“On the road again, just can’t wait to get on the road again…!!!!” And so I once again begin a new journey and continue my blogs from where I left off. I cant believe that my stay in London is now over. My original intention was to stay in the UK and find myself a job till April but as it turned out - The Universe had other plans, as did the financial markets and my ability to seek a somewhat decent job in the current environment. So with that in mind - I decided to continue along the path [View Full Entry]

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Day 32 - Ships ahoy. We board at Aswan. I was going to be spending the next three days of my life aboard an Egyptian Felucca surrounded by 12 of my fellow tour group members with no hope of escape, solitude or immediate access to my backpack (more on that later). How hard can that possibly be….? A felucca is one of those traditional wooden sailing boats that are now mainly used by the tourist market to sail along the Nile between Aswan & Luxor. The one we were on did not have an engine (most of them rarely do) and [View Full Entry]

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Watch out for those beer goggles…..and the resulting hangover!! After our afternoon lunch in Luxor we immediately made our way back to the campsite in readiness for our 2pm convoy to Hurghada, where we would be spending the next two nights. What can one say about the town of Hughada? Nothing in fact! It is what I would call the Costa del Sol of Egypt, filled with tourist resorts & tacky souvenir shops that cater for the much maligned European package traveler and reveal nothing about the true Egypt. In truth the only thing this town has going for it [View Full Entry]

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Day 25: Dakhla to Luxor Sleep is starting to become a tradeable commodity - one that I would gladly soon want to start paying for. One draw back with any organised tour is your inability to select your own itinerary and most importantly your own leaving and arrival times. Today was certainly no exception. Given the long drive day that was ahead of us today, we had no alternative but to head off at the ungodly time of 4 am to get to Luxor. The only positive thing about that early morning experience was that there was no need for [View Full Entry]

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I need a bath!!! This was going to be our last night in the desert and our first opportunity for an actual shower. Yippie !! We were moving out of the desert itself and instead going to be spending the night in the Oasis town of Dakhla. Even in ‘winter’ as they called it - The Desert was piercingly hot during the day and freezing cold at night. Sitting in the truck for our drive with nothing but warm Desert air being ventilated through the open windows made most of us almost catatonic, leaving us with little or no energy to [View Full Entry]

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Does a bear shit in the forest? If so what do you do in the desert? We spent the previous night under the stars in the black desert (Sahara Suda) close to a train line that stretched for miles into the middle of nowhere. The black desert was not what I had visualised the desert to be - thinking that all deserts would be filled with mountains of red or white sand that stretched out endlessly (Okay! I only had the tv to compare it to). Instead the black desert was mounds of sand almost completely covered in small black [View Full Entry]

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”Did I really do that much shopping?" I woke up early today to make the most of a proper bathroom and shower. It’s amazing how when you don’t have the usual things that you would expect to get at home you soon start to recognise how important they are to you - Like a flushing toilet, a shower recess (not a shower head over a toilet). Not only is this probably the first time in 4 weeks that I have not needed to wear thongs in the shower, nor expected to have a mud trail following me as soon as I [View Full Entry]

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I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...... Day 20: Dahab You may have thought that I had forgotten the third calamity but I hadn't....but I will tell you more about that one later.... It is amazing how a good nights rest can restore things. I felt great this morning and was feeling so much better than the night before. I still had the whole day left in Dahab as we were only going to be heading out after dinner for our next stop of Mt Sinai (so that we would be able to do the [View Full Entry]

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All calamities happen in threes.. Day 17 - I think I may be in Egypt!! Our itinerary said that today would be dedicated to solely getting across the Border from Jordan to Egypt - And it wasn't an exaggeration.... We were originally given an 11am departure time to catch the ferry across the red sea to Egypt. This soon changed to 1pm as we sat at the Jordanian Border waiting to cross. We stood waiting at Border control as our Jordanian agent handled the necessary paperwork to process our visas. Standing around watching the scene unfolding before me was like [View Full Entry]

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We were off to Wadi Rum today for a 4 wheel drive safari into the desert. I was still quite tired from my marathon walk through Petra the day before so I was feeling a bit limp as we set off. I don't think I would have been able to do anything other than sit in a truck - so the 4 wheel drive cars were a God send as we made our way into the desert of Wadi Rum.. Wadi Rum is called the 'Desert of Mountains' because of the huge sandstone & granite mountains that are spread out over [View Full Entry]

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