After 14 countries, 7 time zones, 124 taxis, 74 minibuses, 61 buses, 32 cars, 28 metros, 11 boats, 10 trains, 9 motorbikes, 5 ferries, 4 rickshaws, 4 dugout canoes, 1 truck, 1 cable car, 1 funicular, 1 horse, 1 donkey cart and frustratingly 1 plane (not to mention 37 visits to embassies), we have made it from Nairobi to Hong Kong. Well it’s certainly been quite a journey and we couldn’t think of a better place to end it than the fantastic city of Hong Kong. Despite being busy, Hong Kong is an incredibly civilised place and perhaps more than any [View Full Entry]

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Our journey into China took us on a 24 hour bus from Almaty to Urumqi. Upon boarding the Chinese owned bus, we were greeted by quite a surprise. The bus contained no seats, only beds. Once the initial shock had worn off we realised that in a country where distances are long and people are short, it makes perfect sense. Fortunately, we are sufficiently diminutive to be comfortable and managed to pass the journey by sleeping and gazing out of the window at the passing mountain scenery. In Urumqi we took a couple of days to acclimatise to being in China, [View Full Entry]

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We are ashamed to say that prior to visiting, the sum total of our knowledge of Kazakhstan was based on having seen Borat. This being an especially poor showing given that it is the seventh largest country in the world. We always had a suspicion that Borat wasn’t a documentary, but we didn’t fully appreciate how inaccurate a picture of the country it painted. Admittedly we saw only small percentage of the country, but it appeared to be an extremely westernised place. Having made the frustrating, but necessary, detour from Tashkent in order to get to a border cro [View Full Entry]

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As we entered Uzbekistan, we received the most thorough search we are ever likely to, with everything being removed from our bags and inspected. However, unlike at most borders, the guards weren’t looking for anything in the way of contraband, but instead any indications that we were journalists. This being due to a unilateral ban on journalism, a measure essentially imposed in an attempt to reduce coverage of human rights violations. A cheery thought to start a visit to any country. Once in Uzbekistan it was immediately apparent that they have only a fraction of the wealth of neig [View Full Entry]

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Prior to researching our visit to the “Stans”, we saw this part of world as little more than a homogenous mass sandwiched between Russia and China. In general one of the highlights of this trip has been watching places change from a name on a map, to a plan, to living breathing experiences and finally memories; this has especially been the case while travelling through a region about which we previously knew so little. Turkmenistan has been dubbed, by those in the know, as the North Korea of Central Asia. The extent to which this analogy applies is debatable and we [View Full Entry]

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As many of you will know, our original plan had us heading from Syria into Turkey. Our intent was to then travel north to Moscow, in order to get some serious miles under our belt by taking the Trans-Siberian Railway to Mongolia. Unfortunately, failure to obtain Russian visas rendered this impossible. Therefore we needed an alternative plan. After a fair amount of research and deliberation we settled on doing what few people do and turning right when we get to Turkey. Our new route would take us through Iran and the “Stans” into China. On the positive side this would tak [View Full Entry]

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Leaving our hotel in Amman bound for the Syrian border, we were prepared for, at the very least, a protracted crossing. We were aware that there was every chance we would face the inconvenience and ignominy of having to return a few hours later. Our fears were exacerbated when we found that British and American citizens without visas, were not allowed to board buses to Syria. Fortunately, we met an American couple in our hotel who were in the same boat as us and shared a taxi with them, bound tentatively for Damascus. Much to our surprise, Syrian immigration was a [View Full Entry]

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Our time in Jordan will probably go down as one of the shortest, yet sweetest stays of our trip. It will be memorable for three incredible sites we visited, some friendly people and a couple of mishaps. With all our necessary visas either in the bag, in the pipeline or in our dreams and being in danger of actually being able to speak some Arabic, it was high time we left Cairo. The first leg of our journey took us on a night bus to the sleepy Red Sea resort of Nuweiba. Although a lot less developed than Dahab we didn’t [View Full Entry]

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On our next holiday from the embassies and language schools of Cairo, we set out to break the world record for the number of temples and tombs visited in four days. Our destinations for this was the area around Aswan and Luxor, referred to here as Upper Egypt. Once again we opted for the time and money saving option of nocturnal transport, this time a train. Frustratingly tourists are only permitted to buy tickets for one train a day, which only has first class carriages. Therefore, it was far from cheap, but still represented good value for a thirteen hour journey [View Full Entry]

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On our return to Cairo we picked up where we had left off with applying for visas. We reached the conclusion that irrespective of our ability to get Russian visas, we would need a Chinese visa if we wanted to see anything of the country other than Hong Kong. Naively we assumed that few Egyptians would be applying for Chinese visas and therefore, getting a visa would be a relatively straightforward task. How wrong we were. From the what we saw, we can conclude that before long a significant proportion of the billion or so people in China will be Egyptian. [View Full Entry]

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