Wish You Were Here - Mombasa

So, it’s occurred to me that some of you might have ended up very sad to here about my travels and not get to come along yourselves.  As a result, I’ve decided to start a Wish You Were Here section, so that you can recreate the travelling experience for yourself at home!

Mombasa is a coastal town in Kenya, where the Kenyan people go on holiday, and rumoured to be a paradise.  Having spent a day or so there, I can now tell you how to get the perfect experience for yourself at home!

1.  Turn on the oven as high as it will go, open the oven door and close the door to the kitchen.  Feel the stifling heat sink into you.

2.  Every 15 minutes, throw a cup of rancid water into the oven.  This will produce a good amount of claggy humidity to compliment the heat.  Do not open a window - there is no wind in Mombasa.  For a really authentic experince, get water which smells of sewers.

3.  Sprinkle cat litter on the floor and wander about on it.  Make sure you crush some glass and condom wrappers into the dirt too!

4.  You’ll need some other people for this next step.  If you have lots of “friends” (ideally people you do not wish to spend time with) get them to come around and squash into the kitchen with you.  Ensure that once every 15 seconds one of them shouts something at you, whistles, makes kissing noises or starts up a random conversation with no real end.  Everyone should, at some point, try to sell you a safari.

5.  If you can’t find friends to do this, put an offensive sign on your window aimed at upsetting your young male neighbours, and allow them to hammer on the glass and shout at you.

6.  Now for the authentic smell!  You’ve already got the water, but now you need the fruit.  Get a sack of pineapples and one of mangoes, then put them in the oven for a bit so they go all soft and gooey.  Trample them into the floor, and cover yourself with any remaining juice to attract lots of flies.

7.  For good measure, inject some vodka into a mango to recreate the fermenting effect of the sun, and try to eat it.

8.  Turn off the lights and the water, as for more than 50% of the day these will not work.

There you go!  The authentic Mombasa experience!

As a side note, Mummy has decided to create an account for herself here, so she can write about things which are a bit too big for my tiny brain.  She says that writing as a zebra the whole time closes off many avenues she would wish to use.  Look out for the user who posted an entry at the very bottom!

- Greg

The Best Way to Travel

So, you want to travel around Kenya?  Which method should you use? Well, poor soul, luckily I am here to tell you exactly what you need to know about each type of transport.

Flying

To get to Kenya, you’ll probably need to fly at least once.  And it’s great!  If you go with EgyptAir (who I am of course certain fly between the UK and Nairobi) you get a big pile of very tasty hot food and many free drinks on your flight, along with people who are really very pleased that you have decided to visit Kenya.  What do you need to know before you go, though?

*  Remove all knives from your hand luggage.  One of our company managed to lose three sharp things to the watchful fellows at security before we were allowed on the plane.  “Forgetting they were there” turns out not to be an excuse.

*  Do not expect to see your bag at the far end of the flight.

*  They give out free blankets and pillows on night-time flights.  Make sure you leave enough space in your hand luggage to take these with you.

*  You will need $50 to get a visa on landing.  If there are four of you, ensure that you have more than $196, or they will not let you in.  Especially make sure that you have searched your purse well, and that one person does not find a hidden $10 note a few hours after the crisis has ended that she had all along.

Bus

There are lots of big coaches which rumble around the country.  What better way to see the scenery?  Also, if you get a night bus you can sleep in it and save yourself the hassle and expense of booking a hostel.  We got on a 9 hour night bus from Nairobi to Mombasa, the ideal amount of time for a nice sleep!

You need to make sure that the bus driver has the same ideas as you.  In Kenya, it would seem that they like to drive very fast indeed, and to undertake along the rocky, potholed gravelly ground which makes up the side of the road.  Enjoy this - it is more bumpy but less scary then trying to overtake properly and seeing the lights of a great big lorry bearing down on you.  Expect the driver to sound the horn in greeting to everyone he passes, and to use tiny roads in villages as a diversion when the traffic looks a little slower than he would like.

I strongly recommend taking a thin cotton bag to put over your head, so that your terror-wide eyes can close and get some sleep.  Tie it on firmly; it’s a bumpy ride.  Also, if your bus does turn over and you are killed, your bag-headed corpse in the ruins may cause some sort of international incident, and you will be famous.

If you do sleep this way, make sure to wake up at least 30 minutes before the bus arrives at its destination!  It’s rather tiresome to stumble onto the streets bleary eyed at 5:00 in the dark and try to figure out where you are meant to be going next.

Matatu

A matatu is a kind of minibus thing which rolls around the streets of a town until it has found enough passengers before driving to its destination.  It can be remarkably comfortable, but bear in mind that there is no room for luggage.  Expect to be stared at for the entirety of the journey by the locals.  Also, expect one of them to try remove your money belt with their knife.  You should ideally develop a safe word with your buddies before this happens, so you can alert them to your troubles and get some help.

Pick your seat in the matatu carefully.  Sitting surrounded by friends removes the pick-pocketing problem, and bear in mind that if you sit near the door you will frequently have to get out to allow people inside the matatu out.  There is also the “death seat”, next to the driver, which should be avoided.  Matatus engage in many head-on collisions, and roll down steep valleys.  The best place to sit is right in the middle at the back.  If there is a seatbelt, count yourself lucky and use it!

That said, they are very cheap and when they break down, you can get on the next one for free!

Tuk Tuk

These little wagon things rattle around the streets shouting at every passerby they see trying to get fares.  You should ride in one at least once.  Try to avoid being tall, or you will bang your head repeatedly on the ceiling.  Despite the fact that thy are only made of tin, they can reach speeds of 65km/hr, so goggles might be in order to protect yourself from the bits of road which come hurtling past.  These are great if you suddenly realise that you are lost and the power cuts have blacked out all the streets lights again.  Despite the sign saying they only take three passengers, you can fit four in if you learn to tessalate.

Walking

By far the cheapest option so far, but hard on the feet.  Make sure you have a good comfortable pair of sandals (you can’t wear hiking boots in this heat, nor with the impromptu skirt you have made out of a scarf)!  Expect to get large amounts of spiky things, broken glass and gravel under your toes, and timetable frequent stops to remove these things.  Never step in the rivulets on the streets - they might just look like water, but you can never be sure!  Always remember that if you walk in the sea with sandals on, they will smell of the sea forever.   Ideally, get two pairs which rub in different places so you can alternate.

Swimming

Not advised for long journeys, as it is slow and tiring.  If you do intend to swim, get a snorkel so that you can look at the marine life underneath you as you paddle about, as well as keeping a sharp look out for crocodiles, hippos, sharks and jellyfish.  If you do see one of these, try not to move, bleed, or look tasty.  Do remember that despite your best efforts you will ingest huge amounts of sea water during your swim, and that you will need to be violently sick on reaching the shore.  Please try not to vomit on the coral, as it is not good for it.

Also, remember to stay away from the coral.  There will be big signs telling you that touching it in any way will kill the fragile little thing.  They are wrong.  Touching the coral in any way will result in your legs being torn to shreds by the pointy little sod and sea water getting in the cuts.  You would be hard pressed to hurt the coral, and in a fight it will always defeat you.  Show some damn respect for your superior.

- Saf

The Moon is the Wrong Way Up

Looking at the WIG map, it’s clear that I’ve come rather a long way. That is also evident from the fact that it is still January but I am going a deep mahogany colour and that no one understands sarcasm here.

However, the thing that has really brought it home is the moon, which has contrived to be the wrong way up every single night so far. It’s currently a very thin crescent, sitting with the thickest part closest to the horion so that it looks like a luck-filled horseshoe. I am sure that the moon is not meant to look like this at any stage during its cycle.

I also don’t quite understand how I can tell it is the wrong way up. It’s the the sky, after all, and surely if I just lie 90degrees to either side I can make it right again. But somehow that doesn’t work. Maybe it’s because the stars look odd too? Orion dominates the sky over us, waving his sword, but I can’t see the Plough at all. Apparently it should be possible. I am less than convinced by this.

Seeing the sky so very different is rather disconcerting. I’ve never been one to look at it that much, but I’m pretty sure it’s wrong here. And sometimes that makes me feel a bit wrong too.

Thankfully, I then remember that if I were in England I wouldn’t be able to see the stars at all for clouds, and am happy.

P.S. Oh, and the light pollution is not much less here. There are still generally sod-all stars to see.

Nairobbery

…is not as full of robbery as you might think, although one of my shirts has fallen victim to the image.

Kenya is really a rather nice place, with much less hassle than Egypt.  We are now only offered safaris on the street, and not anything else imaginable.  They also have beer in cans here!  The taxi-driver from the airport told Mummy et al about this in great detail and with much enthusiasm, so none of them had the heart to tell him that such things also exist in England.

The amount of alcohol available and the prices (in comparison to Egypt) are stunning.  For reference, the conversion rate is UKP1 = KSh 120, and a half litre of lager is KSh70.  We have been having lager.

The price of the beer is probably to make up for the fact that there is sod all water about.  I think the longest it’s been off so far has been 14hrs, but it’s a lottery to see whether Mummy will end up clean at any point during the day or not!  And showers are certainly needed; we landed at 3:30 in the pitch black, and the temperature was 16 degrees celsius.  I wish I had less fur to cope with this

Last night we went out to a tasty restaurant place, in which there were no menus but we were asked how many kgs of meat we wanted between us. In the kitchens you could see all the goat carcasses hung up ready for use.

Well, better be off to pack for Mombasa! The camera hasn’t been out yet as there’s been nowhere safe enough for it, but I should return with some seaside shots.

P.S.  Hmm - I don’t know how the comments ended up defaulting to disabled in the last post, but hopefully everything should be working now again!

Egypt Digest

So, it seems that we have come to the end of our travels in Egypt, and are about to move on for Nairobi, in Kenya. I am excited about going to the place the guidebook describes as “Nairobbery”, and about getting to the sea, but before I do it’s time to put Egypt to bed.

There’s one hell of a lot of history in Egypt, and it’s actually quite nice to get away from it every now and then. Whilst I’m sure that every tomb and monument has its own special place in Egypt’s cultural heritage, I can’t help but think that maybe the country would be a little easier if they had left the temples at Philae and Abu Simbel where they were and allowed the rising water behind the dam to cover them. Yeah, they’re great, but there’s only so many carved walls you can look at and still summon any feeling.

I perhaps wouldn’t feel so blase about them if they weren’t treated in such a manner by everyone else. Unlike England, anyone is free to touch anything they want, to rub their hands across c. 4,500 year old painted walls, and to finger anything they feel like in the Egyptian Museum. I’m sure you’ll have heard all about the way things are kept and displayed in there before, so I’ll add my own voice to that chorus. I have had to try very hard not to talk to people hanging off various bits of very precious stone. When I am rich, I will buy them a humidifier for that ancient wood just sat about in the open air in the uper galleries.

But the history is only one small part of it! Much more interesting are the people here. Most people speak some English, although whether they understand all of it I’m unsure. The word “hassle” has translated across badly, so that you can find your path blocked by someone shouting “No hassle! No hassle!” as he tries to force you into his tat shop by cutting off all routes away from it. Some shops have gone still further and called themselves “Hassle-Free Shop”, which is almost as appealing as the “Egypt Free Shop” we saw.

I’m pretty certain that the fact the our group is mostly female has not affected the hassle that much, for everyone on the streets seems swamped with offers of taxis, scarves, small toy dogs that do backflips, socks, tissues, furry Arabic writing or multi-packs of cigarettes. Still, I imagine the men do not get kissing noises quite so often, or find a bus driver claiming that you are now his wife and pulling you around by your arm to show everyone. Mummy didn’t like that bit.

If you’re not in direct contact with people shouting, Egypt is still a very noisy place wherever you go. Cars have two indicators, use their hazhard lights to indicate that they are going to do something very odd, and their horns to welcome every single person they come across in the street. Cairo is a city that never sleeps, and those horns never stop sounding. You get used to it after a while, so that only prolonged honking is worth any attention whatsoever.

Aswan and Luxor were much nicer; fewer people on the streets and less honking. Still, the noise was intense. Every tree seemed to be packed full of birds which shriek incessantly for no apparent reason. Along the Nile things get quiet during the day, but at dusk the verges erupt into tweeting and chirruping of birds and crickets, and some strange bird which screams goes off repeatedly at dawn. An aurally challenging place indeed.

The beautiful scenery is enough to distract attention from the carcophany, though. Most of Egypt is arid and dusty, with great clouds of dust blowing around the houses and through the streets of Cairo every other day or so. But then, once you’ve written off a section as dead quarry-like land, a sudden burst of lush green splashes across the landscape, where someone has been bothered to dig an irrigation ditch from the Nile. The banks of the river itself are wonderfully fresh and frondy all the way along, hiding the gritty desert just over the hilltop from view. It’s no wonder people go for cruises along it (and they do in droves; every port is packed full of cruise ships).

Once you’ve got the hang of numbers, and a phrasebook with the Arabic characters written in it, food becomes quite exciting. We’ve eaten a range of strange things whilst out here, from the ubiquitous felafel sandwiches (worth 20p in stirling) which have made up a mainstay of the diet to shakshouka, which is this sort of tomato-ey onion-y vegetable thing with a rubbery egg burnt to the top of it. There’s also kofta, which are delicious tubes of miscellaneous meat, but meat is rather expensive to eat very often. Everything here is spicy in the good way; not hot, but just aromatic and tasty. My favourite dish so far is koshary, which is a layer of pasta on a layer of rice on a layer of noodles, with some tomato paste on top.

So, what was best and worst? Worst first; the constant hassle and trouble when walking in the streets. We were all dressed very conservatively, but it was still interminable and very tiring. Ignoring them seems to be the only option. Other bad bits were the excessive cost of everything and the fact that the sun set so early. After a day of English summer heat, you don’t expect the sun to pop off at 17:30!

The best bit for me was the tomb of Thutmes III, in the Valley of the Kings. Unlike almost all of the other stuff we saw this did not have engraved walls, but merely painted ones. It’s one of the oldest tombs there, and so the hieroglyphics are very flowing and the people are just stick figures. We spent a long time in there copying what we saw (no photographs in any of the historical centres). The felluca ride was also really rather nice, and these last few days in Cairo when we have been able to organise our own time.

But it is nearly time for the plane! I should really go and snuggle back into the special pocket in Mummy’s bag. The rucksacks came back, which I probably forgot to mention, so here’s hoping they don’t disappear all over again! Until we next meet enjoy the photos, and I will see if I can get the titles to work in slideshow mode.

Photos

Right, if I haven’t made a big cock-up some photos should now be up!  They have been uber-compressed (4.5MB to 16KB) to cope with the crappy Internet connection, so apologies for quality.  There are also more somewhere, but compressing them takes a long long time.

Messing about on a River

Whee! I just spent a great few days on a felluca, which is a kind of flat-bottomed boat thing with a sail.

That’s one! We went on that anyway. It was very exciting because I got to steer for a bit.

The boat is open with a canopy over it which gets folded down during the day, and you live on there. There’s no toilets or fresh water or anything, but the nice felluca-men made us lots of strange and tasty foods, and we only got a little bit ill from ingesting Nile water!

I, along with the felluca-men (Mehmood and Tarik; they did have names), learnt lots of new songs while Mummy and her friends were rowing, including the tea song and some of the less-rude –LES songs. We also learnt some Egyptian card games which are notable in the number of hours taken to complete each.

We slept on the boat under the fabric canopy, which meant lots of early starts when the sun rose and woke us all up! I had hoped to see some wildlife in the river, but when Mummy went swimming in the Nile I was glad that the crocodiles and hippos are now fenced in upstream behind the High Dam. Still, soon we’ll be going to Kenya to see lions and hippos, so I can hold on for that! Back in Cairo for a few days now with the idea of desperately sorting things out.

Come on and Shine!

The sun is bright, and I’m in Aswan!

Aswan is a city in Upper Egypt, which is bafflingly in the south of the country, at the top of the Nile. It’s so much nicer than Cairo! The river is clean and blue and you can walk a short distance down the street without being stopped and offered a taxi. You do get offered horse-carriages, but they are less frequent. Judging by the frames of most of this horses around, this is probably because the rest have starved to death.

We went to see some more temples, like Philae which is on an island and Ramses II at Abu Simbel. We got to ride a boat to the former! At the latter, we got to go in a great big convoy with all the other buses of tourists for the 3hr journey, accompanied by armed police to make sure that bandits did not come and attack us on the road. More exciting than that, the hostel gave up breakfast-in-a-box to eat on the journey, which had an egg in it.

It also contained the ubiquitous Egyptian cheese, which is very similar to Dairylea but seems not to need refrigeration. That was also tasty. Oh, and I had my photo taken in front of the temple, but that is less fun. It turns out that it is remarkably hard to make a camera focus both on me in the foreground and the enormous monument filling up the background, so there are many blurry pictures of me now.

Camels!

 Hey peeps!

So, as I mentioned yesterday, I went on a camel ride!  It was well good.  We went to see the sunset behind the pyramids whilst all sat on camels, which was both beautiful and ass-aching.

The camels are nowhere near as sophisticated as zebras.  They wobble about when standing and moving, and then try to eat the riders of the one in front.  Luckily, me and my Mummy (she has told me to call her “Mummy” now, not only in honour of Egypt but also because “Owner” sounds rather odd) were on the last camel.

We waddled our painfully-slow way through the back streets of Giza to get to the perimeter fence of the pyramids complex.  In some ways, they were much more interesting than the walk along the sands itself.  The streets were full of tiny little Egyptian horses, and children beating them with sticks.  Personally, I’m fond of my stocky build, but I can still appreciate the beauty of these horses.

They’re much smaller than the ones in England, and don’t have the big barrel bellies.  Their legs are little but still nice and slender.  And, considering the amount of whippings administered, they look surprisingly healthy.

The entire complex of back alleys is full of riding (or, in one case “raiding”) stables, which look like normal houses but for the fact that every window has a horse poking out of it.  We came out onto a scrub area, in which lots of the little devils were lined up with two children.  The biggest of these entertained himself by leaping onto a horse’s back and whipping it as it galloped, unsaddled, away and threw him off.  He then went on to the next animal in the line.  It reminded me a bit of an N64 game, with a never-ending supply of horses.

On top of the dunes, as the sun went down, the locals gathered amidst the horse carcasses slumped in the sand to listen to music, talk and drink something, with their horses roaming amiably about.  Oh, and there were pyramids and Mummy pulled all the usual poses.  There were also pyramids today, and a Sphinx, but that was nowhere near as interesting as the camel ride.

Tonight we are getting a sleeper train to Aswan, upstream, before we go sailing on a felluca (Egyptian boat) for a few days.  We’ll be sleeping and eating on it, under the stars, but notably not going to the toilet as there are none.  No Internet for a while probably, but I will try to upload photos for you!

Second Day in Cairo

So, we landed here yesterday evening, and what a kerfuffle! After being unable to get a currency card at Heathrow, my owner and a friend had their bags disappear! I’m very glad I got to ride in the cabin, or goodness knows where I would be now. We are still waiting for the bags to appear, and 24 hours have now passed. I hope my owner doesn’t get malaria with no access to her medication.

After we had registered protests we then tried to get the bus into the town, but it turns out that the Arabic symbols for numbers are different to British ones! Luckily, lots of nice men helped us. The bus ride was exciting, as in Egypt there seem to be no lane markings and instead of indicators cars simply beep to show that they intend to change lane into you. People would jump off the bus in the middle of the road and run to the sides! We didn’t do that though.

We soon got good at crossing many-laned roads with no crossings on them. It still makes my heart race but no one is dead yet. The hostel is nice and the man there gave us information about what we can do. Sadly, due to prices we are limited, but we have a fun few days ahead (with no Internet). I hope they have remembered there are c.7 Egyptian pounds to the Stirling, and aren’t using a one-to-one conversion.

Today we complained to the airline, got funky student cards and had a drive around the city. We then spent a while trying to find an Internet cafe, which meant we got to go in the Hilton! There wasn’t one there, but it was a nice visit. Tonight we are going to ride camels at sunset by the pyramids, but we have to leave soon so I’d better get going.

Here’s a blurry picture of the friend I found today!  Look closely at the rear-view mirror: