Elsien's Traveblogue

Egypt
Took plane to Cairo from Athens, which is another continent and it shows. Arrival, wee hours of the morning, coincided with arrival of plane from Jeddah - full of white robed men with white or black-robed women, 1 : 4 ratio. Dad held all the passports. Extremely lively affair.
I could have spent weeks in Cairo as opposed to the few days I had. Saw the Archeological Museum, which is brilliant, lots of stuff higgledy-piggledy on the ground floor, like a stone-cutter's yard, top floor full of Tut's gold and mummies. Cairo has lots of interesting areas, Islamic, Coptic, Diplomatic - heavily guarded, you should see the US and the British Embassy fortresses! - I did a lot of walking around. Saw the Giza pyramids of course, and the Sfinx, who / which is smaller than you'd think from the pictures and had a mini-sandstorm during our visit - I teamed up with an Australian fellow.
Did you realise that in order to get into a pyramid you have to crouch down very low and descend a steeply sloping dark tunnel or several of them and that the pyramids are hot inside, not nice and cool? I should have known, having seen old black and white movies about Howard Carter and grave robbers! I praised myself lucky I had only coughed up 20 Egyptian pounds for the second pyramid, not the 80 for the first! After all, there is nothing much to see in them as all the stuff is either in the Cairo Museum or the British.
I'm not going into any more of those, even though I thought I had been cured of almost all my claustrophobia!!! I read somewhere that each visitor loses a couple of liters of sweat inside them! Tasty!
Next Aswan, right in the south of Egypt, by sleeper train. Fended off Chinese man they wanted me to share compartment with and got nice Yankee woman instead. The Nile is amazing, so is Aswan and the Western Desert. Place full of Nubians in long dresses. Up the Nile to Luxor by short Nile Cruise on M/S Florence. I decided against doing the trip on a felucca (Egyptian sailing boat), having seen the rather primitive crafts, but more importantly having to spend two days in the very close company of 7 strangers decided me against this form of transport. More on Luxor later.

Athens, the heavens just opened.
Am now stuck in this Internet cafe for a bit longer, as the wonderful weather so far has just broken into a thunderstorm, so might as well write.
Made it as far as Athens, which seems to have benefited enormously of the Olympics - it's now actually a nice place as opposed to the horrible overcrowded and polluted dump it used to be. Saw the Acropolis by moonlight last night - it's all beautifully illuminated and looks like something out of a fairytale. Did a lot of footslogging today and saw my Greek friend this evening. Got another day tomorrow, as the plane for Cairo is not until midnight, but haven't decided yet where I'll go - probably to Piraeus which apparently has also changed a lot and the new Metro goes all the way there.
Thessaloniki was also good - a pretty 'cool' place, I thought, could be in the same league as Barcelona and Prague pre-tourist overflow: lots of bars, cafes, terrasses, beautifully restored Byzantine buildings and lovely waterfront. It apparently has a happening nightlife as well, but I didn't get the chance to sample that.
A world away from poor Kosova, which was interesting, but ugly. Pristina is all UN and other similar organisations; the countryside is underdeveloped as I think they haven't done much there other than fight each other for 500 years or so. There are some pretty bits, like the (Serbian) Orthodox monastery, but you have to pass Italian KFOR soldiers with tanks and hand them your passport for the duration of your visit. The Albanian Kosovan driver wasn't too happy taking us there: he got a lot of dirty looks when he had to ask the way and pointed out destroyed Serbian villages to us on the way with a: 'very bad' (the Serbs, he meant).
Sat next to one of the founders of the Kosovan Liberation Front at dinner, but couldn't interrogate him as he was surrounded by heavily armed bodyguards - everyone in Kosova has a gun, according to my friend, and uses it regularly. I couldn't visit the UN buildings as security levels had been raised to Red after death treats to her boss. My friend reckons the UN will be there for a bit longer yet.
The other side of the border is Macedonia. Same region, but full of fruit and vegetables. Kosova only has some corn and a few cows, by the looks of it, and a lot of half finished houses, built with money from overseas Kosovan relatives.
Have pictures, but cannot post them yet. May find some of other people's and stick them on later.

Sniffer Dogs
Not my pics, but a pretty accurate reflection. The Somali-Dutch girl sitting in front of me was practically in the luggage rack, she was that scared of the dogs who were encouraged to sniff all of us and of course went for our crotches, as they always do.

I'm off again on my travels today, flying to Kosova in Serbia. I won't be back in Netherlands or UK until next year June /July now. I'm quite looking forward to it - I was beginning to feel a little stuck in Europe.
Had a nice birthday with my family, then took a bus (yes, another long journey) back to UK.
It was a bit of an adventure as we were all held by French customs at the border in Calais for about 4 1/2 hours, in the middle of the night, before we were finally allowed to get on to the ferry. After we'd already had a thorough search and investigation, someone on my bus had dropped 1 kg of cocaine (!!!) on the floor of the customs building and the customs people followed that up by searching us and our luggage all over again, even more thoroughly. A young man with dreadlocked hair was strip-searched, I was rather frightened about my kilo of white powder, the Aunt Jemima's pancake mix for Josh, but fortunately they believed me. They didn't find who had tried to smuggle the cocaine into the country. I myself suspect the Dutch Nigerians on the bus, as the Nigerians are the world's new Mafia: into every criminal and fraudulent affair imaginable, but nothing was found.
Anyway, the first part of my journey is planned and I will update you as I go along.

Monday 2nd Oct - Wed 4th Oct: Kosova, Pristina.
Wednesday 4th October: Train to Thessaloniki
Wed 4th - Fri 6th October: Thessaloniki
Fri 6th October: Train to Athens.
Fri 6th - Sun 8th Oct: Athens
Sun 8th October: Plane to Cairo
Sun 8th October - Tues 10th October: Cairo
From 10th October: Aswan. Aswan to Luxor. Luxor to Hurghada. No tickets or hotels yet. To follow.
Hurghada to Oman.
Oman: Muscat, Missendam Peninsula
2nd November: Pakistan.
2nd Nov - 1st December: Pakistan. Karachi - Lahore. If political situation allows, Peshawar.
To India via Rawalpindi - Lahore - Amritsar. No itinerary yet.
1st December - 15th January: India: Rajastan, Goa, Kerala.
15th Jan 2007 - 15th February 2007: Nepal (Katmandu), Tibet, Kunming.
15th February 2007 - 30th June 2007: Kunming, China

Elsien's Traveblogue