For whatever reason, the urinals at Cairo's Rameses train station are highly unpopular at 7:15 in the morning so I was able to have my pick of the three available ones while queues five-deep waited outside each of the traps. This wasn't my only relief, as I was shortly to board a train taking me away from the capital into the supposedly more refined setting of Alexandria. The city is situated on the Mediterranean coast less than three hours northwest of Cairo and, in its time, had been home to two of the ancient world's most famous buildings. I had also been led to believe that singularly excellent chocolate cake could be found there. Having lashed out $6.50 for the first class fare, I was pleased to find myself in a clean, spacious, air-conditioned carriage trundling ... read more

My journey back to the UK included a short stopover at Stockholm airport, where the ludicrous cost of a DC ate up a chunk of the savings I'd made by not flying directly to Heathrow. Despite arriving in Stockholm at about 7AM, which could not be considered early by airport standards, there was hardly anyone around except the cleaners, gliding elegantly across the empty floor spaces on scooters. At Heathrow I had a layover lasting the entire afternoon, which I filled with my first Times crossword in months as well as an intake of multiple chicken and stuffing sandwiches. My last layover at Heathrow back in 2005 (when I left New York) had resulted in sightings of De La Soul and Andy Bell (from Erasure) but this time celebrities were thin on the ground. I compensated ... read more

My goal of doing a complete circuit of South America had failed, but only to the tune of roughly half the continent. Distances had again proved to be my downfall. It takes less than a day to traverse England, a yardstick wholly inadequate for applying to most other non-European countries, let alone continents. Brazil was the stand-out omission (I'm not counting my couple of hours at Iguazu), with a a size meriting a multi-month trip all on its own, but that was just one of a whole raft of experiences that would have to wait for the future, including communing with capybara in Venezuela, meeting the epitome of mate culture in Uruguay, and exposing my pasty buttocks and thong to the denizens of Ipanema beach. I think I have an available time slot for these in ... read more

The Medellin-Bogota road links the two most important cities in Colombia, a route popular for both freight and passenger traffic, yet it is one lane in each direction and winds all over the place. Thus, in a bus, you will spend much of your travel time sitting behind lorries waiting for overtaking opportunities. I'd been quoted 8-9 hours for the journey, which turned out to be 11 and felt like 20 as the aircon didn't work and even the locals were complaining about the sweltering conditions. I'd read that Bogota wasn't a particularly pleasant city, and certainly the area that my hostel was in - La Candelaria - looked extremely sketchy at night. Fortunately by day it was much more pleasant and, as Bogota's historic colonial centre, was peppered with churches and interesting architecture in a ... read more

In the nearly four decades that I've been taking up space on this planet, I've never encountered a place quite as rainy as Salento. Wet seasons in the Amazon can only dream of delivering the quantities of water that the skies above Salento deluged the town with during the four days I was there. There was none of the tropical policy of "afternoons only", with torrential cloudbursts around the clock. To say that it pissed down - a phrase I would hesitate to use in genteel company - would convey a small amount of the frustration that this caused me but would not even begin to hint at quite how monsoonal the experience was. My previous rainiest location, Dali, was humbled. In fact the rain was so heavy that the bridge on the main road out ... read more