The drive to Israel from Amman was with four other backpackers, along with our bags, crammed into a tiny little Fiat. Our driver, who was without his nicotine fix because we had asked him not to smoke, turned out to be completely crazy. He drove, if you want to call it that, through the rural and residential roads alike at speeds of around 160 kilometers per hour (100 mph.) The six of us luckily survived that experience and we backpackers prepared ourselves for the crossing.
As I mentioned last post, entering Israel is hard. The border guards are hostile of anyone and everyone, and a good chunk of people are taken to side rooms for questioning. This questioning can take anywhere from a few minutes to hours. So naturally, it's a place to have some fun. Long story - that's a good one for when I get home - short, I was briefly questioned on my way through, but eventually made it across into Israel.
My base for Israel was going to be in Jerusalem, which is only a little ways from the border. At first I wanted to make it to Bethlehem, the Dead Sea, Hebron, Tel Aviv, and the Golan Height, but I ended up cutting out the last two because there really didn't seem to be a whole lot to do there and I cut out Hebron because it's within the West Bank and people are a bit angry there right now. More on that tomorrow.
The residential part of Jerusalem is rather new, having been created some 150 years ago or so around the old section of Jerusalem. It completely encapsulates this Old City, a walled-in, ever-busy section that still has many of the same cobblestone walkways that Christ walked through. It was here that I spent nearly all of my time.
Hawkers sell everything in the Old City in their small stalls. There is constant movement, with Israelis and Palestinians mingling with tourists from all over the world. Your sense of smell is sometimes overwhelmed by the various food and drink, and in general its a place of pure excitement.
The holy sites within the walls of the Old City are focal points for the religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. This of course has made the city more than a bit of a flash point over the last couple thousand years or so. Some notable stops include the Stations of the Cross, the Wailing Wall, and the Temple Mount. Of these, it was the Western Wall, or Wailing Wall, that I for some reason most enjoyed and was here that I made the most stops.
The Western Wall is the most sacred site for Jews in the world. It was built by King Herod the Great around 19 BC as a support for the second temple which had been built some 500 years earlier after the first was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar II and the Babylonians. Both temples were supposedly in the location where Abraham had offered up his son as a sacrifice to God (I think. I'm not double-checking any of my history on this post, so anyone except for John can feel free to correct me when I'm wrong.), only to have his son replaced by God with a ram at the last minute.
When the Romans destroyed the second temple in 70 AD, the Jews were left with a major problem; it was considered sacrilegious to step on the ground or pray where the temple used to be, but nobody knew the actual location of where the temple had been located. So the Wailing Wall became a place for pilgrims to pray and lament the loss of the temple. It soon gained the importance that it has today.
I made it there for the lighting of the first candle for Hanukkah. The main section is in a large square which was a gathering place for all sorts of Jews who had come to celebrate, from the ultra-orthodox to the New York-accented, baseball cap-wearing. The wall is divided into two sections, one for women and one for men. True to it's name, there were indeed some people on both sides crying hard, though most were simply praying or silently staring.
Honestly, I also welled up a bit. It's difficult to fully understand why, especially because it literally is just a wall. But thinking about the history and seeing these people who thought so much of it, it was difficult not to be overcome. The large cobblestones have been worn smooth at arm level over the centuries by the millions who have touched and kissed it in their prayers. The cracks within reach as well have all been filled with little slips of paper, prayers from those who believe that one placed here is more apt to come true - over time they have turned into almost a type of mortar.
Within a stones throw of the wall is the Temple Mount, Islam's third holiest site. You might know it as the giant gold dome that is often seen in pictures of Jerusalem. Though non-Muslims aren't allowed inside of it, it was great to look at from the outside and amusing to think that these two holy sites of such conflicting religions were so near one another.
The Stations of the Cross was another powerful experience for me. These fourteen stations are depictions of Jesus' final hours, from when he was condemned to death to when he was laid in the tomb and covered with incense. The walk is especially important to Roman Catholics, and it was a powerful experience walking these stations and feeling what so many others have before me.
(Jerusalem in general is obviously a spiritual city and being there did good things to me. It was funny though, because the same time I was there feeling good about religion my pope came out and basically said that the GLBT "threat" was as great as that of deforestation and extinction. That was a pretty big buzz kill. Having 1) seen the effects of deforestation first-hand and 2) hung out with more than one member of the GLBT community, I gotta be honest with you; one does seem to be a bit more dangerous than the other. But what the Pope didn't bring up was the possibility of GAY PEOPLE CUTTING DOWN THE RAINFOREST!!! HOLY SHIT! That would be the ultimate threat in the world, kinda like a shark with a bazooka or a pirate with ninja skills.)
The Dead Sea is not far from Jerusalem, so I made it a point to get there. As the buses weren't running on the Saturday I wanted to get there, I hitched a ride there with a friendly Israeli hippie (yes, they exist). The sea is at the lowest point on Earth, some 1400 feet below sea level, and has filled up with so much salt and so many metals over the centuries that it's made up of pretty much 1/3 solid material. So if you float in it you're a hunk of styrofoam and always are at the top of the water.
It was mediocre. I had the bright idea to jump in head first, something you should never do because your eyes explode, especially when the freshwater showers are broken. Besides that, yes, it was pretty cool floating a little higher than normal, but all in all I was relatively unamused by the whole experience. Cool to say I've been there though.
Then there was Christmas Eve.
That was . . . well, certainly something to write about.
It is Christmas Eve here that is a big deal, while Christmas itself is less important. So with a small group of three other backpackers I set of for Bethlehem to see what it had to offer for the day.
Quickly things turned sour as I realized that my camera's screen had somehow broken. But this was nothing compared to how I felt an hour into my stay when I realized that someone had lifted my wallet, in it my credit card, from within the crowded streets. I pretty much wanted to punch someone in the face, but my fellow backpackers, who turned out to be completely awesome, convinced me to stay in Bethlehem and try to salvage the night. So after canceling my credit card we wandered over to the Church of Nativity.
The church itself was divided up by some of the various Christian factions. By a serious stroke of luck our group of backpackers, which had now grown to five, ended up joining a group of around 120 Anglicans who were attending a 10 p.m. mass in the Greek Orthodox chapel. This was quite a thrill for me, as a Christmas Eve mass within the Church of Nativity was an rare trick for the night.
The mass was very crowded, as a group of heavily-armed police inexplicably separated us from the archbishop and his crew up front. It was done in a combination of Arabic, Greek, and English, and we sang the first Christmas carols I had heard all year. The priests/pastors/archbishop up front read various passages and sermons, one of the better ones being a brief speech in English about the need for understanding in the Middle East between the various religions. Through understanding, the speaker said, we could only then achieve peace. It was a well-spoken sermon, but I was a little curious why the speaker thought that a group of Anglicans needed to hear it.
My curiosity was taken care of minutes later when it was announced that "the president needs to leave, but we are very happy that we could attend this mass with you."
"President of what?" I asked the lady next to me.
"Palestine," she answered.
I jerked my head around and, sure enough, President Mahmoud Abbas was standing up at the front of the room. I don't know how I had missed that he was there, but it sure explained the heavy military presence and the sermon. I was only a couple people away from the door he was leaving from, so as he walked out, shaking a couple hands, I reached over those in front of me (God I love being tall) to try to give him a hand shake. When he saw me towering up he gave me a crazy grin. I'll let Derek, a fellow traveler, describe what happened next: "My friend Peter actually gave the guy a high-five on his way out the door. And when I say 'high-five', I mean that Abbas gave him a full-on, reared-back, we-totally-rocked-this-shiz, high-five. It was rad."
Seriously, it was pretty rad. More than that, it was hilarious: here is Mahmoud Abbas, a main player in an almost-impossible peace process, a president of an Muslim and Arab country that doesn't technically exist, giving me this really enthusiastic, hard high-five/handshake in the middle of an Anglican mass within a Greek Orthodox Chapel on Christmas Eve in the church on the site where Christ was born. In terms of events I never pictured happening, that was pretty high up there.
After mass the Anglicans headed back to Jerusalem, but our little cadre stayed behind and went into the grotto, a little room downstairs about 30 feet by 8 feet that is the location of the true manger. We were joined by a group of around 70 Italians who told us that they were going to attend midnight mass down there. It didn't seem like anyone would toss us, so we decided to try to wait also. And as luck would have it, we made it through and managed to stick around for the midnight mass on Christmas just inches from where Jesus Christ was actually born.
I didn't understand much of it because it was all in Italian and Latin, though I knew some of the hymns and such in English. But just the very concept of what I was doing almost blew my mind. I don't know how I got so damn lucky with the whole business, but the night turned out to be absolutely, 100% top-notch awesome. Unbeatable.
I'll write tomorrow about my next, less-enthusiastic experience in Bethlehem.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Jordan
"Dad."
"What?"
"Dad!"
"What?!"
"DAD!"
"WHAT?!""
"Head for the fireplace!"
Jordan, Israel, and Egypt all share the top of the Gulf of Aqaba, the eastern gulf of the Red Sea that is created by the Sinai Peninsula. Having decided to travel first to Jordan and go to Israel afterwards, I had to go first to the Egyptian town of Taba by bus located at the top on the Sinai, cross through the Israeli town of Eilat, and then hitch to the Jordanian town of Aqaba. I made it to Taba easily enough and had a surprisingly straight-forward time getting into Israel. There are countless backpacking stories about the difficulties of the getting to Israel, but outside of the 5 minutes or so of the border agent (they all seem to be 19 year-old girls, literally) badgering me about my lack of solid travel plans, I got through in quick time. This time.
I found Eilat to be a good area and decided to camp out for the night instead of crossing immediately into Jordan. I set up my tent and sleeping bag and was making dinner when a helicopter came from the north and headed out over the Gulf. It banked a ways in and turned straight for me, flying in at a low altitude. It landed a short distance from where I was. I [Edit] wasn't initially concerned, as I assumed it was only military maneuvers in what was the only Israeli outlet to the Red Sea. But when a second, third, and then forth did the same thing within minutes, I started to grow curious. The helicopters were landing, I found out later, only two gorges over from me. While there was a small navy yard on the ocean, I wasn't aware of a army base inland at all. So I hiked to a nearby road to find out, and was shocked when I was told that there had actually been a major bus accident only a short distance away.
A tour bus of Russians had driven off the road and flipped numerous times down the mountain slope. In the worst traffic accident in Israel's history, the bus had been trying to pass another bus when it rolled down the embankment, killing 24 and injuring another 30. Helicopters came and went all night long carrying out severely injured and the dead. As I was hiking back to town that day I saw the bus - it's something I don't care to describe for a number of reasons, but it's something that made me wonder how 30 managed to come out alive.
That was it for me and I had no more stomach to stay in Eilat any longer, so I left as soon as I could for Jordan. I arrived around late-morning and made it through the checkpoint, easily crossing into the Republic of Jordan. My first stop, and as it turned out my only real stop, was in the ancient city of Petra.
Petra, for you Indiana Jones fans out there, includes the famous "Treasury" building, or the building where Indiana finds the Holy Grail in the Last Crusade. I wasn't sure what to expect from the city and had done little research on it because of my haste to exit Egypt, but my exploration of the town made me almost melt.
The ancient city was inhabited by many peoples and tribes for perhaps as much as the last three thousand years, but it was the Nabataeans some two thousand years ago who built the city into what it is today. Taking a water supply from the mountains around it, the Nabateans were able to create something of an artificial oasis in what is otherwise a desert area. They cut hundreds, maybe thousands, or homes into the sandstone mountains and made tremendous shrines and monuments that stand as high as 150 feet from those same cliffs.
To enter the city one must walk a kilometer or so through a gorge created from a split sandstone mountain (the very one, if you might remember, that Indiana and his group went through in the movie). The very first major temple that one sees is nicknamed the "Treasury," the Indiana Jones building, which was actually a tomb for a Nabataean leader. While not the largest, this is the best preserved and most famous of Petra. It is, without a doubt, something that can inspire only awe when first seeing. Walking through the gorge, turn after turn, you don't know what to expect, but when you finally come into full view of the monument, it's such a shock to see this nearly perfectly-preserved 2000 year old, 100 foot building built right into the mountain, that you just stand for a moment in the entry way to collect yourself. Though the inside is unimpressive - it's only a tomb, after all - the outside is a sight to behold.
From here I was free to explore the spread-out city by myself, and I had an incredible time doing so. The city is perfect for my tourism preferences - a map is provided for visitors and a brief plaque is put up on the major monuments and sites, but other than that it's a matter of setting out by yourself. You can go with everyone else, or can see some of the smaller but less traveled areas. Either way you're walking and climbing yourself. My first day I took the main trek and explored some of the larger temples and monuments. I was impressed by the shear number of people of all ages who made the admittedly difficult trek to the far end of Petra and climbed 800 steps up the mountain to visit the "Monastery," the largest of the Petra tombs and close to 150 feet tall. Though less known than it's smaller counterpart the Treasury, the Monastery holds the same mystique of its sibling and I spent hours sitting outside of it enjoying its presence over the two days I spent in Petra.
The second day I bypassed much of what I had earlier seen and took a hike on the outskirts of Petra, exploring the tunnel built by the Nabateans to control flooding and the aqueduct built later by the Romans, as well as the more isolated caves and gorges that are all over Petra but typically are seen only by the nomadic Bedouins who still graze in the area. As the day began to wane I eventually made my way back to the Monastery to watch the shadows overtake it.
I found that as the sun sets people tend to leave Petra quickly, so I made it a point both to hang around so I could have the monuments pretty much to myself. The ensuing darkness made the trek back to the entrance a bit more perilous with the 2000 year old steps and crumbly rocks, but seeing the light fade from this fantastic city is an experience unto its own. Indeed, Petra as a whole is easily my favorite stop so far in my trip and I'm extremely happy I ended up going there. The place is a testament to humanity, a reminder that we can make indescribably impressive cities without even our modern-day technology, and that we can live anywhere and do anything.
I wanted to make Israel by Christmas and planned on spending a couple days in Amman and the Dead Sea, so I set off for the Jordanian capital soon after. Unfortunately, I found Amman to be amazingly unimpressive. The huge city is built from the desert mountains and the buildings are all the same depressing shade of light brown that the ground around them is. Trees and greenery are rare, and the smog is nearly choking. While the food was relatively cheap, this was the only benefit of the city and I decided after less than a day to leave for Israel and get to the Dead Sea from that side.
Because I won't be posting again until after Christmas, I want to wish everyone a wonderful Christmas! To you Jews, I hope you're having an equally great Hanukkah. I've been keeping on on the snow fall in Minnesota, so I know that you'll have a white one, but I hope that everyone enjoys the holiday and gets everything they want along with the coal that I know more than a few of you will receive.
Personally, I'll be making the trip to Bethlehem to see Christmas there and I'm very pumped for it. I'll be thinking of everyone back home.
Keep well, all.
"What?"
"Dad!"
"What?!"
"DAD!"
"WHAT?!""
"Head for the fireplace!"
Jordan, Israel, and Egypt all share the top of the Gulf of Aqaba, the eastern gulf of the Red Sea that is created by the Sinai Peninsula. Having decided to travel first to Jordan and go to Israel afterwards, I had to go first to the Egyptian town of Taba by bus located at the top on the Sinai, cross through the Israeli town of Eilat, and then hitch to the Jordanian town of Aqaba. I made it to Taba easily enough and had a surprisingly straight-forward time getting into Israel. There are countless backpacking stories about the difficulties of the getting to Israel, but outside of the 5 minutes or so of the border agent (they all seem to be 19 year-old girls, literally) badgering me about my lack of solid travel plans, I got through in quick time. This time.
I found Eilat to be a good area and decided to camp out for the night instead of crossing immediately into Jordan. I set up my tent and sleeping bag and was making dinner when a helicopter came from the north and headed out over the Gulf. It banked a ways in and turned straight for me, flying in at a low altitude. It landed a short distance from where I was. I [Edit] wasn't initially concerned, as I assumed it was only military maneuvers in what was the only Israeli outlet to the Red Sea. But when a second, third, and then forth did the same thing within minutes, I started to grow curious. The helicopters were landing, I found out later, only two gorges over from me. While there was a small navy yard on the ocean, I wasn't aware of a army base inland at all. So I hiked to a nearby road to find out, and was shocked when I was told that there had actually been a major bus accident only a short distance away.
A tour bus of Russians had driven off the road and flipped numerous times down the mountain slope. In the worst traffic accident in Israel's history, the bus had been trying to pass another bus when it rolled down the embankment, killing 24 and injuring another 30. Helicopters came and went all night long carrying out severely injured and the dead. As I was hiking back to town that day I saw the bus - it's something I don't care to describe for a number of reasons, but it's something that made me wonder how 30 managed to come out alive.
That was it for me and I had no more stomach to stay in Eilat any longer, so I left as soon as I could for Jordan. I arrived around late-morning and made it through the checkpoint, easily crossing into the Republic of Jordan. My first stop, and as it turned out my only real stop, was in the ancient city of Petra.
Petra, for you Indiana Jones fans out there, includes the famous "Treasury" building, or the building where Indiana finds the Holy Grail in the Last Crusade. I wasn't sure what to expect from the city and had done little research on it because of my haste to exit Egypt, but my exploration of the town made me almost melt.
The ancient city was inhabited by many peoples and tribes for perhaps as much as the last three thousand years, but it was the Nabataeans some two thousand years ago who built the city into what it is today. Taking a water supply from the mountains around it, the Nabateans were able to create something of an artificial oasis in what is otherwise a desert area. They cut hundreds, maybe thousands, or homes into the sandstone mountains and made tremendous shrines and monuments that stand as high as 150 feet from those same cliffs.
To enter the city one must walk a kilometer or so through a gorge created from a split sandstone mountain (the very one, if you might remember, that Indiana and his group went through in the movie). The very first major temple that one sees is nicknamed the "Treasury," the Indiana Jones building, which was actually a tomb for a Nabataean leader. While not the largest, this is the best preserved and most famous of Petra. It is, without a doubt, something that can inspire only awe when first seeing. Walking through the gorge, turn after turn, you don't know what to expect, but when you finally come into full view of the monument, it's such a shock to see this nearly perfectly-preserved 2000 year old, 100 foot building built right into the mountain, that you just stand for a moment in the entry way to collect yourself. Though the inside is unimpressive - it's only a tomb, after all - the outside is a sight to behold.
From here I was free to explore the spread-out city by myself, and I had an incredible time doing so. The city is perfect for my tourism preferences - a map is provided for visitors and a brief plaque is put up on the major monuments and sites, but other than that it's a matter of setting out by yourself. You can go with everyone else, or can see some of the smaller but less traveled areas. Either way you're walking and climbing yourself. My first day I took the main trek and explored some of the larger temples and monuments. I was impressed by the shear number of people of all ages who made the admittedly difficult trek to the far end of Petra and climbed 800 steps up the mountain to visit the "Monastery," the largest of the Petra tombs and close to 150 feet tall. Though less known than it's smaller counterpart the Treasury, the Monastery holds the same mystique of its sibling and I spent hours sitting outside of it enjoying its presence over the two days I spent in Petra.
The second day I bypassed much of what I had earlier seen and took a hike on the outskirts of Petra, exploring the tunnel built by the Nabateans to control flooding and the aqueduct built later by the Romans, as well as the more isolated caves and gorges that are all over Petra but typically are seen only by the nomadic Bedouins who still graze in the area. As the day began to wane I eventually made my way back to the Monastery to watch the shadows overtake it.
I found that as the sun sets people tend to leave Petra quickly, so I made it a point both to hang around so I could have the monuments pretty much to myself. The ensuing darkness made the trek back to the entrance a bit more perilous with the 2000 year old steps and crumbly rocks, but seeing the light fade from this fantastic city is an experience unto its own. Indeed, Petra as a whole is easily my favorite stop so far in my trip and I'm extremely happy I ended up going there. The place is a testament to humanity, a reminder that we can make indescribably impressive cities without even our modern-day technology, and that we can live anywhere and do anything.
I wanted to make Israel by Christmas and planned on spending a couple days in Amman and the Dead Sea, so I set off for the Jordanian capital soon after. Unfortunately, I found Amman to be amazingly unimpressive. The huge city is built from the desert mountains and the buildings are all the same depressing shade of light brown that the ground around them is. Trees and greenery are rare, and the smog is nearly choking. While the food was relatively cheap, this was the only benefit of the city and I decided after less than a day to leave for Israel and get to the Dead Sea from that side.
Because I won't be posting again until after Christmas, I want to wish everyone a wonderful Christmas! To you Jews, I hope you're having an equally great Hanukkah. I've been keeping on on the snow fall in Minnesota, so I know that you'll have a white one, but I hope that everyone enjoys the holiday and gets everything they want along with the coal that I know more than a few of you will receive.
Personally, I'll be making the trip to Bethlehem to see Christmas there and I'm very pumped for it. I'll be thinking of everyone back home.
Keep well, all.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Egypt, Part II
My Sudan visa issues have continued unabated and my temporary good feelings towards Cairo dissipated quickly enough. This meant breaking camp again from Cairo while waiting for permission to head across the border.
I decided that because I had already been west and south - and would eventually travel south again - that it was time to go westward. There is a limited destination choice in west Egypt, because you immediately run into the Sahara Desert and the only real population centers lie on the Mediterranean coast and in any oases that may pop up before the Libyan border.
The most entertaining place seemed to be the far-away oasis of Siwa. It was so far away, in fact, that it was a mere 30 miles from and the last oasis before the Libyan border. Of the two paths to get there, only one is practical for real travel, so I jumped on a bus that went through Alexandria and dropped me off at what I found to be a quaint town whose main mode of transportation was the donkey cart, with the motor bike following as a distant second.
The town itself is nothing outstanding, but spending time in an actual oasis in the middle of the Great Desert was a thrill in itself. Siwa is famous for its olives and dates, neither of which I'm particularly fond of, but I was content to live on fresh fruit and falafels while I was there. I spent my time exploring the various hot springs within the oasis and the giant salt lakes that surround it. The lakes themselves were formed as the Dead Sea was - a constant flow of water comes into the lakes and has nowhere to go. So while the incoming water is potable and palatable, the minerals within it have over time have accumulated as the water evaporates. This is what created the salt lakes.
I rented a bike for two days and set out to the lakes to explore and spent some truly serene time alone. A wonderful experience, with only the occasional gust of wind to keep me company among the salt flats and sand dunes. Other than that, there was pure silence and pure stillness for me to enjoy. For anyone heading to Egypt, I would recomend spending time here.
After a few days I decided to join a small group that was trekking across the desert to the oasis of Bahariyya, which lies to the east of Siwa. I was particularly excited about this because the trek was via the only other route to Siwa, one that virtually nobody took and was, I had heard, a hell of an experience to have.
It turned out to be just that. In small convoy of three 4X4's we set out on what can only charitably be described as a road. Paved at one point in the distant past, it now was a wreck and filled with cracks and giant holes, covered in some parts by the desert, and largely an irrelevant feature to the landscape. The majority of the road was so broken up, in fact, that we drove through the virgin desert in order to save our tires and shocks. Over the great dunes and mountains, occasionally stopping to dig out a stuck vehicle, we slowly struggled from checkpoint to checkpoint.
Under normal circumstances, these military checkpoints would be something for me to ridicule or hate for being a waste of time. Save for ourselves, no others were on that road as we traveled, and the frequent checkpoints we had to stop for could for all intents and purposes be considered stupid - there were no other paths for hundreds of kilometers and nothing at all threatening to the Egyptians. Jesus, if the Libyans wanted to invade, the Egyptians would have months before the Libyans made it through the desert to any respectable city. And that's fine if you want to make sure that travelers like us all have our passes, but with no joining roads, why the multiple checkpoints when one should suffice? Not to mention that these poor guys had the Siberian outposts of Egypt, what with their tiny and depressing one room building, the rubble-strewn yards, and their seemingly obligatory mangy stray dogs that would inevitably trot up to our approaching vehicles.
But it turned out that I was thankful for these checkpoints, if only because they would be our saviors if anything went wrong. A vehicle stuck in the sand was a common occurrence, sometimes as much as a two to three feet down. Likewise, spare tires could be used up alarmingly fast on the broken road and rocky desert. Really, there is an endless list of things that could potentially go wrong out there and these guys could potentially be life savers.
Baharriya itself wasn't that special, though the dinners and music we had every night were very pleasant. We camped one night in the desert and enjoyed some great food with the Bedouins (including some lamb that had been slaughtered for Eid Al-Adha) and in general I had an extremely pleasant time.
Soon enough I was back in Cairo, which had once again become something of a nemesis to me. It was the 4th time I had entered the city, and I was growing tired of the smog and the constant hustle. But incredibly, after once again going to the Sudanese embassy - I could go there now backwards with my eyes closed - they told me that it would be at least another two weeks. I muttered some curse words as I walked out and stalked back to my hostel, determined to do SOMETHING if I wasn't able to get to Sudan right away. Staying in Cairo was out of the question, and I had pretty much visited all of Egypt I cared to visit. Geographically limited because of visa issues for Libya to the west, I decided to go back on my earlier promise to myself and head north, into the Middle East.
Many countries within the Middle East have visa issues as complicated as Sudan's, so I made up my mind to travel to Israel and Jordan. Both were friendly, relatively hassle-free to get in and out of for Americans (I thought), and in general close enough to Sinai that I could come back to Cairo in a relatively short amount of time.
As I'm hoping to keep this country-by-country, I'm going to leave this post there and continue soon with a Jordan post. I hope everyone is well and nobody is snowed in right now.
I decided that because I had already been west and south - and would eventually travel south again - that it was time to go westward. There is a limited destination choice in west Egypt, because you immediately run into the Sahara Desert and the only real population centers lie on the Mediterranean coast and in any oases that may pop up before the Libyan border.
The most entertaining place seemed to be the far-away oasis of Siwa. It was so far away, in fact, that it was a mere 30 miles from and the last oasis before the Libyan border. Of the two paths to get there, only one is practical for real travel, so I jumped on a bus that went through Alexandria and dropped me off at what I found to be a quaint town whose main mode of transportation was the donkey cart, with the motor bike following as a distant second.
The town itself is nothing outstanding, but spending time in an actual oasis in the middle of the Great Desert was a thrill in itself. Siwa is famous for its olives and dates, neither of which I'm particularly fond of, but I was content to live on fresh fruit and falafels while I was there. I spent my time exploring the various hot springs within the oasis and the giant salt lakes that surround it. The lakes themselves were formed as the Dead Sea was - a constant flow of water comes into the lakes and has nowhere to go. So while the incoming water is potable and palatable, the minerals within it have over time have accumulated as the water evaporates. This is what created the salt lakes.
I rented a bike for two days and set out to the lakes to explore and spent some truly serene time alone. A wonderful experience, with only the occasional gust of wind to keep me company among the salt flats and sand dunes. Other than that, there was pure silence and pure stillness for me to enjoy. For anyone heading to Egypt, I would recomend spending time here.
After a few days I decided to join a small group that was trekking across the desert to the oasis of Bahariyya, which lies to the east of Siwa. I was particularly excited about this because the trek was via the only other route to Siwa, one that virtually nobody took and was, I had heard, a hell of an experience to have.
It turned out to be just that. In small convoy of three 4X4's we set out on what can only charitably be described as a road. Paved at one point in the distant past, it now was a wreck and filled with cracks and giant holes, covered in some parts by the desert, and largely an irrelevant feature to the landscape. The majority of the road was so broken up, in fact, that we drove through the virgin desert in order to save our tires and shocks. Over the great dunes and mountains, occasionally stopping to dig out a stuck vehicle, we slowly struggled from checkpoint to checkpoint.
Under normal circumstances, these military checkpoints would be something for me to ridicule or hate for being a waste of time. Save for ourselves, no others were on that road as we traveled, and the frequent checkpoints we had to stop for could for all intents and purposes be considered stupid - there were no other paths for hundreds of kilometers and nothing at all threatening to the Egyptians. Jesus, if the Libyans wanted to invade, the Egyptians would have months before the Libyans made it through the desert to any respectable city. And that's fine if you want to make sure that travelers like us all have our passes, but with no joining roads, why the multiple checkpoints when one should suffice? Not to mention that these poor guys had the Siberian outposts of Egypt, what with their tiny and depressing one room building, the rubble-strewn yards, and their seemingly obligatory mangy stray dogs that would inevitably trot up to our approaching vehicles.
But it turned out that I was thankful for these checkpoints, if only because they would be our saviors if anything went wrong. A vehicle stuck in the sand was a common occurrence, sometimes as much as a two to three feet down. Likewise, spare tires could be used up alarmingly fast on the broken road and rocky desert. Really, there is an endless list of things that could potentially go wrong out there and these guys could potentially be life savers.
Baharriya itself wasn't that special, though the dinners and music we had every night were very pleasant. We camped one night in the desert and enjoyed some great food with the Bedouins (including some lamb that had been slaughtered for Eid Al-Adha) and in general I had an extremely pleasant time.
Soon enough I was back in Cairo, which had once again become something of a nemesis to me. It was the 4th time I had entered the city, and I was growing tired of the smog and the constant hustle. But incredibly, after once again going to the Sudanese embassy - I could go there now backwards with my eyes closed - they told me that it would be at least another two weeks. I muttered some curse words as I walked out and stalked back to my hostel, determined to do SOMETHING if I wasn't able to get to Sudan right away. Staying in Cairo was out of the question, and I had pretty much visited all of Egypt I cared to visit. Geographically limited because of visa issues for Libya to the west, I decided to go back on my earlier promise to myself and head north, into the Middle East.
Many countries within the Middle East have visa issues as complicated as Sudan's, so I made up my mind to travel to Israel and Jordan. Both were friendly, relatively hassle-free to get in and out of for Americans (I thought), and in general close enough to Sinai that I could come back to Cairo in a relatively short amount of time.
As I'm hoping to keep this country-by-country, I'm going to leave this post there and continue soon with a Jordan post. I hope everyone is well and nobody is snowed in right now.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Egypt
I had hoped to make my first travel post after crossing the Egyptian border into Sudan, but for some reason it looks like Hermes has not willed it for me to cross over yet and instead I'm writing from Cairo.
The problem, as I had feared, is that getting a Sudanese visa is damn tricky and I'm striking out at every turn here. I've got no chance because of holiday here for the next week, so tomorrow I'll hopefully be off to Siwa, to the West. Staying for this extra time might be for the best, however, as Cairo (and Egypt as a whole) has grown on me in the extra time spent here and I've discovered a side of the country I would have otherwise missed.
When I first arrived, my first order of business in Egypt was to visit the pyramids, Nile, and National Museum, which I did in quick succession. Unfortunately, I quickly decided that the city fell below what were very insignificant expectations to begin with. It seemed that every cab driver tried to overcharge me, every shop keeper tried to sell me outrageously priced perfume, and every smile directed at me was fake. The city, I felt that and still feel, is essentially like Rome on blow - history every twelve feet and cats every ten feet (in what I can only imagine is a nod to it's ancient history of veneration towards cats), crazy traffic, and a lively population. But where I like Rome, I didn't like Cairo because these effects are multiplied ten-fold and the "bustleness" of the city is just plain crazy.
With many millions of people, the city is understandably cramped and the city suffers not only from human pollution but from the desert sands as well. In some areas I can see no more than a quarter mile because of the smog. And the traffic. God, the traffic.
You know how in some movies the good guy or bad guy will gain control of the traffic light system and then make all lights turn green at a traffic intersection? Of course what inevitably happens is that a dozen or so cars will crash into each other and the drivers will emerge shouting "Hey, what the hell's the matter with you?!?!" at each other. Well it's like that in Cairo, except nobody ever crashes! Seriously, I've been to some of the largest cities in the world and crossed streets in some pretty ridiculous traffic, but Cairo is the only city where I've truly had an adrenaline rush from navigating some of these streets. You don't think about it, you just dive into the traffic and cram into any wedge you can before you're struck by the honking cab drivers. Because they're always honking. Or shouting at each other.
So anyway, I decided Cairo was not for me. After failing in my initial attempts at a Sudanese visa I fled to the seaside town of Dahab on the west coast of the Sinai Peninsula. Still fretting about security from when Israel took control in 1967, security checks are frequent and I had to show my passport four times from the Suez Canal to Dahab and four times back.
Still, the hassle was worth it for the comfort that Dahab offers. It is billed, indeed it was built up for this reason, as a backpacking hot-spot in Sinai and has worked hard to keep itself into a low-key tourist location. Set along the Gulf of Aqaba, the Saudi Arabian mountains can be seen to the east across the channel and, at night, some lights from settlements across the way on the Arabian Peninsula. I was sorely tempted to cross the channel via fishing boat or head north to Jordan and Israel, but I figured that it was best to keep these destinations safe for another trip and instead keep to Africa.
To the west of Dahab lie crumbling granite and sandstone mountains, courtesy of the Great Rift Valley. They had no vegetation and were pure desert, so it seemed very appealing to check them out. After a brief day of snorkeling along the reefs of Dahab I put together my camping pack and set out with three gallons of water and some food to explore these hills.
In every spot it seemed the rocks are just ready to fall off and crumble to the canyons below, so it made me wary of climbing on top of the hills. Instead I stuck to the low points and crossed over ridges as little as possible. Heading north, I trekked along the coast keeping the water in site. There were times, when the gullies went straight down or house-size boulders blocked my path, that I was forced to climb the walls to find another path, and even though I know it probably wasn't the smartest thing to do I couldn't help myself. It's a great feeling having to navigate the rocks and boulders by my own wits. Even the feeling of fear, when I was edging around the cliffs as I felt a rock begin to crumble or break free beneath my hands, or worse, beneath my feet, was an emotion I hadn't felt in a good while and I took a certain perverse pleasure when it coursed through me.
But that feeling was luckily rare and I spent the great majority of my time simply trekking. Nights were spent sleeping beneath the beautiful desert stars. Sunsets were a great time, because while the sun would set in back of me, over the Sinai Mountains, the Arabian Mountains across the gulf always reflected the gorgeous colors. Their brown color would always turn red first with the setting sun. Then it would fade to a pink, next purple, and finally brown again as the sun finally went down. Then the stars would explode into the sky that was otherwise pure blackness.
The mountains weren't safe for mules or camels because of their make-up, and the Bedouins seemed to largely avoid traveling in them as well, so I never saw anyone my entire time there save for a lone bird my second day. If there is a use for the word serene, it is within these mountains.
Eventually I made my way to a road on the coast and followed that back to Dahab. I had forgotten my passport back in the hostel and my trekking had unknowingly put me on the wrong side of a security checkpoint, but after some good natured gesturing with their unnecessarily large automatics, they decided to let me through anyway. Walking back, a man in a shop gestured me over and asked if I was hungry. As I had run our of both food and water the day before, I emphatically told him I was and he invited me in to share his lunch in a most welcoming gesture of Bedouin hospitality. I am told that this is a common occurrence in the next country on my list, Sudan, but still it came as a wonderful shock to me. Especially considering how much I love eating and think of every morsel of food as a wonderful gift from the Gods, having a stranger share their food with me for no other reason than to be nice is incredibly impressive.
I returned to Cairo to wander around the city a bit but quickly became as annoyed as before, especially around the tourist areas where the shop keepers have some pretty well thought out plans to get you to buy stuff. I fled once again and decided to get a train ticket down the Nile to Aswan.
After walking into the train station to buy the ticket with my head down, I was mortified to realize that I had actually walked into what turned out to be one of the largest mosques in Cairo during prayer time. Now, I gotta say, if you ever want to feel like a complete idiot, nothing, nothing, not even setting yourself on fire, makes you feel as stupid as doing something like that. There is no way to get extract yourself gracefully. I thought about kneeling down to pray and hope they didn't notice I had no idea what I was doing, but I decided that the best thing to do would be to cut my losses and flee the area before I did anything dumber. As it was, not many people saw me as I walked in the back way, but still . . . whew.
After failing to a get a visa down in Aswan I quickly came back up to Cairo. I say quickly because I didn't want to get in transit during Eid ul-Adha, the huge Muslim holiday that celebrates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to God (who, it turns out, was just yanking Abraham's chain, the jokester!). Eid ul-Adha is a four day long festival in Muslim countries (which is actually far longer) that I was hoping to experience in Sudan, but that obviously isn't happening, so Egypt it is.
Anyway, these last few days I've spent wandering the streets of Old Cairo, a section of town that I have grown to love. The buildings here, which appear as old as Egypt itself, are in a cramped section of town where the roads are more alleys than anything else and have no sense or purpose, the trash has piled up, and the people look at your strangely not because you represent money but because it's just weird that you're there. It was here that for the first time in ages I got my first whiff of burning rubbish, a smell that any traveler of a third-world country should be familiar with and maybe even welcome.
Chickens, goats, mules, and the occasional cow wander the streets and children usually do one of three things - wave and say "hello," just stare, or run up asking for money. Oddly enough, even the asking for money is enduring. I never give it, but they never really seem to care that much. They just think it's hilarious that I'm as tall as I am.
The first couple times I asked the locals where a good place to eat was, and both times I was motioned to sit. They then went of and brought back my lunch and adamantly refused payment because "I am like a brother." I felt bad at this treatment and today vowed to find food myself. So for lunch I walked into a cafe for some falafels and almost jumped out of my skin when I walked into a huge pool of blood that was forming from the GIANT GODDAMN COW THEY HAD JUST SLAUGHTERED RIGHT THERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DINING AREA.
Seriously, the cow, no doubt slaughtered for Eid ul-Adha which starts tomorrow, must have been alive and kicking only seconds before I entered, because the puddle was still rapidly forming. The head was about half off, and thing thing took up maybe a third of the room that was available in the tiny cafe. At this I decided I was no longer hungry and existed the cafe as graciously and quickly as I could.
So, ridiculous cow slaughters aside, Old Cairo has become a favorite place of mine. I realize that my initial disappointment with Cairo was in it's tourist hot-spots because it's natural to try to get money off of unsuspecting tourists. I've always known this, yet for some reason I forgot it here and at first thought of Cairo only by those who represent it's tourism. Bad mistake.
So anyway right now I'm about to have a seizure because it's so difficult to get a Sudanese visa, but besides that all is well. That's all I got for now, I'll try to post when (if) I cross the border before I head into nothingness.
p.s. All of the computers here have pirated copies of Windows . . . XP. I have yet to see Vista. Suck it, Microsoft.
The problem, as I had feared, is that getting a Sudanese visa is damn tricky and I'm striking out at every turn here. I've got no chance because of holiday here for the next week, so tomorrow I'll hopefully be off to Siwa, to the West. Staying for this extra time might be for the best, however, as Cairo (and Egypt as a whole) has grown on me in the extra time spent here and I've discovered a side of the country I would have otherwise missed.
When I first arrived, my first order of business in Egypt was to visit the pyramids, Nile, and National Museum, which I did in quick succession. Unfortunately, I quickly decided that the city fell below what were very insignificant expectations to begin with. It seemed that every cab driver tried to overcharge me, every shop keeper tried to sell me outrageously priced perfume, and every smile directed at me was fake. The city, I felt that and still feel, is essentially like Rome on blow - history every twelve feet and cats every ten feet (in what I can only imagine is a nod to it's ancient history of veneration towards cats), crazy traffic, and a lively population. But where I like Rome, I didn't like Cairo because these effects are multiplied ten-fold and the "bustleness" of the city is just plain crazy.
With many millions of people, the city is understandably cramped and the city suffers not only from human pollution but from the desert sands as well. In some areas I can see no more than a quarter mile because of the smog. And the traffic. God, the traffic.
You know how in some movies the good guy or bad guy will gain control of the traffic light system and then make all lights turn green at a traffic intersection? Of course what inevitably happens is that a dozen or so cars will crash into each other and the drivers will emerge shouting "Hey, what the hell's the matter with you?!?!" at each other. Well it's like that in Cairo, except nobody ever crashes! Seriously, I've been to some of the largest cities in the world and crossed streets in some pretty ridiculous traffic, but Cairo is the only city where I've truly had an adrenaline rush from navigating some of these streets. You don't think about it, you just dive into the traffic and cram into any wedge you can before you're struck by the honking cab drivers. Because they're always honking. Or shouting at each other.
So anyway, I decided Cairo was not for me. After failing in my initial attempts at a Sudanese visa I fled to the seaside town of Dahab on the west coast of the Sinai Peninsula. Still fretting about security from when Israel took control in 1967, security checks are frequent and I had to show my passport four times from the Suez Canal to Dahab and four times back.
Still, the hassle was worth it for the comfort that Dahab offers. It is billed, indeed it was built up for this reason, as a backpacking hot-spot in Sinai and has worked hard to keep itself into a low-key tourist location. Set along the Gulf of Aqaba, the Saudi Arabian mountains can be seen to the east across the channel and, at night, some lights from settlements across the way on the Arabian Peninsula. I was sorely tempted to cross the channel via fishing boat or head north to Jordan and Israel, but I figured that it was best to keep these destinations safe for another trip and instead keep to Africa.
To the west of Dahab lie crumbling granite and sandstone mountains, courtesy of the Great Rift Valley. They had no vegetation and were pure desert, so it seemed very appealing to check them out. After a brief day of snorkeling along the reefs of Dahab I put together my camping pack and set out with three gallons of water and some food to explore these hills.
In every spot it seemed the rocks are just ready to fall off and crumble to the canyons below, so it made me wary of climbing on top of the hills. Instead I stuck to the low points and crossed over ridges as little as possible. Heading north, I trekked along the coast keeping the water in site. There were times, when the gullies went straight down or house-size boulders blocked my path, that I was forced to climb the walls to find another path, and even though I know it probably wasn't the smartest thing to do I couldn't help myself. It's a great feeling having to navigate the rocks and boulders by my own wits. Even the feeling of fear, when I was edging around the cliffs as I felt a rock begin to crumble or break free beneath my hands, or worse, beneath my feet, was an emotion I hadn't felt in a good while and I took a certain perverse pleasure when it coursed through me.
But that feeling was luckily rare and I spent the great majority of my time simply trekking. Nights were spent sleeping beneath the beautiful desert stars. Sunsets were a great time, because while the sun would set in back of me, over the Sinai Mountains, the Arabian Mountains across the gulf always reflected the gorgeous colors. Their brown color would always turn red first with the setting sun. Then it would fade to a pink, next purple, and finally brown again as the sun finally went down. Then the stars would explode into the sky that was otherwise pure blackness.
The mountains weren't safe for mules or camels because of their make-up, and the Bedouins seemed to largely avoid traveling in them as well, so I never saw anyone my entire time there save for a lone bird my second day. If there is a use for the word serene, it is within these mountains.
Eventually I made my way to a road on the coast and followed that back to Dahab. I had forgotten my passport back in the hostel and my trekking had unknowingly put me on the wrong side of a security checkpoint, but after some good natured gesturing with their unnecessarily large automatics, they decided to let me through anyway. Walking back, a man in a shop gestured me over and asked if I was hungry. As I had run our of both food and water the day before, I emphatically told him I was and he invited me in to share his lunch in a most welcoming gesture of Bedouin hospitality. I am told that this is a common occurrence in the next country on my list, Sudan, but still it came as a wonderful shock to me. Especially considering how much I love eating and think of every morsel of food as a wonderful gift from the Gods, having a stranger share their food with me for no other reason than to be nice is incredibly impressive.
I returned to Cairo to wander around the city a bit but quickly became as annoyed as before, especially around the tourist areas where the shop keepers have some pretty well thought out plans to get you to buy stuff. I fled once again and decided to get a train ticket down the Nile to Aswan.
After walking into the train station to buy the ticket with my head down, I was mortified to realize that I had actually walked into what turned out to be one of the largest mosques in Cairo during prayer time. Now, I gotta say, if you ever want to feel like a complete idiot, nothing, nothing, not even setting yourself on fire, makes you feel as stupid as doing something like that. There is no way to get extract yourself gracefully. I thought about kneeling down to pray and hope they didn't notice I had no idea what I was doing, but I decided that the best thing to do would be to cut my losses and flee the area before I did anything dumber. As it was, not many people saw me as I walked in the back way, but still . . . whew.
After failing to a get a visa down in Aswan I quickly came back up to Cairo. I say quickly because I didn't want to get in transit during Eid ul-Adha, the huge Muslim holiday that celebrates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to God (who, it turns out, was just yanking Abraham's chain, the jokester!). Eid ul-Adha is a four day long festival in Muslim countries (which is actually far longer) that I was hoping to experience in Sudan, but that obviously isn't happening, so Egypt it is.
Anyway, these last few days I've spent wandering the streets of Old Cairo, a section of town that I have grown to love. The buildings here, which appear as old as Egypt itself, are in a cramped section of town where the roads are more alleys than anything else and have no sense or purpose, the trash has piled up, and the people look at your strangely not because you represent money but because it's just weird that you're there. It was here that for the first time in ages I got my first whiff of burning rubbish, a smell that any traveler of a third-world country should be familiar with and maybe even welcome.
Chickens, goats, mules, and the occasional cow wander the streets and children usually do one of three things - wave and say "hello," just stare, or run up asking for money. Oddly enough, even the asking for money is enduring. I never give it, but they never really seem to care that much. They just think it's hilarious that I'm as tall as I am.
The first couple times I asked the locals where a good place to eat was, and both times I was motioned to sit. They then went of and brought back my lunch and adamantly refused payment because "I am like a brother." I felt bad at this treatment and today vowed to find food myself. So for lunch I walked into a cafe for some falafels and almost jumped out of my skin when I walked into a huge pool of blood that was forming from the GIANT GODDAMN COW THEY HAD JUST SLAUGHTERED RIGHT THERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DINING AREA.
Seriously, the cow, no doubt slaughtered for Eid ul-Adha which starts tomorrow, must have been alive and kicking only seconds before I entered, because the puddle was still rapidly forming. The head was about half off, and thing thing took up maybe a third of the room that was available in the tiny cafe. At this I decided I was no longer hungry and existed the cafe as graciously and quickly as I could.
So, ridiculous cow slaughters aside, Old Cairo has become a favorite place of mine. I realize that my initial disappointment with Cairo was in it's tourist hot-spots because it's natural to try to get money off of unsuspecting tourists. I've always known this, yet for some reason I forgot it here and at first thought of Cairo only by those who represent it's tourism. Bad mistake.
So anyway right now I'm about to have a seizure because it's so difficult to get a Sudanese visa, but besides that all is well. That's all I got for now, I'll try to post when (if) I cross the border before I head into nothingness.
p.s. All of the computers here have pirated copies of Windows . . . XP. I have yet to see Vista. Suck it, Microsoft.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Almost there
A priest from Chimanimani once told me that God made Africa first, while he still had imagination and courage.
-Author Alexandra Fuller, while hiking the bush of Zambia.
Now that campaign season is finished with I'm moving on, at least for a few months. My plan is to head to Africa for a cross-continent trip starting in Cairo. It's a trip that I've been wanting to take for years and one that I've been planning for ages - being so close to lift-off is a hell of a feeling. I've never done anything like this, and the anticipation is ridiculous.
This is a great time to travel cross-continent in Africa because, with the exception of fighting in the eastern DRC and tension along the Eritrean-Djibouti border, the path provides open borders and war-free zones that typically haven't been there in the past. Starting in Egypt, I'm going to go up the Nile River across the Sudanese border and to Khartoum. From here, I'll split from the river and explore some of Sudan before continuing onwards to Ethiopia. After a slight detour to Somaliland, Kenya is up next. Then it's a Uganda-Rwanda-Burundi circuit, along with the Democratic Republic of Congo if the Kivu regions are safe and the fighting has died down. Tanzania is right after that, with that the Spice Islands (Zanzibar, Pemba, and Mafia Islands). After this I'm going SW to Zambia, Zimbabwe, and finally South Africa. I'm going to touch into Lesotho if my knees are still up for some climbing, as the Drakensburg Mountains are stunning and form a border with South Africa.
At this point I'm guessing I'll have some time to evaluate my options. There's a strong possibility that after five or so months I'll be tired of traveling and will want to come home. If not, then I'm going to head up north once again and go to Mozambique via Swaziland and up into Malawi. There's also a chance of exploring the Katanga province of the DRC or a source-to-sea trip of the Zambezi river with someone I met at Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree online forum.
As I mentioned, this trip is one I've salivated over for years, and this means that I'm going to try to pack as much into it as possible. There is so much to do along the way - so many mountains, deserts, lakes, volcanoes, beaches, rainforests - that even now, right before I leave, I have a difficult time wrapping my head around what is in store for me. That's part of the draw, of course; the unknowns in Africa are numerous. It's what got me when I was in Africa earlier, and it's what pumps me up so much to go back there for so long. The diversity of life and landscape that one experiences within Africa is enough to stun even the most experienced of travelers. Exploring some of the recently-opened areas of Sudan, climbing the Rwenzori Mountains of Uganda, hiking the overland border crossing between Western Ethiopia and Kenya, and trekking through swaths of South Africa's Wild Coast are at the top of my list, but there are plenty more not far behind those.
The beginning quote from Alexandra Fuller pretty well sums it up for me. From when I was very young through my first trip to Africa and continuing to now, the continent of Africa has always struck me not as the Dark Continent but as an Unknown Continent. It encompasses the geological and geographical extremes of our world, the best and worst of humanity, and a sense of mystery that has has always shrouded it from outsiders. Even today there are entire regions of the continent which have yet to see white skin and presumably will wait decades before they do. Think about that - today, more than a hundred years after Henry Morton Stanley died and with satellites mapping out corners around the globe, there are still places in Africa you can try to get to where the sum total of information known about the climate, vegetation, people, disease, rivers, villages, and dangers is: Unknown.
But for me, those places are not on my itinerary, because my guess is that they are unknown for good reasons. My plans are for the next rung up on the ladder; places that have been searched and trekked but then forgotten or relegated. When a 50 year civil war ends as it recently did in South Sudan, that means two things. 1) It is safe for the first time in ages. 2) Few outsiders have any idea what lies there and it is just waiting to be rediscovered. Same with a desert border crossing which has seen only a handful of travelers in the last decade. Or world-class Neolithic paintings that are hidden in the cave systems of Somaliland. There are endless possibilities in Africa. Presumably the same can be said for every other continent, but for some reason it's Africa that has always held the most allure and it's Africa that I've been unable to get out of my mind since I flew out of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on my way back home some 30 months ago.
Truthfully, I don't know what I am going to feel up for once I'm over there. I have already learned that things never quite work out the way one expects them to over there, so I don't really have too many specific plans except to get down to South Africa by late April. Other than that, I might have a lot of adventures, or I might just end up spending most of my time in hostels. I'll try to post at least once or twice per country.
As something of a parting toast, I'd like to offer my favorite toast, courtesy of Edward Abbey.
"May your trails be crooked, windy, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds."
Cheers, everyone. Good luck with your school, with campaigning, your families, jobs, and travels over the coming months. I hope that you keep me up-to-date on what's happening with you when I'm away. Keep well!
-Author Alexandra Fuller, while hiking the bush of Zambia.
Now that campaign season is finished with I'm moving on, at least for a few months. My plan is to head to Africa for a cross-continent trip starting in Cairo. It's a trip that I've been wanting to take for years and one that I've been planning for ages - being so close to lift-off is a hell of a feeling. I've never done anything like this, and the anticipation is ridiculous.
This is a great time to travel cross-continent in Africa because, with the exception of fighting in the eastern DRC and tension along the Eritrean-Djibouti border, the path provides open borders and war-free zones that typically haven't been there in the past. Starting in Egypt, I'm going to go up the Nile River across the Sudanese border and to Khartoum. From here, I'll split from the river and explore some of Sudan before continuing onwards to Ethiopia. After a slight detour to Somaliland, Kenya is up next. Then it's a Uganda-Rwanda-Burundi circuit, along with the Democratic Republic of Congo if the Kivu regions are safe and the fighting has died down. Tanzania is right after that, with that the Spice Islands (Zanzibar, Pemba, and Mafia Islands). After this I'm going SW to Zambia, Zimbabwe, and finally South Africa. I'm going to touch into Lesotho if my knees are still up for some climbing, as the Drakensburg Mountains are stunning and form a border with South Africa.
At this point I'm guessing I'll have some time to evaluate my options. There's a strong possibility that after five or so months I'll be tired of traveling and will want to come home. If not, then I'm going to head up north once again and go to Mozambique via Swaziland and up into Malawi. There's also a chance of exploring the Katanga province of the DRC or a source-to-sea trip of the Zambezi river with someone I met at Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree online forum.
As I mentioned, this trip is one I've salivated over for years, and this means that I'm going to try to pack as much into it as possible. There is so much to do along the way - so many mountains, deserts, lakes, volcanoes, beaches, rainforests - that even now, right before I leave, I have a difficult time wrapping my head around what is in store for me. That's part of the draw, of course; the unknowns in Africa are numerous. It's what got me when I was in Africa earlier, and it's what pumps me up so much to go back there for so long. The diversity of life and landscape that one experiences within Africa is enough to stun even the most experienced of travelers. Exploring some of the recently-opened areas of Sudan, climbing the Rwenzori Mountains of Uganda, hiking the overland border crossing between Western Ethiopia and Kenya, and trekking through swaths of South Africa's Wild Coast are at the top of my list, but there are plenty more not far behind those.
The beginning quote from Alexandra Fuller pretty well sums it up for me. From when I was very young through my first trip to Africa and continuing to now, the continent of Africa has always struck me not as the Dark Continent but as an Unknown Continent. It encompasses the geological and geographical extremes of our world, the best and worst of humanity, and a sense of mystery that has has always shrouded it from outsiders. Even today there are entire regions of the continent which have yet to see white skin and presumably will wait decades before they do. Think about that - today, more than a hundred years after Henry Morton Stanley died and with satellites mapping out corners around the globe, there are still places in Africa you can try to get to where the sum total of information known about the climate, vegetation, people, disease, rivers, villages, and dangers is: Unknown.
But for me, those places are not on my itinerary, because my guess is that they are unknown for good reasons. My plans are for the next rung up on the ladder; places that have been searched and trekked but then forgotten or relegated. When a 50 year civil war ends as it recently did in South Sudan, that means two things. 1) It is safe for the first time in ages. 2) Few outsiders have any idea what lies there and it is just waiting to be rediscovered. Same with a desert border crossing which has seen only a handful of travelers in the last decade. Or world-class Neolithic paintings that are hidden in the cave systems of Somaliland. There are endless possibilities in Africa. Presumably the same can be said for every other continent, but for some reason it's Africa that has always held the most allure and it's Africa that I've been unable to get out of my mind since I flew out of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on my way back home some 30 months ago.
Truthfully, I don't know what I am going to feel up for once I'm over there. I have already learned that things never quite work out the way one expects them to over there, so I don't really have too many specific plans except to get down to South Africa by late April. Other than that, I might have a lot of adventures, or I might just end up spending most of my time in hostels. I'll try to post at least once or twice per country.
As something of a parting toast, I'd like to offer my favorite toast, courtesy of Edward Abbey.
"May your trails be crooked, windy, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds."
Cheers, everyone. Good luck with your school, with campaigning, your families, jobs, and travels over the coming months. I hope that you keep me up-to-date on what's happening with you when I'm away. Keep well!
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