Jerusalem

6/2 - 6/10

Our first night in Jerusalem we spent in the Muslim quarter of the old city in a really grotty room in a really grotty hostel. Watching the owner painfully shuffling up the steps to show us the room was... painful. We had a beautiful view through wire mesh though.

Playing dead in the Dead Sea

6/2

Back to the Dead Sea. Not so weird this time, the sky and horizon seemed to be in the right place, the water wasn't completely still and there were lots of other people around. Still amazing though.

To the desert! Again! But in Israel!

5/30 - 6/1

Couchsurfing requests sent and replies received we set off to the bus station. Not a hundred metres out the door we're hailed by a guy with a van who's going to the border and will take us there for about the same price as the bus. Bargain!

Dahab and diving. Way too many pictures.

5/18 - 5/29

Overnight bus to Dahab, tickets sold to us by the surliest and most unpleasant man in Egypt.

Again we were the only foreigners getting off the bus at Dahab. Far from the only tourists in town though, I suppose most people came from Cairo or Israel. We got a lift into town from a tout, but the hotel he was touting was pretty grim so I decided to have a look around.

Luxor, not the one in Las Vegas

5/12 - 5/18

You know the first four entries returned for Google on Luxor are for Las Vegas? In fact, it's only thanks to Wikipedia, Wikitravel and touregypt.net that Luxor is on the first page at all.

To the desert!

5/9 - 5/11

We barely made it to the bus on time, running through the streets after we were given a new and distant departure point just as we were leaving the hotel.

Talkin' 'bout a revolution

5/6 - 5/9

Tahrir square was busy every night with lots of flag-waving marching groups, locals out taking pictures and earnest political students. The students I spoke to expected the 'silent' (ignorant) majority to elect an army general for president in 6 months time, and seemed pretty depressed about the prospect, considering army rule a major step back for Egypt and potential disaster. Another guy, a very angry man, bemoaned the average Egyptian's political ignorance and all the unthinking cries of 'freedom!' "These people don't even know the value of the Suez canal!" he cried. Most people there were just really happy and full of hope.

Giza look at Saqqara

Visiting the Giza pyramids can be a harrowing experience, if the tales of other travellers and guide books are to be believed. It all depends how much you value your money. If you try to go in on foot and haggle for everything you'll have a rough time of it. On the other hand, one Japanese guy we met told us how lucky he'd been that a local had showed him round, treated him to lunch and been really kind, only asking for about 800 Egyptian pounds. To put that in perspective, that's double what we paid for a driver for the whole day, all the entry tickets, a tour of the Giza pyramids on camels, the Saqqara pyramids on foot, lunch, dinner and an evening horseback ride on the plateau. He was happy at his good fortune though, that's the main thing.

Cairo, mosques and citadels

Walking through town we were again struck by how hospitable and welcoming Egyptians were. So many cries of "welcome!" everywhere we walked. Whenever we told people this later they inevitably said "oh, they only wanted to sell you..." or something similar. That really wasn't the case. Total strangers walking down the street or driving by in cars with absolutely no desire to sell us anything were just shouting greetings as they passed by. It was weird, but nice. Of course we did meet some really persistent touts, and some stall owners would even go as far as grabbing my arm and not letting go for quite some time, but as long as you took it all with a smile it never became wearing.

Egypt! Well, a bit of Cairo anyway.

4/29 - 5/3

The overnight bus was less than fun, but not as bad as we had anticipated. We were unceremoniously dumped on the outskirts of Delhi though - I should have confirmed the exact destination. An hour of laid-back haggling while we woke up and sipped on chai got us a reasonable taxi price, but we got taken to a real shit-hole of a hotel. Luckily I recognised the area so we paid off the driver and found ourselves a reasonable place to stay nearby.