Krommenaas on the road

Hello from Agra. Sorry for the lack of updates, we just haven't had the time to get online since we're in India since we usually arrive in our hotel in a new city late every evening. Traveling here is not very relaxing, the trains are always hours late and crammed full of people and it's near impossible to get tickets. I don't like India, all the cities are the exact same smelly, dirty, polluted, overpopulated concrete hellholes and the people harass us all the time. But the trains are the worst. On the other hand we're seeing some great monuments so it's all worth it.

A summary of our adventures this week:

• Last Saturday we took a nightbus from Kathmandu to India. Since we took an unusual route to get to Bodghaya, we ended up in Bihar, the poorest and most criminal region in India. The border town Raxaul is the most miserable place I've ever been. Unfortunately, it was election day in Bihar and to prevent violence, all vehicles were banned while the army controlled the streets. So we were stuck there all day. We made up for that by taking another night bus out of there.
  
  This day we were accompanied by a 16 year old Nepalese boy who had run away from home without any money or luggage because his parents were mad with him and wanted to go meet a famous Guru in the south of India. I helped him along to Raxaul so he could say he made it across the border, then spent the afternoon persuading him to go back, with success. A special adventure that.
  
  
• Monday we visited Bodghaya, the place where the Buddha was enlightened 2500 years ago and now the holiest city of Buddhism. Not much to see there.
  
  
• Tuesday we visited Varanasi, the holiest city of Hinduism. The most interesting thing there were the people bathing in the Ganghes. There was a big Hindu festival that day so we thought we were lucky, but except that there were a lot of lights and a lot of people nothing much seemed to happen on the festival. We were actually standing on the main square by the Ganghes between thousands of Indians during the time of the celebrations, and nothing happened, though people applauded periodically for no apparent reason. Very weird.
  
  
• Wednesday we visited Khajuraho, which has big 1000 year old temples covered in little statues, many of which are very sensual and some even pornographic. Beautiful monuments.
  
  
• Thursday we visited Orchha, a village on the site of an old capital where we could roam around the ruins of huge temples and palaces freely. That was great.
  
  
• Yesterday we visited Sanchhi, which has a Buddhist monument with nice statues 2000 years old.
  
  
• Today we visited Gwalior, which has the biggest fortress I've ever seen. There were other great things as well, like big rock carvings, and it was the highlight of the week so far.
  
  
• In between all this we've done lots and lots of traveling, mainly waiting for trains and sitting on trains.
• Tomorrow morning we're visiting the Taj Mahal!

Of course I have many great pictures of all these places, look forward to sorting them out and putting them online.

Not sure if I'll be updating again, in any case we're coming home in a week!

Namaste! (that's Nepali for hi/bye btw)

We're back in Kathmandu since yesterday, and we're leaving Nepal in an hour. The trek has been a total success! I've seen three of the world's five highest mountains up close (the Everest, the Nuptse and the Makalu), I've climbed two mountains of +5500m (Kala Pattar 5545m as planned, and Chukung Ri 5546m on impulse), I've visited Everest Base Camp (and got a cut across my hand from the glacier ice to prove it) and I've spent a night at 5180m which as we were warned gives you weird dreams.

It's been tough though, mostly because of the cold; we've been sleeping in freezing rooms from day 1. At the highest lodges our water bottles became ice bottles and one morning when I wanted to put my contact lenses on I found them frozen in their little box as well (but I defrosted them in the sun and they're fine, even got X-ray vision now :)

Conditionally it was never a problem, we had to go up slowly anyway to acclimatise to the altitude. But Danny got sick (food poisoning prolly) after a few days, so on the fifth day while he was recovering I climbed 1.2km to the top of Chukung Ri and back after a Sherpa told me it was possible as a day trip. That was a tough but fantastic day because I hadn't expected to get that high that fast. Danny recovered fast and the fifth day was a compulsary acclimatisation day anyway so we stayed on schedule all the way to Gorak Shep, the highest lodge at 5180m. From there we climbed Kala Pattar which has the best views on the Everest, and we stayed on top until the sunset, which was a fantastic sight. It's when only the top of the Everest is still catching sunlight while the rest of the landscape has already gone dark that you know you're watching the highest mountain in the world. I have fantastic pictures of it, somehow my camera makes it seem like the Everest was on fire, and the little cloud that was hanging around the top seems like smoke.

Next morning we visited Everest base camp. Since there was no expedition going on right now there was nothing to see except the wrecks of two helicopters that once crashed there. Still nice to see the famous ice-fall (the first major obstacle for Everest expeditions) up close. After that we started going down so fast that we won a day on our schedule. Since we'd also foreseen a day to deal with altitude sickness, we could move our plane ticket two days forward, which means we have two extra days for our India trip.

During the night before the very last day of the trek it was my turn to get sick. I spent half the night running to the bathroom, couldn't even keep in anything I drank. I didn't want to spend an extra night in a freezing room so we set out on the last long walk to the airport anyway with Danny carrying part of my luggage. What a miserable day; I had zero energy and felt like Jesus carrying his cross, except that my cross was neatly folded into a backpack and that I had to spend 7 hours climbing other hills before I could climb Golgotha. Oh and also that I could check into a hotel once I got there instead of being crucified, that too.

Anyway two days later now and I'm okay living on orange juice and some occasional yoghurt. We've spend yesterday and today visiting some places around Kathmandu. We're now going to take a night bus to the Indian border (11 hours to go 100km, I'm not kidding, that's Nepal), and tomorrow we'll spend the entire day trying to get to Bodghaya, the holiest city of Buddhism. From there our India journey will begin. I should be able to get online regularly, so I'll keep you posted!

Namaste from Kathmandu! We already saw the central Durbar Square (which is full of Buddhist and Hindu temples) during the evening, we'll spend more time here when we get back in two weeks.

One great thing about this trip: for once I don't have to spend hours looking for food without meat, in fact most food here is vegetarian. In Delhi the touts even promote their restaurants by assuring passers-by that they're 100% vegetarian - ah bless such civilisation! It's great food as well, and I had the best plane meal ever on the flight to Kathmandu with Indian Airlines.

Tomorrow morning we wake up at 5:45 and fly to the Everest region to begin our trek. We're a bit nervous :)

Hello from Delhi! It's an incredibly dirty, crowded, hot, noisy, polluted city, but the atmosphere is pretty special and it has some fantastic monuments so we had a great day. We arrived on schedule last night; the national strike in Belgium didn't affect our flight luckily. We saw everything we wanted to see today: the Jama Masjid (Mughal mosque, biggest in India), the tomb of the Mughal emperor Humayun (this tomb is the architectural predecessor of the Taj Mahal and looks a lot like it), the Mughal Fort, a Sikh temple with the tomb of one of the 10 gurus of Sikhism (we immediately liked Sikhism; nice place and nice people), a Bahai temple shaped like a lotus flower, the tomb of the Sufi saint Nizam-ud-din (in the middle of a sort of souq, we felt rather uneasy there), and in the dark we visited Qutb Minar, the oldest islamic monuments in India, built from the rubble of 27 Hindu temples in the 12th century, very special. I made lots of pics, and especially had fun doing night photography in Qutb Minar, I made some great ones there I think. The Indian visitors and soldiers who spectated my weird photography liked the pics in any case :)

In the early evening we heard a loud bang but didn't think anything about it. But when we went back to our hotel in Paharganj we found the street occupied by soldiers and saw several TV crews with satellite dishes reporting live news. We made some pictures of that and joked that the bang was perhaps our hotel having exploded. Walking towards it we found out that was not so far from the truth; a bomb had exploded two hours earlier at the Paharganj market place in the same street as our hotel, at 150m from it. About a dozen people were killed there (and more elsewhere in another explosion) but the atmosphere was pretty relaxed. A crowd was trying to watch the bomb site but was regularly being driven back by the soldiers with sticks. We couldn't pass so we just made some pics of the bomb site and then started on a big detour to get to our hotel from another direction. An interesting ending to a busy day!

Tomorrow morning we fly to Kathmandu, and the day after tomorrow we fly on to the Everest region to begin our two-week trek. So long!

From 28th October to 27th November I'll be traveling again, first trekking in the Everest region in Nepal for two weeks, then traveling through the north of India. If you're reading this from my site, scroll down for some info on my plans. As always, there'll be plenty of pics there after the trip!

Hola! This is the last day of our trip :( We're now on Isla de Mujeres, an island near Cancun. The last two nights have been heavy. Wednesday, after visiting Merida, swimming in the hotel, visiting Chichen Itza and swimming in a cave, we arrived in Cancun late in the evening and decided to go to one of the mega dancings there while we still had a car to get around. Cancun is really crazy to go out; within five minutes of parking our car there we'd been offered everything from drugs to whores. We picked what looked like the biggest and most popular dancing, the "Coco Bongo", and paid 25$ to get in and drink for free all night. I hadn't expected much more than to hear bad music and have a laugh with drunk Americans, but wow this place was really fun. There were celebrity impersonators, clowns, acrobats flying around the ceiling, everything you can imagine, and best of all the music was really good and everyone was dancing. We had so much fun that we decided we were going to be the last ones to leave. We ended up dancing on the bar of the empty hall until they showed us out through the back door :)

We also had two fun encounters with the corrupt Mexican police that same evening. In Cancun they apparently prey on tourists driving a car to get bribes for not giving them tickets. We were pulled over twice, the first time for speeding (while we were driving the same speed as everyone else), the second time for drunk driving (my last drink was hours ago). The first time we just paid the bribe, the second time I told the cop I'd take the ticket and he just let us go in the end.

Last night was heavy as well so Danny insists we go back to the hotel now to lie down :) Sunday morning I arrive back in Belgium, until then!

We're in Merida, having completed 3/4 of our Yucatan tour. Yesterday we first went to Calakmul, which is only reachable by a narrow road that winds through thick forest for 60km. It was pure rally driving, fun! Calakmul has two huge temples which tower above the forest, and it's so remote that there were hardly any other visitors, so it was pretty special to climb them. The one labeled Structure II is my favourite monument of this trip, check this picture. We finished our visit playing Texas Hold'em on top of the other one :)

In the evening we raced to Campeche which we visited this morning. Although it's a UN world heritage site there's not much to see there, but at least we got to see the Gulf of Mexico. Then we drove to Uxmal, a Mayan site we only visited because it was on the way but it turned out to be one of the best, with the most delicate pre-Columbian architecture in America. From Uxmal we went to Merida which is the Yucatan's biggest city and has a very nice historic city center. We're on our way back to the hotel now after playing some pool.

On the menu for tomorrow: Merida's monuments, Chichen Itza, swimming in a cave in Valladolid, and finish the day in Playa del Carmen.

Next week I´ll be at home and working again, bah :( But I´ll get two more days on hot Carribean beaches before that! So how are things in Europe - I hear it's freezing and snowing over there? :p

Hello from the godforsaken town of Xpuhil (I'm not making that name up) in the southern Yucatan. Strangely, this place has an internet cafe, so let me update you on the last few days.

After visiting the ruinsin Palenque we spent a day traveling to Flores in the north of Guatemala by bus/boat/bus, accompanied by two nice Argentinian girls. Next day we visited the Mayan ruins in Tikal, and as expected these turned out to be the most spectacular of all; there are four temples there that tower above the highest trees, so when climbing them we got superb views over the roof of the jungle, seeing the other temples sticking out of it like islands in a green see.

From Tikal we pushed on to Cancun in one long day; leaving at 7:30 in the morning, crossing through Belize in the afternoon and arriving in Cancun at 2:30 at night.

So yesterday we woke up in Cancun and that's when I quickly updated (see below). After some price shopping we rented an Opel Corsa with a big engine, and first set out on a tour along the beach resorts, hitting the beach at one of them. Let me tell you Cancun is the most horrible place ever. The very thin strip of beach is divided in tiny sections full of deckchairs, and of course they're filled with fat Americans.

From Cancun we headed south along the Carribean coast to Tulum, and there we found the opposite extreme: a fantastic wide beach with palm trees, and along it only hotels with wooden cabañas, and a nice atmosphere all around. The place we picked looked like the smurf village, and it was right on the beach. Unfortunately the bar played boring reggae all night, that kind of ruined it coz we felt like going out for real.

This morning we visited the seaside ruins in Tulum, then drove to Coban (50km away) to climb the Yucatan's highest pyramid (42m) which gave us another great view over the woods. We spent the afternoon on the beach (lots of yummie girls there instead of fat Americans) and then headed south, racing along Mexico's perfectly fine country roads until this place, Xpuhil.

We're here because tomorrow we want to head into the huge Calakmul reserve to visit the ruins of that city, which was as powerful as Tikal and hopefully still as interesting to visit. Since tourist busses don't come here yet it'll be very quiet in any case. In the evening we'll move on to Campeche, later we'll pass Merida, Chichen Itza and Valledolid and then finish our circle back in Cancun.

Btw Sofia I made some good bird pictures I think, and the Calakmul reserve has 250 bird species so I may get more tomorrow :)

Hasta luega!

Hiya! Just a quick post to let you know I'm still alive. We're back in Mexico now and looking to rent a car for the last week to make a road trip around the Yucatan peninsula and all its ruins and beaches. Tikal in Guatemala was the highlight of this trip, fantastic site! Will post more soon.

Hola amigos. I'm in Panchan right now, a backpacker/hippie resort in the jungle near the Mayan ruins of Palenque. We're among the few people here who don't have dreadlocks and call each other brother and hug each other all the time :) Yesterday we made a tour of several waterfalls nearby, today we visited the ruins. In the morning we managed to get a permit to visit the tomb inside the biggest pyramid, and as a result we were one of only a few people allowed to climb to the top of it. Got a great picture of myself standing up there like a priest. In reality I was laughing at the people below who were all looking up and wondering why I was allowed to climb up and they weren't :)

Before this we were in San Cristobal De las Casas, the mountain town in Chiapas which was famously conquered by the Zapatista movement 10 years ago. A lot of cities here have added the name of a local hero to their town name btw; in this case De las Casas, but there's also Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapa Corzon, etc. It's a nice tradition and we've been wondering what names cities in Belgium should take. How about Antwerpen Brabo, Gent Artevelde, Brussel Egmont, Ertvelde Wally? Sounds cool eh?

Tomorrow we're heading to Flores in Guatemala. The organised trips leave at 6am, so we're going to try to get there on our own steam with local busses and a boat across the border stream. Will probably not get online before we get back to Mexico, so adios amigos!

Mini update while we wait for the bus to San Cristobal. So we took the nightbus last night, didn´t sleep at all as usual but rested well. We went to Chiapo Corzon, an old village, and just today there happened to be a parade to commemorate the Spanish conquest. Hundreds of people dressed themselves as conquistadors with wear blond wigs and masks with white skin and a beard, and danced through the streets. Totally psychedelic. I still haven´t managed to shave here so I look completely like a conquistador myself. The canyon was impressive btw, vertical walls of up to 800m high on both sides. And lots and lots of birds of many different species, I know a Swede who´d love this place :) Aight gotta run, cyas!

Buenas noces! We´re in Oaxaca now, about to take a night bus to Tuxtla Gutierrez where we´ll go boating through a canyon before moving on to San Cristobal. The three days before today we spent on the beaches in Acapulco and Puerto Escondido (among the surfers, great waves there), and today we visited the ancient Zapotec city Monte Alban and the colonial town of Oaxaca (very pretty). We just burned our first load of pictures here, got many great ones already I think.

Btw, after our visit to Teotihuacan on day 2, Danny the semi-negro was sun-burned and looked like a lobster, and I wasn´t, ha! Red and white skin are apparently very popular here coz we got a lot of looks and smiles from the Mexican girls in Acapulco. Danny has a theory that the Indians here still think people with light skins are gods just like when the Spanish arrived. In that case they must think I´m the mightiest deity of all!

Not gonna write more, just one comment on last update :(

Hello from Acapulco! This is just day 3 and it's been a great trip already, here's an overview.

On Saturday we flew to Chicago. We had 5h30 there (a bit less than expected) and lost a lot of time having to get our luggage and check it in again ourselves, but we still managed to spend one and a half hours in the center, and we used it to the max. Getting out of the subway was a fantastic moment, we were in the middle of a deserted skyscraper area (not a working day) and the whole city was covered in snow. It was freezing and we didn't have coats but we were sweating anyway since we literally ran through Chicago :) To be precise we ran from the Sears tower to the John Hancock center, and managed to see all the major skyscrapers along the way. Beautiful city!

At 23h we arrived in Mexico City and quickly checked out the central square. Saturday we woke up early and saw everything we wanted to see in the city, then did the antropological museum which is the best museum I've ever been to, and then went to see bullfights in a huge arena, busy day :)

Yesterday we went to Teotihuacan, the ancient city with the big pyramids, and it was beautiful, I love the architecture of the indians. In the evening we caught a bus to Acapulco where we arrived at midnight.

Today we're taking it slow, gonna watch the rock divers, then hit the beach. We were hoping to find a casino to play poker but apparently casinos are illegal here and I guess we won't find one of the clandestine ones. In any case at midnight we're taking a night bus to Puerto Escondido which is 8 hours further east along the Pacific coast.

Got a LOT of great pictures already, hope they all make it back intact. And we have to get by in Spanish since noone speaks English here. I love the language, wish I'd spend some time learning it in advance.

Okay that's it for now, cheerio!

Preparations are now in full swing - better late than never! We've made a schedule for the first few days, it looks like this:

• Saturday: fly to Chicago, walk around 1-2 hours (been looking up all the interesting 1920s skyscrapers today, wanna see as many as possible), fly on the Mexico City, check into hotel around midnight (got an email reservation, hopefully that'll work out).
• Sunday: check out Mexico City and go to the Archeological Museum or go see a bullfight - I've always dreamed of sitting in a bull-fighting stadium and being the only spectator cheering for the bull.
• Monday: go to Teotihuacan (biggest pyramids in Mexico), back to Mexico City, take a bus to Acapulco (6 hours). This is gonna be tough to pull off in one day but we got to.
• Tuesday: spend the day on the beach in Acapulco, night life until midnight, then take a night bus to Puerto Escondido.
• Wednesday: spend the day on the beach in Puerto Escondido, go out in the evening
• Thursday: morning on the beach, then bus to Oaxaca (7 hours through beautiful scenery)

This would be a great start, from then on it'll be improvising as we have only loosely decided on places we want to go to. Roughly we'll be in Palenque (Maya city) around Sunday and spend the next week in Guatemala. We'll finish the trip in some decadent beach resort in Cancun if we have time left :) See you on the road hopefully!

From 8-30 January I'll be traveling through Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. I don't know if I'll be online at all, but just in case I'm putting up this travel log again so I can easily say hi on my page.

This blog was all about my trip around the Middle East which lasted from 25th February to 14th May 2004. Since the trip is over this blog won't be updated anymore, go to my web site instead to read new updates.

Hallo! So I'm back home now; let me fill you in on the last part of my trip in this last entry in my travel log.

Termessos was great. At the Antalya bus station I was lucky to hook up with two couples, one British one German, who were also heading there; so at the highway turnoff I could share a taxi to Termessos with them which saved a lot of money. I was also that they were very like-minded; the taxi driver suggested picking us up after two hours but we all wanted much more time.

Termessos was once a big city but is now mostly a very thick mountain forest with ruins scattered throughout. The site is actually a protected nature reserve and the combination of nature and ancient ruins is very charming. The only big structure remaining is the ancient theatre, which faces a vertical rock wall, quite impressive.

After visiting the theatre I followed a long path to a tomb which turned out to be nothing much. Since I'd walked such a long way and the tomb was at the foot of a steep mountain, I decided to climb up a little there and get a nice view. After some climbing it got rough and I left my backpack behind to get a little higher. But I kept getting a little higher all the time; it was a fun scramble up the rocks since I always found a way to get even higher. Finally I ended up at a high vertical part and normally I'd have turned back, but I was now at only 5m from the top! So I pulled myself up, not knowing how I'd ever get down again but hey it was the last day of my trip, if I was ever gonna break a leg this would be a good time :) I was rewarded with a view of the valley beyond, always the greatest moment of any climb. I wasn't actually on the top of the mountain yet but on its backbone. Much to my surprise, along the back of the mountain towards the top I found ancient stairs going up, so cool! Getting to the actual top was pretty easy, and then... picture time! On the way down I found an easier route so it was np. I couldn't find my backpack again (had left it behind an hour earlier) but luckily the British couple just arrived at the tomb and they found it.

Then I headed to the necropolis of Termessos. This is a huge ancient graveyard full of huge stone sarchopagusses, 100s of them. The catch is that all of them have been opened long ago by tomb robbers, and many of them were lying scattered about as if some giant had kicked them around (the result of earth quakes I assume), so the place looked very much out of this world - a perfect setting for a zombie movie.

Got back to Antalya in the evening and walked back to my hotel at midnight. I was so lost in thought that when I entered a shop to buy a drink, I slammed into the glass door, ouch. The shop owner was mad at me, everyone who saw it happen thought I was drunk, and people who saw me afterwards thought I'd been in a fight since blood was dripping on my face from a cut in my forehead. Very embarassing all.

Next morning I woke up early and packed my backpack for the last time. When I wanted to pack my trusty old mountain shoes I saw that the soles of both of them had been torn in two the day before (they'd already felt weird). There was no way I could wear them again so I left them behind, sob . How convenient though that they lasted until the very last day of my trip!

There is no public transport to the Antalya airport and I didn't feel like shelling out the exorbitant prize of a Turkish taxi, so I took a bus that dropped me off at the exit and walked the final 2km with my luggage - would be terrible to do with normal luggage but is a snap really with a backpack.

At first I simply didn't recognise the airport. When I'd landed there in February the people on my plane had disappeared into a tourbus within 5 minutes and I'd found myself alone on a deserted airport. Now it was crowded with heaps and heaps of noisy package tourists, funny contrast.

The airport has the most ridiculous security system imaginable as a result of which we had a half hour delay. Each gate had its own bag scanner, and our gate was also used for a plane to Bremen, although any other gate could have been used since it just led to two busses that drove us to our different planes. So two planeloads of people had to pass through 1 scanner, and there was a long row of people lining up while every 10 minutes the airport speakers repeated that passengers for Brussels had to go to the gate "urgently". How stupid can you be, the passengers were standing in a long line right before their noses! And this while most other gates were not being used. The Bremen plane had a delay of over an hour btw.

For the first time in my life I got a seat before an emergency exit and didn't have to fold my legs around my neck, aaaaah great flight. At Brussels airport my parents and sister picked me up and we went to my parents' home for talk and dinner. At 20h I got to my own place and it was a very weird experience seeing it again after almost 3 months; it's fun getting a look on your own home from a stranger's point of view. And then starting my PC I realised how weird it is for other people - icons on the right, mouse with a strange shape, ... . An hour later Fragske came over and we went to see Kill Bill 2, so I've already caught up with one of two movies I must see, the other being The Passion.

At night I couldn't resist having a look at my pics, and this caused a moment of panic: the first 3 CD's I tried were all partly or completely ruined and for a moment I thought I'd lost 80% of my pictures which would be a real tragedy. But all other CD's were 100% fine and since I burned all pictures on two different CD's as a precaution, and none of the ruined CD's were twins, I was reassured after a few hours that I had in fact got all my pics safely home; 2.5 Gb of them (that's about 3000 pictures I think). The best of them will start appearing on my web site soon.

Thanx to all of you who read this page during my trip, and especially those of you who posted comments!

Yesterday at midnight I arrived in Antalya which is my final stop. It's funny being here again after 2.5 months, it makes me realise how long my trip has been because it seems a distant memory already. Konya wasn't much but I knew that and just decided to go because I wanted to visit a 'normal' Turkish town and because I could do it without losing a day; it just meant I arrived in both Konya and Antalya very late which was worth it. In the 13th century Konya was the capital of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, and in that time the Dervish movement (of Whirling Dervishes fame) was founded there. I really love the traditional drawings of the dancing dervishes and I actually wanted to buy one (a rare occasion when I want a souvenir) but they only sold it as expensive original drawings while I'd have been happy with a print, so I didn't get one, grr.

Today I visited Perge, a nearby ancient town. I mainly went to visit the theater because the other ruins aren't much, but the theater was 'closed for restauration' and they still asked 10 million lira (about 7 euro) to get in. There was no sign of any restauration works going on though and I demanded that they either cut the price or let me into the theater but they didn't, so I was a stubborn cheapskate and didn't pay. Instead I first ploughed through the fields around the site to get a look at the ruins, much to the amusement of the local farmers, and then I decided to have a go at the theater anyway. It is built against a steep hill and fenced around, but I noticed the fence didn't go all the way to the top. I climbed up next to it until the fence of the adjacent area, which I think belongs to an electricity company (could also be the army coz there was a watchtower), found a hole in that fence and then managed to get above the theater. I still couldn't look inside much but after a while I managed to climb higher through the bushes and in the end I got an excellent view inside the theater as well as on the ruins field. I'm full of scratches of the bushes but I had a great time, and afterwards I ate 10 million worth of ice cream and pastries at a restaurant to reward myself.

Tomorrow is my last full day here and I'm going to Termessos, yet another ancient city. This one is special because it is in a valley high up in the mountains; it was so well protected by its position that it was the only city Alexander the Great did not manage to conquer during his march along the coast towards Persia. Getting there will require a long hike so it'll be a busy last day tomorrow. Friday, day 80 of the trip, I'm flying back to Belgium.

Marhaba! Capadocia was great, don't have time to say more coz I just decided on impulse that I'm gonna head to Konya; I'm leaving in a few minutes. Only three days left, gotta use them well :)

I've been in three continents this week and it's only Friday... does that sound cool or what! :) I'm in Ankara now so back in Asia. There is nothing spectacular to see here which is why tourists don't come here, but i wanted to get a feel for the place and i while i'm around i want to visit the mausoleum of Atatürk.

I've done the first already by walking through the center - as far as modern cities go Ankara (which was founded in 1923) is quite okey - big boulevards, some trees, and the architecture isn't disturbingly ugly. Turkey generally surprises me by looking like a rich European country rather than a poor oriental one. in Ankara that also goes for the people and the atmosphere - haven't even heard wailing from a mosque here :) One bad thing, most people don't speak any English here. Well, bad for them, i enjoy being the only tourist and having to use sign language.

Btw on the plane from Egypt to istanbul i calculated that i've spent exactly 2000 euro so far, including the three plane tickets. That's a pretty good deal for spending 10 weeks in 6 different countries don't you think? :) These last 11 days in Turkey will be relatively expensive so i expect to spend about 2300 euro in total, for a 79 day trip.

So tomorrow i'm gonna say hi to my pal Atatürk and perhaps visit the Museum of Anatolian Civilisations to check out their collection of Hittite artifacts. The Hittites are an interesting civilisation who peaked around 1200 BC - they're mostly famous for their battles and treaties with the Egyptians of Ramses' days. After that i'm outta here - i'm going to Capadocia yay! People rave as much about is as they do about Petra, so expectations are high.

Whoa, Danny just said in MSN "pity it's not 80 days" (like the book) but actually I'll have been traveling exactly 80 calendar days. So the title of my report will of course have to be "around the Middle East in 80 days" - cool how that works out with the trip being full circle as well :)

Hello from Istanbul. Tomorrow morning I'm leaving (not sure where yet but probably Ankara or Capadocia), so let me tell you about Istanbul now. Well it's great, very beautiful city. And then I'm not only talking about the monuments, the buildings are generally nice, there are a lot of parks and the streets are clean - i.e. it's very different from the cities I've seen so far :)

The first day I spent mostly in the Aya Sofia - WOW what a monument that is! One of the most spectacular I've seen. I also visited the Blue Mosque next to it, and crossed the Golden Horn and went to the top of the Galata Tower for a nice panorama of Istanbul.

Yesterday (which was a rainy day) I did a huge tour of all Istanbul's major mosques. Several of them are spectacular, but the problem is that they're all almost exactly the same; they're all imitations of the Aya Sofia structurally.

This morning I visited the Topkapi palace. According to my guide it's the number one thing to see in Turkey and requires at least a full day, but I did it in 2.5 hours and didn't think much of it. In the afternoon I made another big walk, this time all along Constantinople's old city walls; from the Sea of Marmara in the south to the Golden Horn in the north; 7km of picturesque ruined walls, very nice. Btw along the way I walked past the building where the Eurovision Song Contest will be held in a few days :)

I got some pictures for you too! They're not uploaded yet as I type this but they will be soon (yalla yalla zusje!)

A group of mosques in Alexandria. I'm proud of this pic coz I managed to find an angle that hides most of the street rubbish around these mosques; the area isn't nearly as nice as this pic suggests :)

Sunset behind Alexandria.

Mosques in Cairo.

Running towards the Bent Pyramid in Dahshur. Why do cameras only have a 10 second timer and not a 20 and 30 second timer? You wouldn't believe how many 10 second sprints I've done this trip. Well running towards a pyramid in 10 seconds from a distance where my camera can see it from top to bottom proved impossible; but as you can see I got pretty close :)

Inside the Aya Sofia, taken myself with my arm stretched out. I've given up asking strangers to take a picture, they never get it right anyway.

I got back from Alexandria rather late last night and since I'd already slept very little the previous two nights I decided against going to Fayoum today. Instead I got out of bed late, relaxed a while and spent the afternoon in the Egyptian Museum, taking pictures of all my favourite statues. Later tonight I'll try cramming all my stuff in my backpack (getting harder all the time) and tomorrow morning I'm off to the airport and to Istanbul. I'm leaving Egypt with a heavy heart so it's good that I'll be busy traveling for a while longer.

I can say how much longer now since I just bought a ticket home: on Friday 14th May I'm flying from Antalya (where I started this trip) to Brussels; I'll be arriving at 15:15. I expect an orchestra to be playing the national anthem while I kiss the ground!

I decided on Antalya when looking at the map of Turkey in my LP guide and remembering that when I passed there on my rush along Turkey's Mediterranean coast in the beginning of this trip, I skipped two of the three places near it that I wanted to visit (Termessos, Perge and Aspendos; all Greek/Roman cities; I only visited Aspendos). I enjoyed the rush too much then and didn't want to spend more than one night in the same place; now I'm traveling at a much more relaxed pace and I can arrive in Antalya 1, 2 or 3 days before my flight and be sure to have a good time there. So ending the trip where it began works out perfectly.

I'll have 10 full days in Turkey. Besides Istanbul and those sites near Antalya I think I'll go to Capadocia (which was the other big thing I skipped last time besides Istanbul), and perhaps I'll go check out Ankara - there's nothing spectacular to see there but it's en route between Istanbul and Capadocia. Anyway, you'll read it here :)

Today I took it slow until 3pm, just lying on my bed and daydreaming. Then I took a taxi to the ever elusive Blue Mosque (supposedly a famous monument but I kept failing to find it last time I was in Cairo). Once again the cab driver hadn't heard of it, and the map once again sent me in the wrong direction right into the city of the dead, BUT in the end I found it. It turned out to be mostly in ruins and I don't know why it's mentioned in Cairo guides, but by chance I found out that you could climb the minaret and that was great fun - the view was superb so close to the Citadel.

I did the route through Cairo's old islamic area again, revisiting some places I liked to take more pics, and visiting the very nice El Ghuri mosque for the first time. When it got dark I subjected myself to hours of negotiating in the tourist bazaar Khan el Khalili to get the requested souvenirs - the things I do for my friends!

Tomorrow I'm visiting Alexandria again and Sunday I hope to get to the pyramid of Meydum but it will be difficult. Monday I fly out of here!

So I went to Dahshur and Memphis today. The car I arranged yesterday didn't come but thankfully I didn't wait for it more than five minutes and got the agency I arranged it with to find a replacement within half an hour. Instead of a car I actually got a luxury van all for myself :)

I spent over three hours in Dahshur, first checking out the red pyramid which I already visited last time, then walking through the desert to the bent pyramid, something I've really been wanting to do since my first visit :) It took about half an hour, and then I spent over two hours finally admiring the bent pyramid from close by and photographing it (over a 100 pics :) ). It's superb! Definitely my favourite pyramid and worth going back to Dahshur for; I'm gonna add it to my list of favourite monuments too. The change of angle halfway up is surrealistic (the world's biggest mistake, as I wrote in my Egypt report) but even better is the fact that half of the outer casing is still intact - the only pyramid to still have so much of it - which creates great details and makes it a delight to photograph.

I actually had to fight to get to photograph it though. Until 1996 Dahshur was a military zone closed to the public, and apparently it's still a sensitive place, because when I started walking away from the pyramid (to be able to get it on picture completely) the soldiers started whining already, and when I walked around it and then away from its backside for the same reason, one soldier started yelling from far away and then chased me on his camel, no kidding. I just yelled back "what?" and otherwise ignored him and kept taking pictures - on perhaps my best pyramid picture you can see him galopping towards me in the distance :) He kept yelling all the way and when he was finally near me we yelled at each other for about 10 minutes; he kept telling me I wasn't allowed to go there and I kept saying that is bullshit and that I was just photographing the pyramid; he kept commanding me to follow him back and I kept yelling no. In the end he rode of - victory! I took a pic of him riding away on his camel as a trophy :) I took another hour making pictures of the pyramid to my heart's content. When I'd finally completed my tour around the pyramid, the soldier was there with a superior, and some more soldiers were talking to my driver who was hysteric. I showed one of the soldiers my pictures and then things were okay - much ado about nothing!

From Dahshur we drove to Memphis. I only needed 10 minutes there coz all there is to see is a few big statues. I then asked the driver to just drop me off at the Gizeh pyramids; I spent another hour there, then walked off the site and through Gizeh city (which has 1 million inhabitants) looking for photogenic glimpses of the pyramids between the city's buildings - sometimes a really cool sight that gives a much better idea of how huge the pyramids are than standing before them. I didn't really find what I was looking for but got some nice pics of the pyramids peaking through bushes of palm trees.

Hi fans! Last night and today I got reacquainted (sp?) with Cairo. Next to the train station I found a superb mosque (Danny I think it's the one we drove by and tried in vain to find out the name of so we could return to it - remember?). I took some blurry night pictures of it and returned this morning but then the sun was in the wrong direction so I still don't have proper pictures. After that I walked through the 'garden city' area, got a picture of the Egyptian parliament (for you 'expat' :) ) before the guards could stop me, arranged a nicer hotel and went up the 200m high Cairo Tower. Cairo is really cool from above, what with the Nile flowing through it and the pyramids in the distance. I was up there for two hours waiting for the sunset, but then at 18h got tired of the sun moving so slowly and came down.

My new hotel is called Hotel Dahab, it's a series of little buildings on top of a roof and tries to look like a beach camp in Dahab, funny. Met a Canadian guy here who I met in Petra three weeks ago, and got to empty a bottle of Egyptian whiskey with him and a few Australians :)

Tomorrow I'm renting a taxi all day, I'm going to the pyramids at Dahshur (yay!) and to Memphis (not much to see there but it's on the way). I'm also thinking of making a day trip to the Fayoum oasis (100km south of Cairo), not to see the oasis but to rent a taxi there again and make a tour of three half-ruined pyramids, including the pyramid of Meydum which I described in part 2 of my Egypt report.

So did you like those pictures?

Here are some new pictures.

This is Wadi Ghuweir, a very long canyon into the Dana nature reserve. As I explained below, after several attempts to arrange it I'd given up hiking through this canyon when through good fortune I got an unexpected opportunity to do if after all. It is one of the most beautiful places I've seen in my life. One of the things that make it so special is that it has no vegetation in the beginning but gradually gets greener and greener, resulting in lush green sections like this one near the end. Check the canyon floor at the bottom of the picture and then scroll up to get a sense of the scale of this.

On top of Mount Sinai.

Standing on a natural rock bridge in Wadi Rum, the desert of Lawrence of Arabia fame.

Howdy. Just dropped by to look up info on plane tickets. I use internet in the French cultural center here btw, and I can't use or install MSN here which is why I haven't been on MSN for a while now.

I'm leaving Alexandria tomorrow evening, after nearly two weeks. I'll take a train to Cairo (to avoid another torturous ride in Egyptian busses) which will actually be the first train ride of my whole trip. In Cairo I'll visit some places I missed last time, like the Blue Mosque; I'll go visit the pyramids at Gizeh again since I just can't get enough of them; and perhaps I'll fork out the cash to hire a taxi to take me to the bent pyramid at Dahshur which I only got to see from a distance last time. Friday and Saturday Salma will be in Cairo as well for a conference.

Update: next Monday (May 3rd) I'll be flying from Cairo to Istanbul, so the journey is back on! :) I really didn't feel like coming home before doing some more traveling, and since I can get tickets home from Turkish beach resorts for next to nothing it makes sense to go full circle - I'll actually spend less on plane tickets this way. So I'll visit Istanbul to my heart's content, then travel through Turkey to my final destination. If I feel like it I'll make a detour via Capadocia; and I may end by taking a ferry to a Greek island and fly home from there (equally cheap) - plenty of options! Expect to see me back in Belgium around mid May.

Salaam aleykum from Alexandria! Today I've been traveling for two months; I started on 25th February. This is the first time I've traveled so long and what I've learned is that while after 2 to 3 weeks you feel like you've seen enough and it's time to go home, once you go beyond that and start washing your clothes regularly, buying new soap etc, traveling becomes your way of life, a daily routine like any other, and you can go on forever. In fact, going on seems the obvious and easy thing to do now, while going home seems a tough task; I really don't feel like going back to ordinary life :/ I've already decided that if I ever do the silk route, I will not go west to east like most people do, but will fly straight to Kathmandu or Hong Kong or whatever and then travel all the way back to Belgium. That way I'll approach home all the time and can gradually end the trip with a final trek through eastern europe instead of having to suddenly abort it with one flight back.

Anyway, tomorrow or soon after I'll book a flight out of here. I'd like to add a nice finale to my journey, but that depends on cheap tickets being available for the right places so I'll probably just fly straight to Brussels.

In the last two days my foot healed really well, in my mountains shoes I can walk 100% again. About time too!

Last Friday we went to a heavy metal festival. Yes, metal! Two friends of Salma's were performing there which is how we knew about it. I didn't expect much but as it turned out Alexandria has a small but very hardcore metal community. Fragske (if you're reading this) you would have loved this! There were maybe a 100 people, half of which were members of the bands that were performing :) They all played covers of various metal bands, and to my surprise they did it excellently. I was really impressed by the guitar playing; in some cases I think the actual bands couldn't have played it better. The coolest performance imo was by a nerdish guy who performed all alone with a basic rythm box, a guitar and a lot of enthusiasm. He played a 15 minute long medley of old Metallica songs (Blackened, One, Seek and Destroy, ...). His singing was even worse than James Hetfield's but his guitar playing was perfect.

Salma hates metal and thought the whole thing was hilariously bad. When the next band played death metal and their skinny frontman started growling death metal style she couldn't stop laughing hehe. People actually started pogo'ing during this performance; I recorded a little clip so you'll get a look at Egyptian death metal when I get back home :)

Hey all. Yesterday I switched hotel, and now I'm in the best one of the 30+ I've been in this trip. I have a big clean room with a big bathroom, chairs, a desk, a TV with BBC world and a big balcony, located in the center of Alexandria, for 5 euro per night :)

Today I got myself an Egyptian SIM card for my mobile which will be very handy, but it means I can't receive messages on my usual number for the moment.

Nothing else I wanna report here, soz :)

Here are two pictures from Petra for you. My sis who uploaded them (thx) was not impressed, hope the rest of you like 'em more.

Sitting on top of the rock opposite the Treasury, the rock-cut tomb that is the most famous monument in Petra.

This is the Wadi al Mudhlim, a very narrow and colourful canyon, an incredible creation of nature imo.

Hello from Alexandria! I got here yesterday, jumping on another bus when I arrived in Cairo at 21.30 . That was a bad idea coz that bus spent two more hours in Cairo traffic before heading for Alex, and I only made it here at 2am after 14 straight hours on busses. And then I had to go smoke shisha with the Sudanese guy who had helped me reach Salma with his mobile before I could get to my hotel :)

I didn't make it to my final destination unscathed; yesterday morning on the beach in Dahab I stepped full weight on a sharp rock in the sea. It made quite a deep wound in my right heel and part of Dahab's golden beach (Dahab means gold) is now dark red :/ As I also had two big blisters on my toes on the same foot I could hardly walk at all yesterday hehe. But the blisters are okay now and I can walk on the tip of that foot np. This gives me a funny walk but hey I'm in Egypt everyone walks funny here :p