Travelling with Genghis

Our route from Vadadora took us well south of Ahmamdabad through delightful countryside which was surprisingly lush considering the lack of rain and a 40^oC + temperature. Acacias and mango trees laden with fruit lined the road either side of which the dusty brown fields were punctuated with green leaved trees in whose shade goats and cattle sought respite from the heat of the sun.

Cool buffaloes

No such respite for the farming communities however, their presence in the drab fields signalled by haphazard pinpricks of vibrant coloured saris and white turbaned heads. Every now and then we passed a small town each with its transport hub comprising a chaotic collection of buses, motorcycles and tuc tucs which in turn provided an opportunity for stall holders and hawkers to ply their trade. The road was in good repair and we reached our destination in just over 4 hours. We saw little of Sayla but what we saw wasn’t attractive. To its east there are gravel producers providing a continuous stream of lorries with the wherewithal to repair old roads and make new ones. The town centre is situated around a busy crossroads and the guest house we were seeking (an old palace) was here but set back far enough to mask the traffic drone – but it was closed and falling into disrepair. Down the road was Rajkot which we didn’t particularly want to go to because it took us too far away from the villages we wanted to see. Nevertheless we set off in its direction while we considered our options. By the time we reached the next crossroads we had decided to head north east towards Surendranagar, a large town close to which was one of the villages we wanted to see. It is not a town that appears in any of our guide books and the second of the villages we wanted to visit wasn’t marked on any map we had – we had been relying on information from the guest house owner to find it. The journey to the town was just 35km but the road was in poor condition and we had to travel slowly which, as it turned out, was a blessing in disguise as 10 minutes up the road we bounced around a corner and had enough time to read a very small pale blue sign with the word ‘Somasar’ written on it in faded black lettering – this was the ‘unmarked’ village. Having gingerly driven into what we thought was the heart of the village it soon became apparent to us that we were encroaching into the centre of a village that wasn’t designed to take vehicles so we gingerly extricated ourselves and went back to the road. As we parked on the hard shoulder we were met by a man in his mid 30s who in good English directed us to a small house which turned out to be the ‘shop’ for the textiles produced by the village. The man turned out to be the textile designer and after a display of the cotton and silk saris, ‘doputtas’ (scarves) and other items produced by the village he took us on a guided tour of the production processes – cotton and silk dying (the skeins are brought in from Bangalore) bobbin loading and weaving. The whole village was involved in the process and each house we

Loading a bobbin

 were invited into was a hive of activity, particularly because school holidays were in full swing and youngsters too had been co-opted to help family and friends. We enjoyed a good hour with the people of Somasar who had been very generous with their friendly hospitality.

Surendranagar was a bustling town that was a nightmare to navigate in – so I was told! We entered the town blind, not knowing if there were any hotels available and if so where they were. In the end a friendly face suggested the name of a hotel and with the aid of the GPS we eventually found it – having been ticked off by a policeman for travelling the wrong way down a busy street! The hotel was fine and had secure parking for Genghis which was a bonus. By the time we had settled in it was early evening and we decided to visit the next town on our list if it was reachable by tuc tuc. As luck would have it, the town, Wadhwan, was only 10 minutes away on the other side of a bridge. Wadhwan is famed for its tie dying (bandhini) rather than for its weaving and again it appeared that the whole village was engaged in the process in some way or other. The tuc tuc took? us to the centre of the village where we tried to communicate our interests to anyone who could understand us. The second person we spoke to was a young woman who not only spoke excellent English but also turned out to be a member of a tie dying family – and so it was that we met her father, mother, brother and a myriad of other members of her extended family. We watched the tie dying process from start to finish and ended up in a wholesaler’s shop where quite a number of women arrived to sell articles that they had tie dyed in their homes. The wholesaler spent time showing us a wide range of articles and styles of dying before suggesting that we complete our visit to the village with a visit to a small temple

Wadhwan's Temple

around the corner which turned out to be a very old, simply styled but beautifully symmetrical structure set over water, so much more attractive than the profusion of ornate ‘wedding cake’ temples that dotted the countryside. For the second time in the day we had been humbled by the generosity of strangers.

Early the next day we set off north to The Kutch (Kachchh) and the town of Mandvi. The journey began well but having crossed over the area of the Gulf of Kutch inlet that separates Kutch from southern part of Gujarat the roads got worse and the lorry traffic increased. We made the mistake of hugging the coast and passed through the chaotic town of Gandhirham and then the port town of Kandla before more open roads eased the strain. Mandvi is just like many other rural towns in that it has a central market around which radiates every other conceivable type of business all of which are connected by an endless stream of bicycles, motorbikes and tuc tucs. What makes it different is that it sits on a small inlet on both sides of which huge wooden boats are being constructed in much the same way as they were hundreds of years ago. There is also a textile industry here which is based largely on cross stitch embroidery and Kutch’s distinctive mirror work.   

The boat yard we visited was just a flat piece of ground on which the boat building materials had been deposited. Those materials were almost

Boat building in Mandvi

exclusively raw trunks of Malaysian teak (the same as that used by the Keralan boat builders in Sur, Oman) from which all the timbers would be cut using petrol driven chain saws in the first instance followed by adzes, axes, hand saws and chisels. Measuring tools were very basic but due to the scale of the project there wasn’t the need for mm accuracy. And the scale of these boats is astounding. Ours is a cargo boat being built for a client in the UAE who will use it to ply the route between the Gulf States, Oman and Somalia, a trade route that has been in operation for thousands of years. It will take two and a half years to complete and at the time of our seeing it had eighteen months to go. She is 134ft (41m) long, has a displacement of 1200 tons and we were in awe of the massiveness of her timbers. The keel and ribs had been

The massive timbers of a 134' cargo boat

 rough cut from the trunks before ‘made on site’ templates had been used to refine the final shape of the pieces before more accurate cutting tools are used to produce them. The planks that sheath the ribs are held in place by 12” long steel nails that are hot galvanised on site, but these are temporary fixings that will allow the timbers to season to the contours of the hull. Once the seasoning process is completed the nails will be removed, the planks will be trimmed, refitted and secured with new countersunk nails. Caulking will be traditional tarred hemp rope that will expand into the cracks when it gets wet. The fact that The Navigator was also intrigued by this project bears testament to the unique opportunity we had been given to witness the building of something special.

From boat yard to cross stitch – the penance to be paid for dragging The Navigator round a half built wooden boat in searing heat! As luck would have it our tuc tuc driver was a Muslim and a Jath, a caste that is renowned for their embroidery skills and all his immediate family just happened to be involved in the production of cross stitch embroidered clothing and artefacts!

A Jath embroidered tunic

He was one of six brothers all of whom lived with their respective families in a family enclave a few minutes drive from Mandvi – and we were invited to meet them. The house was full of activity with the older female members of the family engaged in the embroidery whilst keeping a weather eye on the younger members of the family who were either looking after their even younger siblings or, as one young girl was, engaged in trying to copy the artistic skills of the older members of the family. The father of the family was a well respected sifayaurvaid (herbal medicine) doctor whose skills had been singled out in the past for a visit by Indhira Gandhi. The eldest son had followed in his footsteps, two were educating themselves elsewhere in India and the remaining three alternated between running the family shop in Mandvi or tuc tuccing. The embroidery skills were fascinating to watch and although the items on display in the house were not to our taste we resolved to go back into the town and to the family’s shop to choose some examples of their work from the stock there – and so we did!

The Beach at Mandvi Palace

Before leaving Mandvi we drove to the Vijay Vilas Palace where Lagaan and other Bollywood films have been made and had a very good lunch in a tent on a completely deserted beach – in fact a rather special tent that was part of ‘The Beach at Mandvi Palace’ resort where we were the only visitors.

The road north to Bhuj was empty, well surfaced and we reached the town well before dark which was fortunate as at one point we were directed through the main market area that consisted of narrow streets lined with hawkers setting up their stalls. Difficult though it was it would have been impassable a few hours later when the market got into full swing.

Our hotel was well placed and overlooked the once beautiful Aina Mahal Palace that was badly damaged in the 2001 earthquake and which is now derelict and uninhabited save for the many pigeons and ground squirrels that live in its crumbling walls. A project is underway to secure the funds needed to restore it to its former glory but the sum involved is so enormous that unless an international organisation steps in with considerable financial assistance we can’t see the project ever being completed.

Our main purpose in visiting Bhuj was to see the textile skills associated with the town and its immediate environs and to visit the more remote villages in the Kutch to the north of Bhuj as far as the Pakistan border. A conversation with our host gave us an introduction that night to an entrepreneurial couple who had started a cooperative designed to keep alive and promote the textile producing skills of the Kutch tribes. Their passion was clear to see and as we looked through the articles that were being prepared for sale it was clear to see why they were being courted by dealers from exclusive

A typical horizontal loom

shops in many of Europe’s capital cities. They were kind enough to give us introductions to some of the manufacturers and dealers around Bhuj and Bhujodi and the following day we spent an exhausting six hours in the heat of the day travelling from one location to another in a tuc tuc. It was a fascinating experience that covered the weaving of single ikat silk Patola saris, the weaving of wool and silk by a family who also designed and dyed the materials they produced and Ajrakh, the production and use of vegetable dyes. We were introduced to Ajrakh by Sufian Khatri whose dedication to keep alive the natural dyer’s techniques and skills mirrored that of his father Dr. Ismail Khatri who had received an honorary doctorate from De Montfort University for his work in this field. Sufian is the eleventh generation of his

Stirring a vat of natural indigo

 family to be involved in the family business and it was with great pride that he told us that his son, a twelfth generation male, had recently been born and was already under starter’s orders to lead the family business into the second half of the century!

What we hadn’t appreciated before this first visit was that it is generally the men who weave and dye whilst the women concentrate on embroidery. As our knowledge of Indian textiles increased so we became more aware of the high levels of skill, imagination and the patience needed to produce them.

Block printing a 6m cotton sari with natural dyes

And although the workers’ financial recompense would be regarded as pitifully small in a European context it was clear to us that unless prices were kept at a level that guaranteed marketability there would be no point in perpetuating the knowledge and skill levels needed to keep production going. Textile producers and marketers we met are already concerned that the ‘skills drain’ is impacting on the industry as young men, the weavers, and to a lesser extent the young women embroiderers were being wooed by the material benefits that could accrue to a white collar worker in the larger towns. As far as the cooperative managers are concerned their faith in the industry’s future is in the hands of passionate artisans who, with help from government and NGOs, will not only keep the skills base alive but also act as a source of inspiration for others. As long as their skills are attractive to local and overseas markets there will be a living to be made. 

For the first time since our travels began I was laid low the following day with food poisoning but thankfully the symptoms eased in time for the next day’s visit to the tribal region to the north of Bhuj. The night before we left we reported to the Gujarat Police’s  Prohibition and Excise Department to apply for a permit to go into the Great Rann of Kutch where the villages we wanted to visit were grouped.  

We started early the next morning on a road that ran due north of Bhuj and ended in India at its border with Pakistan. We aimed to stop about 15-20km short of the border in the town of Kalo Dungar having spent time in a number of villages on the way. The countryside was flat, scrub desert with very few features to enhance the landscape – and it was very hot. Having driven through a police checkpoint at Bhirendiara followed by a sign that announced that we were passing through the Tropic of Cancer, we headed to the tourist village of Hodka where a tourist camp has been set up and from where visitors can head out with guides to see the local wildlife. Being out of season it was empty when we visited but the caretaker was happy to show us around and have his family’s photo taken. After half an hour or so we left them, headed back to the police post and en route saw a beautiful sand coloured mongoose before turning north to visit the villages of Khavda and Kalo Dungar. The latter, just a few km shy of the Pakistan border was the more remote of the two and on our arrival we were mobbed by children and teenagers. It was clear from the outset that we were not permitted to take photos of the inhabitants which was a pity as all the women, young and old, were dressed in their traditional costumes which were based on smocks embroidered with the beautiful cross stitching technique we had seen in Bhuj.

Traditional dwelling at Ludia

We knew from our contacts in Bhuj that these costumes were hand embroidered in the village and unique both in design and the extent to which the smocks were embroidered. We left (beat a hasty retreat!) after The Navigator had her arms pinched and her blonde hair felt (pulled) by the over enthusiastic youngsters but not before we had given away our lunch! We felt as if we were the first white tourists to have visited the village in some time. On our return route we went off road to look for the village of Ludia which didn’t take long. The village was made up of several ‘enclosures’ each of which was demarcated by a 2m high and at least 2m thick thorn tree enclosure (boma, zareeba fence) inside which were a group of buildings many of which were traditional round, mud (madwa) walled buildings with conical thatched roofs. What made these even more special were that the exterior walls had been painted with patterns that apparently told a story.

Part of a story telling wall

Their presence in the area was becoming more rare as they were susceptible to damage and after many of them had been reduced to rubble during the 2001 earthquake they were replaced with more durable and easy to build concrete structures roofed with clay tiles, a style that was growing evermore popular. Again we were given an enthusiastic reception which we did our best to respond to but again we could only marvel at the beautiful costumes worn by the women but which couldn’t be photographed. From Ludia we headed back towards Bhuj but turned west after passing through the police check point and headed towards Than and Nakhatrana on a circuitous route back to Bhuj. The countryside in the west of the region was hilly and far more interesting to travel through but the textile heritage of the area was less interesting and we reached Bhuj late in the afternoon without stopping. We thoroughly enjoyed Gujarat as a whole, the Kutch in particular and we felt that we had done justice to our quest to learn more about Indian textiles in a region that for good reason is renowned for them.

The next day we left Bhuj early and headed east into Rajasthan and our first stop at Udaipur. With time foreshortened by our Maersk troubles we were unable to do in this region what we had originally planned so had settled on Udaipur and Bundi as the two locations we would visit in the region before heading south. The road to Udaipur was a good motorway described on our map as the east-west corridor that linked Gujurat to West Bengal. Governed entirely by linked toll roads (average R45 per toll and about 10 tolls) progress was good and we only came off the boil when forced to slow down by the effects of blockages caused by landslides in the hills of Rajasthan. Driving through Udaipur is an experience not easily forgotten but we made it safely to our obscure ‘homestay’ in the countryside just outside the town. Staffed entirely by Nepalis, we spent two nights in this beautiful location where we were able to watch frolicking mongooses (mongeese?) and a wonderful diversity of birdlife from a balcony and horizon pool overlooking fields and a range of hills to the west.

Udaipur - sunset from the balcony

The Navigator took advantage of our one full day in situ and attended a cooking course in Udaipur where she learned the skills required of Indian bread making much to the satisfaction of the staff and the other guests of the ‘homestay’ who benefitted from these newly acquired skills.  

We set off for Bundi using the same good east-west corridor as before cutting north for the final 30km – a very congested 30km. Bundi’s location is first signalled by the Taraghar (Star Fort) that sits on the hill top above the town. Approaching from the south, the next indicator that you are about to arrive at the town is the appearance of the beautiful Bundi Palace which seems to be carved into the hill in whose shadow it lies.

Bundi Palace overwatches the town

The palace overwatches the town that nestles in a bowl below the level of the road from where there are great views across the flat roofs of the Rajasthan coloured houses to the temples and history filled architecture. Our very basic accommodation was in a traditional haveli situated on one of the banks of Nawal Sagar, an artificial lake to the west of the town. The ramshackle private garden overlooking the lake was wonderfully peaceful and relaxing and capable of accommodating Genghis thereby relieving us of the security concerns we would have suffered had he been left outside on the narrow, unlit streets. The town started to come to life late in the afternoon and as the heat dissipated so the volume of people and motorcycles swelled. The atmosphere was carnival like, lively and friendly and people were more than happy to have their photos taken, particularly the men with their fantastic moustaches and brightly coloured turbans – they will definitely be reincarnated as peacocks

The moustache and the turban

 in the next life! The market was a delight and a long walk through and around the town convinced us that this place was rather special – long may it remain so.

After a lingering breakfast overlooking the cattle grazing on the bed of the dried lake we set off for Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh, a town that sits on the crossroads of the east-west and north-south trunk roads that effectively divide India into quadrants. We had been waiting for a week or more for information concerning our exit routes from India and had hoped that we might be able to visit India’s north eastern regions before dropping down to Kolkata and shipping out. But there were still too many unanswered questions to justify our reliance on this route in an exit plan so we took the decision in Bundi to head south from Jhansi and end our journey in Chennai from where we had a number of clear shipping options. The route to Jhansi was straightforward but navigating through this major transport hub was nerve wracking and it took us some time to find the road that would lead us to our overnight stop at Orchha, a small town about 20km to the south of Jhansi.

Orchha is accessed via a fortified granite bridge and is a small, pretty town dominated by two palaces, Jehangir Mahal and Raj Mahal. Our accommodation was in one of the wings of the Jehangir Mahal which is separated from the village by a restricted causeway.

Orchha's Jehangir Mahal

We were able to park outside the hotel which was situated on high ground overlooking the village. The proportions of the hotel rooms were enormous befitting such a beautiful and large palace but we felt that the hotel struggled to fit comfortably into such huge space. The town was very tourist oriented but not in a pushy way except a little around the temples which were the focus of attention for local visitors at this time in the Hindu calendar. Orchha provided us with a very relaxing break from mad Jhansi and although we didn’t know it at the time, gave us the energy we needed to tackle the next day.

Since committing to the southerly exit option we had decided to visit one of Madhya Pradesh’s tiger reserves and it was one of those towards which we headed the following day – but the journey would take two days and our next stop was Jabalpur, 430km to the south on the north-south trunk route. It took eleven and a half hours to complete the journey, the entire length of which was on a road under construction – a nightmare journey that tested our patience and Genghis to the extreme. We arrived in Jabalpur much later than we had anticipated and having found our accommodation very quickly thanks to The Navigators excellent map reading, we just as quickly declined it because it was dirty and squalid, not at all as it had been described and it didn’t have the secure parking that had been assured. We then remembered that when we had booked our room for the next day’s visit to the tiger reserve, run by Madhya Pradesh Tourism,they had mentioned that they also ran a hotel in Jabalpur. A phone call later we had the location of the hotel and having hired a tuc tuc to lead us to it we arrived there quarter of an hour later. The hotel was very adequate, had secure parking and was on the right side of town for the start of next day’s journey to Kanha National Park.

Having anticipated a re-run of the previous day’s road conditions we set off early only to be met by well surfaced roads in a largely forested environment so we arrived at our destination well ahead of schedule!

Khana National Park covers nearly 2000sq km that are divided into two roughly equal zones, a buffer zone and a core area. The creation of the core area, in which there is no habitation save for guard (warden) huts and a Madhya Pradesh Tourism lodge, was a key requisite in the establishment of the park under the Indian government’s 1973 Project Tiger initiative. That initiative was in response to the grave concerns being voiced at the time over the dramatically declining numbers of tigers on the sub-continent. Khana was one of the first nine reserves created initially (there are now 28) and required the removal and relocation of the many villages located in the proposed core area.

A banyan tree hosts a Spotted Owlet

Those villages were relocated to the buffer zone where the inhabitants continued to farm. Loans were also made available to promote businesses that would be support the anticipated increase in tourism and employment was offered to the families who knew the country and its wildlife well – they are now the park’s guides and guards. The over farmed land in the core zone was allowed to go fallow and re-emerged as grass land, the beautiful sal tree forests recovered from decades of exploitation as the principal source of timber for the manufacture of railway sleepers and bamboo thickets too were allowed to flourish. As the habitat thrived under careful management so did the fauna. In 1972, one year before the launch of Project Tiger an all India tiger census put the number of tigers in the country at 1,827; at the time of the 2005 census that figure had nearly doubled to 3,600 of which 129 were living at Kanha. To support that growing population the management team had first to create and then control a suitable environment in which those numbers could at least be sustained; the challenges they have faced since Kanha’s creation continue – to manage the environment they have created in the face of ever growing human pressures on their space.

Beautiful Chittal abound in the park

Housed in the core zone in the MP Tourism lodge we went on three safaris; one morning safari and two late afternoon ones. From 10am until 4pm is siesta time in the park for the animals and staff as it is just too hot. Each morning’s safari begins at 5am and concludes at about 10am; the evening safaris start at 4pm and finish at 6.30pm – no one is allowed into the core area between dusk and dawn for obvious reasons. A safari comprises a ride in a roofless Suzuki jeep with raised seats in the back, a smaller version of the African Toyota based safari jeeps. Each vehicle has a driver and guide and as we were the only endangered species of non Hindi speakers at the reserve we had a vehicle and English speaking crew to ourselves, Sukhlal  our guide whose father was a guard and Sondar our driver. In the course of our three safaris we saw a wonderful selection of animals and birds, too many to list here. And did we see a tiger? Oh, yes! During the course of our morning safari we caught a fleeting glimpse of a cub playing in the long grass with mum and then we were called to an elephant rendezvous, climbed up a ladder onto the back of Nirmilla the elephant and under mahout control trundled off into the forest. Within a few minutes we came across two passenger less elephants shuffling about noiselessly under the control of their mahouts. We were busy trying to look through the forest in anticipation of seeing a fleeing tiger when our mahout Ashish pointed to the ground in front of Nirmilla – and there to our amazement was a huge male tiger resting against a fallen tree.

Our Shere Khan

He appeared totally unconcerned by the presence of the elephants until one moved behind him which made him snarl. He was so, so beautiful but quite difficult to keep in view because his beautiful coat blended so effectively with the sun dappled forest floor. We watched him for several minutes before he slunk off just like Walt Disney’s Shere Khan – you could almost hear George Sanders muttering grumpily!  It was explained later that he was the father of the cub we had seen earlier and after we had left the forest and returned to the track and our jeep we saw him once more at a distance as he crossed a dry stream bed. Joy of joys – we had seen what we had hoped we would see but that said the diversity of the wildlife we encountered during our stay would have compensated for a no show tiger – but it was very satisfying to have iced the cake!

During our short visit we were befriended by two Indian families. The first comprised granny and grandpa, their daughter, her husband and their daughter; grandpa was the son of the man responsible in the Indian Lands Department for setting up the park in 1973 and his family name was much revered in the area. So much so that he and his family had been invited to watch a dance performed by local Baiga tribesmen and women that evening – and he invited us to accompany them. The Baigas are some of the oldest inhabitants of India and remain a primitive tribe that has retained its beliefs in animistic religion, sorcery and jungle lore. They are also well known for their deep rooted? knowledge of the uses to which many jungle plants can be put. The evening was a great success despite the arrival of high winds and a thunder storm that didn’t deflect attention from a spectacle that we knew we were very privileged to witness.

Baigas celebrating a successful harvest

When this family left the next day we were adopted by Rajesh and his extended family. They were from Hyderabad and this was their third visit to Kanha because Rajesh rated it above the other 16 tiger parks he had visited – it was his aim to visit all 28 before he went to the happy hunting grounds. A civil engineer by profession, Rajesh had branched out into the wedding industry – he provided the venue and made all the arrangements, including the catering, for Indian wedding parties which are generally pretty large affairs. He had had to draw the line at an all up total of 250. We got on very well with the family and during the course of my discussions with him over routes to Hyderabad, which we reckoned would be best split over a night stop, he suggested it would be better done in one journey and that he would be happy to lead the way as he and his family were leaving Kahna at the same time as us. We bowed to his local knowledge at which point he offered to arrange accommodation for us for two nights in his club in Hyderabad, the Secunderbad Club!

We reluctantly left Kanha the next morning, later than we would have liked as a fairly laid back Indian family took a leisurely breakfast before shoe horning themselves and copious amounts of luggage into two cars, one driven by Rajesh the other by his driver. 750km and fifteen and a half excruciating hours later, just before midnight, we arrived at our destination and in a sumptuous room in the magnificent Secunderbad Club fell into exhausted sleep. I had broken my golden rule of not driving at night and we had come close to disaster on more than one occasion when we were blinded by oncoming lorry after lorry on full beam. It seems it is the custom of all Indian drivers to drive everywhere at night on full beam.

The following day we had an opportunity to walk around the club and what a place it was. Built by the Nizam Chor Mahila as his residence in Hyderabad in the late 19^th century it had been given to the British whose military occupied it for many years, also as a club, before the Indian Army acquired it at Independence. When it became surplus to their requirements it was taken over as a private club and now has a membership of about 2000. Although slightly run down it remains an intriguing set of buildings the public rooms of which retain much more than just an echo of the past. On site there is a shop, beauty salon, petrol station, accommodation for travellers, games rooms, bars, dining halls, swimming pool, library and so on – rather special. We said goodbye to the very generous Rajesh and Laxmi at dinner that night hoping to one day see them in our neck of the woods. The following morning we set off for Bangalore – but not before we were presented with a box of mangoes (Rajesh and his brother own several mango farms) and a large jar of Laxmi’s homemade green mango pickle!

The road to Bangalore was good and we covered the 580km in a touch over eight and a half hours. We didn’t have the time or the inclination to sight see so after a fast food meal we turned in early ahead of a just post-dawn start to beat the city traffic.

We were headed for the Nilgiri Hills and to Udhagamandalam aka Ootacamund, Ooty, Snooty Ooty but we took a brief look at Mysore first – and what we saw we liked, rather a lot. The traffic was nowhere near as frenetic as the other, similar sized towns we had visited, there were seemingly many more tree lined roads than in the other towns and the general pace of life appeared more relaxed. Lunch was delightful and the flame trees in full bloom lining the route out of the town crowned a very satisfying morning. Not much later we were battling our way up the steep, winding road leading to Ooty’s summit at 2,300m. The road was a battleground with down coming as well as up going buses and coaches overtaking on blind corners. Being cut up by overtaking cars whose luck had run out was par for the course and in any case the limp wristed hand signal and a prolonged blast on the horn immediately gave them right of way! Our ‘homestay’ was a delightful bedroom in a period cottage and was well placed to visit the town but not so close as to suffer the noise of the incessant traffic. The town was scruffy and any charm it might have once had had disappeared a long time ago which was something of a shock as it dispelled so many pre conceived images of this well known hill station. Vestiges of better times could be glimpsed on the hillsides from time to time when old, well proportioned houses and mansions made a brief appearance but other than those brief reminders of racy past Snooty Ooty had lost its charm. 

One of Mysore's many Flame trees

In the morning we set off for Fort Cochin but first I had to change Genghis’ oil, not something I was equipped to do on the drive of the house we were staying at. Simpson’s garage was at the bottom of the hill on our route out so we stopped there to see if they could help. They couldn’t so directed us to the official Tata garage a few hundred meters further into the heart of down town Ooty. Just outside the garage I had my first accident in India. My fault or his was a mute point and not one worth arguing when the damage is relatively minor, the crash site language is one you don’t speak, the inevitable crowd is growing by the second and the policemen have started to arrive like hyenas sensing an opportunity to leave the scene better off than when they arrived. The driver of the van that assaulted Genghis had cut across us but got snagged on our 3mm thick steel front bumper – 15- love. His left rear quarter panel was staved in and his tail light cluster was broken but his sliding door still worked – 30-love. Genghis’ bumper had some paint on it – 40-love! By the time all this had been ascertained I had found out who the vehicle owner was, not the driver, and started to negotiate a price with him. I began by offering INR 1,000 (£15) at which point there was much sucking of teeth in the crowd – I can count in Hindi so the crowd quickly got the gist of what was going on. The owner was unimpressed particularly when the driver said it was going to cost INR10,000 to replace the light cluster. By now the police were involved but they were split into two camps; the hyenas and those who wanted the street unblocked asp. At the mention of the sum for the light cluster the mood of the crowd changed as did that of the good cops. With support from the crowd I was urged to offer INR 2,000 which was also rejected by the owner. The best cop suggested INR3,000 but this too was not only rejected by the owner but also by the crowd who said it was too much! Eventually we did settle on INR3,000 which I paid to the owner who immediately told me how to get to the Tata garage – deuce and rain stopped play. The good cops left smiling, as did the crowd. The Tata garage crew were real stars and carried out the oil change for me allowing us to continue our journey on to Kerala’s Kochi (Cochin). After leaving the hills and reaching what we thought was the comparative safety of level ground and straight roads we were subjected to our first potentially fatal incident. From oncoming traffic a large Tata lorry pulled out from the lorry ahead of it and drove straight at us, the driver completely ignoring the safe option to pull back in behind the lorry in front of him. We had no room on the single carriage road to manoeuvre and in a split second had to decide if the substantial drop off the new road surface onto the mud verge would roll the vehicle and if it seemed likely that it would could we dart across the oncoming traffic to the far side of the road that had a wider, flush with the road verge? I opted for the nearside verge and as the nearside wheels dropped at least 30cm the overtaking lorry shot through and we tipped dangerously to the left, shaking violently as the wheels bounced over the deeply rutted, hard mud packed surface. A gentle flick of the steering wheel on a raised piece of the verge and the 4 wheel drive gave us the purchase we needed to be thrown roughly back onto the road. There is no doubt in my mind that a less robust vehicle would not have survived that manoeuvre. The incident left us shaken but not stirred – too much. To add to a bad afternoon, our delayed start had thrown timings out of the window and I again had to break the night driving rule but not, thankfully, in such bad conditions as before. We arrived at our guest house in Fort Cochin in good time to unpack, gulp down a couple of refreshing and rare alcoholic drinks in a very swanky hotel and then tuck into a tasty fish curry at a popular thali restaurant. Fort Cochin felt good.

In the morning we walked to the tip of Fort Cochin to see what a guide book describes a ‘the unofficial emblems of Kerala’s backwaters’, the graceful

Fort Cochin's Chinese fishing nets

cantilevered Chinese fishing nets. Next to them are a handful of fish mongers from one of which we bought a kilo (20 pieces) of medium sized tiger prawns (not caught in the Chinese nets) which we took to a local restaurant which cooked them for our breakfast! The rest of the day was spent wandering around Fort Cochin, acquainting ourselves with the small town and, of course, shopping. On our way back from town later in the afternoon we bumped into a pair of travellers with whom we had shared our ‘homestay’ in Udaipur. It was good to see them again and we had drinks and supper together and swapped travel stories and nightmares. They left in the morning, UK bound whereas we went in search of spice and antiques. Our talkative tuc tuc driver was a knowledgeable man who was slow to warm to – but it was good that we did because he knew Kochi as well as Fort Cochin’s neighbouring districts of Mattancherry and Jew Town. His tour through the spice shops and

Spices outside a warehouse in Mattancherry

 warehouses along the streets and on the waterfront was a delight – we learned much and had a lot of fun in the process! The antique shops were Aladin’s caves with a bite – it was impossible to tell if you were being ripped off or not. Prices were quoted, offers were telephoned to an anonymous Mr Big whose answer was relayed through the front men (mainly women) and you accepted or not the verdict. We did buy a couple of small pieces one of which was less than half the price of a similar item we saw in another shop later on – did we do well or did we buy the fake? In addition to the antique shops there is a growing number of Kashmiri owned and run shops selling Kashmiri products. Some of these are enormous and carry a vast array of goods. No one knows how they make money but they are not much liked by locals who regard them as being unnecessary and out of place in the neighbourhood. Our guide and driver had done well and provided us with an agreeable end to our visit to Fort Cochin. We hadn’t attempted to visit

Ginger drying in the sun outside a river side warehouse in Mattancherry

 Kerala’s back waters because we were in the wrong place. Despite advertisements to the contrary the back water country is south of Kochi at Alappuzha (Alleppey) a town on our next day’s route but not one that we had time to stop in. Another time perhaps – our traveller friends had had the time to travel in the back waters there and had loved it.

We left Fort Cochin at 5am intent on getting out of the urban area before the traffic became tiresome – and so we did. Our destination was Kanyakumari (Cape Comorin), the southern most tip of India. We made good progress initially but a poorly signed diversion and a very confused GPS undid all the gains we made in the early morning. The traffic was its usual mixed bunch of lorry, bus and Tata jeep taxi interspersed with enormous numbers of motorcycles thrown in to plug any gaps. The only road rule that is loosely obeyed is that you drive on the left but even that goes to the four winds at roundabouts – chaos underpinned by ‘might is right’!

Kanyakumari is the point at which the Indian Ocean’s Arabian and Andaman Seas meet. We felt a sense of accomplishment when we reached the town and were genuinely excited when we walked around the point and joined thousands of local tourists at the tip of India. No single point appears

Kanyakumari's Vivekananda and Thiruvalluvar Memorials

 to identify the precise location of the tip of India’s mainland but instead a group of memorials and temples occupy the small triangular space; the Kumari Amman Temple; the Ghandi Memorial; the Kamaraj Memorial. Offshore and south of the tip are two small islands each of which hosts a memorial; on the larger of the two is a building that reflects architectural styles drawn from all over India and commemorates the life of philosopher, Swami Vivekananda; the smaller island hosts an enormous statue of the Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar. On India’s east coast, a couple of hundred metres from the tip, is a small harbour that provides shelter for inshore fishing boats as well as being the point from which a couple of ferries take tourists to the Vivekananda Memorial. Beyond the harbour is a breakwater designed to protect the bigger fishing boats and a much larger collection of inshore boats from westerly winds and seas. At

Kanyakumari fishing village in the shadow of a Catholic church

the landward end of the breakwater lies a fishing village that nestles under the gaze of a ghostly white, ornate, almost surreal Catholic Church. There is a good atmosphere at the tip of India.

A day later we were in Madurai en route to Puducherry (Pondicherry). Again we left early in the morning expecting a traffic filled journey on the same north south trunk road that had given us such a bad time previously. Not a bit of it – the road was new, service roads were in place to allow buses to pull off the dual carriageway to deposit and take on passengers, lay-bys for truckers had also been created off the carriageway and all the villages and towns had been by passed the consequence of which was that we arrived in Madurai in time for breakfast, not lunch as we had anticipated! We used the extra time to catch up on administration and left early the following morning for the only French colonial state (in three parts) that existed in India, Pondy. The road from Madurai was as it had been the day before, a breath of fresh air, literally as there was hardly any traffic to speak of. But despite that we had our second ‘near death’ experience on a section of almost empty dual carriageway. Tootling along at just under 100kph, a large earth moving lorry in the oncoming dual carriageway pulled over into his fast lane with the intention of cutting across our carriageway – there was no dividing barrier. He stopped at the junction of the carriageways to let us go through, or so we thought. At almost the last minute he pulled out in front of us. He was too far across us for me to steer to the nearside verge and we had both noticed another lorry in the oncoming carriageway but he was obscured from our view by the bulk of the lorry now broadside onto us and very close. Our brakes locked, I eased off for a split second then locked them up again before finally, and at the last minute, releasing them briefly to steer to the right and then re-applying them to bring us to a wobbling halt in the oncoming carriageway. At that point we saw the other oncoming lorry which thankfully was in the slow lane and giving us some space. We caught up with the lorry driver who clearly knew he had come within a split second of writing us off – The Navigator gave him the haranguing of his life – not a pretty sight – that left him in no doubt of the error of his ways.

Pondy got better after we passed through its centre and entered the residential area with its quiet, tree lined streets.

Pondy's L'Ecole Francais

This was what we had imagined the town to be and here at least we weren’t disappointed. The street names began with ‘Rue’ and all around us there were hints of a French colonial past – even the policemen wore ‘kepis’. In the older buildings the architecture reflected the need to cope with the climate but still managed to flaunt Gallic flair and charm in much the same way as it does in Hanoi and other French colonial cities and towns. Restaurants proudly produced French menus that included hams and cheeses as well as carefully selected Indian wines (a legacy of the French colonials?). In the haunts of the French expats and tourists Ricard was out in force, cigarettes smoke wafted up from most tables, hand gestures and shoulder shrugs accentuated lively conversations so it wasn’t difficult to imagine that you had been transported several

A slection of Pondy's finest!

thousand miles to the bistros of southern France. It was not difficult to see why this place is popular. If you are mindful you could stay here for a week without noticing India much at all.

Our time in India had drawn to a close. The monsoon had almost arrived in Kerala, our shipping date from Chennai to Penang in Malaya had been confirmed and we had a rendezvous with friends planned in Chiang Mai, Thailand for the third week of June.

We spent our last days in bustling Chennai finalising our exit arrangements. It is interesting for us that little or no Hindi is spoken here, only Tamil and some English.

We had spent two months in India of which a month was overshadowed by the delayed arrival of our vehicle, a consequence of the unbelievable incompetence of the shipping company Maersk. Without our wheels we visited Gujerat, Goa and Nepal’s Kathmandu and got to know Mumbai quite well. Reunited with them we travelled 6,300km in a month during which each one of our senses was thoroughly worked over. By the time we reached Chennai at the end of the journey it is true to say that the road and driving conditions, the noise, the dirt, the begging and the petty corruption had ground us down and we were not sad to leave the country. Nevertheless our experiences have also left us with fond memories of a country with a generous spirit and a cultural diversity that gave us a good deal of pleasure.

The changing face of rural India - plastic gagris

We landed in Mumbai just before 3pm after a two and a half hour flight from Muscat. We were now 5 ½ hours east of GMT , the currency is based on the Indian Rupee of which 1000 roughly equate to £15 (R65/£1) and, for the first time since leaving Jersey in late October 2009, vehicles drive on the left of the road!

Our hotel was situated in the Churchgate area of Mumbai which is an hour’s taxi ride from the airport. The taxi system is again centralised and there is a choice between a ‘cool cab’ (air-conditioned) and a normal taxi. We chose the former at a cost of about R550 and set off in the dense Mumbai traffic. Within minutes we were the target of slum children begging for money, a sharp reminder of the contrasts we are about to be introduced to in the world’s third largest city.

Although described as a ‘backpacker’s hotel’ our base for the next few days is situated on Marine Drive, facing north west and with uninterrupted views over Back Bay towards Malabar Hill and Chowpatty Beach.

Mumbai - Hotel view

It is also located next to the Brabourne Stadium, home of the Mumbai Indians cricket team that plays in the hugely popular 20/20 Indian Premier League (IPL). 

Over the course of the next four days we walked for miles and got lost en route to landmarks like the bustling and seemingly never ending maze of street and alleyways that make up Crawford Market; the Victoria Railway Terminus that cleverly combines Victorian, Hindu and Islamic architectural themes to produce a quite beautiful building that houses Asia’s busiest train station; the wonderful High Court, Mumbai University Library and

Mumbai's Rajabai Clock

Convocation Hall buildings and the Rajabai Clock Tower all of which were designed by Gilbert Scott who built London’s St Pancras Station. They line the eastern side of the Oval Maidan which, as its name suggests, is the venue for a multitude of impromptu games of cricket in which young hopeful’s dream of emulating the success of Mumbai’s hero of the moment, Sachin Tendulkar. We shopped in paper making factories, street art galleries and in old fashioned fabric shops that would have made John Hamon smile – and we ate well whether at established restaurants or at street stalls.

Our final day or rather early morning was given to a visit that we hoped would satisfy our hunger for fish markets, a visit to Mumbai Harbour’s Sassoon Dock. The security guard at the entrance to the docks was perched on a broken chair when the taxi turned off the road and its lights suddenly illuminated him. He sprang to life stiffly and demanded that we stop so that he could determine the identity of the passengers. Seeing two bleary eyed tourists on the back seat he growled ’no camera’ and waved us through. It was 5.30 am when we stepped out of the taxi onto a badly pitted road that led to the docks. We were immediately assaulted by an almost overpoweringly deep smell, not of rotting fish but of drying fish mingled with the smell of drains and the harbour’s glistening black mud surfacing on an ebbing tide. It was deeply ingrained in the place, thick and so pungent you could have cut it with a knife – but had you done so it would have sealed itself like treacle. It was still dark and all around were shapes of buildings and trucks in various shades of grey, punctuated here and there by pools of light cast from naked bulbs which added sporadic dots of colour to the picture. There was energy and purpose all around as people headed for the docks; sari clad women with large plastic bowls on their heads striding gracefully towards the market, wiry men pushing impossibly long hand carts laden with beautifully woven ice filled baskets and small groups of buyers issuing final instructions to their porters before crossing the start line to do battle. Lorries too were arriving prodding the gloom with their lights, introducing more colour to the unfolding scene as they discharged their cargoes of porters, mainly women armed with baskets and bowls. Closer to the docks a noisy ice factory was busy distributing crushed ice to waiting trolleymen and their baskets and parked in front of the ice factory, in an attempt to provide an alternative and cheaper product, a covered lorry loaded to the suspension stops with huge ice blocks. On the tail board a skinny young man clutching enormous metal callipers was struggling to haul the blocks to a petrol driven crusher that spewed small ice shards onto a beaten up piece of metal sheeting from which customers quickly filled their baskets. From slippery tail board to jaws of ice crusher was a very short distance and shivers ran up our spines at the thought of the consequences of a misjudged footfall or the sudden and unexpected release of the callipers from a slippery block of ice.  On another side of the street a number of wooden framed beds were laid out in a line in the open, each contained a blanket shrouded figure seemingly oblivious to the cacophony of noise. We arrived at a fence of red iron railings and a gate with a sign on it stating that what lay beyond was a ‘Restricted Area’ and which restated the ban on taking any photographs. There was more light here and a greater gathering of people not just because it was a choke point but because not everyone was hell’s bent on passing through the gate to the market proper; some were content to remain on the fringes and appeared to be setting up their own small stalls. We assumed that these were the independents; the entrepreneurs not tied to a team but who would rather sell their own wares directly to buyers at a fixed price rather than run the risks of an auction. It later turned out that they were indeed independents specialising in the sale of prawns of all shapes and sizes.

We passed through the gate with a gaggle of porters and saw that we were on a quay about 150m long and 25m wide down the centre of which were two open sheds separated by a 20m gap. On the left of the quay, were a handful of large wooden fishing boats lying unattended on their sides in the stinking black mud whereas on the right side, for the entire length of the quay, we looked down onto a large, tightly packed and haphazard raft of purposeful wide beamed wooden fishing boats built on the same design principles as their predecessors had been for hundreds of years before them. Most had short fore and aft masts to carry navigation lights and antennas between which were strung lines of drying bombil fish, the fish that in its dried state is better known as ‘Bombay Duck’. The deck lights on these masts were on to help the crews sort the catch into baskets which would, when all was done, be carried up to the quay to join the auctions. The scene was made almost festive by the addition of tens of red flashing strobe lights on the end of net marker buoys that hadn’t or couldn’t be switched of and which continued to send out their signals, punctuating the gaps of darkness between the deck lights. Meanwhile on the quayside more and more people filled the narrow space; groups of men staring down onto the boats, chatting amongst themselves quietly with an occasional ribald comment hurled at a crewman on one of the decks that invariably brought with it a ripple of laughter from those around him; sitting in their plastic bowls to insulate themselves from the wet and putrid surface of the quay, women porters huddled together in groups and slowly turned from the moths they had been in the pre dawn light to butterflies as the light of day intensified and the colours of their albeit faded saris brightened the surroundings; the long barrow pushers shouted out warnings as they steered their heavily ice laden carts through the chattering throng. At this point most of the activity was on the boat decks; crewmen squatting in semicircles under pools of light cast from foremasts sorting through an assortment of fish upturned in front of them from baskets hefted by colleagues; another crewman, possibly the most newly joined, working below decks in the iced holds, surfacing only to pass another basket of fish up to the deck and occasionally to dip his freezing fingers into a plastic mug of warm water to restore some feeling into them; prized fish, the large ones, being manhandled into pride of place in the centre of the deck for all above to see; and throughout all this activity little appeared to be said by the crews who were going through a well rehearsed schedule that required their concentration and energy rather than commands and idle chatter – the chatting was left to the waiting watchers above them on the quay. Despite the lack of activity on the quayside, there was an air of anticipation, as if everyone was milling around before the start of a marathon, jostling for position and straining for the off. And suddenly, without warning and with no perceptible fanfare, an auction in one of the open sheds began, and then another outside the shed and before long there were many mini-auctions taking place around the seaward end of the quay before they slowly progressed towards the open space between the sheds and onwards through the other shed and up to the gate. It was difficult to establish any pattern to the proceedings and any attempts to do that were thwarted when some of the women began introducing fish from cold boxes stored on the quay that clearly hadn’t come from the boats. As each auction concluded the winning bidders loaded their prize into the plastic bowls carried by the women porters who having balanced them on their heads weaved their way gracefully through the crowds to their various destinations beyond the gate. The rather torpid crowd was now wide awake and fully engaged  in the fish selling business; a small auction amongst a handful of men for a very large grouper like fish was conducted with a great deal of good humour  and concluded with a grinning victor walking away with his trophy well satisfied with the 12,500 rupees (about £190) he had paid for it; two sharks were purchased by a young girl who had shyly outbid her male competitors but it appeared that she may have been carried away by the moment when she was seemingly chastised by another woman at her side; baskets of small fish fry, tiny squid and prawns ranging in size from tiny shrimps to large tiger prawns were auctioned, sold and whisked away by the basket carrying women porters of whom there appeared to be a never ending supply. In between the auctions taking place all over the quay, there were static displays of fish that had been pulled out of ice boxes stored in the gap between the two sheds. Carefully selected from these ice boxes, the women stall holders laid out their prize fish in what they believed to be a seductive array, ready to snare any half interested passer by, Sassoon Dock’s answer to Amsterdam’s Reeperbahn! Two hours after arriving and with the docks covered in a boisterous, seething mass of colour, we left the quay, inspected the mounds of prawns the independents had for sale and made our way back to the main road, a taxi and some relatively fresh air.  Whatever the rest of the day held in store for us it was going to be an anti-climax.

We left Mumbai for Ahmadabad on a 5.30am flight which was a shock to the system! Our ‘plane was full with passengers who had arrived in Mumbai on a delayed flight from London which meant that they had missed their previous night’s connection to Ahmadabad. It was slightly incongruous to listen to women dressed in saris on the Indian sub-continent speaking fluent English with heavy midland accents one minute and fluent Hindi or Gujerati the next. Their children didn’t appear to speak either Indian dialect but their English was unaccented and clearly the product of expensive English private school education. These were families coming back to India to meet parents and grand-parents, families whose skills and general knowledge of Gujarat’s renowned textile industry had given them the opportunity to emigrate and start new lives in the great textile producing areas of England.

Arriving at Ahmadabad’s airport at 6.30am we had a hassle free taxi ride on pretty much empty roads to our hotel on the outskirts of the very large town. As the shops didn’t open until 9.30am+ we settled in and had a rest before setting off to explore the old town of Ahmadabad, a maze of alleyways lined with every conceivable type of shop interspersed with colourful fruit and vegetable stalls – Gujarat is not only a dry state, it is also vegetarian! Nothing prepared us for the torrent of humanity and motor traffic that greeted us on leaving our hotel – it was quite literally breathtaking. We spent the morning in traffic with the odd foray into shops and guide book recommended sites before returning to our hotel for a siesta- Ahmadabad shuts from 3pm to 5.30pm. Supper in town was disappointing and having had a 3am start that day we opted for an early night. 

We spent the whole of the next day at the ‘Calico Museum’, owned and run by the Sarabhai Foundation. Every visitor makes up part of a guided tour of which there is only one each morning and afternoon; the morning visit concentrates on Gujerat’s and India’s famous textiles whereas the afternoon concentrates on Indian Deities and their influences on the textile industry. Of all the museums we have visited in our lives this was the most informative and interesting and we commend it to all without reservation. It’s web site www.calicomuseum.com is very simple and provides basic information about the foundation and the museum.     

Genghis arrived at the port of Pipavav on Easter Saturday so on that day we left mad Ahmadabad by car for the 250km drive to Rajula, a small rural town about 20km from Pipavav, which had a hotel that would provide a suitable base from which to clear Genghis, a process that we anticipated would take at least two days.

We arrived at Rajula at 3.30pm having taken 5 ½ hours to cover 250km – shades of things to come! Our driver was competent and hadn’t taken any risks, a very wise philosophy bearing in mind the awful standard of driving exhibited by many of his compatriots.

Rural Rajula

Our hotel was located just outside Rajula and was very new having been built to accommodate the business its owners anticipated the expanding port of Pipavav would generate. The staff were very eager to please, so much so that they were trialling a buffet supper around their swimming pool that night, a buffet that provided the additional luxury of chicken and mutton curry which after veg only meals was quite enticing – regrettably we were the only takers although some other businessmen did eat in the veg only air conditioned dining room. We slept well that night in anticipation of starting the formalities necessary to recover Genghis the next day.

We had been assured that Easter Monday was not a public holiday in Gujarat but despite our best efforts we could not contact Maersk at Pipavav, even the boss’s mobile was switched off and so, by 4pm, we had to conclude that, surprisingly, the company had indeed observed Easter Monday as a holiday. Disappointing as it was, we used the day to map out routes, identify likely stop over points and generally prepare ourselves for the journey through Gujarat and then Rajasthan.

By 10am on Tuesday I had contacted Maersk and arranged for a car to take me to their office at Pipavav. A white knuckle ride later I was in Maersk’s office where, after formalities and confirmation that Genghis had arrived, I was introduced to a clearing agency run by Mr Joshi who spoke good English. All our travel and vehicle documents were photocopied and I was asked to wait until they were processed through customs. After a mistake I’d made in Oman, that of turning up to clear customs without first having obtained car insurance, I had arranged with an insurance company in Mumbai to obtain cover through their Bhavnagar office, Bhavnagar being a largish provincial town half way between Ahmadabad and Rajula. The procedure required a physical inspection of the vehicle before a certificate could be issued and the inspector was going to meet me at Maersk’s office at Pipavav. Not long after I arrived at the port he contacted me to say that the port authorities would not let him into the restricted area because he had a camera. It transpired that not only was a physical inspection required but photographs had to accompany the report. After some delay the underwriters agreed to allow the inspection to take place and if all was satisfactory a certificate could be issued but once outside the restricted area photos would still have to be taken – hallelujah! But first there had to be a vehicle to inspect – and, oh, the vehicle has to be registered temporarily in India before it could be inspected and insured! The inspector went home as there was no way that we could achieve customs clearance and registration in what was left of the day. Four hours after Mr Joshi had photocopied our papers he announced that I had a meeting with the Deputy Commissioner of Customs at 3pm to go through the clearance procedures – I didn’t have a good feeling about this meeting. The Deputy Commissioner was very apologetic when he announced that because this was the first case of the temporary importation of a vehicle through Pipavav he had had to seek advice. After consultation with Mumbai and having read their operating manuals it was clear that Genghis could not obtain customs clearance at Pipavav – goods, including vehicles being imported into India under the authority of a Triptique or Carnet de Passage were restricted for customs clearance to 5 ports only – Mumbai, Delhi (a port for these purposes), Kolkata, Chennai and Cochin. This bombshell was disheartening to say the least but there was nothing we could do but address the immediate situation and then explode.  After some time talking with Maersk we agreed that the only option available to us was to re-load Genghis onto the first available vessel and send him to Mumbai for clearance. It was now Tuesday and the first available ship would be at Pipavav on Saturday which meant customs clearance in Mumbai would not take place until the following Tuesday, the day after the vessel docked in Mumbai.

We had time to kill so, having made all the arrangements late that night, we set off very early the next day on a two and a half hour early morning white knuckle taxi ride from Rajula to Bhavnagar and boarded a flight to Goa, selected because it wasn’t on our intended route and it sounded fun. After switching flights in Mumbai we landed at Goa’s airport a few hours later and took a taxi for the hour long run into Panaji and our backpacker hotel.

Panaji, Goa’s capital, is situated at the mouth of the Mandovi River and we’d opted for it because we were uncertain of Goa’s beach culture and wanted a base from which to review the area before committing to anything else.

Panaji - The Church of our Lady of the Immaculate Conception

The town itself was manageable, quiet, well stocked with shops, bars and restaurants and retained a good spread of interesting architecture that reflected its Portuguese colonial past. Having familiarised ourselves with the town we set off for the beaches at Calangute and Baga, close enough to Panaji for daily excursions – but sadly we were unimpressed by both the beaches and the hoards that frequented them so after a very good fresh fish lunch we left with no intention of returning.  

The following day was more successful when we spent the morning travelling inland to Ponda, about 30km from Panaji, where we visited a spice plantation. Our guide had been a chef who yearned to know more about the foods he cooked and as part of that process had come to work on this old, very well established and beautiful plantation.

Nutmeg in its natural state. The red 'basket' when dried is mace.

We were the only visitors that morning and as we walked through the spice trees and bushes it was clear that he had a passion for his subject which translated to a knowledge that he was keen to impart on his visitors. An hour and a half after beginning our visit we sat down to a curry lunch of gargantuan proportions that showed off the flavours of many of the spices grown on the plantation.

Our river trip the next day was less successful. Crowding one of Panaji’s jetties is a clearly recognisable collection of two storey river cruisers, each of which manages a couple of hundred people. A reasonable walk from Panaji’s centre to the jetty, these boats do a roaring trade for the mainly Indian visitors. We arrived at about 5.30pm, purchased our tickets and joined a throng of people being herded by officials onto the ‘Princess’. The gangway lead straight onto the upper deck where we were met by the sight of row upon row of tightly packed dining chairs in which well over a hundred people were already seated. We were very much the last group to arrive and struggled to find any seats that would give us a decent view of the riverbanks but finally, having purchased a couple of beers from the bar, we settled for two slightly damaged chairs at the very back of the boat adjacent to the steps leading to the lower deck. At the front of the boat, towering above the upper deck, there appeared to be a helm position but there was little apparatus to support this assumption, just a solitary man dressed in designer clothes, wearing ‘heavy’ sun glasses and with earphones on – not marine like at all. Below him, taking up the very front of the upper deck was what

Panaji's Fruit and Veg market

could be best described as a stage – but even then we didn’t get it. A minute later we did, when, as we departed the jetty, a man in a sparkly suit with a microphone in his hand leapt onto the stage and in an amplified voice that could have been heard in Mumbai introduced first himself and then the ‘famous’ DJ above him. The ‘cool’ DJ reacted by acknowledging, in Pope like fashion, the two or three visitors who had gasped in awe when his name had been announced. Our entertainment began immediately when our MC invited all the children on board to ‘come up and have some fun’. As parents thrust or carried their reluctant infants up to the stage the DJ began writhing in the crow’s nest and immediately a noise reminiscent of a needle sliding across an old 45rpm record accompanied by a bass note that made the ship shudder, belted out from the man size speakers barely feet away from the dancing infants. One just pre-teenage girl loved it and whilst the younger participants giggled, cried or ran their way through the ‘music’, this little thing went into a routine that had been well rehearsed with friends or in front of a mirror. Unfortunately, at the back of the ship not far from the bar was a bunch of lads, all middle aged, who were definitely out on a bender at the end of a hard week and they were in the mood for dancing! Fuelled up, they sauntered up to the stage, leapt onto it and began to dance only as middle aged men can. Thinking themselves the best dancers to hit the stage since John Travolta wasn’t a view shared by the audience, particularly the children’s’ parents, and it wasn’t long before security, in the shape of a very young and small man appeared to lead them off the stage, a task he finally achieved with some difficulty. One of the ‘lads’ was an elderly Sikh sporting a dashing blue turban who, having declined the opportunity to dance, had instead had positioned himself at the end of a row of chairs from where he had admired the children’s dancing and in particular that of the young girl. As his colleagues were unceremoniously herded to the back of the ship, he stood up, elbowed his way to the stage and thrust some notes into the speechless girl’s hands. She was sooo excited, a sentiment that clearly wasn’t shared by her father who accosted the retiring Sikh and demanded to know what he meant by the gesture. With that lovely waggle of the head and twist of the wrists he gestured that it had meant nothing but dad wasn’t having any of that. With his by now humiliated daughter sobbing beside him, he removed the notes from her bunched fist, rammed them none too gently into the Sikh’s breast pocket and returned with pinioned daughter to their seats at the front of the boat where mama and a severely embarrassed small boy waited to receive them.

At this point the MC quickly brought on a dance troupe who went through a traditional dance to catcalls from the ‘lads’ who could clearly not be contained by the small ‘security’. At the end of the troupe’s very tame performance, dancing was thrown open to couples to which only a few of the more senior citizens responded. Nevertheless the turn out wasn’t bad and as they held each other in anticipation of a gentle and romantic melody, the DJ let rip with something more akin to a crazed re-work of Aerosmith. The combination of being a cool dude ‘so in touch with my music, man’ and the powerful Stevie Wonder dark glasses covering much of his face made him oblivious to the fact that the dance floor had emptied within seconds of his first offering and there was a real danger that the ‘lads’ would fill the vacuum. The MC, drawing heavily on his cigarette and deep in conversation with one of the professional male dancers obviously assumed that his septuagenarian clients were relishing the opportunity to give their hip replacements a work out to ‘Jaded’ and so he too was unaware of the opportunities presented by an empty stage. Within seconds the pack was back gyrating and grinding its collective pot bellied body around the stage whilst re-enacting every pose a heavy metal guitarist had ever dreamt of. By now the MC had flicked his cigarette over the side and valiantly tried to regain control. With much argument and head wagging, the boys were herded to the rear of the boat once more and the dance troupe made a lively return dressed in typical Portuguese attire? By the time they had completed their highly interesting routine the boat had reached the estuary mouth, felt the swell of the sea and turned to head home. At this juncture in the cruise we were directly opposite and very close to a horribly expensive looking resort and it was precisely as we reached the resort’s sun bed surrounded pool that open house was declared on stage – the volume of the music increased, the lad’s hit the stage running and as they got into their stride more middle aged men threw off their pleading wives, undid a couple of buttons on their shirts and launched themselves onto the stage with gay abandon. A beautiful sunset distracted attention from the antics of ‘the damned’ and before long most of us were breathing a sigh of relief and running down the gang plank as if we were pleased to get off the boat! A voyage to savour!

We returned to Mumbai the following day having enjoyed Paniji but our experiences generally, short and superficial

Prawn shellers at Panaji's fishing port

 though they were, lead us to conclude that it was only a matter of time before Goa’s long running flirtation with tourism ended in tears.

Our return coincided with the imminent arrival of Genghis and so we arranged to meet the agents who would help clear the vehicle through customs. We had used Damco in Egypt and to an extent in Oman and whilst reasonably happy with their performance we were still a bit tender from our experiences. After our meeting on this occasion we decided not to use them again – they wouldn’t clear the vehicle because it was too expensive and complicated – we learned later that they had had no experience of temporary importation of vehicles and had been quoted for the regular importation of a vehicle which is a completely different and far from tax free exercise. Nevertheless they recommended a company that could meet our needs and so by happy coincidence we came across Buhariwala Global. They immediately understood our requirements and at our first meeting with them shortly after leaving the Damco office we completed all the necessary paperwork including RAC verification of the validity of our Carnet. With hopes set high, I set off the following day to Nhava Sheva port with John, an agent from Buhariwala to begin what we anticipated would be a two day process. After a two hour taxi ride and a series of security formalities at Maersk’s gates we entered the main office to start the process. We had been in contact with one of their agents earlier in the day so it was he who we wished to see but he did take his time getting to us – and it wasn’t long before we knew why. Due to internal administrative failures Genghis had not actually been off loaded at Mumbai and was currently on his way to Jebel Ali in the UAE! Speechless, incredulous, apoplectic, despairing, deeply disappointed and very, very angry – it took all my resolve to maintain some sort of composure. In the end there was little we could do about the situation except object in the strongest terms officially, make a claim for expenses incurred and soon to be incurred and then try and rescue something from the damage. This delay, added to the week’s delay in Egypt and the mess up in Gujerat now amounted to a month, more importantly a cool month during which we should have been travelling in the hot states of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh before spending May languishing in the hill stations of West Bengal. Genghis was due back in Mumbai on April 24^th so we set off for Nepal and Kathmandu, a place we had planned to visit later on the voyage – we just accelerated the program.

The flight to Kathmandu from Mumbai took a couple of hours only and we were in our hotel for a late lunch. Thamel, the main tourist area was packed with touts, tourists and traffic that combine to create a vibrant, brash, hectic and colourful community. Our hotel for the first night was set back from the main street, a blessing as there are a couple of night clubs that play very, very loud music into the small hours which has caused problems for hotels in the immediate area. Although having visited Nepal on a number of previous occasions, we had never spent much time in Kathmandu but we had retained some memories of it, sufficient to draw some comparisons.  

We could not help but notice the increased pollution straight away and the accompanying tide of scooters, motorbikes and cars that contributed to the sense of almost uncontrolled chaos. ‘Load Shedding’ or power cuts took place every day and have caused all the major hotels to install costly and noisy generators to take over when the power switches off for anything up to 18 hours in a day. In the bustling shopping areas, dodging crazy motorcyclists whilst dealing with good natured hustling is the name of the game and one that was played by everyone with humour, so much softer than the hard selling tout tactics employed in Mumbai.

Street Shrine to Ganesh - Patan

Our principle reason to visit Kathmandu was to catch up with a number of old friends, something we were very glad to be able to do at this stage in our lives. We met many of them and very much enjoyed chewing the fat over cold beers and good food. All feared for the future of Nepal in light of the growing problems facing the country as a consequence of the destabilising effects of the Maoist movement. It was sad to talk to taxi drivers and shop keepers who would not even enter into conversations about them lest they were overheard by sympathisers and punished. We also took the opportunity to investigate a possible route to Thailand by driving through Nepal, into Tibet and then turning east into China proper before turning south to cross the China/Thai border. Enquiries made by email to the Chinese Embassy in Khatmandu previously had indicated that we would have to use Chinese approved travel agents in the UK who would work with Chinese approved travel agents in China. It was possible to do what we were seeking to do but

Potter - Bhaktapur

authorisation would take a minimum of three months to achieve and we would be required to carry a ‘minder’ provided by the Chinese in our vehicle throughout our travels in the country. To double check the information provided by the Chinese Embassy we turned to the nephew of one of our friends who ran a travel agency in Kathmandu specialising in trips to Tibet. He could get us into Tibet and arrange for us to hire a vehicle with driver there, but he confirmed that the regulations governing the temporary importation of a vehicle into the country were so complex and lengthy that he had long ago given up considering the potential that self drive into Tibet might have for his business. Exiting India was now reduced to two options; out through Myanmar or by boat to either Thailand or Malaya.   

Our first hotel could only accommodate us for one night so we moved on the second day to another hotel, also in Thamel that was even more insulated from the noise on the streets. This was quite literally a haven of peace and tranquillity with a good spread of guests from all walks of life – and due to the effects of the Icelandic volcano we remained a community for the best part of a week, most unable to get out and no arrival of fresh blood to dilute the community as the hotel had no rooms available for new arrivals.

Bhaktapur

With no time to wander beyond the Kathmandu valley we visited the towns of Bhaktapur and Patan; both their Durbar Squares were declared World Heritage sites by UNESCO in the late ‘70s. Bhaktapur is by far the larger of the two and it would be easy to spend a day there drifting between the beautiful temples and the old town full of narrow streets separating wooden framed two or three storey buildings that created an almost medieval atmosphere. The area is full of interesting tourist shops and the atmosphere is friendly and relaxed – there is little hard selling and a polite ‘no thanks’ is all that is needed to end a tout’s endeavours.

Patan is much smaller but nonetheless well worth a visit. Its museum is a gem; beautifully presented in a cleverly and sympathetically restored building.

Patan's Durbar Square

We left the valley as others struggled to get home to European destinations and arrived back in Mumbai the day before Genghis was due to arrive for the second time in Nhava Sheva. Having settled back into the same hotel in Colaba we prepared for our departure which we assumed would be on Wednesday morning. Wrong again! I finally prized him out of customs late on Friday afternoon after a nightmarish week during which the administrative mistakes made by Maersk took days for my agents to unscramble. Despite a highly complex series of customs procedures, the agents know them well and had it not been for the unbelievable incompetence of Maersk we would have met our Wednesday deadline – instead we left on Sunday morning. The only plus point during the week was that I got to know Mumbai railway’s Harbour Line quite well and very much enjoyed glimpsing the little cameos of everyday life played out along the tracks early each morning and again late in the afternoon.

As a consequence of driving Genghis the entire length of Greater Mumbai during the rush hour on Friday, I was determined to avoid a similar experience for our departure – so we left at 5.30am on Sunday, a time when you are not required to observe traffic light signals! Guided by a taxi driver we had got to know, we cleared Greater Mumbai in an hour and continued north up the Ahmadabad road, arriving at our night stop 100km south of Ahmadabad in the town of Vadodara seven and a half hours after we had set off. The drive up could only be described as educational – reasonably surfaced dual carriageway for much of the way, saturated with lorry traffic and madcap overtaking punctuated from time to time with the added spice of vehicles on the wrong side of the carriageway travelling towards us! Concentration, anticipation, a good horn, good brakes and a bit of luck were the orders of the day – as they were for the days to come!

Rajkot road - where there's a will...............

The next day we set off for Sayla, a small town 80km to the east of Rajkot from where we aimed to begin our search for the renowned textiles of Gujarat – our Textile Trail.

The flight from Cairo to Oman took nearly 4 hours which meant that with a time change to GMT+4 we arrived at 10pm. Duty free spirits, wines and tobacco were available prior to immigration procedures as was an ATM which enabled us to ‘cash up’ with Omani Riyals (OM) at an exchange rate of £1.83:OR1. We didn’t have visas which turned out to be a blessing in disguise as the queue for those with visas comprised much of the flight. We were the only passengers needing visas which required OR6 each and the completion of a brief form before our passports were stamped and we were directed straight through to the baggage hall and a few minutes later we were ordering a taxi from the kiosk as all taxis from the airport are centrally controlled. Moments later we were being driven at speed along an impossibly smooth highway to the Muttrah district of Muscat and to our budget hotel, the Nazeem. Room 32 had a beautiful view across the harbour in the centre of which was berthed Sultan Qaboos’ private yacht. I only mention the room number because we highly recommend the very clean but basic Nazeem and for increased value rooms 12, 22, 32 and 42 have views over the port. One other point for would be travellers to Oman – the electrical sockets are of the UK 3 pin design and some seem to have been modified slightly to also accept a standard European 2 pin without the need to risk electrocution by pushing down on the earth lug with the nearest available pointy thing that invariably turns out to be made of metal! 

We slept well and were up bright and early to make the most of our one day in Oman’s capital. Most of our morning was spent in Muscat’s fish market – we had chosen the Nazeem because of its proximity to this market and the souk. We have visited fish markets in many parts of the world and this one ranked highly, not just because of the diversity and quantity of fish available but also because of the unique way in which it operated. At the front of the market were the stalls selling anything from anchovy fry (sun dried for ‘ikan billis’ or fermented as the main ingredient of fish sauce) and live crawfish  to beautiful Yellowfin Tuna weighing up to 75 to 100kg and small (30kg) sail fish which really should have been returned to the sea.

Beautiful Yellowfin Tuna in Muscat's Fish Market

At the back were about twenty to thirty stalls in which young and old skilled ‘fish cleaners’ sat. . Fish were purchased from the vendor and then deposited at a stall with instructions to the cleaner on how it was to be prepared. The undoubted king of the cleaners was a young Keralan who was frighteningly quick with his razor sharp knives but clearly very skillful as all his fingers were in place. We watched him for well over half an hour as he worked his way through his orders – Emperor Fish, King Fish, Grouper, Barracuda and Yellow Fin Tuna, the last weighing a good 30kg which he filleted, cleaned and diced  into 5cm chunks in less than a couple of minutes!

The rest of the day was spent wandering around the souk but we were competing with a an enormous and very ugly cruise liner that had disgorged its cargo of elderly (steady!) Italian tourists and so the touts were having a field day and as far as they were concerned we too were part of the gang and ripe for a rip off.

Our flight to Salalah left at 7.50 am and after an hour and half’s flight we arrived at Oman’s second largest town and the regional capital of Dhofar. Maersk, the shipping line transporting Genghis, had kindly booked us into a hotel whilst Genghis cleared customs so having deposited bags in a very odd room I took a taxi to Salalah Port to meet Adil with whom I had been dealing. Unlike Egypt there were no slicks here as all the clearance work was done by Maersk and Adil was my guide from Maersk. He helped me complete all the necessary documentation after which we drove to the Port Police and Customs building where it took just a matter of half an hour for clearance to retrieve Genghis – save for one caveat, the production of a vehicle insurance certificate. I had become too used to land border crossings at which an insurance agent is always on hand but not so at ports. By now it was 12.30, the town based insurers would break at 1pm and return to work at 5pm and the port shut at 6pm. With the driving distances involved it was impossible to clear Genghis that day.

Adil took me back to the hotel and pointed out an insurer within easy walking distance – he would be open at 8.30am and having done my business with him I had time to get back to Adil by 10am at the latest.

The following morning I joined the queue of youths reporting to the insurers with their damaged vehicles and very quickly found out that this insurer did not insure foreign vehicles – but Dhofar Insurance Company did so off I went, met a very helpful Omani there who rushed my proposal through and by 9.45am I was back at the port. Half an hour later all documentation was complete, release papers had been issued and all that was left to do was to get the container out of the container terminal and liberate Genghis. It had been suggested quite early on that to avoid paying the terminal charges for moving the container around to an unloading area, it would be much cheaper to take the container out of the terminal and off load Genghis anywhere a suitable ramp – and the initiator of the suggestion knew precisely where such a beast existed. Accordingly Adil had found me suitable a lorry with driver to whom I would pay OR35 and so I was introduced to Musallam, a small, young and very skinny driver who drove a Volvo articulated lorry capable of carrying two 20ft containers. He disappeared into the terminal with his lorry and the necessary documents and I said farewell to Adil. Three hours later, in the heat of the day Musallam re-appeared with our container – it was a very busy day in the terminal. I jumped in the cab and off we set for the ramp situated somewhere on an industrial site. It was perplexing to hear the bangs and squeals of metal on metal every time we hit a poor piece of road surface and even more so when we pulled over to the side of the road with English speaking driver muttering something about the container moving around because it hadn’t been secured! Ties and stops in place we got to the industrial area and very soon found the ramp. Having sought the owner’s permission had backed up to it was clear that the bottom lip of the container was 30cm or so higher than the ramp. No matter, said Musallam, we will build a smaller ramp on top of the big ramp which after half an hour in the blazing heat we abandoned when it became clear that this would not work. We went off in search of another ramp, found one that suffered the same problem as its predecessor and finally came to the conclusion that we had no choice but to return to the original and build a ramp even if it demanded the help of others. Returning to the ramp I went off to negotiate permission from the owner and to seek his help in constructing something to ease Genghis’ passage out of his box. The owner was busy manipulating a heavy diesel generator into place with a very large crane, a task he did with great skill and precision. At this point the lights in the house went on and when he had finished his task I asked him if he could crane the container off the lorry, let me drive Genghis out of it and then return the container to the lorry.

Genghis, Musallam and the crane driver

Not a problem said he in his best Madrassi and half an hour later the job was done, Genghis was blinking in the bright sunshine, undamaged, and I had arranged a return match three weeks hence when we would re-stuff and lash Genghis prior to shipping him to Gujurat!

To celebrate the restoration of our independence we set off to explore Salalah and its beaches.

At Taqah we were fortunate enough to come across a community pulling in a huge net that had been cast with the aid of a boat. What made it special was not only the joy that this activity gave the participants but also the sights of a very large pod of dolphins barely 30m offshore patrolling the extremities of the net for any escapees. As the net neared the shore it was clear that there were so many fish in it that unless great care was taken it would split. But of course they knew this and men with smaller nets sewn into open mouthed bags were dispatched into the surf and the mouth of the net where they scooped out large quantities of fish and carried them ashore – full bags that easily weighed 25 or 30 kg. As the load in the main net lessened so more of it was dragged from the sea and eventually it arrived on shore, almost empty as it became clear that the main net was merely a means of corralling the fish whilst the bagmen emptied it. And at the end of an operation that netted two Landcruiser trays full of fish an old man wandered waist deep in the sea beyond the limit of where the net had been, feeling for dead fish with his feet.

The Old Man and the Sea

When he found one he ducked down and retrieved it – he knew what he was doing, all were small sharks that had drowned in the net and dropped out of it.

Having re-packed Genghis we set of early the next day to travel the coast line north-east of Salala, knowing that the road ran out 200km beyond our start point and that we would have to return to Salalah before heading north and east towards the island of Masirah.

The road was unbelievably good and we made good progress along a route that without a very disciplined approach to photography could have had us stopping every few kilometres to capture yet another breathtaking view. The sandy beaches and bays, fringed with black rocks were filled with a clear turquoise sea in various degrees of intensity and in the end we became almost blasé about their beauty. The first town of note on the route was the fishing town of Mirbat where a fishing fleet of dhows as well as the smaller fibreglass outboard engine powered inshore fishing boats were harboured. Very hot and seemingly exclusively peopled by Kerelan fisherman, Mirbat is a household name to elements of the British Army who fought with the Sultan of Oman’s Armed Forces during the Yemeni supported Dhofar Rebellion in the early 70’s. Mirbat is renowned in those circles for a particularly fierce engagement centred on an area around Mirbat’s fort (not its castle) involving a very small group of British soldiers and their Omani colleagues which resulted in a decisive victory over almost overwhelming odds but which also claimed the life of a very courageous British soldier.

The Fort at Mirbat

The fort is still in place but is sadly in a poor state of repair.   

After a stunning lunch of a fish masala we headed north to Hacik and the road end a few kms beyond it. Without a sole within 6km of us we had the luxury of positioning our campsite anywhere along the beautiful never ending stretch of white sandy beach. We settled for a spot 10m from the high tide mark and having set ourselves up we began preparing a very live and colourful crawfish purchased in Mirbat a few hours before. A blissful hour or two later we turned in to the sound of the Arabian Sea gently pounding the shore.

Camping at Hacik

We retraced our steps the next day and camped on the beach 30km from Salalah having first met a wonderfully generous fisherman further down the coast who gave us a hammour , a much prized fish that I think is from the grouper family. We were again in splendid isolation – until a young Bangladeshi man carrying some rudimentary fishing tackle appeared from nowhere and sat down to rest. He spoke a little English and after a cold 7Up explained that he had been in Oman for two and a half years and was part of the work force constructing a hotel further down the coast. He had recently returned from a short visit to see his family and was clearly homesick. For us he epitomised the plight of the migrant workforces from poor communities who were seeking a better life overseas and not always finding it. Another supper of fresh fish

Orange melamine and Indian Mackeral - priceless!

, exquisitely prepared by The Navigator  – followed by a night’s sleep interrupted from time to time by waves crashing on the beach.

The next morning, after a swim and a fruit breakfast we set off for an admin. day in Salalah – booking a container with Maersk, arranging flights to Amadahbad via Mumbai, searching for an internet café and visiting a barber to get a moth eaten beard removed and a haircut. All achieved, plus a very good chaat lunch, we set off on the journey north and east to the island of Masirah, once the home of an RAF airbase. The road to Thumrait (another ex British military base) was being turned into a dual carriageway so we didn’t make as good progress as we would have liked but we reached the town an hour or so before last light and turned east, back towards the sea and on a line with Hacik, the road’s end we had visited 2 nights earlier. Forty km after leaving Thumrait we turned off the road onto a small track and drove across the desert until we found a suitable spot behind a small sand dune where we set up camp. A good lunch meant that we didn’t have to cook that night so we prepared and ate a simple salad after which, with a little help from a worryingly diminishing stock of the amber liquid we slept fitfully through a cool and noise free night.

Early nights signal early rising and we were up just before dawn and a beautiful sunrise. An hour later we were on the road and heading towards an unfinished section of the road that we hoped we could negotiate to connect us to the coast via Shalim Wa Juzor Al Hallaniyat. When we reached it the road itself was blocked off but the heavy plant feeder road was available although very uncomfortable to drive on. We progressed slowly on the corrugated surface and eventually reached a point that suggested we had missed a turning. It was too late to turn back so we pushed on along a much smaller and less well defined track across a moonscape that reminded us of scaled down Capadocia in Turkey. Our gamble paid off and despite a few anxious moments we reached a well defined un-surfaced road that eventually led us to the coast. But a worrying rattle had suddenly appeared underneath Genghis which despite a thorough search remained untraceable. Back on a surfaced road it all but disappeared and as there didn’t appear to be any problems with the handling of Genghis, we pressed on north up the coast. We stopped briefly at a number of fishing villages before arriving at Jinawt where the inhabitants were not Kerelans but Pakistanis. We enjoyed a late lunch of very tasty, freshly made paratha and an omelette in the local bakery before exploring the road we had come to find. This unfinished but fully surface road headed south towards Hacik, the point at which we had had to turn back after our first night’s camping with Genghis. As we progressed along this new road it was clear that it was only a matter of a year at most before this road would link with Hacik signalling the completion of a coastal road network from Muscat to Salalah and beyond to the South Yemen border. It wasn’t hard to imagine the changes these extended lines of communication would make to these hitherto relatively isolated villages – we had already witnessed large scale developments on the outskirts of the tiny village of Hacik and other small villages in anticipation of the new road. It had taken us two days of hard driving to reach each end of this incomplete road – in less than a year the journey would take no more than 10 minutes!

We camped by the sea again that night having visited a picturesque lagoon where we saw our first flamingos. Supper comprised paratha from the Pakistani bakery, a salsa left over from the hammour supper and a tin of pork paté that had been lurking in the dry food store for the last 5 months. A game of trivial pursuits later (The Navigator is not a good looser) and we hit the roof – for another good night’s sleep.

In the morning we were visited by the Police, our first visit from Oman’s finest. They were mildly inquisitive but didn’t ask for any documentation. Immediately succeeding them was a Landcruiser with three occupants whose driver spoke passable English and who was very inquisitive. A man old enough to be his grandfather and who had only one tooth in his head squatted on the ground and seemed to be in charge of the interrogation. The third member of the gang inspected the vehicle without saying a word. After we politely refused their offers of shelter in their house, food and anything else we needed they drove off leaving us with a slightly uneasy feeling.

We left a little later than planned on a day that was already signalling that it was going to be very hot. The route north us up a very flat, featureless coast past several small villages until in the early afternoon we arrived at Ad Duqm, a larger town where we had lunch in another Keralan run restaurant. Partially hidden behind a garage we came across

Omani 'pigeonnere'

Oman’s answer to the pigeon towers of Egypt – a valiant attempt to provide pigeons with a home but hopelessly outclassed by the 5 star accommodation available to them in Egypt!

We set off in the heat in the hope of finding somewhere suitable for a camp that night but the featureless terrain seemed never ending and the road was far enough inland to make a beach camp selection impractical. Late in the afternoon we turned right and headed towards Muhut beyond which we hoped to find some cover where we could set up camp, but the billiard table snmooth plain continued. The road we were on ended at Shannah, a small port but more importantly the port from which the Masirah island ferry operated. We reached it as the sun went down and immediately began searching around for a place to camp. The ferries berth at the end of a modern causeway where there is also a collection of administrative buildings which, after a very long and hot day we thought might provide us with a sheltered parking space where we could pop the tent and get some sleep before crossing to Masirah in the morning. By now last light was fast approaching and as we turned the corner at the end of the causeway we could see the landing craft type ferries lined up, bow ramps onto the road. In front of one of them a figure was furiously waving at us and as we drew up to him he gesticulated that we should board the ferry – which we did. As soon as we had done so the bow ramp was raised and we set off. Only at this point did we check to make sure that it was Masirah that we were going to and OR10 and an hour and forty minutes later we drove off into Hilf, Masirah’s only town of note. By now it was fast approaching 8pm and too late to set up camp so we checked into the Masirah Hotel for the night.

Early the following morning we checked out and prepared to set off to explore the island, a round trip of about 200kms. I was still concerned about the rattle under Genghis which we had first noticed two days earlier but which I had been unable to trace. On surfaced roads it appeared occasionally but on the gravel tracks it was a constant and worrying noise. I had another shot at tracing it that morning and to my dismay found that the right rear shock absorber was no longer attached to the body and was rattling in the cup. A petrol pump attendant gave us directions to the only garage in town and we set off with a heavy heart knowing that in all likelihood we were going to be without Genghis for some time while parts were ordered and delivered.

The Chenai Gang- lyrics by Roy Orbison

The garage was run by a band of Indians from Chennai ((Madras) who were working on a fascinating assortment of old vehicles, mostly ageing Land Rovers. I explained the problem to one of the mechanics who immediately grabbed a piece of dirty cardboard sheeting and disappeared under Genghis. A moment later he re-appeared and went in search of some spanners and a huge pipe wrench – not the sort of tool you normally want anywhere near your nuts! Disappearing again he popped his head out minutes later and confirmed with a smile that the shock absorber was intact and working properly but that the rubber bushes at the top had disintegrated and had to be replaced – and he shot off on a scavenging expedition amongst his wrecks. With much chat and directions given by his colleagues he converged on two vehicles and from one appeared with two rubber bushes and a triumphant grin. Five minutes later Genghis was as good as new. This tightly knit group of men were a delight to be with and we marvelled at what they were achieving with the very rudimentary resources available to them – bush mechanics at their best!

The island itself is a flattish figure of eight shape running north east/south west with a very well surfaced road running around the entire coast line with an east/west link round about the middle – hence the figure of eight. Hilf is in the north adjacent to the military air base and the rest of the island is populated by small, coastal fishing communities whose livelihood centres on small, beach launched inshore fishing boats. The boats are launched and recovered simply by being towed by a suitably powerful 4WD vehicle. And for once the vehicles of choice are not the ubiquitous Toyotas but ageing left hand drive long wheel base Landrovers many of which house growly V8s. These vehicles can be seen throughout Oman and have acquired cult status.  The centre of the island is dominated by a rocky ridge of hills and there is very little vegetation – but the beaches are to die for. We were very keen to watch turtles coming ashore to nest but knowing that we were ahead of the major season by a couple of months we weren’t all that hopeful. However that hope soared during our recce when we came across, sadly, a small, dead Radley turtle on a beach we were driving across. We found it on its back which may have been the reason for its death because there were no other marks on it and it was still very fresh. A couple of beaches later we came across the tracks of a much larger turtle which further lifted our spirits. After lunch in Hilf where we stocked up with some fruit and vegetables we set off for our first camp site, one of several that we had noted in the GPS.

Bay Watch

We set up on the beach 20m from the sea and spent a pleasant afternoon beachcombing and swimming before preparing ourselves for an evening of turtle watching. After last light we set off with our chairs and a couple of torches and positioned ourselves on a small piece of beach between two small, sandy bays. In all we sat there for about two hours but saw nothing. Early the following morning we checked the beach for tracks but found none. Disappointed we set off early for Hilf to check ferry times for the following day and en route drove to the bay where we had seen the dead turtle – and there were fresh tracks! We resolved to watch the beach that night. After checking ferry times and having eaten a very tasty roti and vegetable curry for breakfast we set off for a 40km drive to an isolated beach that we had spotted on our first day.

Splendid isolation on Masirah

We spent another blissful day beachcombing, reading and swimming before setting off for the beach we wanted to watch that night. We got there just before last light and positioned ourselves for a good view over the crescent shaped beach – three hours later we had seen nothing and turned in rather disappointed.

A first light inspection of the beach showed that no turtles had ventured ashore during the time we were asleep which made us feel a little better. We broke camp early and headed to Hilf and a 10am ferry back to the mainland. But first we had a few chores – stocking up with food for the next two nights camping, repairing some areas of our awning that had come unstitched and to have another Indian breakfast so we could drive through the day without stopping for lunch. The stitching was carried out by a ‘Gent’s Tailoring’ shop of which, alongside Coffee Shops, Foodstuffs and Hairdressers there were hundreds. We missed the ferry – it was full at 9.30am so had left. Now we had an hour and a half to kill so we did some more admin at the Restaurant where we had had breakfast. We loaded early and watched a fishing dhow come alongside the jetty and offload a cargo of fish that included at least fifty small sharks, two very large 3m sharks some prized Kingfish and a small 2m sailfish. All were loaded into a refrigerated truck that then reversed onto our boat and proceeded to offload all the small sharks onto the deck. Money changed hands and an already overloaded Landcruiser that was on board reversed up to the mass and threw them in – the strong, ammonia like smell of shark stayed with us throughout the voyage!

We arrived back at Shannah at 1pm and set off  with the aim of getting to the turtle beaches of Ras Al Hadd, 40km south east of Sur before last light. At this point we decided to take a gamble. On all the tourist maps of Oman there is a significant break in the coastal road just north of Shannah between the towns of An Najdah and Abu Al Akarish. Confirmation that there is no road linking the two towns is also given in several guide books but during our lunch at Ad Duqm three days earlier we had been told by an Indian lorry driver that there was a road link but that it was not yet complete but could be negotiated in a 4WD vehicle. We decided to give it a shot because the alternative route would add over three hundred kms to our route and we would be nowhere near Al Hadd that day. The gamble paid off – the road was rough to start with but 30km into it a brand new, surfaced road became available that was not yet in commission – we travelled at high speed in splendid isolation through magnificent sand dunes all the way to the large fishing village of Khuwaymah before we returned to the regular roads.

During the journey we established that we were woefully ignorant of the habits of the turtles we so wanted to see and that the hit or miss, very much miss, approach we had employed on Masirah was tantamount to searching for a needle in a haystack. We needed guidance. Ras Al Hadd is the eastern most point of the Middle East and where the sun’s rays make first landfall each morning – but more importantly for us, a series of beaches just a few kms to its south at Ras Al Jinz is the nesting site for 30,000 turtles each breeding season between June and the end of August. Early though we were we had a reasonable expectation of seeing them here if we received help. During our brief visit to Muscat on our arrival in Oman we had met an English family who had seen turtles at Ras Al Jinz and kindly given us a brochure from a hotel at Ras Al Hadd that had organised their visit – it was in the glove box. We’d purchased an Omani SIM card for a spare mobile to cut out expensive roaming charges so we tried to contact the hotel several times without success and in the end took pot luck and turned up late in the afternoon to see if they had a vacancy – we took their last room. I say room but in fact The Turtle Beach Resort comprises a large number of independent reed shack type bedrooms clustered around a central administrative block adjacent to a small private beach. The admin. block houses a large dining area, games (billiards) area and to our absolute delight, a bar! With the exception of a sniff of the all but exhausted amber liquid that we keep for medicinal purposes, we haven’t had any alcohol since we arrived in Oman so the opportunity to have a glass of wine or a cold beer or three was very welcome. The resort is well established, efficiently run by its Philippino, Keralan and Nepali staff and we had booked in for two nights to give us the best opportunity to see the turtles. Then we discovered that the resort didn’t actually organise visits to the turtle beaches but instead puts visitors in touch with the Turtle Habitat 7km down the road at Ras Al Jinz. Having contacted them they allocated us a place in the turtle visit at 9pm that night.

After a very refreshing swim and supper with half of France we set off for Al Jinz in a high state of anticipation. Ras Al Jinz’s two beaches and their surrounding areas are a nature reserve that is off limits to the general public and very efficiently patrolled by wardens. The beaches can only be visited after booking a slot with the Turtle Habitat which acts as both a visitor centre and scientific research facility. The Turtle Habitat is based on a large, modern and impressive building on the fringes of the beach. Our group of ‘watchers’ comprised 14 other people of many nationalities and we had an Omani guide who briefed us on turtle watching etiquette before leading the group onto the beach. In general terms, wardens on the beach identify the location of turtles and what they are doing, they inform the guide by walkie-talkie and he leads the group to the activity. The wardens had signalled that there were already five turtles on the beach – yippee! After a 15min walk we entered the beach area and shortly afterwards came across our first Green Turtle. Her size took us aback because she was so much larger than the little dead Radley we had seen on Masirah. This one had dug a burrow that she was in the process of abandoning before digging another so she was left alone in favour of another turtle further down the beach – and she was laying her eggs! In groups of four we were martialled forward to watch this beautiful creature depositing her one hundred or so eggs in the burrow she had dug with her flippers – and although we had seen the same images on TV natural history programmes nothing could eclipse the magic of that moment. Later that night we saw her bury the eggs before returning to the sea. In the interval we were taken to another area closer to the sea to watch the end of the cycle – tiny baby turtles with disproportionately large front flippers making their way like wind up toys to the sea, another magical moment – but less than one fifth of one percent of all the hatchlings from Ras Al Jinz would make it to sexual maturity (reached after 37years!) and return to the same beach to begin the cycle again. Two hours after first entering the beach area we returned to our resort in high spirits – all the efforts we had made to observe wild turtles in their natural habitat were justified. Now it was time for a glass of chilled white wine and a cold beer!

The next day was spent lounging at the resort and catching up on administration – and speaking Nepali with two of the staff much to our mutual delight. The major part of France had disappeared earlier that morning so we had enjoyed the resort pretty much to ourselves until half of Germany arrived, the half that lived in old people’s homes!

We checked out early after breakfast the following day and headed for Sur, 50km up the coast. The town is split into two parts that straddle a river mouth and which are connected by a bridge; Sur proper on the northern side of the river is the commercial and business centre whilst the south bank.is very pretty,

Sur, south side

almost village like and is largely residential. The southern part has an interesting past having declared independence from the rest of Oman, a declaration that ended following two years of careful negotiations by the British Government and the Sultan. The bulk of Sur on the northern bank is a sprawling town that caters for tourists and acts as a seaside getaway for Muscat to which it is linked by a motorway. We spent a large part of the morning here not because the town was that interesting but because the directions we had been given for Sur’s boat yards were sketchy and we went down several blind alleys before finding them. Situated on the north bank of the river in the shadow of the bridge (closed for repair whilst we were there) , the boat yards are renowned for the building of traditional Omani wooden boats. The one we visited had three

A Samboog under construction

Samboog boats under construction, boats that had been trading vessels operating between Oman and East Africa and India. The yard quite literally makes each boat from scratch having first bought in seasoned teak tree trunks from Malaysia from which every plank is made. These are not small boats being at least 20m in length with wide beams and deep draughts and with three on the go at once, each taking at least 7 months to complete and all at a different stage of completion, the yard is a hive of activity. The Samboog is the same in shape and size as another trading vessel, the Al Ghanjah but which is identified from its sister by a differently shaped bow stem or prow (forgive my un-seamanlike terminology). The stern is flat and normally well decorated. The Boom is a similarly sized boat but has a canoe stern and the Badan is a 12m boat designed for short haul cargo and passenger traffic along the Omani coast. All are still built at the yard although not for their original purposes but for tourism needs throughout the Gulf, a happy alternative that allows the traditional boat building skills to be kept alive.

Carving a stern plate for one of the Samboogs

Again it is the Keralans who are the work force in the yard – it is a wonder that there are any men left in Kerala as most of them seem to be the power behind every aspect of Oman’s commercial activity!

Our visit to Sur marked the end of our surge towards the north of Oman. Because of the short time available to us we had taken a conscious decision to concentrate on the coastal regions as far as we could and we had achieved our aim – but in doing so had sacrificed the opportunity to visit the better known areas around Nizwa and Muscat.

Our journey back to Salalah took us two days of hard driving across featureless desert in high temperatures – and we missed the aircon for the first time since it packed up 3 months ago!

On arrival in Salala we booked ourselves into the Hilton for a night to celebrate a birthday (joined up meat for the first time in weeks) and left the following morning for a quick dash down to the South Yemen border and a final night’s camping in Dhofar.

The road south begins with a steep ascent from 0 to 1000m in a very short distance necessitating a very windy hill climb that reduced Genghis to a crawl at times. In the valley bottoms we came across portable bee hives much the same as those that we had first seen in Greece and later on in Turkey. This region had had some rain two months earlier and the hives had been moved from farms near Salalah and brought up here to take advantage of the new growth. This type of country was something new for us and refreshingly different from the plains. Cattle mingled with camels grazing in the hills that became visibly greener the further west we went and the fishing villages of

Deserted fishermen's huts at Rakhyut

Rakhyut and Dalkut were populated not by Keralans but by Omanis with, as you would expect, close ties with Yemen. As we approached Sarfayt on the border we passed through two military check points manned by soldiers who, in stark contrast to those we had seen elsewhere in the Middle East were alert, smartly turned out and well equipped.

We camped in splendid isolation under a star filled, moonlit sky in hills overlooking Salalah and in the morning began preparations for our journey to India; Genghis was containerised and cleared through customs for his four day journey to Pipavav in Gujerat and we packed our bags for a flight to Mumbai and a four day break there before flying to Ahmadabad in Gujerat, the recovery of Genghis and our journey through India.

We thoroughly enjoyed Oman but despite driving over 4,500kms, we saw only a very small part of the country. Nevertheless, because our journey was more extensive than most tourist visits and because we were entirely independent in our wandering, we were able to record an observation that might elude the average visitor; Oman exudes wealth, it is well ordered, drivers obey traffic lights, the streets are clean, the road networks are comprehensive and well maintained, there is little overt presence of the police.People are generally polite and helpful. In short it appears populated by a people who are happy with their lot. But that lot is dependent upon a huge, largely Indian workforce for its well being and there were incidents that we witnessed suggesting that some elements of Omani society, particularly poorly educated, overindulged and jobless youths, treat the ex-patriot workers with contempt. It would be a shame if steps weren’t taken to address the matter.

The first leg of our road journey from the UK to New Zealand began on 23 October 2009 and concluded in Egypt six weeks later on 9 December. We remained in Egypt until 14 Januaury 2010 when, having found secure parking for Genghis, our Toyota Landcruiser, we returned to our home in the UK for a two week break to catch up with family and friends.

Our return to Alexandria at the end of January marked the beginning of the second leg of our journey, a leg that would take us from Egypt to Thailand.

During our break we had used improved communications to thoroughly investigate the route options available for our exit from Egypt and journey towards the east. In the final analysis there were three;

• backtrack through Jordan, Syria and Turkey and drive through Iran and then ship to India via the UAE;
• obtain a transit visa for a dash through Saudi Arabia, enter Oman and ship to India from Salalah;
• ship from Egypt to Oman, spend time there and then ship to India.

We were not keen to backtrack and in any case we did not have the opportunity to obtain visas for Iran which necessitated submitting our passports to their embassy in London where we were told that in all likelihood it would take more than two weeks to process the applications. We could not be without our passports for that long and there was also no guarantee that our applications would be accepted. Travelling to Iran and hoping to obtain a visa at the border was not an option.

Our enquiries in Egypt with regard to Saudi transit visas were met with the response that it was unlikely that they would be granted. Even if they were, we were not keen to ship to Jeddah and then ‘dash’ across a couple of thousand kilometres of the country in the stipulated number of ‘transit days’ – and so that option too was rejected.

So shipping from Egypt to Oman was the option we chose and as soon as we were back on Egyptian soil we set about putting the pieces of the jigsaw in place. Although we had at least three weeks in Egypt our intentions were to spend as much time as we could on the house building project in Siwa so all activity that required our presence in either Cairo or Alexandria needed to be attended to first so that we had clear water in front of us en route to Siwa.

We arrived back in Egypt at midnight on Saturday 30 January courtesy of British Airways, spent the night in a hotel in Cairo and at 10am on Sunday morning submitted our passports and visa applications to the Indian Consulate in Cairo who told us to return three days later with LE£500 when they would be ready – and three days later they were!

On our return to Alex we began the task of tracking down shipping agents and forwarders, not an easy task for novices who had no previous knowledge of this sort of business. But we had been fortunate during the crossing from Aqaba to Nuweiba when, during a conversation with John and Amy, they’d advised us to use Maersk if ever we were in need of a shipping line. So our first ‘lookup’ on the internet gave us the contact number of their agents in Cairo who helped us through the first part of the jigsaw. We gained a great deal of information from them and finally established dates and the fact that we could ship from Alex to Salalah although the journey time would be extended from 5 days (Port Said to Salalah) to 10+ depending on the cross shipping time in Port Said. The extra couple of days made no difference to us and the convenience of being able to ship from Alex was a major advantage. At this point Maersk informed us that we needed the services of a ‘forwarder’, a company which specialised in the preparation of documentation and which could smooth our way through the minefield of bureaucracy surrounding the port authorities and customs agency. Damco is a sister company of Maersk and were an obvious choice – and Maersk introduced us to Mr Ahmed Habib, Damco’s Senior CHB Coordinator for Landside Services who reassured us when he told us that he had moved eight other vehicles similar to Genghis and that the procedure was quite straight forward. Another major advantage for us was that Damco had agencies wherever Maersk were which meant that anywhere we were likely to ship from and to in the future would be covered by both companies. We disappeared to Siwa for another two weeks and returned for the first part of the exit procedure on 20 February.

•  Day 1– Mr Habib unavailable today so 10am meeting with deputy. After an hour and a half’s delay we were whisked off at 11.30 to the Traffic Department by Ahmed, a freelance agent used by Damco to smooth the paths we had to tread – he turned out to be very efficient! Due to the sharp dress code adopted by Ahmed and his henchmen as well as for their purpose of pouring oil on rough water I decided that they would best be  referred to hereafter as ‘slicks’. Traffic confirmed that we were not involved in any ongoing accident disputes etc. and 45 minutes after arriving there Ahmed re-appeared from the crowds wearing a grin and brandishing an ‘all clear’ document. So far so good.
• Day 2– 10am meeting with Mr Habib to go through the loading schedule, finalise costs etc. The meeting concluded at midday after which we went to the bank to withdraw the funds needed to settle our invoice the next day. HSBC were very efficient and swiftly depleted our bank balance.
• Day 3 – 10am meeting finally got off the ground at 11.45 with the re-appearance of Ahmed and two other slicks. One climbed into Genghis beside me and gave directions to the port where Ahmed and his other companion met us. Having been given a coke and told to remain in Genghis the three slicks disappeared into the bowels of the Port Police offices to obtain Police permission to enter the port’s restricted area. At 2pm they emerged looking battered and bruised with the news that we had to return the following day! Apparently a government decree issued in late January prevented the likes of me from entering the port on the day the application is submitted – news to Damco and Ahmed. Foolishly we had assumed that we would load Genghis this day and overnight bus tickets to Siwa to conclude unfinished business had been purchased – and could not now be used!
• Day 4 – 9am meeting (urgency kicking in) with Mostapha, Ahmed’s right hand slick, and a trip straight to the port to continue the previous day’s failed business. By 10.45 Mostapha and I had concluded all the paperwork which with my passport were delivered, along with about fifty other similar applications, into the boss’ inbox. He alone could sign off – heaven help you if he was sick or otherwise indisposed. Anyway we were told to return at 1.30pm which we did and at 2.15pm Mostapha Chamberlain leapt out of the building waving my authority to enter the port – all was well. A few heart stoppers later we were driving in the port’s restricted area and heading for customs, where Ahmed, like a genie, appeared. A mechanic took rubbings (brass rubbing technique) of chassis and engine numbers, attached them to yet another document which was added to the ever growing pile carried by Ahmed who in turn thrust them through a dark hole in the wall in the manner of a gaoler thrusting food into a vermin ridden prisoner’s cell. Not very much later a smiling duo appeared to say that all was clear and we could proceed to the next step – loading into the container perhaps? – not quite. A short drive later, at 3pm on the dot, we arrived at a shed containing a number of dusty cars (Bentley Continental, Porsche Cayenne, UK registered BMW X5 etc) and were directed inside. I assumed that this was the customs shed where Genghis would be inspected before being loaded – wrong. Customs finished work at 3pm and as I was now in a restricted area from which Genghis could not now leave he would be locked up for the night pending loading the next day – oh, and please leave the keys with the dodgy looking man in the corner. This was very disappointing to say the least – and plans to return to Siwa that night went out of the window, again.
• Day 5 – Despite itching to complete the loading process I was not scheduled to meet Mostapha until midday. I took a taxi to the now very familiar Port Police building but was met not by Mostapha but by Ayub who I had met briefly two days earlier. As far as slicks went Ayub and Ahmed played in the Premiership League – unfortunately for me, Mostapha my genial slick and Arabic teacher by profession, had a long way to go before joining their company and was currently trialling for Portsmouth with little hope of being selected – but he was a trier! Paperwork flashed back and forth as did small denomination notes and at 2.30 pm we had all the necessary clearances to load – hallelujah! We walked the short distance to the custom’s shed where Genghis had already been removed to the road outside in preparation for the journey to the container loading area. I was assigned a ‘marshal’ to guide and hold my hand en route to the container terminal and to hand over the paperwork. He was a man of such obese proportions that I seriously didn’t think he would get into the vehicle – and I really didn’t want him there in case he broke the seat, something his sheer bulk indicated he could do with ease. Having wheezed himself into position he produced a large sandwich and proceeded to munch his way through it, very noisily. Meanwhile I had noticed that some of the loose items in the cab were not in the positions in which I had left them and a short inspection later confirmed that all the door pockets, the glove box and centre console had been turned out and the contents haphazardly returned with the exception of a torch. Naively I had assumed that whilst in the custody of the customs the vehicle would be safe. I made a fuss but decided to call a halt to the gnashing and wailing in order to get on with the loading. Having shaken hands with the leader of the custom’s shed pack I headed off with the mammoth – Mostapha had to follow in another car. We duly arrived outside the container terminal, presented the paperwork, the mammoth belched and departed but Mostapha seemed caught up in some sort of dispute with the terminal staff. A feeling of déjà vu suddenly surfaced with my fears confirmed a couple of minutes later when Mostapha appeared to say that he needed another piece of paper and would return in a few minutes, half an hour at most. Two hours later he re-appeared looking triumphant only to return from the terminal’s office two minutes later with the news that they would not give him permission to enter the terminal with me. In good colonial fashion I demanded to see the boss for an explanation – and he gave me one – Mostapha was not authorised to enter the terminal although I was. Good, says I, I’ll leave Mostapha here and load Genghis myself! Not allowed says he – you must have an authorised guide. What about the vehicle lashing team says I, they must be authorised to enter the terminal and surely they know their way around it?  OK, says he, but it is your responsibility to get the lashing team here. At this Mostapha and I grinned at each other – the lashing team was already here, we had met one of their team (we learned later that he was the only member of ‘the team’) earlier when he confirmed the container number we had been allocated and deposited some ratchet straps in Genghis – and we knew he was in the terminal. A phone call later and ‘the team’ appeared at the office, jumped into Genghis and guided me to ‘my’ container. Five minutes later I had reversed Genghis into MSKU7157240, done my impersonation of a contortionist to get out (it was a very tight fit!) and then gave advice to the lasher on how to use a ratchet strap as he went about his business, business that he was clearly exercising for the first time! A ten minute walk later I was back at the office where a sheepish Mostapha was apologising for the hundredth time. He had been a very amenable companion during the last few days despite my non-existent Arabic and his mainly unsuccessful but valiant attempts to speak English. Having said our goodbyes he handed me over to a slick I hadn’t met before and after a 15 minute route march through the docks and a couple of unlit and rubbish strewn alleyways we emerged onto a main road, climbed into a taxi and twenty minutes later I was deposited outside our accommodation in Alex. At 7pm, less than an hour later, we were heading off on the 7 hour drive to Siwa.
  

  A Tight Squeeze!

 Four days later we were back in Alex having got very close to completing our building project. Genghis had departed on the high seas two days earlier and all that remained of the exercise to ship Genghis to the Oman was a final meeting with Mr Habib at Damco to obtain a Bill of Lading and the return of our Carnet de Passage booklet with the completed Egypt section confirming that Genghis had been exported from the country within the stipulated time frame. He had been due out by 2 March so the timings had been tight and we were glad that we had allowed sufficient time for any protracted procedures!

 The meeting got off to a bad start when I was presented with an amended sailing schedule, printed a week earlier, showing a revised program from Port Said to Salalah involving a different ship and an arrival date in the Oman one week later than that given on the earlier confirmatory shipping letter. To cut a long and grisly story short, I expressed my displeasure at having to wait a week for this news which had a serious impact on plans made in accordance with the original information and then got on with the business of rescuing us from a mess. Our flights to Muscat were cancelled as were two night’s hotel reservations, applications to extend our visas were made and granted and so, to kill time, we set off for five days in the Sinai at Dahab on the Gulf of Aqaba – all’s well that ends well!

Dahab's Waterfront

St Catherine's Monastery, Sinai

 Dahab is a dive resort that has managed to hold onto a laid back character developed in the 60s and 70s – there is still a ‘hippyish’ feel to the place and whilst locals might mourn the changes taking place it will take some time yet before it echoes the vulgarity of a much larger resort 90km to its south – if it ever does. You cannot visit the east coast of the Sinai without visiting St Catherine’s Monastery, an hour and a half’s drive from Dahab.  Built to house and protect the Greek Orthodox priests in 565AD  it is the oldest Christian monastery in existance and well worth visiting.

 Back in Alex we had a clear day to pack before setting off on our re-scheduled flights first to Muscat and then on to Salalah to pick up Genghis. He was due to arrive there on Friday 12 March, a holiday, so we were hoping at best to clear him through customs the following day, the 13^th. But that depended on Egyptian customs signing off the Carnet de Passage and getting it back to Damco in Alexandria before we left for the Oman. In the event that it didn’t reach us in time the documents would be couriered to us but even with the best will in the world they wouldn’t be with us before the 13^th and in all likelihood would take a few more days beyond that.

The Eel Garden End of Dahab

 On the 10^th, two hours before the Customs closed for the day we got word that Damco had the documents and with a huge sigh of relief we put the finishing touches to our packing and arranged a rendezvous with Mr Habib, the very harassed Mr Habib who had finally pulled a rabbit out of the hat!

 We set off for Cairo Airport by train from Alex at 8am on the 11 March for a 4pm flight to Muscat. Our last experience in Cairo revolved around Said, our taxi driver. He was a cocky young man with slicked down hair whose style of clothes and long pointed shoes announced that he was a ‘cool dude’. He drove a battered Peugot 504 that had wheel bearing problems and which shook violently at speeds in excess of 80kph, a speed he seemed capable of maintaining everywhere but at police manned traffic lights. The trip wouldn’t be worth mentioning but for two points – it was our last on Egyptian soil after 3 months of great fun and we were saying goodbye to a son and because Said blew away the much touted assumption that men cannot multi task. Cairo traffic is pretty awful at best and anyone who has actually driven in it knows that you need 100% concentration as well as the largest and cleanest wing mirrors. The Peugot didn’t have an internal driving mirror but had both wing mirrors, held on with an assortment of rubber bands cut from inner tubes rendering them incapable of being adjusted thereby causing the driver to shift his position when using either of them, a position that differed depending on which one he was using. His taxi was also equipped with a steering column mounted gear shift and a substitute horn which was activated by a button mounted under the steering column, an action that required Said to lean forward, slip a hand under the steering wheel and press the button. Before we had left the confines of Cairo station we had been given the privilege of witnessing a performance that couldn’t help but make you smile – normality was suddenly interrupted by Said suddenly pushing himself back in his seat to peer at his right hand wing mirror then almost violently lurching to the right, stretching his neck forward and cocking his head to the left to peer into his left hand mirror before lurching forward and ducking down to steering wheel level to activate the horn. If you weren’t aware of what he was doing you could have been forgiven for thinking that he was suffering a fit. Whilst these antics were frequent interruptions to the journey Said introduced another prop to the show, a cigarette. He didn’t have a lighter but used a box of matches which, with an open drivers window and no winder handle, demanded that he shield the match and box in cupped hands as well as shorten the distance between the anticipated flame and the cigarette protruding from his mouth – whilst simultaneously watching his wing mirrors, avoiding the very many surrounding and overtaking cars as well as letting all around him know that he was there with his horn. A few wobbles later and the cigarette was alight and the usual pigeon mating dance continued. Finally a mobile phone was brought onto the stage and with some aplomb. On the first ring the cigarette was transferred from right to left hand, a quick bob and weave to check mirrors, an obligatory punch on the horn button, head cocked to the right, button pressed and ‘hello’. He was on the phone for much of the journey but after one particularly animated and very loud exchange we had to ask him to put his mobile away. Our tolerance of his antics petered out when we observed him steering with his knees, changing gear with his left hand (gear shift on the right of the column) which necessitated him twisting his whole body to the right whilst holding the mobile to his ear with his right hand and angrily shouting into it – and all this in very heavy traffic on a fast moving freeway. Checking in at the airport was a relief!

We had visited Egypt on two preious occasions prior to disembarking at Nuweiba. With the benefit of an Egyptologist son we had been introduced to the many famous archaeological sites as well as many that were not on the well trodden tourist routes. Our visit on this occasion was not to go over old ground but more to concentrate in an area of Egypt that our son and his partner had fallen in love with and where they had purchased some land on which to build a house – the Siwa Oasis in the Western Desert. Situated in the upper left hand corner of Egypt, the oasis is 300km south south west of the coastal town of Marsa Matruh and a mere 40 odd km from the Libyan border. It is unique amongst Egypt’s five great oases because its inhabitants do not regard themselves as Egyptians but as Siwis who, as descendents of the Berber and Toureg nomads more commonly associated with Western North Africa, speak their own language.

But first we had to get there and after a disturbed night’s sleep in the Prince Home resort at Nuweiba we set off north towards Taba from where we turned west towards Port Suez. After arriving from Aqaba the evening before we had settled into the Prince Home in the dark, the only occupants.

Prince Home, Nuweiba - £8 per night!

We had not had an opportunity to view our surroundings which in the clear light of early morning were spectacular. To the west were towering rock cliffs leading into the desert and to the east the Gulf of Aqaba and to the north and south, empty beaches. The Resort was 10m from the edge of the sea and we enjoyed a very healthy date and foul (bean stew) breakfast before heading off.

We reached Taba in forty minutes during which we had driven along the coast passing an abundance of hotels, resorts and sea side shacks in various stages of completion. The coastline was very pretty and judging by the signs we saw en route, a diver’s paradise. Taba is adjacent to Eilat in Israel which in turn is adjacent to Aqaba our port of embarkation in Jordan the day before from which it had taken ten and a half hours to progress to Nuweiba!

Having turned west towards Port Suez we travelled fast on well surfaced ‘gun-barrel’ roads for the next two and a half hours before passing under the Suez Canal and taking a break. A soft drink later we had set off en route to Cairo where we had a rendezvous with our son who was crammed into the 3^rd seat and we all set off for The Fayoum, a “semi-oasis” south west of Cairo. This son inherited his map reading skills from his mother (who, I hasten to add has successfully made a big effort to improve them) and the journey took much longer than expected. A white knuckle ride along Cairo’s ring road freeway with a setting sun making it impossible to see the warning of break lights kept this driver on his toes and by the time we turned off towards The Fayoum my eyes were out on stalks. We crept around the southern shore of Birkat (Lake) Karoun in the dark and finally reached our destination, an eco-lodge hotel at the lake’s south western corner. The day’s journey had taken an unexpected 10.5 hours largely due to ‘temporary disorientation’ and very heavy Cairo traffic. Joined by our son’s girlfriend a couple of hours later we were set to explore an area famous for its history, its fertile soil and its pottery. But The Fayoum is also famous for its pre-history;

40m year old parts of whale skelletons in the Valley of the Whales

 50 million years ago a very early type of whale, the Zeuglodon or Basilosauras, lived in the Fayoum where over 240 skeletons have been found near Kasr el-Sagha north of Lake Karoun. Some of these skeletons can now be seen in the ‘Valley of the Whales’, the first and only World Heritage site in Egypt.

The Fayoum  

One of Egypt's many beautiful Pigeonieres - more to follow on this subject

Cultivation on the banks of Lake Karoun

From Fayoum we headed north to Alexandria where, after a couple of days washing clothes, servicing Genghis and generally preparing ourselves for nearly a month of camping, we set off on the 7 hour drive to Siwa.

The Siwa Oasis

The route is split into two exactly equal legs; 300km Alex to Marsa Matrouh; 300km Marsa Matrouh to Siwa. The road is generally good and we arrived in Shali, Siwa’s town’s centre, on schedule. We immediately departed to the site on which the house was being built and with the exception of forays into the desert and surrounding areas that is where we stayed for the next three weeks.

The site is pretty having its own date palms, garden and most importantly its own source of fresh spring water. The walls of the house had already been built. Made of ‘karshif’, salt block broken into small palm size and smaller pebbles which is held together with mud. The walls are 50cm thick and  built up using layers of karshif the insulating properties of which are extraordinary. Its major drawback is that it is seriously compromised by water and especially rain which thankfully is a rarity. Nevertheless on one infamous occasion in 1926 three days of of unusually heavy rain literally melted large parts of the fortress town of Shali which is still in the process of slowly being renovated.

 Our job here was to help wherever we could so that by the time we left in early January  at least the roof on the first floor would be in place – and it was. We also spent a novel Christmas with Billy which was delayed until the 28^th due to the late arrival of guests who could not get to the oases in time for the 25th. It was to be a special event and one that justified a special meal – enter Billy the Kid.

 Billy was purchased two months before the event and lovingly looked after in the intervening period during which he was fed well, very well! On the morning of the 28^th he was sent very quickly to the happy hunting grounds (do goats really go there?) by the butcher from whom we picked him up. Curled up in his big plastic washing up bowl he did look a little pathetic but the satisfied smile on his face, his head was still attached to his neck, gave us comfort and the resolve to celebrate his life in style. The cooking style chosen was a Siwi speciality – ‘Abu Merdem’ which is difficult to translate but alludes to something ‘buried’. This involved a 40 gallon oil drum cut in half laterally, some hefty chunks of olive wood (yes, yes Peter I know your thoughts on people who burn olive wood), a sand pit (not difficult where we were) and a very, very large aluminium plate.

 The expert chef was Ibrahim who with assistance from the group began the process by making a hearty stuffing/marinade. To benefit from the flavours that this stuffing would give to Billy, his flesh was slashed and the mixture was roughly pushed into each cavity. Still in his pink bowl, the large aluminium plate was placed on top to keep away the flies and our attention was turned to the ‘oven’. The 40 gallon oil drum had been bought earlier in the day and cut in two by a lorry mechanic wielding a huge electric grinder – his antics and those of a colleague under an antique Isuzu lorry would have given a Health and Safety inspector apoplexy! A deep hole was made in the sand and the sharp edged half barrel was lowered into it leaving about 5 cm of it above sand level. It still had some oil in it so a small fire was set to burn it off and half an hour later the olive wood was added and a fierce fire developed. As the wood burned it was broken up and gradually the bottom of the barrel developed a layer of hot coals.

 An hour and a half into the process Ibrahim declared the barrel ready for Billy who was removed from his orange bowl and placed onto a round grid that was gingerly lowered into the barrel and placed directly on top of the red hot ‘coals’. Immediately the aluminium plate was placed on top of the barrel and the first of many shovel loads of sand was placed on top of it until the barrel was completely sealed into a sand cocoon to a depth of at least 10cm. An hour and a quarter later Ibrahim began to remove the sand very carefully until the plate was entirely exposed and brushed free of sand. Then, to prevent any grit dropping into the barrel when the lid was removed, he ran a pointed stick through the sand immediately under the rim of the barrel. The effect of this was to create a small trench into which the now unsupported sand around the rim of the barrel fell thereby preventing the possibility of sand falling into the barrel when the lid was removed.

 And finally the huge aluminium plate was carefully removed and we stared into the barrel to see what appeared to be a perfectly cooked Billy – but the sceptics would only have their doubts removed when we tasted him – was he cooked through after such a short time in the barrel and, heaven forbid, was he gritty? Triumphantly carried to a makeshift carving table on his upturned aluminium plate, Billy was carved and served with a selection of roasted local vegetables – and he was absolutely delicious, succulent, tasty and totally grit free.  

 We used the ‘Abu Mardem technique twice more, once to cook five chickens (one hour) and once to cook two gigots of local lamb (one hour). The products on each occasion were superb!

 Christmas with Billy Recipe

 5kg dressed weight of young goat

 2kg red onion grated, juice of 4 lemons, 1 lemon finely sliced, large bunch of green cumin plant very finely chopped, 6 large tomatoes, seeded and finely chopped or 500ml Passata, 400g butter, melted over a bain marie and 400g Billy Mix – ground cumin, ground coriander and curry powder in equal quantities – mix all the ingredients together well and rub handfulls into the slashed flesh of the goat..

 House building continued throughout this period but after a quiet New Year’s Eve we set off into the desert with Genghis and another Landcruiser driven by a Bedouin who was well versed in the techniques of desert driving and we spent a wonderful two days driving hard during which we visited areas full of fossils, fresh water lakes, hot springs and meteorites – and we slept under a full moon and a star studded sky. A very fitting end to over ten weeks driving to get to the oasis and a finale that has whetted the appetite for longer and more challenging trips – perhapsSand Sea in the not too distant future!

We left the oasis on 8 January, returning to Alex to sort ourselves out prior to taking a two week break in Jersey. We also began the process of planning our exit from Egypt at the end of February – and from the outset we had our concerns about those options confirmed. We will not get a clearer picture of which route we will take to get to India until our return at the end of January. As we leave on completion of Leg 1 we have travelled 11,394 km and consumed 1,700 litres of diesel, an average of 6.7 km/litre or 19.06 mpg.

As we passed through the final border gate and set off down Jordan’s main north south highway that links Amman and the north with Aqaba on the Red Sea we were struck by the number of police check points on the route most of which were engaged in conversations with the occupants of vehicles they had stopped. If this heavily overt police presence was designed to intimidate any ne’er-do-well it was probably quite effective particularly when added to the attention we witnessed given to the Lebanese driver at the border crossing!   

We had other immediate observations; where Syria’s roadsides were festooned in discarded black plastic bags and empty plastic water bottles Jordan had successfully applied a good deal of effort to remove rubbish from the roadsides; where Syria appeared to have little in the way of planning guidelines for urban development, all the evidence we saw pointed to the fact that Jordan had embraced the need to plan and control the manner in which the urban and rural areas were developed. It is perhaps unwise to draw too many conclusions from these simple observations but by the end of our very brief visit to the country we concluded that Jordan’s relative order muted its raw character, something that had not happened in Syria and which made that country, in our eyes, more appealing. A little like comparisons between Singapore and Hong Kong in the 70′s when the earthiness of Hong Kong won the character contest against an increasingly sanitised Singapore.    

Our first overnight stop was in the market town of Madaba in the hills south of Amman. We had little difficulty finding the hotel which was situated in a residential area within easy walking distance of the town. The town centre was very well ordered and obviously geared for tourism as every other shop appeared to be selling souvenirs of one sort or another including, in some numbers, ostrich eggs painted with scenes specific to Jordan but which we were told later were imported from China! Also in the town was a bar serving beer and wine which it was impossible to resist. There we met a couple who were back packing their way around Jordan and Syria in public buses because they felt that it helped them intermingle with the local population far more effectively as a consequence of which they got a much better feel for their host country – fair point but each to their own. After a kofte supper we finished off our administrative tasks for the next day’s travel and turned in early.

Breakfast saw a few hard boiled eggs added to our collection after which we set off to the Dead Sea a short distance away. The morning was hazy and long distance visibility worsened the closer we got to the rift valley in which the Dead Sea and the River Jordan lie. After half an hour’s driving we reached the lip of the ‘high’ country and began the descent into the valley on a good, downwards spiralling road. The atmosphere became more oppressive the further down we went and it wasn’t long before the altimeter in Genghis showed that we had dropped below sea level – ultimately to a ‘dpth’ of something approaching 350m!. The immediate scenery was ruggedly beautiful and to our eyes almost entirely devoid of any vegetation, a mistaken conclusion judging by the number of shepherds with their flocks that we saw heading into the gulleys and dried stream beds. I have forgotten how many thousands of litres of water evaporate from the Dead Sea each day but a combination of that loss and the reduced amount of water flowing into it as a consequence of human demands on those sources has reduced the surface area of the sea by something like 20% since it was first measured in the early 1950s. We were thankful to be visiting it in the winter months as it was oppressive enough even without the addition of extreme heat.

The salt encrusted Dead Sea shore near Mazra'a

I’m not sure why we expected it to look different but we did and now we were going to experience the characteristics for which it is renowned. The water was cool and at first appeared little different to ordinary water but as we waded out to knee level there was a noticeable resistance to our movement that intensified the deeper we got. Not much further out we lowered ourselves into the water and our legs immediately shot out in front of us as our bodies were cocooned in the water – a feeling rather like lying on a super soft chaise longue. The water was ‘thick’ and left skin covered in a thick, opaque emulsion but the most disconcerting effect of the dense salt solution was that as you got deeper so buoyancy increased and it became impossible to put your legs down and, as you floated on your back, the only method of creating any form of movement was to use your hands just below the surface to paddle and propel your body backwards. It is impossible to swim in the Dead Sea – a very odd sensation. That sensation promotes all sorts of questions – can boats be used in the sea, if you jumped into it what would happen to you and so on? The presence of the fresh water showers was a relief as by the time we reached them it was clear that the rest of the day would be made very uncomfortable without washing away the emulsion entirely – we tasted the water which was almost painfully salty but were careful to avoid getting it in our eyes which we were told is a very uncomfortable experience.

The rugged hills leading to Karak

Having thoroughly enjoyed our ‘swim’ we set off south along the sea shore to Mazra’a, the point where it turns west and becomes part of Israel. At this southern end of the sea the land is extremely fertile and for many miles around the shore line there are large agricultural enterprises which add refreshing colour to a largely khaki landscape. From Masra’a we turned east and began the long climb up to Karak and its Crusader fort before joining the King’s Highway that links the hill top villages along Jordan’s spine and which include Petra, our next stop. The highway is a great vantage point from which to view some very beautiful and unexpectedly rugged countryside. After a late disappearing hard boiled egg lunch supplemented with bread and tomatoes bought in Karak, we set off for the final three hour stretch of the road to Petra. The altitude of the road at this point was about 1500m and there were black rain clouds hurrying in which began emptying their contents on us a few minutes later. In addition to the heavy rain the clouds settled themselves on the hill crests and reduced visibility to no more than a few metres at best. What should have been a three hour journey became five and we crawled into Petra well after dark and in the pouring rain. The first ‘pension’ we stopped at was full but another was recommended and we obtained a room there. The Frenchmen we had met in Damascus were sitting in the public room and unexpectedly welcomed us like long lost friends. They explained that the rain we had experienced had put an early end to their Petra explorations but as they had allowed themselves two days to do the recommended sites they were not too perturbed. The forecast for the next day wasn’t very bright- more rain clearing late morning – and we only had the morning to see as much as we could because we needed to be in Aqaba by last light. Our room was dirty but it had a loo and the semblance of a shower and it was dry. Later, during a supper of spaghetti, we decided that we would get up early and be through Petra’s visitor gates by 7am which, after a reasonable night’s sleep we managed to do.

First sight of the Treasury from the Siq

The forecasted rain hadn’t appeared but dark, threatening clouds still hung around the tops of the immediate hill tops and we expected the worst. As, it appeared did all the other tourists because, with the exception of a lone American, we were the only ones there – a site all to ourselves again! With only 5 hours at our disposal we had to be picky about the sites to visit and with the advice of the Frenchmen and some friends at home we settled on a short list that was manageable. A horse and cart to the start of the ‘Siq’ saved us half an hour and still allowed us the joy of walking through the narrow canyon with its clever viaduct and interesting carvings at the end of which was the awesome ‘Treasury’. There is hardly a Middle Eastern guidebook available that doesn’t wax lyrical about Petra and all we could do was to agree with all that they say – in our very limited experience it ranked alongside Syria’s Palmyra but in the final analysis was eclipsed by it. We didn’t see the ‘High Place of Sacrifice’ but did get to see the ‘Monastery’ which we travelled to and from by donkey which saved us at least two hours if not more. Some would say we ‘cheated’ by not visiting all the sites on foot and a purist would be right I’m sure but if you are pressed for time and do have to make choices the horse/donkey options are huge time savers. But a word of caution to those who do opt for the donkey ride to the higher spots – there are places on the ascent that will make vertigo sufferers’ heads spin but other than that it is a great way to observe the fabulous scenery.The descent is different. I am a reasonably strong man but I struggled on occasion to stay in the saddle during the descent, particularly when the donkey’s hop from one front foothold to the next.

The Monastery

On a number of occasions I nearly tipped over the donkey’s head or slipped sideways out of the saddle and was doubly concerned because my boots were jammed into the stirrups making it impossible for me to pull my feet clear of them during a fall. The Navigator enjoyed the complete attention and support of the guide and remained oblivious to my predicament – I have to smile at the tought of what Thelwell would have made of my efforts to stay in the saddle! Forewarned is forearmed! After five and a half hours on site we left Petra having enjoyed a very full morning.

A detail of the rock face near The Tomb of 17 Graves

Our journey to Aqaba was uneventful other than to say that the scenery was so much more interesting than the equivalent north/south highway in Syria. Here the spectacularly rugged hills erupted out of the desert floor in profusion creating a landscape that wasn’t expected. Although we didn’t have time to visit Wadi Rum it wasn’t difficult to see from the road why it is such a tourist magnet. The signage into Aqaba was poor but after an unexpected visit to the container port we finally made our way to the town centre and our hotel.

Aqaba is a very pleasant sea side town, well laid out, clean and clearly thriving due to the success of the Aqaba Special Economic Zone (ASEZ) which provides tax breaks for business and reduced customs duties. We were here ahead of our schedule here because we had been told that the ferry to Nuweiba in Egypt didn’t sail on Thursday’s and as it was important for us to be in Egypt by Friday morning we had had no choice but to cut our time in Jordan by a day – hence our hurried visit to Petra. With the help of a travel agent adjacent to the hotel we acquired the location of the ferry agents (written in a notebook in Arabic), presented it to a taxi driver and 5 minutes later we were there. There are two types of ferry to Nuweiba, the slow (6 hour) conventional ferry that departs at midnight ish (it is prone to severe delays) and the Fast Ferry (1.5 hours) that departs at 1pm. Unsurprisingly we had opted for the latter and were very relieved when the two ladies dealing with us agreed that there was space on the Wednesday sailing. $US 360 later we were smugly settled over a kebab before having a quick search around the hotels in the immediate area for a cold beer – without success.

The following day we loaded up and made our way back to the container port and the passenger terminal where, after a couple of wrong turns we ended up at the embarkation terminal where we began the process of leaving Jordan and entering Egypt. The procedure was pretty straightforward and it wasn’t long before we had collected all the necessary paperwork and stamps. A cold soft drink later we returned to Genghis to find an expedition Landrover parked behind us, crewed by Amy and John who were headed for Cape Town. They informed us that the boat was leaving at 1pm not midday as we had been told by the agents. Having swapped experiences we boarded late but easily amongst the health and safety nightmare we were becoming accustomed to. We sat together for the journey that got us alongside the port in Nuweiba at about 3pm. We hadn’t been able to view our progress down the Gulf of Aqaba because the salt encrusted windows prevented that and there wasn’t an opportunity to step out onto an outside deck. Eventually, nearly an hour after we had entered the port we were given the all clear to return to the vehicles and drive off. We stopped on the quay side with Amy and John’s Landrover while an official called Rafaat recovered some paperwork from the boat that we should have been given earlier. He was a stocky, middle aged man with a hawkish face who wore a uniform with rank insignia on his epaulettes. He had a pleasant manner, spoke heavily accented English and introduced himself as the man who would see us through the immigration process. He knew his business well and John and I were whisked backwards and forwards filling in forms, paying $US for insurance, vehicle registration, import taxes, purchase of Egyptian pounds etc. Finally, over three hours after we had driven off the boat we were handed our temporary Egyptian licence plates, hastily attached them to the cars with cable ties, said farewell to Rafaat with what we assumed to be a fair tip for his services and drove off into the darkness. We had arranged to stay the night in a small hotel near the sea just north of the port and John and Amy drove off south towards Dahab. We watched their tail lights disappear and drove off towards our night stop.

We had achieved what we had set out to do on Leg 1 – to drive from our home in Jersey to Egypt where we would team up with an Alexandria based son and his partner and do what we could to help them build their house in Siwa, an oasis in the Western Desert. We would have a month there before returning to our home for a 10 day break after which we would return to Egypt at the end of January for another month when we would investigate the route options for Leg 2 which would conclude in India.

Almost our first view of Syria was a rubbish strewn lorry driver RV just outside the Syrian custom’s post. The rubbish was in such quantities that it looked as though a dustbin lorry had dumped its entire load into the road. Having learned to ignore first impressions we moved on through a scruffy village and soon after ran into a very stark but attractive countryside comprising small fields and boulder strewn hillsides interspersed with olive trees.

The colours of Syria

The colours were mute shades of grey, brown and green which intermingled well with one another and were quite beautiful.

Diesel in Turkey was expensive and we had crossed the border with only a half-full main tank so we were keen to top up before we got to Aleppo. The first fuel station we came to   seemed to sell nothing but diesel and having paid $USD 100 diesel tax at the border we wanted to know why – the reason; diesel at less than 30p per litre! An unsmiling fuel attendant directed us to a pump, I opened the fuel cap and in went the fuel – until I saw the words ‘Premium’ written on the pump. The hairs went up on the back of my neck as I pointed to the word and shouted ’benzine?’ and when he nodded he saw in my face that it was time to let go of the trigger. By that time 50 litres had gone into the sub-tank and another 20 into the half full main. Thankfully the engine had not been started and the immediate solution to the problem was to totally empty both tanks and refill them with diesel – easier said than done. We pushed Genghis away from the pumps and over to a washdown area where an elderly non-English speaking man joined us. He worked on the other side of the road and from what we could see he was a car exhaust fitter. He had wild eyes, a short temper and very few teeth but he was the undoubted boss and immediately started telling me in sign language what it was he wanted me to do and then turned to the gathering group of onlookers and spat at them in his own tongue something along the lines of ‘bugger off, I don’t want any of you ignorant bastards lighting up a fag near me when I’m draining this infidel idiot’s petrol tanks!’ It worked! When Genghis had been pushed into a position that would allow the extraction of fuel to take place, I provided the tools and he provided the work force, ably assisted by his 8 year old son. It took an hour to drain the nearly 100 litres of contaminated fuel into a selection of empty cans provided by the station and as each can was filled the station took it away and emptied it straight back into the underground fuel tanks! After we had nearly rocked Genghis off his wheels the tanks were declared empty, the drain plugs were replaced and Genghis was pushed to the pumps where his tanks were filled with diesel! I offered our saviour a pretty free hand into my wallet but he would take no more than the equivalent of €8 so his son ended up with a few $USD which he proudly paraded under the noses of all his friends. We had escaped from a potentially very serious incident through a measure of good luck but in the main because of the generosity and honesty of a good man, in all a rather humbling experience. Back on the road we breathed a huge sigh of relief and listened nervously to any engine noises out of the ordinary but there weren’t any and we slowly relaxed.

As expected, Aleppo threw the usual confusing selection of signage at us and we whiled away a good half hour familiarising ourselves with much of the large town before finally finding our hotel. We unloaded on a busy main road and parked Genghis in a narrow street behind the hotel where the hotel staff assured us he would be safe. The hotel was far more comfortable than we had expected. Based around an internal courtyard that in winter was closed off to the sky by a large canvas roof , each room in its three storeys opened onto it thus minimising any external noise and it was a very peaceful place. As soon as we had put our bags in our room we approached the receptionist in the hope that she had a more detailed street map than ours to help us navigate our way around the old and new elements of the town and she did but in handing it over she said ’but you do know that everything including the souk will be shut because of the holiday (Kurban Bayrami)? This was a huge disappointment because Aleppo’s souk is renowned for its atmosphere as well as for the variety of its merchandise. Rather despondently we set off to explore the town on what was a beautiful afternoon.

The Hotel Baron is well known in Aleppo as an establishment full of character which at one time was one of the Middle East’s premier hotels. It is now rather run down and neglected but its cosy bar and a superficial knowledge of the names contained in its visitor books adds romantic imagination to any drink: Lawrence of Arabia, Theodore Roosevelt, the aviator Charles Lindbergh and Agatha Christie who is reputed to have penned the first part of ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ here. And so the magnetism of the place drew us to it and having passed it in the car already (several times) we found it quite easily and spent half an hour in the bar where the French speaking manager, a dead ringer for Yves Montand, tried hard to get us to visit his carpet shop in the souk – ‘but aren’t all the shops in the souk closed for the holiday?’ we asked, ‘oh no’ he replied ‘only a few of the lazy ones’. The speed with which we paid the bill and exited the hotel probably astonished him but we were very definitely now a couple with a mission and our focus was the souk! First, however, was the question of food. We were hungry and needed energy to fight off the persuasive traders in the souk and as luck would have it we turned a corner in the street and there, set out before us was a street ‘café’ selling grilled chicken meat with salady bits wrapped up in a piece of flat bread, and outside on the counter were large containers filled with pickled jalapeno like chillies that you helped yourself to – heaven for €1. A couple of hundred meters further on we came across Aleppo’s Museum that we knew would not be open the next day so we bought a ticket and browsed the exhibits for about an hour. Fascinating though the exhibits were there are only so many shards of pottery and incomplete pieces of stonework that one can absorb and as our interest waned we stepped back onto the street and headed towards Aleppo’s Citadel and the souk and as we did so we noticed an increase in the number of people in the streets, a number that increased the closer we got to it. Before reaching the crest of the hill on which the Citadel stands we turned into what we thought was the start of the souk but that turned out to be a false start and as we exited what was a small market a voice in perfect English said ‘are you English?’ we looked up and replied ‘yes’ to a curly haired young man who was unquestionably Syrian. In the course of the succeeding conversation he explained that he had studied English literature at Aleppo University and had then followed his passion and become a jewellery designer who now worked with Armenian craftsman and had his own shop in the souk which he would be happy to take us to – like the spider to the fly! We dodged and weaved our way through the crowds and entered the narrow passages of the souk at the ‘rope sellers’ entrance where the stalls were filled with all kinds of traditional hemp ropes as well as with their more modern synthetic equivalents. At an intersection we turned right opposite a cheap jewellery stand that was doing great business with old men and into the ‘bridal area’ where every conceivable type of wedding dress was on display along with wedding shoes, plastic bouquets etc – and it was men doing the buying, selecting outfits with such wistful looks in their eyes that it was unclear whether they were for a soon to be bride or perhaps for themselves!  Finally we reached Ahmed’s small shop where he weaved his magic, a lesser magic than a carpet seller’s magic but one that nevertheless achieved its aim and we left him with more than one plastic bag full of ‘goodies’! But that was not quite the end of our foray to the souk however as Ahmed insisted that we meet his ‘cousin’ who had a wonderful collection of Syrian and Middle-Eastern textiles that we really must see! Like a sheep dog Ahmed steered us through the confusing labyrinth of narrow tunnel like passage ways until finally, at another entrance to the souk we stopped in front of a shop where we met Ahmed’s ‘cousin’. He spoke exceptional English with a clipped accent but with a sentence construction and vocabulary that would have made a product of Eton or Harrow glow with satisfaction. He showed us his wares very briefly before declaring that he wouldn’t waste our time now as he had a stomach upset and would be unable to give us his full attention. It was very clear to me that this was a carpet seller ‘grand master’ and we were extremely fortunate not to be the object of his attention and spell weaving – but in hushed and chocolaty tones he did make us promise that we would come back and visit him the following day! We fled the souk and gulped in fresh air at the Citadel which was buzzing with life on what was expected to be the last night of the holiday.

Aleppo's Citadel

We gazed in awe at the magnificence of this powerful and hugely significant building which dominates the town. It was everything one imagined a Citadel to be – massive, powerful, purposeful and majestic and at the same time, intimidating. The throngs around the Citadel and the Great Mosque were clearly enjoying themselves as we climbed into a cigarette smoke filled taxi and headed back to our hotel.

Supper that night was at a restaurant recommended by the hotel and which was just around the corner but nevertheless extremely difficult to find. A doorway in a narrow alley concealed this very large establishment that had a central dining area which was surrounded on three sides by another. It must have been capable of hosting two hundred in one sitting. The menu was in Arabic and English and boasted it’s pre-eminence in the field of Aleppo’s renowned cuisine. We dined very well indeed on food flavoured with mixtures of herbs and spices that we had never experienced before and we promised then that on our return home we would spend time researching this style of cooking. We were also able to order wine to accompany our meal and set about a bottle of Chateau Ksara’s ‘La Prieuré’ from Lebanon’s Bekka Valley – it didn’t last the meal! This sumptuous meal including our wine set us back the equivalent of €30. Needless to say we slept well.

I was woken early the following morning by the muezzin’s first call to prayer (Fajir) as I am on most mornings (I am a light sleeper) but this one was a cut above the ordinary. On many occasions you can hear the microphone being switched on and a little squeak of feedback before the prayer begins. The prayer very often ends with a loud click as the mic is switched off and in Turkey one muezzine’s efforts were interrupted by a mobile phone tone being broadcast through his speakers. But that morning’s muezzine was very slick and his voice was an absolute joy to listen to. Unusually the microphone was left on throughout the prayer session and the murmur of maybe a hundred or more worshippers reciting their prayers created a very pleasing addition to the occasion. After breakfast the following day we spent a little time chatting to an interesting American couple living in Istanbul after which we went for a walk through the town and where did we end up? yep, back in the souk at Ahmed’s because ‘you know those things I bought yesterday for Christmas presents, well I didn’t buy one for so and so and I thought I’d get another one’. But Ahmed was closed, as was his ‘cousin’ which was annoying as we’d recommended them both to a couple staying at the hotel. Once out of the souk we returned to the Citadel and enjoyed a coffee in the sunshine before going to explore its interior, but it was closed so we dived back in to the labyrinth in the hope that Ahmed was there and we could do our business and shoot off. We didn’t find Ahmed but when a tout who hassled us to buy  pretty much what we had bought from Ahmed the day before was told by us that we were loyal to Ahmed he introduced himself as one of his ‘cousins’ and escorted us round to Ahmed’s shop, telephoning him en route to make sure he was open. And yes he was, hunger in his eyes and a calculator in his hand waiting to convert his Syrian pound prices into any currency known to man – and he didn’t have to wait long! Business concluded, he asked us if we had enjoyed his carpet selling ‘cousin’ the day before to which we replied that he wasn’r feeling well but that we would visit him later that day. He then explained to us the quickest route out of the souk and wished us ‘bon voyage’. Feeling fresh air on our faces we rounded the final corner before the exit and who was waiting for us like Walt Disney’s Jungle Book villain, the tiger, Shere Khan – that’s right, Ahmed’s ‘cousin’. His eyes flickered with the satisfaction of someone who, having been given early warning (by Ahmed) that his prey was on the move, has laid and successfully executed an ambush. Now the silky smooth patter began whilst he almost unconsciously steered us into his den.  For over an hour we enjoyed looking at his beautiful carpets and kilims and finally wished him goodbye without having bought any of them – the Grand Vizier had failed to work his magic on me but I have to admit it was a close run thing. The navigator on the other hand did not fair so well and whilst the plastic bag was small and light it concealed a hefty price tag! By now it was getting dark (it’s normally dark in this part of the world by 4.30pm) so we caught a taxi and returned to the hotel to plan our next day’s excursion and to catch up on some administration. That done we had no choice but to head back to the previous night’s restaurant to savour another glorious meal and to remind ourselves of just how far sighted the French were in setting up vineyards in the Bekka Valley!

Saint Simeon's Basilica

Early the following morning we loaded up Genghis and set off for the ruined basilica of Qala’at Samaan also known as Saint Simeon. He was the son of a shepherd who, as a young boy opted for life in a monastery. Finding life too soft he exiled himself to a cave in the hills and adopted a very severe life style. Word of his piety got around and pilgrims began seeking him to obtain his blessing, not at all what Simeon had intended. Resenting this invasion of his privacy he erected a 3m high pillar and legend has it that as the visitor numbers increased so did the height of his pillars, the last being 18m high! In all he is reputed to have spent nearly 40 years of his life living on the top of pillars from the tops of which he preached daily and shouted answers to questions. But he never communed with women, not even to his mum who visited him regularly – what thoughts must have gone through her mind! When he died in 459 he was nearly 70 years old and his body was taken to Antioch (Antakya in Turkey) and buried. An enormous church of unusual design was erected around his pillar which was a place of Christian worship until the arrival of Islam when the Christian community were on he defensive and the church was fortified hence the Qual’at (fort) precursor to Samaan (Simeon). The fortified church finally fell to an Islamic dynasty 500 years later. The drive was only a matter of 60km north west of Aleppo on a route that took us through some very attractive countryside with the occasional shepherd and his flock of sheep or goats grazing in the rocky outcrops or down by the roads, a sight we had also enjoyed in Turkey and Greece. The site itself is perched high up on a rocky outcrop and as we continued to enjoy bright, sunny days it was possible to see for many miles around. The ruins of the basilicas were remarkably beautiful and where the four basilica intersected one another in the shape of a cross they would have been covered by a dome beneath which was the remains of Simeon’s last pillar. Those remains are still there but hardly recognisable as part of a pillar. After his death (for obvious reasons) thousands of pilgrims chipped pieces from it as talisman reducing it the blob of rock it is today. As on all our visits to sites of interest we virtually had the place to ourselves, one coach load of Italian tourists arrived but after a quick photo shoot and an extortionately priced fresh pomegranate juice each they were off – as we were.

Our next stop was the town of Hama where we were due to overnight. We opted to take the ‘country’ route rather than use the main roads and we saw a lot of country, much more than we had opted for but it was very worthwhile. Breakfast’s disappearing boiled egg trick had been impossible to pull off due to the paucity of boiled eggs and so lunch was skipped, not a hardship after a breakfast of olives, labeneh and olive oil, flat bread and cheese. The navigator finally got us to where the hotel was supposed to be but it had no discernible entrance at ground level despite an awning overhanging the pavement clearly advertising its presence. Eventually with a gap toothed grin and the pointing of a gnarled finger from a passer by we found a narrow lift entrance with the faded name of the hotel on the door. There were only two buttons in the lift, 0 and 4 and so it was that we arrived in the foyer of the hotel on the 4^th floor. After some negotiation we managed to change our room to one that had a window which at least allowed us to regulate the amount of air we received although because it opened onto the main street it meant that the use of earplugs was likely. Hama is famous for its ancient wooden water wheels, some of which are the equivalent height of a four storey building. They were introduced to scoop water from the river to the irrigating aqueducts many meters higher than the river itself.  But Hama is also the site of an infamous massacre that took place in 1982 when the authorities quashed an uprising by a banned religious group that had wounded members of the ruling Ba’ath party. Much of the old part of the town was destroyed by intensive shelling which, with the interjection of some 8,000 troops, left between 10 and 25,000 townsmen dead. The town itself has little to offer in the way of ‘sites’ but it is a good staging post for a visit to Krak des Chevaliers (Quala’at Al-Hosn), originally an Islamic fort that was captured by the Crusaders who expanded it into its present form. Having visited the town’s water wheels before last light obscured them and having walked the streets to exercise out stiff joints and observe the small markets which were just beginning to get busy our stomachs rumbled to remind us that we hah hadno lunch and so we opted for a ‘high tea’ at a very clean ‘spinning chicken’ outlet. Unable to finish the mammoth portions we took out a doggy bag that with a little enhancement would give us a good picnic lunch the following day. Back on the 4^th floor we carried out our daily admin tasks, watched CNN news on the satellite TV and turned in early in preparation for our visit to the castle and onward journey south to the town of Homs.

Breakfast was a poor, very bland affair but we did manage to do well with the egg trick – the six French tourists we had encountered briefly the day before in the foyer had not at that point had their breakfast!

With fresh, warm flat bread and a bottle filled with freshly squeezed orange juice secured along with our bags in Genghis we roared out of town, only to roar back in again due to the signage – again! We finally broke out of the town quarter of an hour later and set off west towards the Lebanese border. The first half hour of the journey took us through a series of dusty industrial complexes before the traffic disappeared and we found ourselves once more in the very beautiful rural Syria. The map didn’t match the road, the GPS knew where we were on the world’s surface but couldn’t match the position indicator with either the instrument’s rudimentary map or with the paper map. Lost again? Not quite, we were headed in the right direction but even with the clarity of vision we had from the hilltops (another beautiful day) we could not see the castle. With the help of passers by we inched our way closer to our destination and stopped for the last time in a small village high up on a hillside that overlooked a deep valley in front of it. The café was run by a young man who spoke no English but who was keen to help us. We ordered a coke each and with the aid of a notebook explained to him where it was that we were headed. While we drank our cokes and enjoyed the great panoramic views from his café he went off to draw a rudimentary map for us which contained the names of all the villages in Arabic that we had to pass through to get to the castle. It was a very thoughtful way to help us and one that came in handy once more on our route producing as it did an immediate and accurate response. Forty five minutes later we arrived at Krak des Chevaliers.

Krak des Chevaliere's Main Hall

This is the castle of castles, everything a child imagines a castle to be; King Arthur and his Knights lived lived and fought from here, King Richard the Lionheart took it back from the Sheriff of Nottingham with the help of Robin Hood and it was the castle from which Charlton Heston’s ‘El Cid’  rode to do battle with Omar Sharrif. It is massive, intact and occupies a commanding position from which to do battle with any invader using the Homs Gap to reach the land beyond Lebanon. Any attempt by me to describe the castle’s exterior would fail to convey the feeling of shear power that it projects. The scale of the main passageway is breathtaking; its stone floor and high, vaulted ceiling would swallow a column of mounted horsemen at least four abreast as they headed for the stables of similar proportions that would be home to at least fifty horses. The soldier’s quarters, sentry positions, latrines, and bathrooms, chapel (a mosque initially and a mosque again at the end) and bread oven all remain intact – there is enormous atmosphere here. We were fortunate again to have the site very much to ourselves allowing us to exercise our imagination without fear of interruption when walking the ramparts, sitting on the stump of a stone table leg in the Hall of Large Columns or when admiring the vaulted ceiling in the Main Hall. We left the castle on a high and headed towards our night stop, the town of Homs. It was 2 pm and on re-reading the guide book’s summary of the town we questioned our reason for going there – we were feeling invigorated by our visit to the castle and wanted to remain in that mood. So we re-jigged our plan and decided to bypass the mediocre industrial town of Homs and head straight for Palmyra quite some way to the east. Palmyra’s history is fascinating and far too detailed to go into here but as an oasis it was bound to play a very important role in the trading links between the East and the West, and that is exactly what it did for nearly two thousand years. It is Syria’s preeminent tourist attraction. 

Palmyra's Memorial Arch just before dawn

We calculated that the drive would take us two hours and that if we didn’t stop for lunch and if we re-fuelled like a Formula One racing team we would arrive there a matter of minutes before sun set, a time at which we had read the site is at its best. And two hours later we did arrive at Palmyra but the setting sun was hidden behind a gathering collection of clouds. Nevertheless we could still see the site clearly and could not be anything but impressed at its magnitude, an appetite whetter for the morning. Last light arrived soon after our arrival so we busied ourselves looking for a hotel – we had a wide choice as there were few if any other visitors in town, so few in fact that we reckon every hotel tout in town had a go at us before we finally settled on one. The hotel didn’t open its restaurant out of season and so the manager recommended that we eat across the street at his friend’s restaurant. Calling it a dive would have been to flatter it. It was dirty, full of locals on the make and the staff were surly and uninterested in our custom. Three young backpackers from Holland were looking for cheap accommodation which the lewdest of the locals arranged for them making it clear that if they wanted any drugs he could arrange a selection for them. He arranged for a money dealer to exchange Turkish Lire for Syrian pounds at a rate that we recognised as being a rip off but they seemed content with their lot and we left them to it. We couldn’t get out of the sleazy place quick enough. Outside we noticed that the adjacent souvenir shop sold stamps so having post cards to post we bought some from the shop keeper who was as high as a kite! We went to bed early determined to be on the site at 6am to get a good vantage point from which to see the site being illuminated by the rising sun. The alarm was unnecessary, the muezzin having called the faithful to prayer at 4.30am! We dressed, crept out of the hotel and arrived on site as it was getting light. Not a soul was stirring. We walked the fringes of the site surprised by the extent of the ruins and as we closed in on and checked out the external walls of the main complex (it was closed) the sun’s rays were tingeing the clouds a dark pink – but that is all that the sun did as it remained hidden as it had done the night before.

Dwn through the Memorial Arch at Palmyra

Nevertheless we spent a good two hours on site dipping into the guide book for history, facts and figures. We took so many photos that the camera was overheating and by the time we headed back to the hotel the SD card was all but exhausted of space. As we let ourselves into our room we realised that we were ‘stoned’, not as in hippy but in terms of having become immune to the excitement of seeing and touching tangible evidence of ancient history, we realised that we had seen some of the worlds most breathtaking sights and enjoyed the atmosphere these stones offered us in complete privacy, we cant imagine any other old stones doing the same for us ever again. We left the hotel soon after a very ordinary breakfast and headed towards Damascus where we stayed for two nights. The scenery between Palmyra and Damascus is far more interesting than that of the Homs-Palmyra route and the two and a half hour drive passed quickly. We found our hotel without getting lost, a first for us and a great achievement by the navigator who has since got a bit cocky. Genghis was parked right outside the front door and we unloaded a minimum of bags into our room, another recommendation by a son who had stayed there – twice. We have always been slightly worried by his judgement but on this occasion it was spot on and we enjoyed what could best be described as the ‘laid back atmosphere’ – so laid back in fact that it was in danger of reaching the horizontal! The room had twin beds, was very basic (naked light bulbs, stone floors, peeling paint) and in one corner was a recently added cubicle that contained the ‘en suite’ facilities. Standing in the shower tray to use the basin was quaint and the practice of tossing the loo rolls out of the cubicle before using the surround free shower became second nature. Our arrival coincided with the beginning of the weekend and so very few shops or restaurants were open. We had a late, light lunch of salady bits and a chicken tawouk in one of the few places we could find open and then went for a walk through the old town before heading for the town centre and the more modern shopping areas. We loved the architecture of main train station but weren’t drawn to the National Museum where bits of stone lay strewn around the square in front of the entrance like large pieces of gravel. We enjoyed Damascus’ open spaces which in the town centre were free of rubbish and looked well kept and we enjoyed the holiday crowds who, on a beautiful day, were content to walk idly through the streets chatting to one another in family groups, stopping occasionally at a juice or ice cream shop. Our ice cream stop was in the Four Seasons Hotel, a huge (for Damascus) high rise building smack in the centre of town. As we lowered our rather scruffily clad bodies into the plush chairs in the ground floor coffee shop we were aware that the people around us were from a section of society that we hadn’t come across before – the horribly rich! The women were exquisitely dressed and coiffured whilst the men were exquisitely dressed and coiffured! Jewellery and huge watches caught the interior lighting and reflected flashes around the room. They sipped water and drank dainty cups of coffee whilst reading about the latest caviar promotion that tempted the reader with ‘come on, give it a try, you know you are worth it’. Molly coddled teenagers sat demurely in family groups trying hard to be attentive and not to lose the words of wisdom tumbling from father’s lips. And all the while we crunched on roasted nuts and drank our beer and coffee conscious that we were very much out of place – we headed back to our laid back hotel. Perhaps we had been travelling too long!  That night we eat in a café that was recommended by two French backpackers we had met earlier and for the first time in a month or so we ordered joined up meat, a steak in fact. Three or four mouthfuls later, despite its juicy succulence I could eat no more and at the end of a good meal it was bagged up and en route to our hotel, fed to a family of alley cats by the navigator !

For some reason the muezzin did not make the first call to prayer the following morning. Many of his colleagues did but not him – so I rolled over and went back to sleep. The morning was spent in an internet café catching up on mails, bank balances, re-crediting mobile phones and so on. After that we walked into the town centre to change some money into Jordanian Dinar in anticipation of the next leg of our journey and then we built up our levels of energy with a light lunch before conducting a full frontal assault on Damascus’s fabled souk.

Damascus' Souk

It was enormous and buzzing with life – this was the shopping centre of town and the world and his wife were there to prove it. You would be hard pressed to dive into this cavernous mall with an off-beat shopping list and not emerge from it with a squeal of satisfaction at having found it all as well as a whole host of items that weren’t on it in the first place! We spent the afternoon there and came out with a very humble package – the navigator has definitely been travelling for too long! During the course of our meandering we had had to refer to the maps in our guide book to orientate ourselves and one of these sessions a well dressed man approached us and in heavily accented English welcomed us to Syria and asked if he could be of any help but we declined his offer but thanked him for it. This was not the first time this had happened to us in Syria and on each occasion we were convinced that the speaker genuinely wished to help us if they could. This very touching sentiment epitomised the hospitality of the Syrian’s we met who we grew to like very much.

We had supper in a restaurant not far from the hotel and returned to the hotel without a snack for the alley cats. Our sleep was interrupted at 2am when a group of noisy Italians returned to the ‘dormitory’ but we had enough sleep to feel pretty good when we threw the covers off at 6.30am for our journey to Madaba in Jordan. Our early breakfast was late and as a consequence of which we were late leaving but after only three visits to the same roundabout we met the Jordan bound road and after a short fuel stop reached the frontier an hour or so after we left Damascus. The exit from Syria cost us $USD 5 to process the vehicle documents and $USD 26 for the exit visa and it was pretty slickly done. Then, after a journey through no-mans land we arrived at the Jordanian vehicle check point. We were required to drive over an inspection pit into which a Jordanian customs official had pre-positioned himself (brave man or a new recruit?) and then we lined up to undergo a more thorough ‘internal’. The driver in front of us was from the Lebanon and his car was very rigorously inspected to the point whereby the interior trim in places was removed to reveal bare bodywork. Our inspection was more light hearted and having been given the all clear we purchased car insurance for a week (JD20 – a Jordanian Dinar (JD) is roughly the equivalent of a €), JD20 for the temporary importation of a vehicle and we purchased our visas for (JD20). After passport control we drove passed the sign ‘Welcome to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan’ and into the next phase of our journey.

The road south was good and we kept up reasonable speed as we passed through increasingly agricultural land in a wide valley bottom. We reached the large town of Balekesir at around midday. Far from being the small dot on the map this was a big town with a heavy traffic flow in which we got hopelessly lost! Neither the GPS nor the exquisite skills of the navigator could unscramble our position and the confusing signage just confounded our problems. Eventually, with the assistance of a non-English speaking Turkish fireman we heard the words ‘bigger dick’, words that immediately transported me back years to the halcyon days of Singapore’s Bugis Street! Biggadic (known to the English speaking Turks simply as Bigga for obvious reasons), was on the road we were seeking but is only a very small pinprick? on the map but is in fact a large town which deserves to be awarded a more prestigious nap symbol. With Biggadic in mind a combination of GPS and navigator got us out of trouble and onto the right route. We had lost an astonishing hour and a quarter! The countryside now changed dramatically and as we moved further south the wide, fast roads we had become accustomed to slowly became narrower, wrigglier and there was much more climbing and dropping. We were back in alpine country, pines, autumn coloured trees and a beautiful fast flowing river in the valley bottom, next to the road one minute and hundreds of meters below it several minutes later. We were now well behind for our scheduled night stop at Afyon, a stop that if we reached it would give us a much gentler route the following day. The road was difficult to drive and there were very few opportunities to overtake – but then again we weren’t encountering much other traffic. At about 4pm, having had nothing but a pee break since leaving at 8amm, we reached much flatter and open countryside that brought with it wider and faster roads. Well into darkness we reached the town of Usak where there was an option to stop but we decided to grit our teeth and push on to Afyon where we eventually arrived at 6.35pm, 10hrs and 35 mins after we had started. We were very stiff when we checked into our hotel where our room fronted onto the noisy main street. We dumped bags and moved across the road to a kebab café, eat a pretty ordinary but filling meal and went for a walk in the town to shake off the stiffness. Afyon is famous for the production of the best Turkish Delight in the country and it wasn’t long before we found the heart of Turkish Delight selling country. And not very much later we walked out of a shop with a bag full of goodies to sample as a ‘pudding’ to our kebab. The shopkeeper was a Turkish delight himself who, when we ran out of change discounted the cost of the goodies rather than lighten the load in the bag. We vowed then to return in the morning before leaving to stock up on whichever tasty morsel we liked best. We slept very well!

We returned to the shop before leaving in the morning but disappointingly it wasn’t open. We had to stock up on tomatoes and cheese so we popped into a shop across the road and bought tomatoes, cucumber and some hard cheese, a mixture of goat and ewe (Chebris in France) and despite our inability to talk with the shop keeper used hand signals to ask if he knew when the Delight opened. He grinned, walked out of his shop, crossed the road to a café adjacent to the Delight, went inside, dragged out a spotty youth, cuffed him playfully on the top of his head and pushed him towards the Delight’s shop which he duly opened. He wasn’t the Delight who had served us the day before but he behaved just like him and looked after us very well. With several suitcases full of the glorious pistachio flavoured Turkish Delight in hand we checked out of the hotel, recovered Genghis from a lock up garage kindly loaned to us without charge by a car wash owner and set off en route to the town of Konya.

The route could not have been more different to that of the previous day. Within a very short space of time we were on a wide plain with gently rolling hills on both sides and very little habitation. This landscape slowly gave way to small towns and fertile fields which all seemed to be in the throws of having their crops harvested – and all of it was sugar beet. A little further on we came across at least sixty ten ton lorries laden to bursting with sugar beet queuing up outside an enormous refinery. Our initial thoughts were that this was a bio fuel producing operation but we later learned that this was indeed the straight forward production of sugar – and when you see the number of pastry shops in Turkey it is not difficult to see why so much sugar is needed! We arrived in Konya in the early afternoon and stopped for a coffee and to seek directions. Armed with a memory full of hand signals we set off and found the landmark we wanted before eventually finding a sign post that set us on our way. The hotel was on a main street and the ‘Oto Park’ was a only a 100m or so behind it so Genghis was parked up and we checked in – good size room at the back of the hotel so no traffic noise. We set off straight away for the local market which was thriving. Hungry, we sat down in a scruffy little shop at the rear of which was a wood burning oven, a pizza oven. But instead of pizza the Turks were making ‘pide’, a variation on a pizza using finely minced meat, tomatoes and onion smeared over a long ‘cat’s tongue’ of flat bread which is then cooked in the oven and served with Greek chillies roasted alongside the pide. Simple, very tasty and a €1 each! One area of the market was festooned with carpets and kilims which led us to them like bees to honey. We visited shop after shop, drank tea and marvelled at the selections. Anatolia is well known for the style and designs of its carpets and kilims and Konya as a town in this region is especially highly regarded for the quality of its textiles, old or new. The charm of old kilims and carpets from the region have made them collector’s pieces and try as they have to replicate them there can be no substitute for the wool quality, vivacity of vegetable dyes and idiosyncrasies of a horizontal village loom that characterise these tribal pieces. So they fetch eye watering prices and as soon as you step into a passionate carpet dealer’s lair, beware. We entered lairs having cut our teeth on the subject of carpets some years ago but still the carpet sellers patter can be mesmerising and difficult to resist. Thankfully, many cups of sweet tea later we emerged from this part of the market empty handed – almost! Tassels are very much in fashion in our house and there were just too many beautiful ones to choose from and of course they take up such little space don’t they and we could always use them to tie something up if we didn’t have any string and wouldn’t they look nice in …….. and so we added some to ‘our’ collection, actually more than some! After the market we went back to the room, did the usual administration, selected the route for the next day and beyond and wrote up our notes. Later that evening we went downstairs to the lobby for a drink and asked the man at the desk if he could recommend a restaurant but before he could answer a slightly dodgy ‘George’ stepped up and in good English gave us the name of one that he was sure we would like. I call him George because of his likenesses to George Michael you know, thick dark hair, dark glasses, stubble chin , black leather ‘bum freezer’ black leather jacket, dark grey T shirt, dark grey tight jeans and black pointy shoes, slightly dirty and turned up at the ends. We thanked him and went to look for the restaurant that wasn’t far away. It was a large building with a central courtyard and the restaurant on the first floor overlooking the square on three sides. We were met by a young, well dressed man who showed us to one of the restaurants and in so doing had to take us through one of the others that was the venue for a local teacher’s retirement party – we entered at the ‘entertainment’ end, interrupted it and then had to walk the length of the restaurant before reaching ours. We were ushered into a very comfortable room that had three other diners who left a few minutes later. Our host explained the menu and as we chatted he explained that he wasn’t anything to do with the restaurant but was just helping out his friend, the owner. He was in fact a trailer salesman, not just any old trailer but huge 40’ trailers for a variety of uses from fire fighting to rock hauling. He left having ordered our meal for us – good salesman! The meal began with a very tasty bean and minced lamb soup followed by flavoured rice wrapped in vine leaves after which we shared two meat dishes of lamb each prepared in a different way and which were accompanied by different vegetables. Very tasty and a restaurant to which we would have returned had we had the time. On our return to the hotel we were just about to climb the stairs and poof, there was George asking how we had enjoyed the restaurant. We politely engaged him in conversation during which we made stupid mention of ‘the tassels’ – big and expensive mistake! His eyes lit up and a couple of minutes later we were in a small shop behind the hotel that was full to bursting with carpets, kilims, camel and horse bags and of course, tassels. Seconds later in walked George’s brother, a very suave man who bore no resemblance to George whatsoever and who then began spinning his magic, the magic of the carpet seller who has them in his blood. To cut a very long story short we ended up with things that were much more difficult than tassels to fit into Genghis! We enjoyed Konya and would have spent another day there but our schedule dictated a move the following day and early in the morning we set off for Capadocia a few hours away.

The route took us onto another plateau, again with big rolling hills covered in short yellowish brown grass that looked like velvet at a distance but on this occasion we were now catching glimpses of snow capped mountains behind the hills. As we neared the half way point the barren landscape changed as it had the day before to well tilled agricultural land where sugar beat was again the cash crop.

Goreme in Capadocia

Three hours after we left Konya we picked up the first signs to Goreme, our destination, and having negotiated a few more twists and turns we arrived on the lip of a bowl and looked down into Goreme nestling in the most extraordinary landscape we had ever seen. The landscape was created by the eruption of a volcano many, many years ago resulting in the production of hundreds of hollow chimney, mushroom, pyramid and column shaped rock structures as well as valleys of cascading cliffs – a description of this place  is difficult and even the pictures cannot do it justice – it is extraordinary. We negotiated our way to our hotel which had been recommended by our son who had visited the area several months before. Our host met us and showed us straight to our ‘rock’ room, a very comfortable and warm place filled with beautiful textiles. Dad runs the next door carpet shop which is an inadequate term for what he has – a building covered on the outside by every imaginable type of textile and which comprises six or seven large interconnecting rooms each housing hundreds if not thousands of carpets, kilims, bags and other textiles. He has four sons of which our host is one, another is set to run a new hotel when it opens next year, another is an accountant and the last is a teacher who has a finger in each of the other enterprises – and they all speak English well. Whatever their profession they share a passion for textiles and because this very closely knit family have vegetable dye, warps, wefts and knots coursing through their veins and it is a very dangerous place for us to be!

One of the many cave churches in Goreme

After unpacking and putting together a laundry bag, we will be in Goreme for two nights, we met our host on the roof  terrace where he outlined his recommendations for activities whilst we are town – and the program started immediately! He drove us in his car to the open air museum, a collection of numerous churches, but churches with a difference – they were all rock cave churches and quite fascinating.

A word of warning to anyone who reads this and visits Goreme and the museum; if you are at the museum at the same time as a bus load of Koreans, Chinese or Japanese very quickly establish the direction they are headed and go in the opposite one, oh and add the French to that list too.  

We were then transported to Rose Valley and a 5.5km walk through a truly remarkable landscape that introduced a surprise at every twist and turn. Anyone who has done this same walk knows that the its actual length is 4.5km but we, true to car navigation form are still having difficulty with signs and, temporarily disorientated again, we saw much more of the valley than those who were kept to the proper path by a guide! By the time we reached the rendezvous selected by our host it was dark and we returned to the hotel for a bit of Egyptian PT. Supper that night was in a restaurant belonging to one of our host’s many friends and members of an extended family the size of which any Pallot would be proud . The food was pretty ordinary but the restaurant was warm as were the people who ran it and we had a good night. We slept well in our ‘cave’, land walked up to the top of a hill close to the town that overlooked it and the valley beyond. Although sunrise wasn’t due for another half an hour the sky was already pink in the east and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. In the valley beyond the town there was an incessant hissing noise emanating from huge shapes on the ground which were occasionally illuminated by a tongue of flame – balloons! As the sky lightened these  giants, 20 in all (sometimes as many as 60 in at the height of the tourist season) slowly came to life and as the sun got higher in the sky they lifted off one after the other for a no doubt breathtaking view of the extraordinary countryside. We watched the sun rise above the distant hills and snapped away as the Goreme’s mosque and some of the rock chimneys, pyramids and columns were washed by its rays – very pretty. Back at the ranch we breakfasted on fresh fruit, yoghurt, honey, olive and feta which gave us the energy we needed for the day. We drove to Kaymakli to visit its Underground City. This incredible site houses a four storey underground complex comprising living quarters, granaries, stables, wine cellars and shrines all clustered around air shafts and wells. There are several such ‘underground cities’ in the region the largest of which is reputed to be able to house 22,000 people. The one at Kaymakli was quite breath taking – literally. The interconnecting rooms are linked by passages which are only 1.5m high at best forcing the visitor (and previous inhabitant) to stoop for many meters between rooms. By the time we reached the second level my susceptibility to claustrophobia forced me to surface but by then we had been overwhelmed by the ingenuity and determination of a population that had the resolve to create such a structure to give them protection from marauders.

The Ilara Valley

With fresh air in our lungs we completed our 100km drive to the Ilara Valley where we were scheduled to walk the river valley before returning to Goreme. We parked Genghis near the village of Ilara and walked down to the river. This is a well set up tourist attraction and you have to pay to visit the area but as the tourist season was well passed we were a couple of only a handful of visitors to the area. Our walk along the valley next to the river was fun and because we had been told that the valley was known locally as a ‘valley of imagination’ because it allows you to interpret shapes in the rock formations as you wish – we saw turtles, horsemen, Fred Flintstone, Homer Simpson and a host of other animals and characters during our very pleasant two hour walk which concludes at the edge of a small town where there are a number of restaurants. We chose the first, a building on stilts overhanging one of the river banks where we had a late lunch of fresh trout, yes trout and brown ones at that with their tails beautifully formed that proved that they were wild, not farmed. Add salad, fresh bread and lemons and we couldn’t have done better. A .French speaking taxi driver, he had lived in Marseilles for 24 years, drove us back to Ilara from where we drove back to Goreme. Back at base we had tea with ‘Dad’ and his carpets and in similar style to Konya we left with a little something that wouldn’t take up too much room – oh yeah? That night we eat in a small café and mulled over the sights of the last two days. Whilst Capadocia is very much on the tourist route, the charm of its landscape and its residents easily compensate for the inconveniences and annoyances that are normally associated with large numbers of tourists in a small space. We thoroughly enjoyed our time there but would recommend an out of season visit and the hire of a car to give you that added independence – but then again you might enjoy the atmosphere of a bus full of Chinese honeymooners!

After breakfast the following morning we said goodbye to our host and headed south to the town of Gaziantep, a staging post for our crossing into Syria. We left Goreme on the first of the three day festival of Kurban Bayrami (Festival of the Sacrifice),  the most important religious and secular holiday of the year which is for Muslims the equivalent of the Christian’s Christmas. It is estimated that in Turkey alone four million cows and sheep are slaughtered on this day by heads of families with much of the meat being distributed to the poor. Throughout our four hour trip to Gazientep we witnessed not so much the slaughtering but the flaying of carcasses and their butchery. In every small community whether in a field, in a back yard, on the road side or on pavements in town, groups were busy butchering meats, not a squeamish sight but one that begs a myriad of questions.

The route from Goreme to Gaziantep

The countryside we travelled through was a continuation of the plains we had seen en route to Goreme from Konya only the snow covered hill tops were much more visible.  As we started to descend from the 1500m plateau we went back into the alpine scenery we had witnessed on the journey to Afyon. Having twisted and turned for a couple of hours we stopped for lunch at Tekir a small town we had been told produced wonderful lamb because they were fed on the high, sweet pastures which flavoured their meat – and our friendly adviser was right – we eat the best lamb kebab we had had in Turkey, well cooked, tender and very tasty. The long highway into Gazientep provided the usual dilemmas with signage and at least half an hour after we had breached the town centre we found the hotel we stayed at for two nights. The purpose of our visit to this town was simply to draw breath and reorganize ourselves before crossing into the Middle East’s Syria and then Jordan. Our hotel was well located, our room was just what we needed and Genghis was secure in an Oto Park. The added advantage to us was that everything, except a kebab and juice shop was closed for the holiday. This removed temptation to visit sights so we knuckled down and wrote blogs and postcards, caught up with emails, downloaded  GPS tracks to the laptop and edited and catalogued photographs – all those things we had not had much time for since we had arrived in Turkey. We eat from the kebab shop and drank juice from the juice shop (and bought bottles of whiskey and wine from a little kiosk adjacent to the hotel!) and spent almost the whole of our free day sorting ourselves out. So we left Gazientep two nights after having arrived there without seeing anything of it but we were free of what had been a build up time consuming administration. As we recovered Genghis from the Oto Park a gang of teenagers came to inspect him so we showed them around his many features after which they bought us tea and cakes and we departed having passed an amusing half an hour during which no one had communicated with anything other than hand and body signals. Our three hour trip from Gazientep to Antakya (Antioch) on the Syrian border where we would spend our last night in Turkey was uneventful – until we hit town and went through the map reading bit! A quick stop at the first hotel we came across gave us directions on a map and within 5 minutes we were there. A nice hotel on a river front with Genghis, eventually, parked right outside the front door. Unlike Gazientep, Antakya was not closed for business and was humming with life, most of it shopping in the many relatively sophisticated shopping areas. We had a very spicy kofte and salad meal in a small café and thought it so good (and friendly) that we went back there for supper too. Back at the hotel we checked our documentation for our trip across the border the following day and turned in reasonably early. It was raining – the first rain we had had since our first day in Greece.

After a disturbed night, the result of traffic noise, Cuban heels on the hotel’s mock wooden floors and a streetlight right outside our window, we rose at 6am, eat a hearty breakfast of the usual and saddled up. 50km to the east of Antakya is the town of Reyhanli which was our destination and which we reached just before 8am without once getting lost! We had encountered thick fog en route and as we emerged from it we noticed the strand of rusty barbed wire to our right, almost within touching distance, which signalled our imminent arrival at the border. Bab-al-Hawa is a few kms beyond Rehanli and after passing a few manned watchtowers and what seemed like a hundred articulated lorries in a static column we arrived at the Turkish check point. Getting out of the country wasn’t simple and after much tooing and froing we finally got the ‘all clear’ stamp from a scruffy man we had originally dismissed as the building’s sweeper on yet another tea break. Next was a short drive through no man’s land in which another column of vehicles waited patiently, this time heading for Turkey. Finally a cluster of buildings appeared over which hung the Syrian flag and we parked up and began the immigration process. Passports cleared very quickly and then we entered the murky world of vehicle importation. A minder who resembled the flamboyant Italian Bersaglieri in ‘Allo ‘Allo appeared on my shoulder, smiled a silver toothed smile and in very broken English offered his services. For USD$ 6 he helped us negotiate the very small minefield of paperwork: car insurance was $USD 56 (and 2 for the clerk); diesel tax was $USD 100 (and 2 for the clerk); customs duty was $USD 9 (and only 1 for the clerk). A rather officious man then stopped the vehicle to carry out an inspection but he was so impressed by the drawers at the back of Genghis that he let us go without further ado and after a final check point by an officer who you would definitely not like to meet in an alley after dark, we were finally in Syria and en route to the fabled city of Aleppo.

As Genghis was reversed off the ‘San Nicholas’ onto the quay side at Cesme we realised that we were now technically in Asia, Europe and the euro were behind us and every country we would visit from now on would require us to change currency and be mindful of the religion and customs of that country. Turkey is predominantly Muslim and its currency is the Turkish Lire which exchanges at about 2.1 lire to the euro.

Having driven onto Turkish soil no one appeared interested in telling us which way to go to clear customs. Eventually a lorry driver indicated a direction and as we rounded a corner we were shouted at by an official wearing plain clothes and sporting a pass of some sort around his neck. In heavily accented but very good English he told us to park our car and proceed through immigration control. The whole of Cesme’s very modern port control/immigration centre is a hive of activity with uniformed and non-uniformed officials buzzing from office to tea lady to office to someone else’s office to the loo to the tea lady etc. The gruff passport checker grunted and gesticulated that we needed a visa from the person over there – but the person over there wasn’t there but having wandered aimlessly around ‘over there’ without success a plain clothed lady who should have been ‘over there’ appeared and having paid €15 each, a stamp was placed into our passports and the man who had hailed us originally called to us to follow him. At a convenient place inside the terminal we stopped and presented our passports and vehicle documentation. Not surprisingly our Jersey vehicle registration document caused some puzzlement and so armed with that, our International Vehicle Registration document and passports he disappeared into a male colleague’s office where we could see much head scratching and discussion was taking place. The two then moved to an office occupied by a female official who appeared to be the boss and after more discussion he finally emerged to tell us that this was the first time that any of them had come across this document but that all was in order – except that we had no insurance to drive in Turkey. We had expected this at other borders but as our insurance company in Jersey had specifically told us that we were covered in Turkey this news came as a bit of a shock. Our man then told us that it was easy to arrange insurance and that he would fix it – how long did we want it for, one or three months? We opted for three as it was the same price as for one (about €33) and if we needed to re-enter Turkey on the second leg of our journey from Egypt eastwards, this could be useful. He made a telephone call, passed passport and vehicle information to the person at the other end of the line and then told us to wait. A sweet cup of black tea and a very light filo pastry cheese roll from the tea lady helped kill time and a few minutes after we’d brushed the crumbs from our clothes we were called by our man. In attendance was the insurance man who checked the details on the document with our minder, a nod was the signal for me to hand the money over and hey presto we were ready to go – but not quite. There was now to be a vehicle inspection and as we trooped outside we were joined by our man’s colleagues including the boss. Genghis attracted a good deal of attention but after a superficial rummaging around in the mid section and a check to verify the chassis number the boss wandered off to another vehicle and the proceedings came to a close. Our man disappeared into the terminal building and we waited outside rather like errant schoolchildren waiting to be interviewed by the headmaster. There was a good deal of police activity around the port the majority of which focussed on three sniffer dogs and their handlers exercising their various functions. We watched articles being hidden by accomplices in between fuel drums and inside a crate after which dogs were led to the general area and given the necessary commands to search – which they did with success on each occasion – Midnight Express sprung to mind! Finally our man emerged with a smile from the building, handed over our documents – and demanded another €9 for port duty! We finally exited the port over an hour after we had arrived nurturing a memory of a quite intimidating experience but one which in fairness to our man was conducted efficiently and with courtesy. So we set our sights for Ayvalik to the north and set off on the first leg to Izmir 70 km away on a fabulously smooth three lane highway that was virtually devoid of vehicles. Our first and immediate observation concerning the Turkish road system was that Turkish road signs do not conform to the European norm and requires knowledge of all the lesser towns along a route as it is likely to be one of them that is signed, not the major town on that route. And so it was that having intended to bypass Izmir we found ourselves in it, frustratingly unable to make a U turn on the wide, new triple lane highway running through its suburbs. It took us half an hour to extricate ourselves and had it not bee n for a stroke of luck we may very well have found ourselves repeating the diversion when confronted by the signing at the major junction leading out of town. With a sigh of relief we set off on the bypass and for over an hour we circled the enormous, sprawling town of Izmir before finally shaking it off as we headed north. The road was fast (for some) but the heavy presence of police in their blue uniforms and white peaked baseball hats kept most drivers to a mere 100kph. For over 3 hours we drove north up the coast on the smooth three lane highway but despite a perfect day and a bluer than blue Aegean Sea to our left we were left unexcited by what countryside or beach front we saw. Sprawling town gave way to another after another and it was clear that the magnetism of Izmir had created pockets of supporting industry and dormitory towns needed to house the workforce. On the coast small towns had had huge ‘estates’ of modern housing tacked onto them and there appeared little beach front left unaccounted for. It was difficult to imagine a population either large enough or wealthy enough to occupy them all.  Our faith in the reputed beauty of Turkey was restored when three and a half hours into our journey we began a long and tortuous climb away from the sea and into the countryside. Pines and deciduous trees in their Autumn shades of yellow and red lined the steep embankments and introduced a distinctly alpine flavour to the area, in stark contrast to what we had experienced earlier. When we finally reached the top of this spur of land we found ourselves on a plateau which to begin with was covered in a forest of pines which, from the limited activity we saw appeared to support a logging enterprise. Half an hour further on the forest ended abruptly and the plateau gave way to cultivated fields tended by small villages, each clearly identified by the minarets of their mosques which could be seen from miles around. There was very little traffic here and what there was made up of lorries and buses distributing goods and passengers on these unexpectedly fabulous roads. Descent from the plateau indicated that we were closing on our first night stop at the fishing port of Ayvalik. We had booked to stay with Annette, a retired German school teacher who owned two houses in the town, two of which had rooms for guests and the other in which she lived. She had warned us that the route to her house was difficult for large vehicles but that as she was situated on a square on which the village held its open air market every Thursday and to which small lorries brought vendors and produce I should not have too much of a problem negotiating the same route with a Landcruiser. At her suggestion we had visited an internet café during our last night on Chios to look up her web site and print off a map giving detailed directions to her house. Clutching this map we began the task of navigating Genghis down impossibly narrow streets to a point we could go no further. Out of the sea of faces of well meaning residents trying to give us unintelligible directions to her house as well as directions on how to turn Genghis around, Annette’s distinctly Eurpean face suddenly appeared – we were within 30m of her house and could leave the vehicle where it was – there was the muddy site of a demolished building next adjacent to the small, cobbled street. Having unloaded our bags we followed her to ‘her’ square and the two houses she owned overlooking it. Our knowledge of Ayvalik was at this point extremely limited and although the waterfront looked inviting our very recent experience of the environment behind the façade of the waterfront had bee less favourable – a labyrinth of narrow cobbled streets and small stone buildings in various stages of disrepair giving a distinctly medieval feel to the place. Annette’s house blew all of those impressions away. The house in which we were staying was light, airy and backed onto a delightful garden with, joy of joys, cats – immediately sold to the lady in the baggy pants and the dusty shoes! Our room comprised a large bedroom, a kitchen, shower room with wc and a designated area of the garden in which we could sit and have breakfast etc. There weren’t actual lines drawn on the ground demarcating each area but from the instructions we were given, verbal and written it was evident that Annette was running a tight ship! Anxious to stretch our legs after over 5 hours in the cab we headed off to the port to a small fish restaurant that had been recommended by our host. The journey took us through a maze of narrow streets lined with houses and small shops all of them trapped in air thick with wood smoke which hung in the windless streets adding to the speed of with which darkness was falling. It really wasn’t difficult to imagine this location as the set for a film set in the middle ages. Our visit to the restaurant was intended as a recce for our supper but having found it and sat down on their terrace which was literally being lapped by the Aegean

Ayvalik - view from the restaurant terrace

we reminded ourselves that we had eaten little or nothing since 7am, 9 hours before, and in addition to a glass of wine and a beer, ordered a selection of meze.  The little or nothing was actually a hard boiled egg each that we had dropped into an open mouthed handbag at breakfast on Chios two days before and some wonderful bread sticks bought by another guest of our olive picking friends for her grandson – but she had left them behind and her loss was our gain – thank you Penny. With the eggs we had salt from a 35mm film cassette case thoughtfully added to a picnic provided by our hosts in Tuscany to sustain us on our journey towards Bari on the day we left them – thank you Juniper. Having watched the sun sink below the horizon we returned to Annette’s house where we did a little administration before heading back to the restaurant only by now darkness had set in and the gloom of wood smoke thickened darkness was offset by irregular street lamps and dim shop lights – change electric lights for burning braziers and oil lamps and the ghosts of marauding Romans would have felt at home again. We had picked a good night to visit a restaurant in Aivalik because, yes folks, it’s live music night! Annette had warned us of this weekly event and we had glibly shrugged off the information with some crass remark about it being a welcome break from the limited selection on our iPods. The restaurant was a quarter full when we arrived and a small stage had been set up for the musicians and all their paraphernalia to one side but there was no evidence of the musicians. We chose a table as far away from the wall mounted speakers as possible and set about interpreting the menu. With help from a very tolerant waiter we made our selections form the meze on offer and finished with a main course of squid and sardines that we were assured were a house speciality. We smiled smugly to ourselves at the thought of completing our meal before the musicians began their gig, a happy thought that was dashed moments later when the re-incarnation of Sony Bono (Sony and Cher) dressed in dazzling white (but without the wings) took his place in front of the bongos. He smiled appreciatively at the growing number of patrons, warmed up with a short solo and waited for a warm reaction to his expertise. It didn’t materialise and as he stared at the floor and sulked the other three members of the band arrived on stage – tambourine player, (Ernest Borgnine), flautist (Buddy Holly) and a bouzouki player/lead singer (Walter Matthau). Our pickled octopus (rapidly pushing feta into second place) arrived and a tender morsel was in each of our mouths when, without any introductions or warning, the group launched straight into its repertoire. An hour later they were still playing as we struggled with a plate of well over cooked squid and sardines – but we didn’t care. The musicians had provided the best entertainment we had had since listening to my Grandmother singing ‘Chin Chin Chinaman’ on her 90^th birthday. What should have been a short walk home lasted longer than anticipated as we got temporarily disorientated on  our way back to Annette’s but we finally made it, crept into our room and slept soundly.

After breakfast in the garden we said our goodbyes to Annette, loaded Genghis and negotiated our way back through the cobbled streets to the main road. From Ayvalik we headed north up the coast again towards the town of Canakkale (Chhunukaley), a port on the southern side of the Dardanelles from where we need to take a ferry across the straits to the waterfront  town of Eceabat and the Gallipoli battlefields and memorials. Again our route was along the coast with its accompanying unattractive beachfront development. As short time before reaching our destination we crested a spur we had climbed up and laid out in front of us was The Dardanelles, Canakkale and Eceabat and in the far off distance the beginnings of the Sea of Marmara leading to Istanbul. Genghis came into his own as we negotiated a small track to an off the road flat hill top where we had a picnic lunch of feta, hard cheese and onion whilst soaking in this magnificent view. Rather by good luck than good map reading we found ourselves at the ‘Ferribot’ terminal in Canakkale where a ferry was soon to depart for Eceabat. A few minutes later, having paid the equivalent of €11, we were aboard

Genghis en route to Gallipoli

and soaking up the sights and sun. The trip across The Dardanelles took 25 minutes and having watched terns diving to catch small fish being chased by large fish that also broke the surface we docked in the small port of Eceabat. We had booked to stay in the ‘Crowded House Hotel’ a fairly modest but modern hotel a few metres from the waterfront. From its name we assumed that the hotel focused on attracting Australians and New Zealanders who were touring the battlefields which turned out to be strengthened when we saw the decorations left behind by visitors to the small bar – ‘Beware of Crocodiles’, Australian car registration plates?, slouch hats, photos of hundred sun burned antipodean faces and a multitude of letters expressing their thanks to the hotel staff for their help and friendliness. Our room was small but adequate and had a view of the port and the ferries. The staff were great and lived up to the reputation their Australian and New Zealand guests had given them and after we had been given some recommendations for a place to have a meal that night we set off to explore the town. Ten minutes later we were back where we started having toured the town in a thickening sea mist made all the more unpleasant by the strong smell of – wood smoke! We didn’t find the recommended restaurant but had noticed fresh sardines and anchovies for sale from a small kiosk near the fishing port with the added attraction of what he was offering for sale being cooked by his wife in an adjacent room – very promising!

Mr and Mrs Fishmonger

 By now it was 5pm, dark and we were beginning to imagine hunger pains (we’d only had a little bit of cheese for lunch, honest) so, in fear of the fish monger closing, we sprinted off to the kiosk. He was open, the Jandarm (Gendarme equivalent) were just leaving after what the debris suggested was a very good fish supper, and yes, they did pay their bill, so we sat down at a clean table and smiled at the non-plussed fishmonger and his wife. Loving anchovies as we do (you hadn’t guessed?) we knew that the Turkish for anchovy is ‘Hamsi’ and so between the four of us using a mixture of hand signals, smiles, nods and headshakes we left our hosts to get on with what it was they thought we wanted. Fresh hot oil was poured into a flat bottomed wok like pan that was set over a gas ring, the anchovy were headed and the guts removed in a deft flick of the wrist that was difficult to follow with the eye and after a dip into the whisked yolks of freshly cracked eggs they were rolled in breadcrumbs and carefully placed in the oil. Meanwhile the fishmonger had been cutting up bread and preparing a fresh green salad with onions, peppers and tomatoes all from a stall a few steps away. No beer here but Coke was on offer and it was as good an accompaniment as one could wish for to such a delicious and plentiful meal – all for €7! We left the fishmonger and his wife promising ourselves that we would return. At 8ish, having done our evening admin that included downloading GPS information, embellishing notes and typing them up, planning the next days routes and ‘must dos’ and re-packing non-essentials we headed off for a little ‘apres poisson’ at a touristy kofta serving café that put the anchovies into context and caused us to vow not to visit the café again – choices were narrowing in Eceabet!

The following morning after a disturbed night (why was the ferry operating at 3 and 4 in the morning?) we had a good breakfast where, thankfully, there were sufficient hard boiled eggs for two or four to disappear into the bottomless handbag without attracting attention. Today we were visiting the Gallipoli battlefields, an important day for me as for 25 years of my life I had had the privilege of serving with a Gurkha Rifle Regiment that had fought with the ANZACs at Gallipoli, a name it received as a battle honour in recognition of its conduct on the peninsular. More poignantly, throughout my service, wherever the regiment was stationed, the quarter guard displayed, amongst many other artefacts from other wars and conflicts, a kukri (the curved knife carried by all Gurkha soldiers). It was simply called the ‘Suvla Bay Kukri’ and had been presented to the regiment in the early 1950s by an ex Royal Navy rating who took part in the evacuation of troops from Suvla Bay on the west coast of the Gallipoli peninsula. Whilst manning a small boat, he was involved in pulling aboard two Gurkhas, one of whom was already seriously wounded and who pitched into the bottom of his boat. After his cargo of men had been transferred to a larger boat he noticed a kukri in the bottom of his boat and kept it as a keepsake until he retuned it to my regiment shortly before his death. I researched this incident during my service and established that the kukri belonged to a 16 year old rifleman who was killed at Gallipoli. Paying homage to this courageous young man at Suvla Bay was almost more important to me than visiting the Helles memorial where the names of all the regiment’s dead are inscribed alongside all those British and Commonwealth soldiers who had no graves.  

The campaign itself is far too detailed to go into here but it will always be remembered as a significant failure for Winston Churchill who as First Lord of the Admiralty was the driving force behind the campaign and it was the first operation in which the newly formed Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) went into battle. By the end of the campaign 36,000 Commonwealth troops, 10,000 French troops and 86,000 Turkish troops had been killed.

We set off in Genghis heading south west down the Dardenelles side of the peninsula and quickly entered the national park that encompasses all the memorials and battlefields of the campaign – it is a beautifully natural area untouched by development of any sort. The first site we visited was one of the many Turkish cemeteries

Turkish Cemetery at Gallipoli

 containing the names of some of their dead – rather chillingly the Turks have mark their burial sites, real or symbolic, with white Turkish helmeted heads set into the ground on which each ‘face’ is inscribed with the name of a Turkish town in which a soldier was born or which was his home at the time of his enlistment.

The names of the dead are inscribed on plaques lined up symmetrically around the walls that demarcate the burial ground in which the heads are laid.

Australian Red Gum and English Oak stand watch at the Redoubt Cemetery

We then came across the Redoubt Cemetary where an Australian red gum tree and an English oak stand side by side as symbolic guardians of the occupants, Wylie Grove and V Beach cemeteries before reaching the Helles Memorial at the southern tip of the peninsula. This imposing memorial is the battle memorial for the entire campaign and contains the names of all British and Indian servicemen who died throughout the peninsula and who have no known grave as well as those Australians who died at Helles – there are over 21,000 names. The eminent Scottish architect Sir John Burnet designed the Helles Memorial

The Helles Memorial at Gallipoli

as well as the other five Commonwealth memorials and thirty one Commonwealth cemeteries. After more cemeteries at Lancashire Landing and  Pink Farm we entered ANZAC territory with cemeteries at Twelve Tree Copse and Lone Pine cemetery and Memorial.

Lone Pine Cemetery and Memorial

We spent time at the latter because it was so beautiful with such a commanding view over the peninsula. A lone pine, reputed to have been grown from a seed from the original tree after which the battle was named stands sentry in the cemetery. We passed through the remains of trenches in the area before coming across a host of other cemeteries; Johnston’s Jolly, Coutney’s and Steel’s Post, Plugge’s Plateau, the Nek and so on. The personalisation of so many of the ANZAC sites adds added poignancy to them and it is not surprising that this place, a place where the Australian soldier earned his nickname ‘digger’, remains a significant chapter in the folklore of Australia and New Zealand. Dropping off the high ground we drove through ANZAC Cove, passed Shrapnel Valley Cemetery and headed north to Suvla Bay and the Azmak and Hill 10 Cememteries. At the bay itself we had lunch of breakfast boiled eggs and cheese and raised a bottle of water to the courage of a 16 year old who epitomised the spirit of all the Commonwealth, French and Turkish troops who died in this campaign.

On the road back to Eacebat we chatted at length about the skill of the architect Sir John Burnet who had created a design theme that combined gracious simplicity with haunting symmetry, perspective and humility that so perfectly matched the mood of the events they were to commemorate.

Back at Crowded House we prepared for a long haul the following day and then set off to the fishmongers for a repeat of the previous night. The fish were every bit as good as before only more numerous and the salad had the addition of red cabbage. Smugly satisfied that we had eaten like kings for €12 we thanked our hosts and went straight to bed in preparation for an early start in the morning.

A 6am alarm was unnecessary as we had already been awoken by some horn blowing down on the port so after final packing, breakfast and the disappearing hard boiled egg trick we loaded up and took the ferry back to Canakkale.

Twenty five minutes later we were backtracking the route we had taken from Ayvalik and two hours further down the road we turned south towards Afyon and Konya.

Sparti isn’t a town in which you would want to spend much time – an uninspiring grid of concrete that is practical but soulless. However it did provide us with the opportunity to change some traveller’s cheques and to do some shopping for shortfalls in our packing list. We also wanted to find out if there was an opportunity to get to Turkey by ferry rather than flog up the motorway through Macedonia and Thrace to the Greece/Turkey border and were advised to visit the shipping agents represented in a street close to our hotel. Unfortunately the head man couldn’t be bothered to give us the information we were seeking and told us to search yellow pages for a travel agent! Fortunately for us, we returned to our hotel to pack up and asked the concierge if he knew of any travel agents who could help us and as he shrugged his shoulders a voice behind him said that the only way we could get to Turkey by ferry with a car was to go via the Greek Island of Chios. The voice belonged to a very smartly dressed woman who had no need to audition for a part in a Cinderella pantomime as one of the Three Ugly Sisters. She turned out to be a well travelled business woman and was extremely helpful to us even phoning a travel agent in Piraeus (Athens’ port) to verify the information she had given us – thank you madam. We headed off early, the banks and shops open at 8am and shut at 2.30pm, but didn’t leave the town immediately having decided to visit the ‘Museum of the olive and Greek Olive Oil’ which is on the outskirts of the town. An absolute gem, this modern and well presented museum was very informative and a joy to spend well over an hour in. We shook off the town and headed towards Athens and the port of Piraeus specifically so that we could check the detail of the information we had been given. The route took us over the top of the third and eastern most leg of the Peloponnese, an impressively barren stretch of landscape where we saw snow on the highest of the peaks in the area. We then started our descent towards Corinth and passed over its canal at the same time realising  that if Piraeus operated the same working hours as Sparti we were not going to get the information we wanted that day. So, rather than be stuck in a city for the night we headed to the coast north west of Athens to find somewhere to stay. An hour or so north of the new and very fast Athens motorway we came across a scruffy collection of beach shacks at the head of a small inlet that were closed up for the winter but on scanning the inlet further up the pebbled beach there looked to be an isolated shack that had some activity around it. Five minutes later we were in a taverna right on the sea, the owner, a middle aged woman was swimming in the sea off her veranda and ducks and geese were majestically paddling by hoping for a snack or two from potential donors. The scene was quite idyllic and it wasn’t long before we were suckered in to a plate of deep fried red mullet, a beetroot salad served with the beetroot’s boiled leaves and washed down with a cold beverage – delicious but, as we had found throughout Greece, expensive whenever you ordered ‘fresh’ fish. The owner told us that most of the camp sites, rooms or hotels in the area were shut but that around the headland was a port with two or three accommodation units, one of which might be open. A tortuous half an hour of driving over the headland produced an even scruffier ‘tourist’ village where there was nothing living save a stray dog or two. By now it was getting dark so we decided to cut our losses and head back towards Athens so that we could pounce on Piraeus early the following morning. Two hours later, with eyes out on stalks having twisted and turned our way to the outskirts of Piraeus with seemingly millions of lorries driven by stunt men, we came across the suburb of Elesfina and the Hotel Melissa which had a cheap room available so we took it. As we headed up the stairs with our bags, we were confronted by a very black man sauntering down the main corridor dressed in nothing but a towel after he had emerged from a communal shower unit (men and women each had their own separate units!). Needless to say there was a stifled gasp of panic from my travelling companion who had put cheap price and communal shower unit together with verrucas, swine flu and anal warts! Our room had clearly seen better days but it did have its own bathroom with a bath and a loo and the bath plug fitted, joy of joys? Not quite, because it smelled of smoke which really wasn’t that surprising since we hadn’t met anyone in Greece above the age of 10 who didn’t smoke. We dumped our bags and set off to explore the town of Elefsina which wasn’t unpleasant and seemed to consist largely of a very, very long promenade linking the grotty railway siding end of town to the sea and a marina. The promenade was lined with smart cafes, tavernas and shops most of which were virtually empty but perhaps they would all have been overflowing with visitors a month or two before. A couple of beverages and a very interesting grilled octopus tentacle later we were in bed where we slept like the dead, despite the smoky blankets and a bed that had a deep valley running down the length of the mattress.

After breakfast with a fair proportion of Manchester (what were they all doing there?) we set off for Piraeus which only took about 20 minutes. We parked on the quayside, asked the Port Police which car carrying ferries went to Turkey as a consequence of which we ended up in the offices of the Hellenic Sea Ferries where we purchased tickets for Genghis and ourselves to travel to the Greek island of Chios (pronounced Heehoss) that night at 7pm with an arrival time on the island of 4am – another little mew!  Chios was to be a staging post before catching another car ferry to the Turkish port of Cesme, 60 or so kms to the west of the city of  Izmir. We were told where we had to report elsewhere for the ferry as it was not in the location where we booked the ticket. An hour later we found our departure point having been given quite inaccurate directions by a ferry official and then set off to visit Corinth where we spent the day sightseeing and visiting the Corinth Canal that had been completed in 1893, an achievement that would forever be overshadowed by its much more famous cousin, the Suez Canal. We reported to the ferry terminal an hour and a half before departure and casually drove to what we assumed to be the loading point at which time an official asked us to park ‘over there’, which we did. Our ferry, the Lissos was pretty big and was clearly designed to act as a lifeline between the islands and the mainland. As we parked to one side of the ferry’s enormous loading ramp we counted at least twenty 40’ container lorries jockeying for loading position with much hooting and revving of engines. We had witnessed the organised chaos of loading at Bari but this performance took the biscuit! Officials ordered and counter ordered, drivers argued with officials and everyone shouted, shrugged shoulders and gesticulated. Recorded in black and white and speeded up a little the Keystone Cops, Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers would have had a good run for their money!

Loading at Piraeus

And then the ballet started – each ugly duckling lorry driver pulled his rig forward on a command, reversed his huge load up the ramp at the top of which he was swallowed into the bowels of the ship before emerging some time later with the flourish of a smug swan having dropped his trailer, inch perfect, in a spot designated by another official, one banished to the darkness of the middle kingdom never to see the light of day again! Then it was our turn and having parked Genghis with nothing like the flair of the lorry drivers we went into the ship and up to our cabin. After a drink in the bar we watched the lights of Piraeus slip behind us and went back to the cabin for the light supper we brought on board with us – yep, feta etc! We were in bed by 8pm and slept until a 3am early morning call got us out of bed. We watched our approach into Chios and were one of the first cars off the ferry. At 4am the island was dead to the world so we had the choice of trying to sleep in the cab or get to know the island in the dark and having opted for the latter we drove around until first light when we headed back to the town to walk the streets. What caught our attention was the size of the island and its rugged makeup, not what we had expected. The town was centred on the lively port

Chios Waterfront

and the main shopping and market areas were within easy walking distance of the water front. We tried to find some of the recommended hotels and rooms but without success. After a coffee in a 7am opening café by the port we tried the Information Office that boasted 7am opening but because the lad who ran it had difficulty getting out of bed it didn’t open its doors until 8am by which time we had learned a lot more about the street life of Chios. During our wanderings we had found the accommodation we had been looking for but it appeared to be closed. The man in the ‘Tourism office said that he would phone the owner as he was a friend of his and hey presto, he was open. Don, a New Zealander who has lived on Chios for 25+ years runs ‘Chios Rooms’ a converted merchant’s house on the waterfront. We had the opportunity to select our room from the 8 or so available and chose the attic room that had its own terrace from which you could look over the port. We unloaded Genghis, sought Don’s advice on where to go and what to see and headed off to explore what is a large and rugged island. We only had time to look around part of the south of the island where the olive harvest was in full swing and ended up at a secluded pebble beach on a beautiful sunny afternoon. We selected a place at one end of the beach because a rocky headland gave added shelter from a cool breeze –

Picking Grapes in the Aegean

and we went in for a swim in the crystal clear water. As we lay in the sun drying we heard voices and on looking around saw that a group of tourists (we had seen a cruise liner docking earlier that morning) were heading straight towards us. Even at a distance of 100m or so there was no mistaking the accent of our ‘special relationship’ friends, confirmed when at 50m we were hailed and asked if there were any sea urchins in the water. Although tempted to tell them that they were all over the sea bed we thought better of it and for the sake of that ‘special relationship’ gave them the all clear – and so they parked themselves right on top of us and shouted at one another in non-stop conversation. Eventually our chilly silence got to them and half an hour later after a swim and a ‘Gee Wilmer, this water is colder than the pool on the boat’ they trudged off up the beach like a gaggle of geese to their waiting minibus.

Back in the town of Chios we finished off some administrative bits and pieces and headed out of town on foot to a restaurant that Don had recommended. The restaurant’s interior was impressive – at least 80 covers in an old, well proportioned room decorated with ancient farming implements as well as those for the preparation and preservation of food. We were also very impressed by the menu which included tempting plates of ‘Soulzoukakia’ – meat balls with cumin in tomato sauce and ‘Dolmadakia’ – vine leaves with rice filling and lemon sauce. The head (and only) waiter was a large, grim faced man who stood with his back to the entrance of the kitchen and watched over the diners with a belligerent stare. It wasn’t difficult to imagine him lashing galley slaves for missing a beat with their oars! Having made our choices from the menu we signalled, timidly, that we were ready to order and having fixed us with a stare that froze the blood he strode over to take our order. It was at that point that we realised that he wasn’t a waiter at all but must have been standing in for the real waiter who hadn’t yet appeared, perhaps because he was still recovering from a pre-dinner lashing as part of this man’s warming up exercises. The menu was in English, which he didn’t read, write or speak so there was a bit of a dilemma when it came to recording our order. With some ingenuity and a sharp pen we were able to make indentations in the plastic sheath the menu pages had been inserted into and, hoping that the page would not be dislodged in any way, Shreck headed off to the kitchen. Minutes later he returned to us and with something between a snarl and an attempt at a grin he produced the menu again with a cross against two of our choices, most notably the octopus and fresh anchovies. Having gone through the previous ordering session we silently agreed just to stick with the other parts of our order and not to try for anything else and so, with nervous smiles, an inclination of the head and a shrug of the shoulders with upturned palms of the hands we accepted the situation and made no attempt to add anything else. As we breathed a sigh of relief on seeing Shrek disappear into the kitchen, the door to the restaurant opened and in walked a smiley waitress! Our meal was a disappointment but we had enjoyed an entertaining couple of hours and were glad to be heading back to our room with our skin intact!

The next day we had chores to do for much of the morning which included booking ourselves on the next leg of our journey, the ferry trip from Chios to Cesme, a Turkish port 70km due west of Izmir. We had been told that Sunrise Tours operated a boat called the ‘San Nicholas’ between the two ports and so we hunted down the agent and booked our passage for the following morning’s 8.30am departure. We stopped for coffee and on our return noticed that the Sunrise agent had shut up shop which we thought strange seeing as we had witnessed his arrival for work only 30 minutes earlier. All became clear when, on asking a docker which of the boats in the port was the ‘San Nichols’ a narrow but fastish looking vessel was pointed out that clearly only had room on its deck for one car the size of Genghis. So, having sold his only space for the next day’s passage, the agent had gone home – a good day’s work! In the afternoon we again headed for ‘our’ beach with a picnic lunch that consisted of – that’s right children, feta, onion, pepper and tomato, only this time we had added pickled chillies, and pickled onions and garlic still in their skins all of which turned out to be delicious. En route we stopped at an olive press in a small village that we had seen the previous day. Housed in a modest concrete shed, the area around it was teeming with young and old, men and women each with their own quantities of olives brought to the press by a wonderful array of tractors and antiquated three wheelers. This was a truly communal facility which at this time of year was the hub of village life, giving each olive tree owner the opportunity to change his or her crop into oil. Inside, the press mirrored the sophisticated machinery we had witnessed in Tuscany and differed only in the fact that it was slightly smaller in scale. It was in the building that this facilities true worth was evident – one man emptied about twenty boxes of olives into the hopper and watched as they were crushed and pressed before vivid green oil flowed into his cans. As his process completed another began, this time only eleven boxes of olives belonging to an old, wizened woman dressed in black and wearing a black headscarf.

Chios Olive Press

Her smile as the oil pored into her plastic container lit the building! We felt rather privileged to have witnessed this very ordinary but core event in the life of a rural community. The wind had turned a little cooler so beach time was curtailed and we set off back to Chios town to prepare for the following day’s departure.

After some very early morning shopping and a cup of coffee we reported to the quay side at the appointed 7.40am, presented our documents and then waited to be loaded. Loading was a delightfully hap hazard affair as the fifteen passengers drifted on and off the boat well after the scheduled departure time. Finally Genghis was loaded,

Loading Genghis at Chios