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Sat 17 Dec 1988
It was holiday time at St John’s School in Cyprus where I was working and recently divorced, so a single man in the junior Officers’ Mess and bored and lonely with only me and Stavros (the one who tried to arrange a new marriage with a local lady). Another few nights at the bar feeling sorry for myself with Stavros the matchmaker was too much to handle so I decided to throw the dice of life and have an adventure. Lady luck came to my rescue in my last-minute planning and the next day I went to the travel agent with a vague notion of going to Syria or more likely a triangular tour from Cyprus to Egypt then Israel by boat and back to home in Cyprus if I could fit docking schedules in.
The boat with cabin was my likely choice until 3 mins before the travel agent closed I found the possibility of flying Larnaca -Cairo then Tel Aviv -Larnaca, and the low price was guessed by someone wanting to get rid of me. It pays to hassle! But the flight was cheap because it was the last seat on tonight’s flight that departed from the other end of Cyprus!
Panic packing, no guide book or idea what to see or where to stay, I hitched a lift with a teacher going to Larnaca en route to UK, and at 0300 am the next morning, the adventure started. After a fitful sleep on a hard bench at Larnaca Airport in Cyprus my trip nearly finished when the ticket girl couldn’t understand how the fare was half what it should be, but firm smiles, and early morning “No problem” from me won the day and at last I bought my ticket and boarded the plane for Cairo.
Oops, I arrived in Cairo without money nor plan of where to go and I was exhausted from no sleep the night before. I need cash or the customs won’t let me in, they only wanted bone fide wealth travellers, not penniless middle aged wanderers. Cheques were unacceptable for ticket or foreign currency -nearly pipped at the post again. Thank heavens for plastic money, the credit card saved the day and money flowed into my pocket.
But here I am at Cairo airport with nowhere to go, no hotel booked and no idea what would happen next. Well I wanted an adventure so here goes! After travelling for 8 months by public transport from UK to Nepal I thought I knew how the international “help/con” system worked so I waited until someone came to “help” me ie someone who gets a cut from taking me to their friend’s hotel (or who robs me on the way but that is a different set of contingencies)
So, the con man at Cairo airport “I’m from the Government Tourist Organisation, free, I’ll organise your trip” He did organise everything, even arranged hotel and taxi, then asked for £e500 for the guides and train. I paid something less exorbitant, took the notes with the customised itinery, found the taxi and went.
The hotel was quite acceptable 3 star local place. I went to book the train immediately and was conned for £e5 for a £eO.85 taxi ride, the start of war with the taxis. Actually, taxis are almost at war with anything on the roads, it’s like Ben Hur with sound effects of a thousand car trumpets.
I negotiate for a local Egyptian taxi driver to take me anywhere interesting for 13 hours for £e10. He overtakes lorries as a matter of pride, then I shout “stop” for a click stop. He is used to camera mad westerners. “Stop – Click” becomes our regular communication.
At Memphis is the statue of the fallen Madonna (sorry “Allo Allo” fans)/ Rameses. It’s in a shed with too many tourists, and no travellers, and lots of hassle. This is not the personal adventure that I want so I tell my helpful driver to find the next place.
Saqquara is an adventure ground in time travel. Forget guide books, though listen occasionally to guided tours (even when they speak in French a few words are understood). Visual treasures are found not only above ground with ancient buildings but hidden entrances to the underground leads to a fallen tomb. It was like going down a caving tunnel entrance to arrive in a cavern of early history.
A huge stone sarcophagus rang like a bell when the guide banged it, strange hieroglyphs meant poems and prayers to the initiated, side caverns showed false rooms to cheat the looters.
I emerged from one experience below ground to a surface level crowded with tourists so to escape the hordes, I was beckoned by a local to go behind a pile of stones, into another hole in the ground, down 180 spiral steps and into 3 Persian tombs, each with a vertical entrance shaft but only one had been excavated. Here we saw the carved tunnels made by looters that connected the 3 smaller caverns with places for sarcophagus in each, hieroglyphs in relief and impression. There was only me and a local who was there to check I don’t take photos since flashes are destroying the colours.
Outside, I try to climb a pyramid, but am told no, and go to tramp in the virgin (well un-touristy) desert for a few minutes, and I came across a lad sifting sand round a hole. He beckons me and I see a new discovery of painted walls and hieroglyphs and a small tomb of a doctor. 50p for the personal show.
I wander near other labourers and await more hidden delights as they sift through the sand and gravel and sure enough I’m beckoned to the best reliefs and hieroglyphs yet. 50p for the photo (£e5 for the permit, but the reward is him showing me something not seen for thousands of years until he discovered it at that moment. I’m beginning to realise the thrill of adventure and discovery that is delivered by archaeology.
Some re-building is going on with labourers working as they would have done in the ancient days. He has two roughly carved blocks of stone on top of each other, one man slides the blocks over each other with grit in between them and slowly a newly shaped and smoothed block emerges to be used in reconstruction. He is on the same block 3 hours later, but it is smoother. Another team carry huge paving slabs into position where a labourer chips gently into the surface with an adze similar to a pick/hoe to smooth it.
I send my driver on to the next pyramid and walk a mile without seeing anyone and I wander deep in thought past forgotten ruins far from the tourist trail. It is so easy to make one’s own discoveries here, there is a world of exploration and adventure waiting the inquisitive adventurer.
A fantastic find was the Seraphaeum tombs. Carter and the French man Champollion who deciphered the hieroglyphs from the Rosetta stone, found some hieroglyphs referring to the sacred bulls of Aphid that were mummified. Just think for a moment; a few bulls take up a lot of tomb room, and they could not see anything like it above ground, so they predicted that the mummified bulls were to be found underground as in the underworld. But there was no trace of the entrance so where should they dig? The mystery of the underworld home of the mummified bulls caused lots of speculative digging but no success until the pictures of a star chart inside a tomb were considered as if they were a map.
Eventually the map was correctly interpreted and once the entrance had been found ie under which sand dune do you thing there may be a bull or two, then all was revealed in outstanding mind boggling glory. There were 200 metres of tunnel underground that we had been walking over! Even the entrance was almost invisible, an inconspicuous barrier with steps down to the underworld of the 200 metre corridor with rooms of tombs branching off every few metres. This was a highly underrated experience and one that stays with me so many years later.
The sarcophagus for a bull is obviously a huge thing, but it is made of one block of stone and the lid is one block of stone so you can imagine the difficulty of moving the lid to get at the mummified bull underneath. Inevitably one or two lids were broken when the bulls were removed but the scale of the underworld experience was awe inspiring. I imagined the underground world of insects or honeycombs of bees and then upscaled it to the size of bulls then upscaled to the size of huge stone troughs that they were in … my imagination runs wild and this underworld inspires stories and awe now in the same way as it must have done three or more thousand years ago. What were we Britains doing then …?
The mysterious stone boxes here are amazing to see and touch. Each weighs somewhere between 75-100 tons depending. How were they moved? How were they cut? What were they used for? The traditional story doesn’t seem to hold water once you scrutinize that these boxes were used for burials of symbolic bulls.
(2) The Mysterious Serapeum of Egypt Full Movie – YouTube
An exploration of the ancient machined boxes in the Serapeum at Saqqara in Egypt. Featuring Yousef Awyan
Back to the surface and back to the present day strange reality. I decide to experience the camel con of £el0 for “ride to distant tomb missta” I see tomb on horizon, but he meant tomb 50 metres away so this led me to a counter con of “give me 1/2 hour ride and I’ll hire you for 3 days expedition in the desert” He became intoxicated by the money idea and promised camels, guide, food, hashish and dancing girls! I settled for 20 mins of sitting behind him. I know why the camel is called ship of the desert, it’s because you get sea sick riding one!
Now for Giza and the main pyramids, but on route, the driver gives me the full treatment, stopping at various tourist factories where carpets were made by orphan children -that’s school, their fingers can tie smaller knots, though they have an uncertain future when their fingers outgrow their usefulness. Incidentally in Iran, where Persian carpets of extra small knots need the same children, the Shah had outlawed this pseudo school and insisted on semi proper education. [I went through Iran in 1978 (en route to India) when the Shah was being replaced by Kohemi]
In my diary I write:
“1514 hrs I’m sure another day past since last writing. I went camera happy even though there are post cards. I’m happy and elated beyond expectation.
1534 hrs Oh sh** I’ve just crunched a stone in the rice -my first local meal and I’ve broken a molar ••••• and I was trying to be vegetarian•••• certainly can’t chew meat now•••. old age and falsies are upon me. I knew things were going too well!
Next the perfume factory, and a drink and so many beautiful but strong perfume essences. I am sure that I should have got some, but what smell and for whom? Both there and at the papyrus factory I was alone, not hidden in a bus load of tourists, so I felt guilty to accept the tea and coffee and act the interested potential buyer while he split papyrus, soaked it, pressed and rinsed it, wove it and pressed it again. I saved face for all the hospitality by negotiating a price and saying I had no cash to pay the exorbitant amount (‘e20 each)
5.00pm and time for the pyramids. Mammut, my taxi driver, is getting desperate cause I don’t buy anything and he gets commission. He and a horse trader persuade me that I need a horse to see the pyramids, and I’m tired so say OK only to be led by a boy like a seaside donkey. For £15e I can walk faster, and dismount to prove it in a fury at acting like a gullible tourist, being hassled for backsheesh and clicking pictures too much. The lad tries to gallop after me so I walk towards a tourist policeman and they go away. Lots of tourist police everywhere, they keep the rules of tourism OK (I later learned they are only paid £6e per month, so would be jealous of the hassle lads getting that for some tips).
Now in a foul mood from being conned, I barge past a barrier (all tourists are supposed to be out of the area at night), but I’m walking at warp speed and get to the furthest of the 3 main pyramids which I’m going to climb, but am spotted by a local, an Ali. The Sun is setting by now and I have calmed down and want an adventure so I persuade Ali with a few £e and he guides me up a smaller pyramid from which I see the last glows of the sun disappear over the bare desert horizon on one side. On the other the looming shapes of the giant pyramids change from visible shapes to shadows, outlines illuminated by a three quarter moon.
The peace is interrupted by female twitters from below and another local is wanting me to descend to buy something or he will report me. I pay him £e2 and $1 and get scarabs, and thanks, I don’t care, I’m high again. The two young girls, UK USA and young Israeli guy are smoking dope with a local Egyptian who is obviously hanging around looking to make some deal or con. We all find a wall to sit on and see the sound and light show of the pyramids for free. We look like Humpty Dumpty sitting on the wall so we swap the wall for the desert’s cold bosom of naked sand. There is a mischievous atmosphere of will we be spotted and it’s only later that I realise that the convoy of cars and outriders with the headlights were not the start of the light show, but was the arrival of a visiting head of state with armed guards who should have been looking out for the likes of us! Oops, nearly an adventure too far!
Just before the show started the still night air vibrated to the harmonious discord of a hundred wailing mullahs at prayer hour, whose cacophony disturbed the local dogs who joined in with a howling chorus. I must bring a tape recorder next time I travel.
I tell Mammut 3 extra travellers for Cairo and he gets excited at the thought of women hash and whisky so he starts his sales and chat up pitch to us all. However, common sense prevails with me and I escape to my hotel and suggest to the youngsters some ways out of the mess they are aiming towards, but the stoned guy and the naive girls just saunter on regardless. No wonder some Westerners end up in a mess and get a poor reputation. Oh the other Brit in the hotel is still in the bar since lunch, complaining that his 8th pint hasn’t got him drunk! Everyone has their own path to travel and I am pleased that the drunk and stoned way is less attractive to me than the mini adventures that I am creating.
Up late, find Visa works in Egypt to get cash -Bank of America or Barclays off Tahir Square. Museum is full of dead things and rocks. Why is everyone taking an interest in un-tombed bodies? It’s macabre -let the graves be! Tut’s bits were quite interesting especially the photos of the opening.
An amazing con -I’m looking lost in Tahir Square, a man says follow me for the bank I want. After 15 mins walk there’s no bank, but he says you may as well come in my shop now! I’m too flabbergasted to be annoyed, and retrace my steps exactly the opposite way to find the bank.
I bought some audio tapes for my Walkman portable cassette player, Chris de Burgh, Lionel Ritchie, Tina Turner, Mozart to use tonight on the train.
Diary:
2018 hrs I’m early for the train, and happily watching the faces and different costumes, making sign language pleasantries with the army lads, the nation seems to mobilise at night.
2127 hrs Oh sh**. I got all happy and excited again. I was so early, 1 hr early, that I got on the first Luxor train and sat in my reserved seat, and made friends with a Swedish couple, opened the beer, oblivious to the local consternation about my seat.
“Double booking” said the business man in a suit standing over me. I vainly said “I’m not moving.” Minutes later the guard came and said yes I had the correct seat but the wrong train !! Mine left 1/2 hour later. I’m chucked off at an unknown station in the largest city in Africa (14 million souls). Thank God and Allah that violence is not in their nature (I hope).
I now sit on a platform bench in the semi dark illuminated by a dim platform bulb. People crowd round to see me as I write this (quoting from diary still) I say can you read this? And suddenly “Excuse me Hello” he says “You speak English What is nationality How do you do” in on breath. I wonder if he knows what he means? I try Salaam -laughs and smiles all round -the locals are friendly. Even the aggressive stance of the group of paratroopers with wings on their uniform melts with my (apparently hilarious) sign language explanation of how I too did free fall for my 40th birthday, though he may have misinterpreted the charade for “I did it tandem with another man strapped to my back. No he was not on my back, I’m not like that … Get off sweety. All ends up in good humour and a mini adventure becomes a good memory.
PANIC The train pulls in. The lads say “yes Luxor” and board. 1st class is always in the rear where I”m dropped; no 1st class. I run to the front with 40lb rucsac (including 4 bottles of beer, one open). 200 metres later no 1st class at front. I see horrors of 2nd and 3rd class sardines on the floor.
HEELP nobody speaks English, I show ticket in Arabic, someone points out a policeman, “Next train” Oh no not again! He sits me down, I finish beer, shaken but resolve not stirred. What next in this adventure?
I think I fancy a quiet train journey please, no broken teeth or wrong train. I’ll be good-ish.
2158 hrs On a train again, this time it is the correct one. Some hip people opposite. A dope head from Dagenham says “I didn’t like the hotel, it’s too noisy when I stay in my room all day”
I’m sitting the wrong way round playing footsy with a rucksack , pi**** off. At least the cycle of luck is due to take an upward turn, though with my luck the upward turn may be on my jaw!
A man in a paddy field quietly contemplates a flock of egrets stalking cockily around him. He looks as bemused and involved as I am as I capture the moment in my memory. Fleeting views of hidden courtyards as we clickety clack past. Sugar cane, millet, paddy fields, coconut, all flow past the window. They seem to be defying the desert sand which is always lurking where the irrigation waters lose their energy.
LUXOR
I follow a hustler to a cheap doss house that reminds me of how I lived 10 years ago, cheap and rough, how did we do it? I feel sorry for the youngsters doing it now, thankfully I can ignore the doss house and can afford my 3 star twin room with air conditioning, own toilet and bathroom and shower, colour tv and telephone, all for £e4.50 to £e7.50 per night with a room and balcony overlooking the Nile! ! !
[Years later I organise Chris and a group to take a taxi from Hugharda to this same hotel in Luxor in another adventure]
I meet Mark and see the Temple of Luxor. Wow, it’s big, impressive, forget words, huge dwarfing pillars and phallic hieroglyphs, an avenue of stone lions guarded by living modern rabid dogs (don’t stroke the local muts).
I’m sad to get the history only from guide books and overheard guide people, but pleased to do my own interpreting of the carvings when the swarms of people drift in then out. Suddenly I’m totally alone in a maze of pillars with a few other souls dwarfed by the enormity of the building. Time and feeling flow by me; poor tourist, how do they get photos of the place without people being in the way, how can they gain a deep feeling without the rabble of noise, how can they find peace without hassle and hustle from guides.
The traveller knows how to find peace and then people, how to pace effort, yet be available for discovery and adventure. It’s fine so far, but tiredness exacerbates loneliness and nostalgic feelings.
Chris Rea sings “This will be my lucky day” in my personal stereo. OK Chris, I’m doing fine so far. I’ve found that watered down Turkish coffee wakes me, meditation relaxes me, wandering finds me amidst the adventures of new places and new experiences. Shades of India and Herman Hesse’s Wandering Sidharta reincarnated in Egypt. The place is immortal, immaterial, the experience stimulates the feelings.
The bazaar looms like a hurdle to be overcome. I try out my technique on a trial sale, ½ price, but I’m just warming up. Saffron for £50e per kilo. 2 loom carpets from £60e. I feel the temptation to cash in on poverty.
What’s more dangerous than hang-gliding or solo rock climbing? The answer is; cycling along an unlit road parallel with the Nile at 5:45pm, pitch black, waiting to run into the rear end of an unlit buffalo or worse still, a rancid camel.
I’m rushing to catch what may or may not be the last ferry, and am concerned by the apparent manners of drivers. When meeting oncoming traffic they switch lights off, maybe because lights are set too high and would dazzle. Some vehicle lights only work when the flasher is on. Some rear lights appear or some disappear when headlights are flashed -amusing but every horn blast tells me they have seen me, or perhaps they didn’t see me but saw the black water buffalo trundling across the road. I err on the side of caution and every time I hear a vehicle or think I see one I cycle off the tarmac part of the road onto the dirt track beside it.
Later I am told that Egyptians know that they pay for electricity in their home for their lights so logically electricity costs money for any light, including vehicle lights, so save money and turn the light off. We were told that as children, turn the light off if you don’t need it. So if you think you don’t need the light in the dusk of an unlit road with black water buffalo lying on it, locals walking on it, and unsuspecting tourists on a black bike on it, …
At last I arrive unscathed at the ferry, which is an unlit barge that slides over the river, somehow avoiding the unlit sailing feluccas and I am returned to a hotel with a relaxing shower followed by a search for vegetarian food.
I’ve escaped Mammud with the stolen treasures, but of him, more anon ••••
The day starts with a clothes wash and away for the big tour at 1200. 25p for the ferry across the Nile. School students and trainee teachers play drums with feathers and fingers and an accordion leads the group who sing and clap with joyous happiness. I surreptitiously sneak a shot of the girls but cannot take an official group photo of girls until I tell (in sign language I pidgin English) that I am also a teacher on holiday. Suddenly I’m accepted and there are handshakes and they take group shot with me and the young girls. There is friendship and genuine warmth, as friendly as the Nepalese villagers were when I avoided the tourist route in the Himalaya. I’m impressed. They offer to give me a lift on their bus, but I want to cycle with bike freedom today.
On the East bank of the Nile I select a push bike and detour away from the tourist tarmac road, away from the stalls and official historic sites, and wander down a dirt track towards a village with signs of poverty, cane stalks for matting, buffalos wandering, old ladies, mothers, toddlers doing nothing but sitting on the step, or washing clothes. I know that the camera will provoke demands for backsheesh and posed shots and when I take it out many of the kids and ladies turn away to hide in their house. So like a cowboy astride his mount, I prepare my weapon, strapped round my neck, cocked ready for action and casually hidden in my shoulder bag.
Back along the street I ride, catching everyone unaware. I stop, take aim, click – you’re shot missus. Re-cock the camera weapon, click, got you kid. A lady waves her arms, ruining the posture – I lower the weapon and she relaxes, then a sudden draw, aim and click. I’m off pursued by angry murmurs. An old man blocks my way lying on his mat; no time for niceties, this one’s from the hip on the run. I’ll know later if I got him. The kids and even some of the ladies realised it was a game and in the end the kids were laughing and some ladies were smiling.
Wow, that was good; blood and film lust satisfied, it’s time to trot on astride the trusty steed with buckled wheel rhythmically grating and the Chris de Burgh singing the western based “Don’t pay the ferryman”. I’m too happy – look out. Sure enough after a 20 minute of cycle I arrive at the ticket barrier only to be told that I should have got my ticket at the ferry station – a 40 minute re-cycle.
Well westerners know how to deal with problems so I do my Clint bit, look him in the eyes, and say “Backsheesh”. He nearly called the police! Oh dear my first honest Egyptian just where I didn’t want him! Anyway, we came to a legal, proper agreement whereby I bought 2 lots of carefully receipted tickets and promised to pretend I was a student.
Onwards and upwards steed.
It’s hard work to cycle up to the Valley of the Queens but I am well organised with tickets and I arrive after most of the crowds have packed up and are going back to their air conditioned hotels. I find tomb entrances that lead along horizontal shafts into room sized burial places. Wall paintings are the brightest I have seen and seem untouched and colours so bright that they arouse suspicion of being recently painted but of course not. I visit another three temples at the top of the valley with similar carvings and paintings.
Time to move on in the heat but fortunately I can freewheel on my rattling bike along a badly signposted track and I arrive via a village at Rameses III stadium which is huge, like the Temple of Luxor, why is it not better known I suppose Luxor is on the modern city side of the Nile and on this side there are supposed to be no new buildings because the ground is where all burials used to take place so the whole area is hollowed out underneath with burial chambers.
Here I am on my own in this huge Rameses stadium place and the silence is tangible and the atmosphere intimidating because all the pictures and carvings are of people’s heads being cut off, violence everywhere. I take a selfie with an avenue of pillars behind. On the Rameseum a 1000 ton statue has been pulled down and destroyed except for the head which lies forlornly in the dust but still intimidating in its huge size. Another photo of me with the headless corpse behind!
On to the Valley of the Kings on my trusty steed and I do a quick Clint Eastwood job on the way, camera held low until the unsuspecting victim is within range then quick on the draw, level, shoot, reload, run away. A great game to play with the kids but their part of the game is to run after me demanding baksheesh.
A 5km slog to the Valley of Kings up gentle but thirsty and tiring road and finally I reward myself with a bottle of unopened water, so sweet. At 3pm the Tutankhamun tomb is empty, for ten minutes I am on my own wondering about Carter’s find and I feel the tranquillity and mystery of the place. I saw the photos of his first discovery at Cairo museum. The sarcophagus with mummy case are still in front of me and I have a feeling of seeing it as it should be seen, but still I have a nagging guilt about taking an unhealthy interest in the dead.
I draw a picture of the long corridors and false chambers and pits of other tombs, some of the drops are huge and have a walkway over the drop.
Remember Indiana Jones Temple of Doom and the chocolate orange advert of the rolling stone, well they are all based on truth; the original archaeologists were robbers piecing clues to guess where in a wadi or behind which pile of rubble or where under the ground may be the long forgotten entrance to a tomb. When I was cycling I stopped and jumped up and down on the ground and heard it sound hollow. The vertical shafts from their exploration could be a hazard, they can be 60 feet deep. The last tomb is the most amazing and is hidden up a wadi then starts 50 feet up a cliff and then goes steeply down and down and further down to a huge cavern. The original explorers would have had to either build scaffolding up the pits of precariously balance over the void as the tapped the walls and listened for hollow sound that would indicate the entrance to further tunnels and chambers.
It’s now 4 pm and all is shut up but I am still feeling like exploring so following in Lawrence’s footsteps of adventure I climb a subsidiary steep wadi only to find it is a dead end that is used as a loo by the doorkeeper, so much for fearless exploring!
Back to the entrance to the Valley and a hassle for a £5e scarab and a relic is offered by Mahmud who sees interest and offers me more relics and follows me down the road to his house, occasionally leaving me alone while he hides in the steep sided sandstone wadi. I note birds chaffinch sized with red beaks, green long tails and egrets when I descend to the lower agricultural area beyond the Valley of Kings at the border of the Nile.
I decide I want an adventure and give in to his offer to go to his village and see some relics. The village is like a dung heap with rubbish everywhere and mud huts and no tracks, just find a way around the piles of rubbish between high walls surrounding the houses. There are new bricks laid out to dry, literally mud bricks and may be signs of a thriving community. His walled entrance is mud bricks stacked on top of each other with his house in a corner. He sits me down cross legged and claps his hands and his wife appears with a beautiful baby but he dismisses her with a flick of the finger and she brings tea and cake while we suck a hookah. A colour TV in the corner is showing soccer with the electricity wires connected to an outside wall.
Eventually the relics come out although I’m no expert they do look just like the wall frescoes and carvings and the quality of the work is much better than the bazar, even the pot roughly glued together seems genuine.
Carter stayed in the village 100 metres away and probably got his labourers from here. Mahmud says there are tombs below his hours and knows from digging holes within his walled compound and elsewhere. It seems Luxor was the side of the Nile where people lived and this other side was where they were buried and because this side is higher, it does not get affected by the floods so the tombs and bodies are intact and the ground is difficult to irrigate so people didn’t settle on this side as much as the other side.
500k – 1 million people once lived here so there must be an awful lot of dead bodies around here. The mummy relic seems real but I’m slightly disgusted and could no way support tomb robbing by amateurs – leave it to the professionals and call it archaeology, at least some of it will end up on public display.
I realise that the price for hospitality and cake and tea is the purchase of his bits so I say my money is plastic and explain Barclaycard, careful to explain about secret code numbers and telex to UK so the card doesn’t seem to him like a golden opportunity to “take” it. To save face I haggle a price and 20 minutes of entertainment, always judging when a ridiculous offer is near an insult and when near a realistic fair price. At last with promises of me returning in the morning I go. I was going to give something to the kids but he is so wealthy that he doesn’t seem to need it so I give him some headache tablets. I note that he has a £600 TV and a newish motor bike so he is rich.
It is now dark and I don’t know where to go to get to the ferry and there are no street lights of course. The Nile must be downhill and there must be a road on this side of the Nile so eventually I find the road, and fearful of black buffalo on a black road and traffic that keeps its lights off to save electricity (sensible eh?) eventually I make it to the ferry and food and hotel by 11pm – what a day!
I knew the cycling would leave me tired so a lazy day today. At breakfast I ask for my music cassette to be played but the man says “baksheesh” and makes to pocket it and wander off so I snatch it back.
Midday to 4pm I take a £2.75 bus from Luxor to Aswan city, crowded with dirty windows so I have time to read my first book. A rushed snack and a taxi to Philae Temple on Agilkia Island, an island that is accessed by a boat taxi. On the island the temples of Philae there is a sound and light show with but since I am the only person I get screwed for an extra £6. They even tried to demand my bottle of beer until the older one said no and I shouted “police”. [In 2013 Feb I returned there with my wife Christine and had much happier memories. I could not remember the experience of 1988, memories are best cemented when shared with love.]
The show was very good with a full moon to illuminate the history and wonder of the temples. Unfortunately I am getting tired and overdosed with sound and light and ruins. The modern Egyptian authorities dismantled and rebuilt this one like they did with Abu Simbel – they even built the lake and island to rebuild the ruins on! The evening smells are beautiful.
Early night at 2100hrs because at 0430 I arrange for a taxi to be shared between seven of us for £18 so we will arrive at Abu Simbel before the sun rises and the tourists arrive. 3 hours and 200km of a road straight as an arrow from horizon behind to horizon in front, through the night desert with a full moon high on the right and glowing rays emerging from warm yellow, to red through clouds then to a fierce furnace sun trying to kill all life in this truly sandy inhospitable desert.
At least we arrived at Abu Simbel before the full rays hit the temple. We paid a guard to open the door to the inner temple early and we few went in along a narrow corridor of towering blocks of stone until we were faced with three carved seated gods. Slowly and as if stage managed, the first rays of the sun crept along the corridor and illuminated one of the gods. Apparently on the equinox and mid summer different gods are illuminated but the experience did not need science, it was awe and wonder from the ancients. It was also awe and wonder for the modern world because the original site was to be flooded by the Aswan dam so the whole site had been cut up and lifted and transported to this new location and an artificial mountain created so that the gods on the outside that are cut into the mountain can be seen in their huge size, as well as the smaller corridor and gods aligned so that the sun can still do its magic at the equinoxes.
The mountain is not solid, it is a man made dome with the temple perfectly repositioned and the dome covered with the original rock. I went inside it to see the empty dome that was built by Swedish engineers with tensioning rods and devices so that it would stand even earthquakes and last another few thousand years. I remember reading about the project in National Geographic magazine when I was younger and now felt even more in awe at the engineering and the politics and the financing of such a huge preservation of our world history.
I’m getting tired and a sense of humour failure at Luxor showed me that I need rest but I only manage 2 hours sleep so I meditate to clear my mind and allow my weary body to carry on.
I bargain for a sailing Felucca for 3 hours so that I can explore three islands in the Nile. We set off in the heavy dinghy with its boom that is bigger than the mast. A lad runs up the mast to connect something and the huge sail takes some sort of shape, but the wind is light and the current is against us so the men have to row.
Unfortunately for them they are smoking cannabis weed and their lethargy nearly overcomes them and they offer me some dope, which I decline (honestly!) and then they ask me to row but I tap my wallet and make it clear they row or no money. We establish a fair relationship and when the breeze finally arrives I take the tiller for a while and they take photos of me.
The silent sailing brought the wildlife nearer to us and cranes and storks on an outcrop watch us float by. Fishermen throw nets onto the water and other fishermen beat the water with a stick to stun the fish and then harpoons them. In a fisherman’s tiny boat by the shore he lights a smoky fire and the smoke creates a hanging curtain above his head which in the still air falls slowly to enshroud him. On the way back across the Nile we keep careful watch for other sailing Feluccas because none have lights and there is so little wind to enable us to steer against the relentless current of the great river. In the dusk we glide silently to nearly touching distance of a huge grey shape, was a it a stork or crane, it blended into its surroundings and didn’t move and seemed more like a shadow or disturbance on the river surface.
The islands were OK but I expected some sort of wilderness but the island was a tourist attraction of a botanical garden with many different sorts of palm and other trees. The experience was marred by me wanting to just look at things but when I show any interest in anything people hassle me to buy. I shout as some kids who were following me and hassling me.
[Years later in 2013 Chris and I wander around the same island botanical gardens and groups of Egyptians come to us to request that they photograph themselves with us, as if we are famous.]
I’m too late for the Agar Kahn island so I go back to my hotel via the Felucca in the dusk and go to Nubian folk dancing. The crowd love it, clapping and shouting in the balcony above. Three men played one string fiddles and played a device like a handle rotating something and there were two horns. The crowd join in with some words and upstairs they start dancing. The chubby leader leads a chant with some sort of satire and the crowd roars with amusement and approval. He leans on his stick and winds everyone up, even us westerners sense his humour and we all smile and laugh at the bizarre experience of internationally conveyed humour.
After the performance, at the hotel, a party nearly gets started with some pretty Russian girls and some Uzbekistanis but they retire to their rooms.
A late start and I pack my bag because the hotel is full for the next night. I try to phone to book another hotel, no good. I meet Rick on the ferry to Oboroi which is a hotel and we get a Felucca and I sail it for about one and a half hours in gusts. We reefed the sail on a run by pulling up the lower boom.
A camel ride again. I steer and trot and do the gargle thing which is the sound to make it sit down. I feel like Lawrence of Arabia. The ship of the desert takes me to St Catherine’s monastery which is just a ruin but the camel ride was fun. A Nubian village was an obligatory visit but was a tourist trap house.
I missed the bus for Luxor and realised all the hotels were full. Rick lets me stay in his room but I don’t sleep well with someone else there – I’m conscious of my snoring. At 7am he goes on his two and a half day £25 felucca trip down the Nile from Aswan to Luxor that he and five others have organised. I didn’t fancy the sleeping on the open deck, crapping over the side or into a bucket, and the hassle with buying food from villages on the banks on the way down. I had also heard of some not nice stories about being in the middle of nowhere on the Nile and extra money or watch being demanded for various reasons like food or bed in a village at night.
After a late evening wandering the bazaar I get the 10 bus to arrive at Luxor at 2
Browsing is impossible in bazaars unless you have tourist police nearby.
After booking in at the Mina Palace again (25e£) I go to Karnak for a day tour, then the light and sound show again then great meal at the student restaurant – spaghetti with okra aubergine spinach white bean green beans potatoes tea for 4e£.
A day to kill, exhausted and getting fed up. Last night an English guy said Sinai is Sham el Sheik is too touristy and expensive, even the food is expensive. I don’t fancy the sleeping in Bedouin village inside walls, under stars” described by the German in the bus, it may be 2e£ but I’ve no sleeping bag. The sea is too cold for snorkelling and even the air is cold when the sun is clouded over. We have had about four days of occasional very strong wind with accompanying sandstorms, not pleasant to be out in, so no open air sleeping adventure, I will find hotels.
I do the bazaar thing in poor humour. I don’t like bargaining and do a mild bargain with a Coptic Christian but heavy bargaining with “laugh a minute” cocky Ali who is imitating a Yorkshireman. He throws me out of the shop in the end. I go into another shop, just wanted to browse, and ended up with a local person’s dress costume dropped from 120e£ to 30e£. I buy a lady’s dressing gown with sequins for 45e£ – why? I didn’t want it so who is it for? I buy some papyrus prints at 4e£ that seem OK, the papyrus is sometimes banana leaves I was told.
I’m getting travel weary, too much on my own, each traveler conversation starts the same, most are couples under 25, certainly under 30yrs old. Older ones are on the guided tours “wimps, wallies and woofters punters” was how the overland Nepal guys called them. I don’t think I will handle going around the world on my own so I decide I will go back to the UK or Germany. Hormones guide us all!
I’m now in Cairo. I photographed a local bazaar today and bought some things but it is time for a change. I met an Australian who for the last three years have been travelling and working in America, UK and Europe – where is his home? I have a good veggy meze type meal in the student restaurant.
Train 2100hrs – 1230 hrs, 14 hours of smoke, plastic seats and dozing while I read and listen to my personal stereo tape cassette and watch the village life through dirty windows and try to ignore the locals spitting on the carriage floor.
I left my rucsac at Tahir Square at the Museum left luggage facility then found the Hilton Kousheri and American Express in the Hilton directed me to the Cyprair agent, but the flights are full until the 4th January for Cairo to Tel Aviv – and this is the quiet season! I arrange minibus 20p to Abasiaya bus terminus to get a bus to the Nile Delta and 45e£ to Tel Aviv at 0700 Thursday, tomorrow.
By now it is 3.30pm and the hotels are full – panic!! To get rucsac from museum by 4:00pm or I miss the bus tomorrow and am stuck in Cairo. I stop a taxi, even with two people in it, and say take me to Tahir Square (everyone shares taxis) and I arrive at the Museum left luggage with 3 minutes to go!!
I get a bus to Tahir Stree cinema which is the dropping point for the Noran Hotel that I used when I first arrived an age ago and I am received as a long lost guest and a room is found for me for 31e£ with B&B. I have a well earned shower and an urgent wash of clothes and fall asleep meditating. Hilton Dolman and green tahinin then bazaar and bed then early up for taxi to bus station and 7am bus to Israel, then home. I daydream of Karnak Temple and the kite birds soaring over it and I long for hang gliding when I return to Cyprus.
I’m in the back of a “luxury” 55 seater bus with a toilet beside me at the back. I’m cocooned inside my trusty blue anorak over my head, Strauss in my ears, hiding from the rear engine noise and poor piped music and the chanting or “singing” of prayers and the rhubarb rhubarb mumble of the devout bearded Orthodox Jews. There’s a chaos of movement as they now do ritual washing, pouring water down the step beside me before they eat.
It is 45e£ and 6-10 hours and I’m sorry that I’m not flying but at least I will arrive in Tel Aviv earlier that the flight would have, it lands at 2300hrs. I daydream this morning at 5am after the alarm call from reception and I follow a real daydream / possibility of grotty teaching the UK and living in a bedsit or flat, where to put the furniture I have accumulated? How to meet people, where to settle? Then I think of running a business, perhaps teaching IT to adults. I see it as a possible next year, another 5 year plan.
The last 5 year plan has now come to fruition. It started in Alnwick with a tentative stab at Higher Education, the Technology foundation course of the Open University. That was to see if a) I could find self discipline, b) had I the intellectual ability, c) could it open new horizons away from social studies grotty teaching and youth work.
The 5 year plan worked out, wasn’t too hard and in India on my trip I saw nothing to lose and an objective in sight. My bridges were burned on return to the UK, no job, no money, no future without hard work. That pressure was what I react to, like the last minute rushes to write essays at college, last minute rushes to do assignments of the OU and even last minute rushes to prepare courses for my present job. I even learn under pressure of time and ability to learn how to use the BBC computer and make a network ‘on the job’. I respond to pressure that I impose on myself and yet like to take it easy on a soft rut.
St John’s School is that soporific soft rut, like Alnwick; money and standard of living is good, the future is OK, but something is missing. Splitting with Joy kicked me out of the easy living rut and I haven’t regretted it. Nobody will kick me out of this current situation so its time to discover my dreams and put myself in a pressure situation from which I will respond and rise above the adversity. Hence the need for the cocoon to daydream inside. The dream of IT training is large and follows from early seeds to the equipped busses visiting sites like the ITEC.
Also the dream of building a house is very real – my hands itch at the thought of doing it, itch for those building blocks, feeling the struggle, the mountain of physical, emotional and financial risk and bureaucratic challenges and obstacles to overcome. But the pride in the achievement would be to leave my mark on the earth, like dad once said. I may not leave kids behind but a house and maybe a business will be my legacy. I see all that almost as a sporting challenge and all sport would have to take a back seat while building work goes on. Building would be my physical challenge and my test of personality. Financial and physical danger are there to contend with and feel satisfaction in overcoming. As if to reinforce my decisions my body relaxes and I use the loo beside me! And then fall asleep.
The silence of semi sleep is shattered by a cry of pain – or is it prayer from an Orthodox Jew with a box on his forehead and a leather thong around his wrist. He stands in the steps while the bus thunders on and he is nodding his prayers and occasionally spitting onto the floor. Some English guys take the piss out of the praying and I feel guilty about laughing at their intolerance.
I copy a guidebook for Israel and we finally arrive at Tel Aviv. I immediately take a bus to Jerusalem and ask for a hotel or hostel and relatively easily find it even with the new strange lettering of street names. I’m getting quite streetwise internationally but nearly get caught out crossing the road on a red pedestrian light – it is not the done thing here, the opposite of Egypt! A local guy says it is an immediate 22 shekel £10 UK fine if caught!
Hotel is called Zerha $15 with no breakfast and stinking of boiled and fried cabbage, it is a hostel really but the manager is helpful. I walk to the centre of Jerusalem in 10mins for a Yemenite meal and have a drink downstairs in a friendly bar after a meal of mixed salad, tahini, humus, aubergine, toms pepper and bread like a tandoori stuffed with spinach like naan with crisp outside cooked like a pancake and folded over the spinach. I finish reading my book about the Greek junta and Cyprus and find a bar and American girl to chat with while entertained by solo singers with lyrics about Israel and peace.
I happily sleep in with the familiarity of over-eating and over-drinking; this had been my Christmas treat back in civilisation. The women are beautiful here in Israel – at least to my eyes at present – it must be the effect of me living in an all male garrison back in Cyprus.
I want to go to Masada, the last stand of a Jewish tribe against the Romans where they ended their siege with a mass suicide. The bus goes at breakfast, next at 12:00, last at 4:00pm but would leave no time to see it so I go back to the hotel, book out, put my bag in the store, take bus back to the station – I’ll hitch back or doss in a YHA, I am decided on going to Masada. I only just make the bus.
is a huge steep sided hill but the Romans built a matching huge ramp up to it so they could eventually breach the walls. I took a cable car up to it and wondered how they survived without water on the top of a pinnacle / mesa. The solution was huge cisterns carved into the rock which stored any rain that fell and would have kept the water for 20 years. When it became obvious to the Jews that the Roman ramp was complete and slavery or slaughter was inevitable they all killed each other and themselves. The Romans then completely destroyed the buildings but there is a partial reconstruction to commemorate the place and the event. I had just read a novel with a title Masada in which the nuclear option is the final option of Jewish Israel if they were about to be overwhelmed. The sense of history then and its ominous ever present potential repetition is a sobering thought and one that makes me connect with the Jewish situation now and in history.
I’ve just had an armed Israeli escort me through the Jaffa Gate area! Actually I asked the armed lads by the gate if they could recommend a restaurant and they with good humour escorted me. The other armed lads at the New Gate in Jerusalem’s city walls were equally helpful, there is no trouble in the Old City they said. However … it is the Intifada, an uprising and disobedience by the Moslem stirrers who demand that all shops should close.
The narrow alleys are dimly lit or not lit at all and the steps and cobble provide an obstacle course so I have to divide my concentration between walking and checking out the shadows for “problems”. There is no one else around! Was that a doorway pillar or a person. I check out a hotel for $25 and they would summon an evening meal for $6. The New Imperial Hotel was as bad as the guide said, thank heavens I checked it, the lad didn’t even keep records of which rooms were occupied so it needed three searches for keys.
A jolly money grabbing Jew had a transport café type open en route to Jaffa and some Aussies were making fun and eating there but warned that the salad was cabbage, the steak without any trimmings and the chips appeared 5 minutes after the steak. I have OK soup and leave to find local food. I’m getting good, or lucky, at finding food, transport and hotel even on shabbatt in Jerusalem.
I’ve just had a fascinating lecture while overhearing a tour group’s guide and as if Divine Providence needed to summarise my trip, I now see a pattern of religion, culture, wars and social evolution.
My version:
Early man the farmer becomes densely populated; leaders organise labour through cooperation or coercion. Leaders get involved with spare time pursuits like “thinking” which leads to religion, philosophy, politics. It also leads to egotistical demagogues who seek the ultimate control over life itself. The secret to life itself is to conjure up an afterlife and know they will exist in it in the same form and the same status as before. Hence the refinement of the mass’ hope of a better deal in the afterlife which leads to the rulers preparation carefully preserved ie mummification, pyramids and huge cavernous tombs.
The effort of building these needed huge social organisation, the division and specialisation of labour and a way to exchange the value of labour more efficiently than bartering ie money was created to define the relative values of everything. It also stimulated foreign trade. All this not for the benefit of the individual member of society, (he is just a cog in the social wheel) but for the hub of that social wheel ie the ruler and priests. Hence Luxor with 400k – 1000k people whose existence is for the glorification of their ruler. It makes our media fascination with our Royal Family looks tiny.
Actually it was the spirits within the idols that were worshipped and only later that the pharaohs claimed to actually be god. So the many spirits and many idols were rejected by AK Memnon and his wife who started the first monotheistic – one god religion. It lasted only for their lifetime and the sun god was the focus of their attention. After his death Tutankhamun, a child pharaoh came. He must have had a priest actually making the decision because he was too young. These priests were of the old school and moved the new centre of religion back to Luxor and went back to pluralistic religion and ended 27 years of mono-atheistic religion. However one tribe did continue their one god idea and were subsequently persecuted – maybe they were part of a general revolt. This was the era of Moses etc. then the expulsion and fleeing of Egypt and starting a new tribe … David … Jews.
I want to ask the guide more about the development of religion in the Middle East but he has to go. I must read much more.
After Christ, when he carried his cross he put it down occasionally, or things happened like people giving him water – the places became the stations of the cross. Byzantium were the first churches, destroyed by St Helen by “Divine Inspiration” (the RC version) or for commemoration (protestant version) and built churches etc on the station of the crosses sites, the most important of which is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Moslem hordes in 600AD destroyed them, then Crusades in 1100AD? Resurrected them and then the Muslims destroyed them, then the Ottoman Empire occupied Jerusalem, Greek / Turkish wars reconciliation, then rebuilt them so ironically the RC sites are built and owned by Greek Orthodox church for the last 600 years. A new RC site recently was bought off Greek Orthodox site.
So, back to the 5 year plans. Here I am 10 years on, waiting and wanting to go home.
In India I had choices of further travel to Japan or Australia or back to any place in the UK. I decided then that the Lakes were the best place and didn’t regret it then. Now I fancy the English countryside, green and lush, walks in valleys and hills. Yes I remember last summer on my own on the hill wasn’t particularly good but with Kev I enjoyed the day. I need company of similar people. I don’t want to live in my Cyprus bedsit, but realise a temporary flat or bedsit may be necessary. I don’t want the Cyprus bondu – the green country calls. I’ll give up the accessible short ski runs of Cyprus for remote unreliable but longer ones of Aviemore and the expensive Alps. I’ll give up windsurfing and water-skiing until I buy a wetsuit or dry-suit and maybe a boat and friend will appear. Hang gliding will be a big investment £1000 but in Cyprus I’ll need £500 for a suit and harness and variometer if I pursue the sport. Exploring, wandering, eating, drinking, meeting, I’ll have UK Scotland Ireland Europe own cooking at last, home brew, family, new horizons, maybe a business, maybe build a house, meet a girl and still do sport and keep warm by travelling in holidays. In Cyprus I save £400pm with no house. So in the last idyllic months I try UK adverts, dateline singles and prepare for the future. Time to tell Cdr Ed if no Germany posting then this is my last year.
Happy New Year. Here I am with dirty washing, snotty hankies and trinkets of travel spread around the security desks in the middle of the BG airport. I guess they are only being careful, why did I have to say I was here 1 day in march or that the bag was unattended for two and a half hours. Honesty is a slow policy. They even check my rubber soled shoes more than just the metal detector. They could have whistled and my clothes would have come crawling out of the rucksack.
Earlier the Holocaust Museum was as moving or more than I expected. I felt drained, angry, depressed and spent longer than I intended. I had to sit outside to recover and saw special significance in a similarly moved soldier – a new recruit being initiated into the “why” of Israel. He with a weapon, took it off but carefully oh so carefully, arranged it within his companion’s hip touching distance. Overhead I hear the double bang of a supersonic fighters crisscrossing this narrow country. They won’t be caught out again. Perhaps Masada and Dimona with the Hagenah and extreme fighters will win or bust.
At Larnaca various people offer me lifts. Bill McCormack and Di meet and I check if Arthur and Jan are there before I go back to the other end of the island for home, wash, taverna on a Bank Holiday (shades of shabbatt) even Pisouri Village is dead until I find the new place at the back of the taverna.
At the meal table on my own I open mail that accumulated over Christmas and position Christmas cards around the table while I drink Keo and eat. Each card is an oasis of love and companionship after my dry lonely soulful searching and adventure. Each card seems to say with invisible subtext that England awaits your return. I’m in my temporary transit camp abroad, psyching up to my temporary transit camp in the UK en route to my next home in the UK and new challenges.
That’s it folks, the mess today was predictably boring, false, not the real me, even antagonistic or alien as I see military versus civvy barriers. I’m beginning to actively dislike being here and am even associating sport with this dislike. Paradise is decaying fast.
The above was typed in 2017 from notes and diary in my home of 30 years in Cumbria with my wonderful wife Chris, with whom we have re-built a lovely old house with big garden with stream at the bottom of the garden situated at the end of a hamlet with no through road, unless you want to walk up the old Roman road to get a view of the Lake District fells. It all worked out fine in the end!
Extra note in December 2020. Ps I woke up this morning wondering how I got across the Suez Canal and crossed the desert to Israel, so I decided to read this old diary. It seems that I fell asleep for most of the journey but I have a recollection of the bizarre view of a huge ship in the desert, a fleeting view that emerged into the realisation that the desert just stopped, the canal emerged and on it was this huge steel self propelled island slowly moving to distant lands.
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