Cairo, Egypt

First of all, for everyone who’s worried, I am not, I repeat, not hurt nor dead. Not really something to joke about, actually - some of you may have heard (and I’ve even received emails about it) that there was a terrorist attack at a resort town just outside of Sharm El Sheik. Anybody keeping track of my itinerary would have noted that I was in Sharm El Sheik just the day before the attack. So that was in some ways a close call. In other ways it wasn’t: I spent no time at all in the resort in question, and was in Sharm El Sheik only half an hour. My exposure was pretty minimal. Scary nonetheless.

But the terrorism spectre is taken extremely seriously here in Egypt. Tourism is Egypt’s 3rd most important industry (after the Suez Canal and Oil), and it employs 60% of Egypt’s workforce. As such, when terrorism hits a tourist area in Egypt and the tourists stop coming as a result, it causes huge losses to the country and it’s people. As such, the government goes out of its way in a major way to protect tourists.

For example, I took a tour to Luxor about a week ago. Luxor is the site of the ancient Egyptian capital city of Thebes, containing a huge amount of temples, palaces, not to mention the Valley of the Kings nearby in which many of the Egyptian Pharaos’ tombs are found (including King Tut’s tomb). The place is simply amazing. But I digress, I was talking about terrorism and security: when the bus went from Safaga (where my boat was docked) to Luxor - crossing a desert to reach the river Nile - we went as part of a caravan of tourist buses. This caravan was escorted by a bunch of army trucks and police, the roads were blocked off while this caravan went through... In addition, there were armed checkpoints on the highway every 25 km or so, where every car had to stop and be questioned, searched or what have you. Busses in the caravan flew through these checkpoints, however. Our caravan had about 70 busses in it - imagine 70 large, air conditioned busses, all in a line, driving 130 km/h down a highway. Sometimes the caravans can reach 250 busses even!

But it’s not just caravans - every tourist site had numerous bag searches, metal detectors and (what initially put me off the most) lots of armed guards. I have never seen so many guns in my life until I came to Egypt. Oh, and another thing - our bus had it’s own bodyguard - a guy in a dark suite carrying an automatic rifle casually “hidden” from sight.

Major security, if you ask me. I didn’t feel safer - if anything, 70 busses in one spot make for a rather meaty target if a suicide bomber can figure out how to get past all the armed guards - but I definitely felt like there was an effort being made to keep us safe. How do you defend against a maniac with a bomb strapped to his body? I’m not sure how...

Having delved a bit into negativity, I should talk a bit about the things I’m loving here on this trip.

Lovin’ it #1 - deserts are cool. Really cool. I went on a trip to St. Catherine’s monastary (a very old Christian monstary built around the legendary “burning bush” where god revealed himself to Moses, and also close to Mount Sinai where Moses got the 10 commandments). During the 3 hour busride there and back, I took about 120 pictures of desert scenery. That included sand dunes, camels, Beduin tribe people and huts, and the occasional tree, but honestly most of the pictures were just really cool rock formations. It’s so dry and desolate in the desert, but at the same time extremely beautiful. I wouldn’t want to live in the desert, though. I like my tap water.

Lovin’ it #2 - camels are cool. I don’t know of any other animal that comes across as content as a camel. If you leave them alone, they just hang out, look around and gaze calmly in a given direction as if they’re just sighing “hmmmm.... “. A bit like cows, though I can’t seem to shake the feeling that cows are suching “duhhhh....” instead of “hmmmmm....”. But that’s not all, when camels walk, they don’t walk, they “lope”. Slowly. With their feet touching the ground as if they’re wearing really comfortable slippers. I just love it.

Lovin’ it #3 - ancient Egypt is cool. This stuff is old!!! Really old! I mean, us Europeans were living in caves, banging bones together to make tools while the Pharoas were ruling an advanced civilisation with writing, pyramids, temples, gold, jewelery and probably a fashion show or two. Now that’s advanced! But what gets me is when you’re looking at a piece of pyparus parchment from the 10th century BC (say) and you can see the penmanship of the writing. 3000 years ago, some guy was sitting at a desk with a pen in hand, writing this thing, probably pausing for a moment or two to chew on the end of his quill before going on to draw a bird, then a washboard, then a feather and then a guy walking - which means “apeman” in hieroglyphics, and which is pretty much where us caucasians were in the evolutionary chain at the time. It just boggles the mind.

Lovin’ it #4 - dolphins rule! So far this entry has dwelled on Egypt, but I’m not forgetting that I’ve spent most of my time in the past month on a boat, and I have seen a total of 18 dolphins playing on the bow of said boat. Nothing compares to seeing dolphins having a bit of fun in the wild. On time, when the waves were really high, I saw dolphins playing around and actually jumping from one big swell to another! It was truly a sight to behold. Sorry no pictures, because whenever something like that happened, I didn’t want to run down to my cabin to get my camera, in case the dolphins had left once I got back.

Okay, enough for today. Hope everyone is well! I’ll be back in Montreal in just over a week, so I’m looking foward to seeing you all again soon!

PS. The photos are:
1- Temple of Luxor
2- St. Catherine's Monastry
3- A content looking camel
4- One of my many desert photos
5- Star Flyer: "My" beautiful boat

Luxor, Egypt

Just a very quick hello from Egypt! I've survived the 2 week crossing of the Indian ocean, and an enjoying myself immensly! In a few days I'll have a better internet connection and will post a few photos...

Hope everyone is doing well!

Goa

Hello everyone from my second and final stop in India. I am told by people in the know that Goa is the least "India" that you can find in India, but it looks, feels and sounds like India to me. Loads of Indians, cars, bikes, trucks and rickshaws weaving around the roads, honking at each other, yet never colliding despite dangerously close maneuvers. Maybe it isn't like India because I didn't have a large crowd of rickshaw drivers decend on me to demand that I take _their_ taxi to my destination.

Which segues naturally to my major gripe here in India (and also Sri Lanka, though things weren't as bad over there). In Cochin, when we exitted the port gate, we were assaulted by a group of about 30 people all yelling and screaming, grabbing us, telling us to take their taxi to whatever our destination was. Normally I'm a pretty laid back guy, but this assault made me extremely uncomfortable, nervous and tense (and I call it an assault, because many of the other passengers were extremely put out by this, and because it simply did not stop even when you made it quite clear that you weren't interested). Once you get out of choke points like port gates, the assault calms down a bit, but you never really have a moments peace...

So I ask all my friends who have told me again and again how wonderful India is: how did you deal with this? I am told that things get worse in the interior and the east, and I simply can't imagine what "worse" would feel like. It's obvious to me that you shouldn't try to form an opinion about a country based on 2 days of visit - I never thought that even from the beginning - but I was hoping my taste of the country would entice me to come back. As it stands, I would much rather explore a western country. Maybe I'm a wimp. But to prove that I am not, I have promised myself I would come back to India another day for a longer trip to test my limits properly. My little sailboat trip has made me soft and vulnerable. A real trip to India will hopefully thicken my skin enough to see past the annoyances and find the beauty and culture.

Tonight we leave India and sail due West across the Arabian sea and up the Red Sea to Safaga Egypt. What fun this will be! The winds have been relatively good and so we'll most likely be sailing the whole way (but in the north part of the Red Sea we'll most likely use the motor). Since we'll be away from land, I won't be writing an entry for about 2 weeks. Check back then for the latest news! :-)

Hello From Kochi, India!

Anybody checking this blog over the past week may have noticed that I've been relatively silent. In fact, completely silent. This is not because I don't love you all, but because the boat I'm on has no internet. Sorry! But that's what happens when you're crossing oceans.

So what is my ocean crossing like? Pretty cool. The other passengers are almost entirely my parents age - a few even older, and a few younger, but I am by far the youngest passenger on the boat. Not that it matters much. I have taken it all in stride. First of all, I've started hanging out with some of the crew, who are young and quite energetic. Pretty adventurous really. We had a night out of wild drinking and dancing in Columbo (Sri Lanka) a few days ago, and I got to see the more (shall we say) extreme side of the crew members... When sailors go out drinking, they go out _drinking_. I still remember how and when I got back to the ship, but coordination was seriously compromised at the time. It seems like everybody else was pretty much in the same boat (har har).

I'm taking a positive outlook on my situation with the rest of the passengers. When, in my regular life, would I have the chance to talk to a large number of older yet adventurous people? On this trip, that's when! I'm playing chess with an 88 year old gentleman who has 7 great-grandchildren, and stories of travels in countries all over the world (including such exotic locals as Iran, Congo before it became known as Zaire, and Northern Ontario). I'm spending a lot of time with a Brit from Liverpool who's had his shoes vomited on by John Lennon and was having dinner with Ben Kinglsey when he got his phone call to work on the movie Ghandi. There are obviously many more, with many more stories... I have yet to scratch the surface.

I have so much to tell, but what do I tell now? I only have little time, and I can't fit it all in... I'll have to be random...

Crossing the Bay of Bengal (between Thailand and Sri Lanka/India) was extremely hot, and lacking wind - so the ocean looked very oily. It rolled the boat quite a bit, making me almost seasick until I got used to it. There was only one day of non-sun, and on that day we had a rainstorm of epic proportions. Fortunately, the sea was calm (actually, because of the rain for some reason), so it wasn't that much of an ordeal.

And - the difference between an ordeal and an adventure is attitude. So the rain was fun! Because it was warm - I went up on deck and got myself thoroughly drenched. Everybody thought I was out of my mind, but then they just said "he's the young guy... he's a bit strange to us".

Both Sri Lanka and India a very interesting so far. Chaotic, with everybody rushing at me (or us, if I'm in a group) wanted to take us somewhere in their Rickshaws, sell us something, be a tourguide, or just get free handouts. This is something I find very irritating, because it gets my heart racing, and that's annoying...

But there are other things here that are really cool - people are super friendly, houses and cars and walls and every paintable surface are really colourful, the forests are super green and rich with life (moreso in Sri Lanka than here in India), and it just vibrates here with energy.

It's too bad we're in these countries for such a short time, but the purpose of the trip is the beautiful sailing ship, and that we'll be on for a length of time yet (still about 4 weeks to go!)

Anyway, time to go. Hope all of you a doing well! Thanks to those who have responded to my blog - you all rule!