon named Malik-i-maidan, crushing the tree-trunk support beneath it.

We hadn't been drinking at all in India, but in order to eat a non-vegetarian meal we sought out a 'permit bar'. The ground floor entrance to the vegetarian family restaurant was airy, well-lit and deserted aside from all the staff. The basement-level entrance around the side through the garage led to a gloomy, smoky bar packed full of guys drinking and eating meat. Fun.

Hampi and towels.

2011-08-08T20:54:00.001+09:00

Early bus to Bangalore, good food. Get two berths on a sleeper train to Hospet, where we met a Finnish dentist who stays 4 months a year and an Italian farmer who lives in Auroville. The Italian entertained us all with stories of his trip to Japan - his first bath in Kyoto's YMCA, travelling and busking as a musician.

From Hospet we took a bus to Hampi, where we walked to the ghat and waited for the ferry across the river. While we were waiting Lakshmi, the temple elephant, awkwardly walked by for her bath. Amazingly docile and obedient, despite the painful-looking scrubbing.

Some really grimy, nasty accommodation options in the backpacker village of Vijayanagar, but cheaper and clean rooms also thankfully available at the rather boring Gouthami that had mostly closed down for the off season. We ate at the popular spots with views.

Hampi is a popular backpacker hangout. Every menu features a range of western and Israeli dishes, and every restaurant has cushions strewn across the floor, coloured fabrics draped from the roof, trance music playing and evening films on large TVs. Thankfully Hampi also has a lot to see, with ancient ruins and temples scattered around a really amazing landscape of giant boulders piled higgledy-piggledy like some giant's playground.

We spent a few days hanging out with other backpackers, eating food that wasn't curry and relaxing. We also rented a scooter and spent a day puttering about taking all these pictures. I bought a towel for my head, having lost my hat somewhere previously. That towel has served me well, and if it weren't for all the comments I've received wearing it I wouldn't bother with hats any more!

"Where did you buy it? It's good! True Indian!" - India
"Are you an Arab (sheik/prince)?" *laughter* - Egypt
"I thought it was Palestinian" - Israel
"Lawrence, I presume?" - England

The queen's bath

This fancy structure housed elephants!

The best bike shed I've ever seen