Anyway, from Bikaner, we went to Jaisalmer, another desert town, another impressive fort.  We took the bus for a change this time, not nearly as bad as we thought it could be.  Like most bus trips in developing countries, the stops were numerous and often seemingly in the middle of nowhere, the only real hardship was the volume and frequency of the horn on the bus.  Most of the trucks and buses have magical seeming horns that play a variety of tunes randomly, at ear splitting levels, and boy do the drivers see this as an essential part of driving.  We were dubious about the necessity. Anyway, Jaisalmer. The fort, like Carcassone so long ago in France, was a huge one with people still living in the walls but not a particularly traditional lifestyle – 99% of the buildings were hotels, restaurants, money changers, travel agents and souvenir sellers. But you get that in India. Inside the fort there was a palace museum and a series of about 6 Jain temples that were particularly great. Another big thing was all the traditional merchants mansions (called Havelis) that are outside the fort, seemingly everyone was a wealthy merchant back then as there was house after house of fantastically carved facades (the interiors weren’t always that exciting, it being all about appearances to the outside world).

Onwards to Jodhpur, the blue city and also home to jodhpurs but we didn’t see any polo matches in progress.  The fort here was particularly impressive set on top of a hill/mountain in the middle of town.  Once we eventually got to the top of the fort, the view over the blue painted houses (a sign of nobility once upon a time, now it is thought to repel mosquitoes) was great.  The fort (and audio tour) was what we had come to expect – beautiful buildings and tales of war and death.  But the rest of the town was a little underwhelming.

From Jodhpur we rented a car (with a driver – there is no way we were driving anywhere) to take us to Udaipur with a stop at Ranakpur. Ranakpur has another complex of Jain temples, but in the middle of nowhere but much bigger and better than in Jaisalmer.  Fantastic and well worth the effort of the detour.

Udaipur was always intended as a bit of a relax spot, but also a bit of an indulgence too.  We were there for 5 nights and stayed at 3 different hotels, first off was a cheapie until we secured our room in a nice 5 star job called Udai Kothi for two nights of luxury, and then back to a cheapie for our last night before we flew out.  There wasn’t a whole lot to do in Udaipur, it has a lake, but it’s reputation is more as a place to relax and do not much in fantastic restaurants and hotels, king amongst them the Lake Palace Hotel right in the centre of the lake (where, as just about every budget hotel proclaimed by showing it nightly, some of Octopussy was filmed).  There was of course a palace to look around, a temple, some shops and in one of the many luxury hotels there was an “English afternoon tea” which we had set our sights on some time ago.  I can’t say it was a strictly traditional high tea (toasted sandwiches and chips featured?) but it was very nice and in a great location looking over the lake and lake palace.

We then flew out to Goa for a (bit more of a) relax.  We did the obligatory stop in the capital Panaji (where there was a very uninspiring carnival in progress – tacky floats and bad music everywhere) and Old Goa where the Portuguese influence is everywhere and all the sights are.  Very nice, very church filled and then headed off to the beach to do nothing for four days, along with throngs of other tourists.  Goa is strange, the capital is, as I say, Portuguese influenced but still Indian, but by the beaches any hint of India disappears and you could be anywhere in SE Asia sitting on the beach drinking cocktails, eating western food, buying the standards of beach fashion and reading on hammocks and sun-lounges.  Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just unexpected.  After getting “nicely” burnt, we moved on.  Or at least tried to…

Trains continued to be a pain.  We had been on a waitlist the whole time in Goa and while usually this isn’t a problem as there is a lot of movement in the tickets so you move up the queue (very complicated system as I say) this time no such luck so it got to 11pm on the night of our train and we had no tickets and couldn’t get any for the next night either.  So we stayed on in Goa in a much crappier room and booked ourselves on an overnight bus out of there.  Unfortunately the buses are a far slower and less comfortable ride.  We could only make half the distance in a night and reached Mangalore where we had booked an onward train the next afternoon.

After killing time we got to the train station only to discover that we had gone to the wrong train station (Mangalore Junction instead of Mangalore Central, or possibly vice versa, hard to remember).  There being not enough time to make the journey to the correct train station we had to buy tickets on the next train. Which involved a huge (and very hot and sweaty) queue for unreserved tickets to be upgraded when the train arrived.  Of course the train arrived and it was full, the only seats in a general seating carriage straining to bursting – when we had 5 hours of it in extremely hot and humid weather we thought better of it and opted for one more overnight bus.

Eventually we arrived in Kochi (or Eranakalum or Cohcin or Cochi depending on who you ask) a day or two behind schedule.  A very nice town spread over several islands and the mainland.  We had a wander around the fishing district and so called “Fort” Cochin, including the fantastically named area Jew Town (even funnier for John Saffran fans).  We finished the day with a performance of the traditional dance style “Kathakahli”.  We didn’t realise it at the time but it involves a fancy costume and make up and then just wriggling your eyebrows and shaking your hands around, not very exciting at all.  The next day we booked on a boat trip through the, again, amusingly named Backwaters.  A network of rivers and creeks and the like that spans a huge area.  Our tour was on a big houseboat first, visiting a factory that makes lime out of mussel shells (supposedly, it looked abandoned when we were there), tasted a coconut based drink (toddy) and just generally ambled on the rivers. In the afternoon we switched to smaller canoes for the narrower creeks and visited more stuff.  A very relaxed day.

Next stop was another beach stop a completely incident free train trip away, Varkala.  A very nice beach (and for the first time in a long time, slightly rough seas) was protected from all the restaurants and hotels and souvenir shops by a large, convenient cliff.  A great spot to finish our relaxing finish to India.

A short train trip later we were in Trivandrum (renamed Thiruvananthapuram post-Independence but that’s not a name that I ever used) to finish off with a bit of administration and wait for our flights out of here.  Printing e-tickets, organising money and other things for Kate’s volunteer leg and that sort of thing. All very ho-hum.  We left just enough time to see the main attraction in town, the zoo.  The good old Lonely Planet talked it up a bit so we were looking forward to it, sadly it wasn’t quite that good.  Some enclosures were good (and in these the animals were nowhere to be seen) but most were either cramped or just a rock garden full of forlorn animals. And the locals had a bad habit of hissing and yelling at the animals to get them to move.  Oh well, at least it was cheap.  All in all, Trivandrum was not that fantastic, no great sights, no good restaurants, a whole lot of mosquitoes and a whole lot of noise – we arrived in time for another celebration of sorts, something to do  with the temple and of course involving incredibly loud music all through the night and day..

And with that, India is over.  In Kuala Lumpur waiting for our flights – mine to Melbourne and Kate’s to Sumatra.  India has left a strange impression on us both.  It is certainly a fantastic country, plenty to see and do, some truly amazing experiences, but on so many instances one or both of us was so completely fed up with the place that we would have jumped on a plane back to Australia that second if the option was offered to us.  There are just so many things positive and  negative all happening at once that can be an overwhelming experience.  One that we both enjoyed, taken as a whole of course.  After the last few days though, I am happy to be leaving.  But at the same time, wanting to return in the future.  Who knows when, but I think we will be back. So much more to see. And so many more people to stare at us.  But for now, sweet relief.  And some photos to share.

It all started in Delhi and things were far from rosy.  While I enjoyed the sights (Red Fort, Old Delhi, Connaught Place,     Bahai Temple, Qutb Minar, Jantar Mantar) none, with the possible exception of the beautiful Bahai temple, really blew us away at all.  Even after all our middle eastern and African travel there was still a bit of an adjustment to make (as I said last time, perhaps 4 weeks in England contributed to that) and the smog, millions of people, cars, stray dogs, cows, pigeons, rubbish everywhere, etc just set us on edge and we didn’t  really enjoy the place that much.  Just when an exit was in sight (an overnight train to Varanasi) Kate got very sick.  She dragged herself to the train station only for us to discover that the train had been cancelled due to fog (a big problem on winter nights, though it is difficult not to call it smog) and we were trapped.  Probably for the best as Kate had a shocking night and wouldn’t have enjoyed the toilets on the trains as we later discovered.  We gave up on Varanasi (time constrained) and made for Agra the next day when Kate was up for it, knowing we were going to see the Taj Mahal helped.

Things were not so rosy at the train station however, after negotiating the huge crowds (what else would you expect, though luckily we never had to travel near peak hours) we found out our train was delayed several hours, we went off for dinner and came back to find a further delay so we waited some more (a funny incident happened about this time, I got into a small – and what would become frequent – conversation with a guy on the platform asking the usual stuff about us and our trip. As the conversation wound down he asked me “Mac (Matt is very hard for them to understand) are we friends now?”, I was a little bemused (we had spoken for maybe 2-3 minutes) but answered “yeah, sure, why not.”  “Well, can I have your mobile number?”  And so we exchanged numbers and maintained a very strange dialogue for a few days via texts – up until I lost our phone.  The highlight being him imploring Kate to send a message to a girl he met on the train who he fell in love with, Kate was to tell her what a fine person he was and to convince her he was a great guy.  Interesting.)  Anyway, the train arrived, we jumped on and found our seats/beds.  It was now midnight but we knew that the train should arrive at Agra at 3am so we decided to stay awake until then, which we did, but no sign of a train station… And then we both drifted off in our separate bunk beds where we couldn’t see out the window.  We woke up regularly but no sign of any train station at all and by this time (about 7am) we had assumed we slept through our stop and would have to backtrack and just jump off.  The train pulls up at a station and we are set to jump off when the name  sounds familiar – it’s on the way to Agra.  Happy (sort of) we stay on the train until it pulls in at Agra at 10.30am – a mere 10 or so hours to go 200km, but the fog was to blame again.  This left us a little unsure about our travel plans and seeing so much if this was the way the trains ran – a tour loomed as a real possibility, but we thought we would try the trains again before making that “drastic” decision.

Anyway, we were in Agra after all that, more than a little tired.  After a nap it becomes clear that now I’m not feeling so great either so we take it very slowly in Agra.  We  of course saw the Taj, which was as fantastic as we had hoped – such a beautiful building, and so, so many tourists, foreign and domestic alike.  In fact, perhaps not surprising considering the population, domestic tourists always outnumbered the foreigners – usually by about 10 to 1 wherever we went. I like that.  We also saw the “Baby Taj”, a smaller, earlier tomb, Agra Fort and took a taxi ride to nearby Fatehpur Sikri, an abandoned city, complete with obligatory palaces, beautiful.

We then took a train (and tempted fate by it arriving at 3am again, but not a problem this time) to Sawai Madhopur to see Ranthambhore National Park, the only place in Rajasthan that still has tigers.  Touring around Rajasthan seeing all the palaces and the like, it quickly becomes clear why there are so few tigers left – the maharajas absolutely loved their tiger (and other large animals) hunting and there are photos, heads or whole skins everywhere you go.  But we wanted to see some in the flesh so booked in for two “safaris” around the park. But even with the backup trip we still had no luck, they are pretty scarce and it is a large park. It was still a lovely park and a great way to see deer, monkeys, boar, peacocks, and all sorts of other birds as well as some nice flora too, and to listen to fellow passengers’ tales of the tigers they had seen that morning…

From here we took the train to Jaipur, a cattle class ticket this time, we couldn’t find a seat but a nice young fellow found us some seats (that belonged to other people, they didn‘t mind too much) and it was quite fun watching them play childish games to pass the time and the like.  About half way there everyone started running around, hiding valuables and pretending to be asleep, we were told to hide our ipods.  What we were told is that a group of “bisexuals” roam the train and offer to bless you, for a fee, if you don’t want to be blessed they “show you something you don’t want to see” or take something of value until you pay them.  As curious as this made us, we decided feigning sleep was the best course of action and so they passed us by and everyone “woke up” again.  We shall never know.

Jaipur was great, very big, but great.  The big drawcards were the old, pink city with shops everywhere selling all sorts of amazing stuff; Jantar Mantar, one of 5 observatories built years and years ago around India (Jaipuir is the best preserved) that are truly awe-inspiring creations; the City Palace, typically sumptuous and luxurious; a fantastic old cinema, with a great interior, where we saw half a bollywood flick; and Amber Fort, the best fort we have seen so far (out of a large field).  Oh and some western eating options (pizza hut and McDonalds both got a look in) appealed as we were both still struggling with food, not so anymore. Food is a major highlight of this trip, it just takes some adjustment.

From Jaipur there was another train, another drama.  We were at our hotel printing our tickets, time running out, jumped in a rickshaw and headed  to the train station.  We got there and I realised that the mobile we had bought was back at the hotel, as we got to the platform though, that thought disappeared as our train was there and moving. So, in true India style, we ran along and jumped on the moving train.  Wrong carriage of course (the trains are huge), but we chatted with people in the carriage before changing at the next station (another run and jump affair) and we were away, minus the mobile.  The train was headed to Bikaner, one of two desert towns on our travels.  The main attraction for us was a fort in the centre of town, which was pretty great, a lot of people also go to do desert safaris by camel, but we had decided a while ago that we had ridden our last camel for a while…  We also had lunch at a rather luxurious hotel (Rajasthan is famous for it’s old heritage hotels) that Kate’s parents had stayed in a few years ago – very nice.

Almost forgot!  We took a side trip from Bikaner to the small town of Deshnok to the Karni Mata Temple.  A long story involving reincarnation but basically they believe that the rats in the temple are holy descendants of a god and so are given free run of the temple.  We had a (quick) wander around in amazement before we had to give up.  A truly strange sight, but a touch on the uneasy side.  Being rats the temple isn’t the cleanest either, their favoured corner is a hideously messy section but they are all over.  You could also buy rat food at the front of the temple but we didn’t see any need to encourage them further.

I could write another blog this size about the strangeness of India, but I might leave that for another time.  Needless to say the constant noise (traffic honking, music from temples, loud conversations, loud everything), spitting everywhere, men urinating everywhere, cows all over the place, stray dogs roaming all around (some supposedly carrying Rabies), and always people, people, people takes some getting used to.  But once you are used to it, India is fantastic.  A shame we have “only” 3 weeks left.

Here are a lot of photos.

Egypt has been great! There is so much to see here and, despite having heard so many bad stories about being hassled etc, we have found the people very friendly and the travel pretty easy.

We started in Dahab (after taking the ferry from Jordan). Dahab was a good place to start. It’s a very relaxed town, not at all like the hussle and bussle of all other towns we visited. It also had great restaurants and I was pretty excited to find that they all sold banana and chocolate pancakes – yum!!

Dahab’s a great location for diving in the red sea.  So, I left Matt behind to have some R&R while I went on a few dives. The absolute highlight was seeing a huge giant moray eel – probably at least 2 metres long!I also went on my first night dive which was fun. It took a while to get used to being able to use a torch under water.

We then had a 10 hour bus trip to Cairo and spent a couple of days wandering around some of the major sites, including the pyramids of Giza. The pyramids really were as amazing as I had expected them to be and I fulfilled my dream of going inside a pyramid. It was quite expensive and there was nothing to see inside so Matt was not so excited about it, but I still thought it was great.

The Egyptian museum was wonderful, particularly the mummy room and the Tutenkarmon display. We had fun buying some souvenirs from the souks and smoking a sheesha in one of the cafes there. We had our first Sheesha (waterpipe, hookah, nargileh, it goes by many names) in Dahab, where I was absolutely terrible at it and kept coughing, but my Sheesha smoking has now improved (nothing to be proud of I’m sure).   

Our first night in Cairo happened to coincide with the soccer match between Egypt and Algeria (if Egypt won by 3 goals they would win a place in the world cup). I have never seen anything like it! The game started at 7.30 and the whole of Cairo seemed to be out on the  streets watching it on big screens set up specifically. So, of course we went along to watch it too.  They got 1 goal within the first couple of minutes of the game and when all seemed lost they scored a second goal in the very last minute. The whole city went crazy with good-natured celebrations. The streets were packed with people dancing & singing. Everyone was soo excited. People were really happy to see us in amongst the crowd and we got “welcome to Egypt”‘d and asked to pose for photos hundreds of times that night. (We assumed we were incorrect about the 3 goal thing, but we found out later that scoring 2 goals meant they were tied and it went to a rematch to decide it in a few days – such a celebration for a small result.)

We then took the sleeper train down to Aswan. We had a nice comfy cabin to ourselves. I was soo glad we weren’t in a seat as the 12 hour trip turned into a 16 hour trip. From Aswan we joined the 4am convoy (unfortunately it’s next to impossible to travel any other way) to Abu Simbel, which was definitely worth losing sleep for.

Thanks to Agatha Cristie’s ‘Death on the Nile’ I had ‘always’ wanted to take a steam boat down the Nile. I was pretty adamant that this is what we were going to do, but we had no idea if it would actually be affordable. It turned out to be an absolute bargain! Unfortunately the little steam boats have now turned in to huge cruisers and we ended up with the ugliest monster of them all – called the Aton. But the inside of the boat was lovely and so were the buffet meals. It was great to spend time sitting on the deck, watching the nile go by. We stopped at a couple of temples Kom Ombo and Edfu on the way to Luxor.

 
In Luxor we spent a day on the east bank visiting Luxor Temple and Karnak temple and then took a day tour of the west bank, visiting the valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, temple of Hatshetput and the Colossi of Memnon. The  inside of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings and Queens were beautiful as the carvings have retained their colours.  (Matt: for the record, the rematch of the soccer game happened while we were in Luxor – they lost, we got a good night’s sleep.)

We took the sleeper train back to Cairo and visited some more pyramids a little further out of town, Dahshur and Saqqara. Dahshur pyramid was great because we were the only tourists there. Unfortunately this also meant we got targeted by the tourist police, who are always best avoided because it usually ends up with them demanding baksheesh (a tip – and they aren’t the only ones of course) for some unwanted service, like pointing something out to you that is already extremely obvious. Anyway, we were able to  go inside the pyramid here, which was great fun and even better than Giza because you can go in quite a long way (with a torch) and we had the whole pyramid to ourselves.

The boring story of the visas…
The rest of our time in Cairo was taken up with trying to work out the nightmare of visas for west africa. Once in West Africa most visas can be obtained at the borders, which is what we were planning on doing. But the problem is getting there in the first place. Every embassy we approached wanted to see return airfares that fall within the period allowed by the tourist visa. As we were wanting to travel overland and had no idea of an end date we couldn’t satisfy these requirements. It also didn’t help that the Embassies are only open for visa applications on certain days for limited hours and that our time in Cairo happened to coincide with holidays for the ‘feast’ (that marks the end (or possibly beginning) of the pilgrimage to mecca). Also, some airlines wont let you fly if you don’t have a visa, even though you can buy a visa at the airport on arrival. Basically we were banging our heads against a brick wall every step of the way. In the end we decided to purchase a ticket in to Burkina Faso (as visas can theoretically be obtained at the airport) and out of Mali (as we can then get a visa at the embassy in Ougadougou or at the border). So that’s that. I think we’re both just glad that we can still go, despite having to cut our plans down significantly. Although, it’s not 100% we could still be denied by Royal Air Maroc (despite asking them) or not get a visa at the airport. Time will tell.

After this, not sure how reliable internet access is in Africa so the blog might re-appear around christmas (when we return to the UK) or it might continue on regardless.

Here are a lot of photos.

From Amman we took a one-way daytrip to Petra via the Dead Sea and others. First stop was Madaba to see a supposedly famous mosaic map of the middle east, it was fairly impressive but not overly. Next stop was Mount Nebo, the biblical resting place of Moses where he died (at 120) after being shown the promised lands that he would never enter. A good view but a bit hazy. Next up was the Dead Sea, something we had been looking forward to for a while and it didn’t let us down. I really didn’t think it would be quite that floaty, but it was amazing. It was almost impossible to not float, it took a lot of effort to put your legs straight down. A lot of people got covered in mud from head to toe (quite a sight) before getting in, but we decided against it, but we did indulge in the other thing to do of posing for photos reading a book or newspaper. A funny sight. Next up we followed the coast to a mountain range and we stopped at a few more things but the view was obscured by the haze. Our last stop was at Shobak castle which was fairly standard for the desert castles (we’ve seen a few now). We then went on to Petra for the night.

We spent the next two days clambering over most of Petra, I say most as it is a huge place and we could have spent a whole week there and not seen it all. The first day we did the main tourist “pilgrimage” through the centre of town seeing all the sights along the way including the most famous treasury and monastery (after a long hike uphill), the second day we took a more indirect route and hiked through an amazingly twisty canyon and then back down to the centre before climbing up to the top of the “high place of sacrifice” for lunch and then down the other side seeing many tombs and things along the way. Altogether an utterly unforgettable two days, an absolute must do for anyone in the area. I guess we aren’t the only ones who thought so as it was packed (the main route was anyway) with tourists, horses, carriages, donkeys, camels and of course souvenir stalls every 10 metres or so. Still, it doesn’t detract from the place and the second day was almost the exact opposite, we only saw two people for the first 3 hours. Amazing, but we eventually moved on to Wadi Rum.

Wadi Rum is a great little protected area of desert where hundreds of local Bedouins take tourists out on jeep/camel safaris of the desert to see some random sights, but really just soak up the amazing scenery, and then to camp overnight out in the desert. Most of the sights had some connection to T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia), but were not that great. “Here is Lawrence’s House”, he lived there for a few months and is now just one wall and the rest fallen over. A great experience that was marred by two things. The first was more camera trouble – in between taking photos of the sunset the camera said “picture error”, it then changed to “card error” and wouldn’t work no matter what we did. Luckily photos had been downloaded after the first day in Petra so “all” we lost was the second day and all of Wadi Rum. That was annoying enough but then we were on the tour with a couple from France with Arabic heritage so they spent the whole time talking with the guide in Arabic, despite the fact that all of them spoke perfect English. Later on another French/Turkish couple showed up who also spoke English/French/Arabic. After a short group conversation they suddenly switch to French at rapid speed and so completely ignored us. After staring at them for a while I walked off and went to the tent. Damn Europeans (this is not the first time this has happened but it never gets any less annoying). One positive was that I got all the photos that the French couple had taken of Wadi Rum (thank goodness for having a laptop with a card reader), which will explain the lack of photos of us.

From Wadi Rum we took a minivan to the intersection of the highway, a minibus from the side of the road to Aqaba where we bought a new camera card and called our credit card company who had left a message saying there was a problem, but after a very expensive 12 minute conversation the result was “there is nothing wrong with your card and you don’t need to do anything” – thanks! We decided to go straight on to Egypt so we took a minibus to the port and then a very expensive and time consuming ferry to Nuweiba and then a minibus to the bus station, then a bus to Dahab and then a ute to the hotel. A long day of many varied transports but we got to Dahab in the end and were so glad to be there as the place was and is great. We are staying one more day and then going to either climb Mt Sinai (biblical references again – but great views) or go to Suez to watch boats go by or go straight to Cairo. Then on to Alexandria, maybe an oasis town and then down the Nile (incorporating some water transport in there.)

[A lot of] Photos now (obviously the photos from our second day in Petra are absent and the Wadi Rum photos aren’t ours – but we were there, honestly).

We arrived in Beirut and noticed the difference from the rest of the middle east as soon as we hit the centre. Walking around the downtown area, we immediately felt like we were back in Europe. And after being sick for a while and with not much of an appetite it was a refreshing change to suddenly have options for dinner that didn’t involve kebabs of some description. Despite the reputation of Lebanese cuisine our first two dinners were at Mexican and Japanese restaurants. Apart from, eating and hiding in our hotel room watching movies during the storms, we also went to the great national museum, wandered along the beachfront and then took a daytrip to Jeita Grotto. These caves were the most impressive we have ever seen, plus we got to take a cable car and a boat ride inside the caves. Unfortunately we couldn’t take photos. (If you are interested www.jeitagrotto.com has some photos.)

We then took a trip up north to Tripoli. Unfortunately we timed this rather poorly. The main things to see are souqs and mosques and the like, but we were there on a Friday afternoon – basically the Muslim weekend. Just as we decided there was nothing else to see around town, it started pouring so we went back to the hotel. The next morning we went to Byblos to check out some ruins, however no one had mentioned that they were very ruined ruins and after all we’ve seen we were a little under whelmed.

We then returned to Beirut (a change of plans after losing my keys and then extremely luckily tracing them through the hotel’s taxi) to make a daytrip the next day to Baalbek. Yes, it was more ruins, but much more impressive. We even got a small window of sunlight to enjoy them in.

The next day we headed off to Amman (Jordan), via Damascus (Syria is the only way in or out of Lebanon). It was quite an adventure. Firstly at the Syrian border we had to buy a whole new visa ($100 each!) because our old ones were two days old and they don’t extend them or have transit visas. It reeked of slightly shady goings on, but you never really know. Then our driver between Damascus and Amman was less than fantastic. First of all, we are flying along the highway to the border in the dark and wet at up to 150km/h (conditions appropriate I would think). I suspect that was just to get there as quickly as possible for the shenanigans he had planned. Syrian border, no problems. In between borders there is a duty free shop selling all sorts of things presumably, but all anybody bought was cigarettes. Our driver came out with several bags full, chucked them in the car and then went back in for more. He came out and then started hiding the excess (there are obviously some customs requirements) all throughout the car – in the glove box, centre console, in the boot, under the seats (he asked to use us but we were having nothing to do with it), in his socks and finally under his tucked in shirt. Quite impressive in its own way. He also met up with other drivers and seemed to be arranging something. We get to the Jordanian border and the car gets a thorough(ish) searching, with a discovery made in the (locked) glove box. A bit of yelling, arguing and then dealing behind the car later we were free to go. 100 metres past the border we stop and meet back up with some other drivers, cigarettes are distributed and we’re off. When we got to Amman he insisted that a random hotel was our hotel and we couldn’t be bothered and got out of there, the pouring rain was a better option. Quite an adventure really.

That’s it, here are some photos. I’m annoyed we didn’t get any photos of the legendary traffic though. For a known car hater, the traffic in Beirut was unbelievable and inexplicable – why would you drive when you can’t go anywhere without being stuck in a traffic jam? Unless of course you like using your horn…

Oh and we are in Egypt now, have already gone through Jordan, a blog post to come on that in a few days. Quick summary – Petra is absolutely amazing! We are in Dahab to be exact and soaking up the beach after a few desert experiences.

From Aleppo we took a day tour around “dead cities” and to the cathedral of St Simeon. The dead cities were pretty interesting, but I can’t tell you much about them, signage was either non-existent, in Arabic or bullet-holed. Our driver tried to cover the gaps but his English was broken at best. Never mind. The cathedral (ruins now) was pretty cool though because we knew the story – some silly religious guy decided to start sitting/living on pillars for 36 years and they built a cathedral around the most famous of the pillars.

After Aleppo we went to Hama, a city famous (in the Arab world) for its norias (huge wooden waterwheels). Unsurprisingly there wasn’t enough water in the rivers for the wheels to turn, but they were still impressive. We also took a daytrip to Crac des Chaveliers, a pretty fantastic castle in the middle of the countryside.

Next stop, Palmyra, another in a seemingly endless string of ancient Roman cities throughout the middle east. It was pretty impressive though. Overlooking the site there was a castle on a hill where you can watch the ruins at sunset when the effect of the light produces something or other, no luck for us when we were up there though. The town itself (a short walk from the ruins) was a bit of a tourist town, all restaurants, cafes, hotels and the like.

From here we went to Damascus, but by this time I was sick (again), the usual suspect. A few days were wasted in a fairly average hotel/hostel – terrible beds, mosquitoes all night, lots of fun. Damascus was eventually explored though, but I was a little underwhelmed (possibly because I wasn’t feeling that great). The highlight though was the Umayyed mosque, probably the most impressive mosque we’ve seen on our trip so far (and that is a few). We also took a daytrip out to Bosra, home to an impressive theatre and ruins, all in basalt for a nice change.

We are now in Lebanon, a decision we made late in the game but it seems safe enough, though we are staying away from the south. More on Lebanon later. Till next time, some photos.

One final thing, though it might sound (and initially seemed to us) that we were being trailblazers or some such going to Syria, it couldn’t be more different. There were plenty of travellers around, and us tourists are so conspicuous and predictable that you see the same people over and over again, it feels more like travelling a well worn trail. The actual getting around couldn’t have been easier either. Turn up at the bus station, look lost (everything being in Arabic helps with giving that effect) and someone will spring up and help you to the right bus company, then the right bus, then the right seat on the bus (though we have mastered the Arabic numbers, finding the numbers on the tickets is a little more difficult). Couldn’t be easier.