Graham Williams's Travel Writing

Photos: Sudan

will — Thu, 3 Mar 2011 06:30:00 GMT

A selection of pictures from my two years as a teacher in the Sudan.

The Sudan English Teachers Scheme

will — Tue, 1 Mar 2011 06:26:00 GMT

In the 1970’s and 1980’s there existed a scheme for English teachers to go out to The Sudan to teach in Higher Secondary Schools. Although thousands of young, well educated British and Irish people took part in the scheme, some of them for years, there seems to be very little information about it on the web; which is surprising considering a lot was written about the scheme when it was running, with the ‘Education Guardian’ publishing at least one article a year. There is now a facebook group but so far it only has a few members.

For most, going to The Sudan was a life changing experience, a chance to live and work in a totally different society under radically different conditions. I did two ‘contracts’ the first in 1982 – 83, when I went alone and a second time in 1986 – 87 when I went with my partner Louise; both times I was in El Damazine in Blue Nile province. This article is my account of my experiences, it’s by no means definitive particularly regarding the organization of the scheme or the dates it was operating. If anyone knows more, please get in touch and share your experiences, either on this blog or the facebook group. I for one would like to know more about how the scheme was set up and when it closed down. For me, my times in The Sudan were some of the best of my life and I still have a great affection for the land and the generous and hospitable people who live there.

Recruitment

Every Spring in the 1980’s an ad would appear in the Education jobs pages of the ‘Guardian’ newspaper – ‘English teachers needed for The Sudan’. The qualifications needed were quite straightforward, a degree in any subject and some evidence that you’d travelled a bit preferably off the beaten track. You were then invited to the Sudanese Embassy in Kensington for an interview with an official from the Education ministry and a British former teacher, which was fairly easy going. It was obvious that being able to cope with the living conditions was almost as important as your ability to teach. Successful applicants were then sent for a three day preparation course at the ‘Centre for International Briefing’ which was housed in Farnham Castle in Surrey.

The ‘Centre for International Briefing’ was more used to preparing international bankers or diplomats who were being sent out on foreign postings, so it was a very pleasant place to spend a couple of days. A group of teachers just back from The Sudan formed part of the instruction team; they all looked tanned and lean. They were there to address the tricky issues the Centre’s staff couldn’t, like how do you cope in a world without toilet paper and what is it like to try to teach a class of 70 pupils. We were given talks on living in a Muslim society and medical issues. One ‘expert’ told us that we should get our servants to boil all our drinking water, which bought snorts of derision from the returned teachers. We also had an afternoon class in TEFL, the only instruction on how to do our jobs we received. I managed to wangle another trip to Farnham in ’86, me as a returned teacher and my girlfriend as the newbie. I never worked out who paid for our pleasant days at the castle, the story I heard was that the father of a teacher who had died of malaria somewhere in the south harangued the Foreign Office for letting young people go to such a hostile place so unprepared, and so the British Council stumped up the cash for our ‘briefing’. The only other aid we were given was a copy of ‘Thompson and Martinet,’ an English Grammar; everything else we had to find and pay for ourselves. Luckily, the centre sold essentials like mosquito nets as they were almost impossible to buy anywhere else.

Arrival

Groups of teachers were sent out during June and July. The flight was included as part of the ‘package’ and everyone went out on the state owned carrier ‘Sudan Airways’. This was always an adventure as the planes seldom left on time which meant that we often got put up in a nice hotel. On my second flight out the auto pilot did not work, so the pilots manually flew the plane the whole way. Flying over Khartoum at night, you looked down on dark city lit only by fluresant strip lights. Piling our kit into a mini bus for the trip to the hotel I was struck by the smell, a heavy, dank, river smell. ‘What’s that smell?’ I asked a girl who looked like an old hand, ‘Khartoum’ she replied. We were put up in a hotel (the Gassa – which has since burnt down) in the centre of the city, a clean place where the helpful staff were used to groups of teachers passing through. We then spent a couple of weeks getting our paperwork sorted out. We were now employees of the Sudanese Government and everything the Sudanese Government did involved a lot of form filling, waiting for papers to be approved and signed, copied onto carbon paper and then filed in great moulding piles that filled the corners of the sprawling Ministry of Education down on the banks of the Blue Nile. There was a full time British liaison officer, an ex teacher, who helped us with the forms and explained how the system worked. As offices only worked in the morning, we had the afternoons to explore the city and get to know our fellow teachers. So we went out to Omdurman to see the whirling dervishes, looked around the old colonial buildings, and had tea at the Grand Hotel. I was fascinated by the city, but I did hear stories of teachers who arrived, took one look around and then demanded to go home, only to be told they had a year’s contract to fulfil. Teachers were allocated to schools around the country with little say as to where you went. On my first tour I was sent to El Damazine in Blue Nile Province with two other guys, Rory McClane, a Scotsman on his second tour, the previous year he’d been posted to Dongala in the north, and Dave O’Neil, a newbie like me.

Finally we were given some money and a pile of signed stamped paperwork; we then had to find our own way to our schools.

Getting started

Sudan only had a limited road system, most of it built in the seventies as foreign aid. There was also an antiquated rail network that had been built by the British that was crumbling due to lack of maintenance. The first part of our journey to Wad Madani (the second city) was fairly easy as this was on the road, from there we had to get the train. As the summer is The Sudan’s wet season the countryside was a sea of mud which meant that Ed Damazine was cut off from the outside world except for the train which ran once a week. The engine was a ancient steam relic and carriages wooden boxes with wooden seats. It was heavily overcrowded with as many people on the roof as inside, luckily we managed to get seats but on one journey I had to stand for 12 hours. The train chugged along at a walking pace, stopping at difficult sections and for ‘comfort’ breaks; it usually took a day to go the 100 miles. Getting off the train, I’ve never forgotten the sight of the vivid, emerald green of the grass, dotted with white egrets, back dropped by a grey lowering wet season sky.

As civil servants we were allowed to stay in the Government rest house until we found somewhere else to live. Luckily we befriended a local businessman – Bushra, who had a house to rent. I lived there with Rory and Dave on my first tour, and on my second tour with Louise.

Ed Damazine was a ‘new’ town built in the 1960’s as part of the infrastructure that grew up around the building of the Rosaries dam, which dammed the Blue Nile a couple of kilometres out of town. There was another much older settlement, Rosaries, about half an hour away on the far bank of the Nile which was a more picturesque place to live as the houses (mainly huts) were scattered among a forested area. The sanitation and water supply was not as reliable here and we would have had to commute to work on the school bus, so we decided to stay in Damazine, where the school was within walking distance.

The Schools

We had a few weeks before the start of term to meet the teachers, look around the school and do more paperwork. Nearly all the other local teachers were young men, most of whom had come up through the school system themselves. They were all putting in the years working in a Sudanese school until they could qualify to head off to teach in Saudi Arabia, where they could earn some real money, and so be able to get married.

In my first tour I worked at the Girls Higher Secondary School and then at the Boys’ school on my second. Most of the pupils (aged from 13 – 18) were the children of Sudan’s small middle class, children of that age were usually working, so if they were at school and often having to pay for board as well – the parents had to have a reasonable income. Class sizes of sixty or seventy were normal and generally we were only talking to the front two rows, as you went further back, comprehension drifted away.

School hours were from 0730 – 1300, with a break mid morning for ‘breakfast’ usually addas (lentils), which was eaten communally.

The pupils were all working towards a final exam which was made up of multiple choice questions and if they passed it, it meant that they could then be considered for University. The academic publisher, Longmans, had created a complete range of text books specifically for The Sudan, called the NILE course, which was pretty well put together. The curriculum was fairly rigid, laid down by the Ministry of Education and some of the set texts had obviously been big hits when the men at the ministry had been at school, so we worked our way through plays like ‘Arms and Man’ by Bernard Shaw, which had little relevance to modern Sudan. Of course as the aim of the system was to get the pupils through the final exam, there was a lot of ‘teaching to the test’ with the pupils becoming quite agitated if something wasn’t ‘in the book’. I heard about some English teachers being complained about because many of them had been on TEFL courses and they tried to use modern learning techniques in the classroom. The pupils used to go to the Head of English and say that lessons were being wasted, learning things that weren’t ‘in the test’.

As well as the set books we also used easy readers, shortened versions of novels for language learners, many of which were supplied by the British Council who sent out book boxes to the schools. Again many of the titles were fairly old fashioned. I remember starting ‘Moby Dick’ and trying to explain the idea of whales and sailing ships to girls who had never even seen the sea.

At the end of every term there were exams which the students took very seriously and among the star pupils it was very competitive. We had to make up the questions ourselves, nearly all were multiple choice, then type them onto stencils on an ancient typewriter. The papers were then run off on a bander machine. The big job was marking them all, with the kids endlessly pestering you to know their results.

Discipline was never a problem; most of the students knew that they were fairly privileged to be at school at all. When a teacher walked into a room, everyone stood up and stayed standing until told otherwise. Corporal punishment was regarded as normal. Every school had a solider; a retired NCO whose job was to ring the bell and whip the kids – with a whip. At the girls school the solider was a kindly old gentleman much loved by the students; on the odd occasion he had to do his job, and one day the headmaster had a whole class whipped for being late for a lesson, he reluctantly did it but only used the top 10cm of his whip, and only on the hand. The solider at the boys’ school was a complete contrast, tough as nails; he also ran the schools cadet force. His idea of fun was to chase the boys out of the boarding house, thwacking anyone not moving fast enough.

Of course stroppy adolescents are the same the world over, and they were keen on ‘strikes’ and protests. After the Boys school was disqualified from Blue Nile province school football championships (after fielding a player from another school), the boys organised a protest march, and for the final, the towns police force turned out in riot gear.

Living

Living in Sudan took some getting used to. Firstly there was the weather, arriving in the wet season meant that rain, dampness and mud were pretty constant. In the town off the tarmac roads, everything was a sea of mud, and almost nothing could move outside it. Once the wet finished it did mean that basic commodities could finally get through and even luxuries! We were always absurdly excited when the first Pepsi truck arrived. As the year went on the land became as hard as concrete and great splits appeared in it. Then the weather was bright and cool in the mornings and overall very pleasant.

We were lucky to have a large house in a quiet area and surrounded by a high wall, the norm in Sudan, so we had our privacy. Our kitchen was a tap around a drain at one end of the garden and a charcoal burner. The choice of food was fairly limited; we used to make ‘Damazine stew’, basically a stew of onions, garlic, tomatoes and potatoes. When we got tired of this we bought in fuul, the staple dish of the country, brown beans which were boiled for hours, then mashed up with a Pepsi bottle and salad, cumin, oil and occasionally egg added. Like many staple dishes around the world, you can eat it every day and it never seemed to get boring. I still enjoy it even now, buying the beans precooked. When the roads opened we had a good choice of fruit, and fish always served deep fried, came from the Nile. The meat market in the souk, where cows were hacked to bits with axes in medieval conditions, pretty much made us vegetarians.

On my first tour, booze was still legal although Blue Nile was a ‘dry’ province. None was ever for sale and we only ever had it when we visited our ex pat neighbours, American aid workers or engineers at the dam. By ’86, booze was illegal everywhere so the only drink was Aragi, a liquor distilled from dates and usually tasting pretty disgusting. In the big cities, it was very easy to get but in Damazine we got it from the Greeks, an elderly father and son, who were part of the large African Greek Diaspora (Khartoum had a Greek school) and just about hanging on.

Our house had a long drop toilet, a cubicle with a hole in a slab of concrete into which everything dropped into a septic tank, in which huge cockroaches lived and mosquitoes bred. Of course there was no toilet paper so we used the method used throughout the Arab world of cleaning up with water and your hand. Our toilet had an upmarket tap and hose to help you do this, but most just had a plastic bottle.

We had a pleasant veranda area, which we furnished with angrebs, (beds made of wood and strung with rough cord), a table and a few chairs. We had an immersion heater to boil water and or course a short wave radio to visit to the World Service. The bedrooms were the only rooms with ceiling fans, and I have fond memories of being wafted by warm air while lying under the mosquito net. The electricity could go off at any time for an indefinite period and being plunged into darkness meant a scramble for torches and then matches to light candles. At one time the water, which often came out of the tap the colour of Oxtail Soup, went off, and for a few days we had to carry buckets from our neighbours house before we tracked down the man who fixed these things. I’m always amazed when I hear people say they can’t live without their mobile or some other gadget; living without running water for a few days will help you reassess your priorities.

It was fortunate that we’d bought lots of books to read, as we had a lot of spare time to read them. Damazine had a small library in the cultural centre which had been left behind by workers on the dam in the ‘60’s. This was like walking into a literately time warp, lots of authors like Morris West, who were big in their day and at least ten copies of ‘Fear of Flying’ by Erica Jong, which I never got around to reading. We read pretty much everything else out of sheer necessity.

Another constant of tropical living was illness, which used to come and go fairly regularly. Very often you just had a fever, it wasn’t malaria, it was just another unknown tropical fever, this along with diarrhoea and stomach problems were the most common complaints. I had malaria a couple of times on my first tour; chloroquine was fast losing its effectiveness as a prophylactic and we all got it at some time or other. I knew teachers who had typhoid, Hepatitis A (fluorescent yellow eyes) and heard of others, who just went around the bend and had to be sent home. We used to ‘cure’ our own bouts of Malaria by following the instructions in ‘Where there is no doctor’, a medical self help book, so I was really surprised when I got home to learn that malaria was regarded as a medical emergency requiring instant hospitalization.

As was the case with all problems, be it illness, lack of housing or pay not arriving, there was very little in the way of back up. Apart from the liaison officer in Khartoum, who had almost no resources, we had to sort out everything ourselves. So no matter how tough and difficult life became you knew you had to cope with it, we knew the cavalry would never arrive. What it did mean was that was that you made strong bonds with your fellow teachers, for who else could we turn to if not each other?

The Sudanese really took the Islamic code of hospitality to strangers seriously. We were always being invited to tea or for breakfast (more like bunch) and the main social meal of the day. Even chance encounters would result in an invite, regardless of where you were. In the Muslim world, teachers had a status up there with other professions, so even buying tomatoes in the market, the stall holder would address you as ‘teacher’, which was quite a contrast to how the profession was being run down at home. The people always seemed content with their lot, with strong family bonds and a general sense of optimism, which made it a pleasant community to live in. Some things they could not understand about us were our lack of interest in religion, and the fact that Louise and I did not have any children. The inevitable question was, ‘How many children do you have?’ When the answer came there were always exclamations of surprise, and towards Louise, looks of pity.

One advantage of being a teacher is that you get lots of holidays and once the road was open you were free to explore the rest of the Sudan. For short breaks we used to visit our ‘neighbours’ up in Sennar and Singa, the towns to the north of us. With people just like you stationed all around the country, you could arrive in any town, ask for the English teachers and expect a warm welcome and a place to sleep and we had lots of people come to stay with us. On one holiday we went up to the bright lights of Khartoum and then along the road to Kassala with its backdrop of domed mountains. On my first tour I carried on up to Port Sudan, visiting the incredible lost city of Suakin and then back across the north of the country to Atbara and the pyramids at Meroe on the Nile. Hard travelling but a great trip.

Leaving

When the final term came to an end we then had to face the long process of leaving the country. In the Sudan this involves collecting paperwork, firstly from your school; you couldn’t get an exit visa without a letter of release from your headmaster. Then packing up the house and heading up to the Ministry of Education in Wad Medani, where you got more papers and your final pay. I spent weeks hanging around here, the second time I did it I read ‘War and Peace’ in a fortnight. Finally up to Khartoum for the last bits of paper, and our air ticket home.

All of it was a real adventure, and we felt we were doing a real job. I met several teachers who signed up year after year, dedicated educators who loved the country and who felt they were making a real difference. Such a contrast to the ‘pay to volunteer’ and do your bit for the third world rackets that are so common today.

Whether we achieved much, it’s difficult to say. Did many of my students, particularly the girls go on to use their English? With the oil industry now a big employer, I would hope that some of them are using what I taught them to secure good jobs in the new economy. Who knows, I’d very much like to go back to find out, or at least see the town and school again.

Africa by Overland Truck 2010

will — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 05:53:00 GMT

I first did an overland truck trip in Africa four years and enjoyed the experience so on my recent trip to East Africa I decided to do another one, mainly for convenience and safety concerns but also because on a truck you get a group of readymade friends to share the journey with you. I decided to go with the devil I knew, so booked again with Africa Travel Company (ATC) who are based in Nairobi. On this trip I actually went on two trucks, the first one had come up from Cape Town, I got on at Dar es Salam and went on it up to the North Tanzanian game parks then onto Nairobi. There I got on a truck with a new group and leader that went to the Masai Mara national park, then into Uganda, driving down to the far south of country to see the mountain gorillas over the border in The Congo. This leg was the start of the groups 52 day trip that ended in Cape Town. I got off the truck when it arrived back in Nairobi, and all together I spent three weeks – trucking.

One thing that is immediately apparent is that nothing has changed in the four years since I last travelled with ATC. The organisation of the truck, rotas, the daily routine and all the equipment is exactly the same. Even the pre departure information sheets don’t seem to have been amended. At the end of each trip passengers are asked to fill in assessment sheets (I filled in two this time round) with their thoughts on their experience and how things could be improved and no doubt ATC has collected thousands over the years; what happens to them all? No doubt someone must have made a few good suggestions, but nothing that has ever been actioned. Anyone reading my original article ‘Africa by Overland Truck’ will still get a pretty accurate picture of daily truck life.

Of course, different companies do things in different ways, I saw one truck that had individual lock up boxes for passengers to put their valuables, ATC’s safe was communal; and in one truck park, a ‘Rolling Hotel’ a monster German truck which has individual sleeping compartments as well as seating, so the passengers live entirely on the truck. They also ate their meals off tables, overlanding luxury! One factor to be considered when booking an overland trip is how many crew it has. ATC always have a tour leader, a driver and a cook. If there are only two crew, it means that the passengers have to do the cooking which can lead to variable results and extra work for all concerned, something you may not want if you are on holiday.

As before, some passengers had unrealistic expectations of what to expect on an overlanding trip, usually because the agent who had sold the package hadn’t given them full information. One girl was aghast that there were no tables at meal time and that plates have to be balanced on your knees. Another thought that the tents were put up every night by the crew or the people at the campsites, they never considered that they would have to do the job themselves.

There were some long driving days on the trips I did, it was very apparent that the itineraries are all based around ‘activities’. For example the leg from Kenya into Uganda, stopped in Kampala for the night (all we saw of it was a shopping mall) and the next day we drove the length of the country to the far south west so that we could go Gorilla trekking in The Congo. We had a day at Lake Bunyonyi (very nice) a day trip into Rwanda (organised by the tour leader) then had another fourteen hour driving day all the way to Jinja, where the group could do adventure activities like white water rafting. Most of the country of Uganda was just passing scenery out of the window, mainly because, no matter how nice or interesting a place may be, everything is judged on what ‘adventurous activities’ can be done there. I looked around the town of Jinja, which had some pleasant cafes and the site of the source of the Nile which I wanted to see. No one else on the truck bothered, and the tour leader never suggested going into town; the other passengers not rafting just hung around the campsite all day. The same in Eastern Kenya, we passed some lovely countryside with lots of tea plantations, but I don’t suppose anyone’s considered it might be interesting to visit one? Instead endless driving, as we had to reach a particular campsite as soon as possible.

These long days in the truck do become quite wearing and when I met up with my first group in Dar, they were exhausted by it. The leg from Victoria Falls to Dar is one I’ve never done on a truck for good reason, as there are very few places to do activities this means lots of long driving days. Zambia is basically two days driving and nothing else. There are a few stops in Malawi, as there are things to do there, like at Kandi Beach; but after that a couple of long days on the road to get to Dar. Everyone loved Zanzibar as it was like a holiday away from the truck and the routine of getting up and eating breakfast in the dark, driving all day, then putting up your tent and eating dinner in the dark. On my first truck we didn’t even stop for lunch, only toilet breaks, we had to make sandwiches and eat them as we went along. Most people could easily have done with a week in Zanzibar but we only stayed three nights.

The one factor you cannot control on an overlanding trip is who your travel companions and crew are. Luckily on both my trucks I met some interesting people and we all got along very well. Australian travel agents seem to push ATC tours so there were a lot of Australians on both the trucks I was on. I also hopped a short ride with another ATC truck at the end of my trip where nearly all the passengers were Australian!

The two tour leaders I travelled with were completely different in the way they approached the trip and dealt with people. On the first truck from Dar to Nairobi, the leader was a young American guy who was totally in love with Africa and who conveyed his enthusiasm at all times; he was also an outstanding naturalist. He saw himself as a guide, and he gave a running commentary not only the wildlife but also the landscape, people and everything else we could see out of the window. He had a very hands off approach to running the truck, the chores rota existed and he left us to get on with it, he didn’t feel the need to oversee everything. The same with getting room upgrades and border crossings, we were left to sort it out ourselves, and nobody thought that there was a problem with this.

On the second truck the leader was a young English woman who set the tone at the beginning at the start by stating that she was ‘a tour leader and not a guide’ and also ‘that the next two weeks will be some of the worst of your life!’ Luckily I’d had some experience so wasn’t too bothered by that, but I did feel sorry for one Australian man as the trip was his annual two week holiday so not a big moral boost for him. In the past she’d had a lot of young people on her truck, so she was very hands on, constantly making sure things were done. This was an approach that did not work so well with an older more mature group, as it came across as endless nagging and moaning. Although a jobs rota was set up, the leader did not like to see people standing around doing anything, so she began to press people into helping with chores. After a few days the system began to collapse, as the attitude developed of ‘everyone’s doing it, so nobody’s doing it’ and the people who were supposed to be doing a certain job stayed away, safe in the knowledge that a few stalwarts and whoever had been press ganged were doing the work. Not surprisingly this led to a lot of resentment and even more yelling and moaning from the tour leader. On the other trucks I’d been on, the jobs rota worked because it was fair, the jobs were shared out and everyone had a day off; and everyone was mature enough to realize that doing some work was part of the deal. Micro management by the tour leader managed to wreck it fairly quickly. In the end I was glad to get off, just to get some peace and quiet.

After I left the truck at Nairobi I travelled alone, back down to Zanzibar and onto Malawi. I’d originally joined an overlanding tour as it was convenient, particularly with arrangements for safaris in the main game parks, and for safety concerns. Of course I had a few white knuckle bus journeys and the ATC trucks hadn’t been driven very fast, hence the endless hours on the road. What was a concern though is that a driver who has been at the wheel for fourteen hours, sometimes day after day, is a driver who may very well make an error. I saw innumerable truck and bus wrecks at the side of the roads, many probably made by tired drivers. Another reason the trucks went so slowly was that they weren’t in great condition. On my second trip we nicknamed the truck the ‘tortoise’ as it could only crawl up hills, and on one occasion we had to stop for emergency repairs. These things happen but you don’t expect to set off on a road trip with a vehicle that starts out with problems.

Would I do another trip? Probably not. I’ve overcome my reticence about travelling on African public transport and if I went to the region again I feel I could get around fine on my own. Certainly a tour that involves getting up well before dawn for days on end and endless driving, just so that some people can do activities doesn’t have much appeal. These trips offer companionship which is great but they don’t add much else in the way of added value, they get you from A to B, feed you and arrange trips and that’s about it. The only way I would sign up with another ATC tour is if the young American tour leader was leading it. He really added value; unfortunately he seemed to be very much the exception.

Photos: East Africa 2010

will — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 06:11:00 GMT

New Website and New Trip

will — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 07:49:00 GMT

On August 17th I’m setting out on a new trip to East Africa, which will see me clock up my 100th country. I will be keeping a blog and writing articles as and when I can which you can read on my new website at: www.grahamwilliams.net .This blog will no longer be updated but I will still respond to comments on it.

My Travel CV

will — Tue, 5 Jan 2010 22:20:00 GMT

This CV outlines my travels experience to date and is aimed at prospective employers, to highlight my experience and knowledge and my commitment to travel and the outdoor life.

Travelling mainly independently, I have now visited 98 counties and spent almost a third of my adult life abroad. I have also trekked and climbed in most of the great mountain regions and visited many of the worlds great cultural sights.

Numbers in brackets (97, 08 etc) indicate trip dates. To obtain a conventional employment based CV contact me via the ‘About will’ page.

The Big Trips

South East Asia. September 09 – December 09

Malaysia Kuala Lumapur, Georgetown. Thailand Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai, Bangkok, Ko Samet, Ko Samui, Krabi, Trang, Ko Hai, Ko Phi Phi. Vietnam Hoi An, Hue, Hanoi, Sapa, Dien Bien Phu. Laos Don Khone, Pakse, Attapeu, Muang Ngoi, Luang Prabang, Mekong River.

The Americas, Southern Africa and India/Nepal. April 2005 – April 2007

Canada Vancouver. USA Seattle, Mt Olympus & Mt Rainier National Parks, Mt St Helens, San Diego. Mexico Ensenada, Mazatlan, Durango, Zacatecas, San Miguel d.a., Queretaro, Mexico City, Oaxaca, Zipolete, San Cristobel, Palenque, Merida, Chichen Itaz, Tulum. Berlize Berlize City, Caye Caulker, Crooked Tree, San Ignacio. Guatemala Flores, Antigua (Language School), Lake Atitlan. Honduras Copan. El Salvador Santa Anna, Suchitoto. Nicaragua Leon, Granada, Isla de Ometepe, San Juan. Costa Rica Liberia, Samara, Santa Elena, La Fortuna, San Jose. Panama Boquete, Bocas del Toro, Panama City. Colombia Medellin, Salento, Parque National de Los Nevados, Cali, Popayan, San Agustin. Ecuador Otavalo, Quito, Chucchilan, The Galapagos Islands (Three weeks travelling independently), Banos, Robamba, Guayaquil. Peru Mancora, Chiclayo, Huaraz, Lima, Nasca, Arequipa, Colca Canyon, Cusco and the Sacred Valley, Lake Titicaca, Bolivia La Paz, Potosi, Sucre, Salar de Uyuni, Coroico, Rurrenabaque & Rio Yacuma. Brazil Porto Velho, Manaus (via the Rio Madeira), Brasilia, Ouro Preto, Rio de Janeiro, Iguazu Falls. Paraguay Asuncion, Encarnacion. Uruguay Colonia, Montevideo, Frey Bentos. Argentina Buenos Aires, Cordoba, Mendoza, San Rafael. Chile Santiago. South Africa Pretoria, Jo’berg, Kimberley, Bloemfontein, East London, Hogsback, Cape Town, Orange River. Nambia Fish River Canyon, Swakopmund, Etosha National Park. Botswana Okavanga Delta, Chobe National Park. Zimbabwe Victoria Falls, Hawange National Park. Zambia Livingstone, Lusaka. Tanzania Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar. India Goa, Mumbai, Ajanta Caves, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Pushkar, Jaipur, Bharatpur, Agra, Delhi, Calcutta. Nepal Pokhara, Annapurna Region, Chitwan National Park, Kathmandu.

Asia, Australasia and Russia. April 1994 – April 1998

Poland Krakow, Warsaw Belarus (via train). Russia Moscow, Trans Siberian Railway, Irkutsk, Lake Baikal. Mongolia Ulan Bator. China Beijing, Xian, Chengdu, Yangsi River, Wuhan, Nanjing, Shanghai, Yangshuo, Kunming, Dali, Lijing, Tiger Leaping Gorge, Tengchong, Kashgar, Urumqi, Turpan, Dunhuang, Golmud, Lhasa. Hong Kong Lived and worked in the city for fourteen months. Vietnam Sapa, Hanoi, Hue, Hoi An, Nha Trang, Dalat, Ho Chi Min City. Cambodia Phnom Penh, Siem Reap,Sihanoukville. Thailand Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Surat Thani, Kanchanaburi, Mae Sot, Ko Samui, Krabi, Ko Phi Phi, Ko Chang, Ayutthaya, Pai. Laos Vietiane, Luang Prabang, Phonsavanh. Burma Rangoon, Mandalay, Maymyo, Pagan, Moulmein, Inle Lake. Philippines Manila, Mindoro, Boracay, Panay, Luzon, Santiago, Mayon, Leyte.Malaysia Georgetown, Cameroon Highlands, Kualar Lumpur, Kota Bahur, Kuching, Kota Kinabalu, Sandakan, Malacca. Brunei. Singapore. Indonesia Medan, Bukit Lawang, Lake Toba, Bukittinggi, Bali, Yogyakarta, Solo, Cemoro Lawang, Lombok, Gili Islands. Australia Sydney, Adelaide, Coober Pedy, Alice Springs, Townsville, Tully (worked for two months), Brisbane, Byron Bay. New Zealand Auckland, Rotorua, Napier, Wellington, Murchison, Franz Josef Glacier, Te Anau, Dunedin, Christchurch, Arthurs Pass National Park, New Plymouth, National Park (Tongarino) Bangladesh Dhaka, Chittagong, Rajshahi, India Darjeeling, Calcutta, Varanasi, Lucknow, Cawnpore (Indian Mutiny sites), Orchha, Khajuraho, Dehli, Manali, Dharmsala, Amritsa, Mumbai, Poona, Goa, Hampi, Bangalore, Mysore, Cochin, Kovallum, Trivandrum, Madurai, Trichy, Pondicherry, Mamallapuran, Madras, Puri Pakistan Lahore, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Chitral, Kalash valleys, Muree, Karakoram Highway, Gilgit, Bartit Valley, Karimabad, Minapin, Passu. Nepal Kathmandu, Pokhara, Annapurna Region, Chitwan National Park. Sri Lanka Columbo, Kandy, Dambulla, Polonnaruwa, Annuradhapura, Unawatuna.

Other Travels

Albania Tirane, Durres, Elbasan(88)

Argentina Buenos Aires, El Calafete, El Chalten, Trelew, Peninsula Valdes (01)

Belgium Ardennes Region (03)

Cuba Havana, Vinales, Bay of Pigs, Trinidad (03)

Egypt Cairo, Alexandria, Lukor, Aswan(87) (90)

Estonia Tallin (93)

Ethiopia Addis Ababa, Lake Tana, Gonder, Lalibela, Abiata National Park (03)

France Paris (83)(87)(08), Champagne, Rouen (85), Bayeux, and the Normandy, Somme and Arras battlefields (03) Nice (09)

Gambia/Senegal Banjul, Toubakouta, Kaolack, Soma, Tendaba (02)

Germany Innumerable visits since 1976.

Greece Crete (most years since 88), Athens (05)

Holland Amsterdam, Deventer, Breda (84,85)

Hungary Budapest (93)

India Dehli, Agra, Jaipur, Simila. (89)

Ireland/NI Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, Cork, Dingle, Limerick, (83) Bushmills, London/Derry (02)

Italy Venice (02) Tuscany (03) Rome (87) (04)

Latvia/Lithuania Riga, Vilnius(08)

Morocco Tanger, Rabat, Marrakech, Azrou, Fez (88)

Poland Poznan (92)

Portugal Lisbon, Oporto (98)

South Africa KwaZulu Natal, Durban, Umfolezi National Park, Anglo Zulu and Boer War battlefield sites, Ladysmith, Pietermaritzburg (99) Cape Town, Stellenbousch, The Garden route, Addo National Park(09)

Spain Madrid (01) Barcleona (02) Andalucia (07,08)

Switzerland Innumerable visits since 1976.

Syria/Jordan/Lebanon Aleppo, Hama, Damascus, Beirut, Amman, Dead Sea, Petra (00)

Tunisia Hammamet, Tunis, (08)

USA/Canada Boston, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Chicago, Wisconsin, Great Lakes, Adirondack Park (NY), New England (92)

Uzbekistan Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva (93)

Business Travel

Lonely Planet Travel Guides. Sales Manager - Europe, Middle East and Africa. August 2001 – February 2005

Travelled extensively in Europe and the Middle East spending a quarter of the year abroad. Germany Hamburg, Frankfurt, Koln, Stuttgart, Munich, Berlin, Holland Amsterdam, Weesp, Den Haag Switzerland Geneva, Bern, Zurich, Fribourg, Olten. Scandinavia Copenhagen, Stockholm, Gavle, Oslo, Helsinki, Belgium Brussels, Ghent, Tielt Italy Turin, Milan, Modena, Bologna, Spain Madrid, Barcelona, France Paris, Estonia Tallin, Czech Republic Prague, Hungary Budapest, Greece Athens, UAE Dubai, Saudi Arabia Riyadh

Onslow Books Limited. Export Sales Manager. April 1998 – August 2001

Spent a third of the year travelling on business to Germany Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Koln, Stuttgart, Munich, Darmstadt, Freiburg, Austria Vienna, Switzerland Geneva, Lausanne, Fribourg, Bern, Zurich, Basel, Olten, Belgium Antwerp, Brussels, Kortrijk, Ghent, Holland Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Haag, Utrecht Slovenia Ljubljana, Greece Athens Cyprus.

Harper Collins Publishers – London. Export Sales Manager. July 1990 – April 1994

Spent a third of the year travelling on business to Denmark Copenhagen, Sweden Malmo, Lund, Gothenburg, Stockholm, Uppsala Norway Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim, Iceland Reykjavik Germany Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Koln, Stuttgart, Munich, Darmstadt, Freiburg, Austria Vienna, Malta

Early Travels

The Sudan. July 1982 – April 1983, July 1986 – April 1987

Worked as an English Language Teacher in Ed Damazine, Blue Nile Province. As an employee of the Sudanese government I taught in the Boys and Girls Higher Secondary School, living under local conditions and on local pay. I also had to arrange my own accommodation and transport. During vacations I travelled throughout the Sudan, Khartoum, Port Sudan, Kassala, Suakin, Atbara, Shendi, Meroe, Wad Madani, Kosti, and the Ingessana Hills.

Europe. July – August 1976

Hitched hiked from Britain through the Belgium and Germany to Czechoslovakia, then to Austria, through Yugoslavia, with a side trip to Romania, then through Bulgaria to Istanbul. I then travelled down to Athens, through the Peloponnese, then north to Corfu. I took a ferry to Italy and travelled up to San Marino and Venice via Naples and Rome, then across the country to the South of France and Monaco. I re-entered Italy, travelling though the Lakes region into Switzerland. From Geneva I travelled through Eastern France back to the Channel Ports and home.

Europe. July – August 1975

After a period working on a Swiss Farm, I hitched hiked through Switzerland, Austria and through Germany up the Necker, Rhine and Mosel Valleys to Luxembourg. I travelled up through Belgium and Holland to Amsterdam, before crossing the north of Belgium and back to the Channel Ports and home.

Travel Writing

I have built up a portfolio of well reviewed travel articles which can be found on:

http://journals.worldnomads.com/will

Contributor to and extensively quoted in the ‘Career Break Book’ published by Lonely Planet

Written updates for numerous guide books, including Lonely Planet Crete (Trekking in the White Mountain region), Lonely Planet Bangladesh, Rough Guide Crete and South Africa, Footprint South American Handbook, Footprint Pakistan and Footprint Laos.

Lectured at the ‘DT Travel Show’ in 2002 on ‘Volcano climbing in Asia and New Zealand’

Other information

Elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1992.

Highly experienced trekker, hill walker and Orienteer. Extensive trekking experience throughout the world. View my Trekking notes here

Well read in modern Travel Literature. Interested in Cartography and Natural History, particularly Ornithology and Geology.

Knowledge of German and Spanish.

Touch Typist. Computer literate, extensive experience of using MS Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint and the Internet..

Staying in touch

will — Sun, 3 Jan 2010 05:11:00 GMT

About a year ago I bought a netbook, a handy sized laptop which I though would be ideal to take travelling, for connecting to the net and writing articles on. I took it on a few weekend trips but didn’t use it much and often found that the wifi zones in cafes didn’t always work that well.

When I planned my last trip, three months in South East Asia, I deliberated hard whether to take my netbook with me. What if it got wet, got dropped or worst of all – got stolen? I also had images of myself sitting alone typing away in my hotel room, when I could be in the more sociable environment of an internet café.

Tony Wheeler the founder of Lonely Planet once wrote that internet cafes had taken over from Poste Restante offices as places to meet people and to some extent he was right. When travelling through South America I had some very pleasant encounters in net cafes, many of them were very pleasant and far as writing was concerned – productive places to hang out.

So I decided to leave my netbook at home, which was kind of ironic as I had bought it with just this sort of trip in mind.

I realized my mistake within a few hours of stepping off the plane, looking for my room in the hostel in Kuala Lumpur I came across a couple of girls sitting in the corridor tapping away on their laptops as the wifi signal was better than in the rooms. I soon discovered that many hotels and hostels have wifi as a matter of course, and now the place to hang out is the hotel lobby or the communal areas, as they have better coverage. Add in cafes and there are an awful lot places where you can now get online. In a couple of places every customer seemed to have a laptop or netbook which made me realize that quite a high percentage of travellers now carry one.

Added to this, as Asians are more likely to be wired, places to log on outside tourist towns could often be difficult to find and as they often double as the owner family’s front room, one often had to share the space with a couple of shrieking kids; either that or the local truants playing loud shoot ‘em up games. Logging on could also be quite expensive, particularly on the islands.

Interestingly, using ‘personal’ computers often seems to be quite a communal activity, if people are looking at a vid or a notable web page and are talking about it, they usually don’t mind if you have a peek and give your opinion. Netbooks/laptops and wifi are the new means, not only of staying touch with the outside world, but of getting talking to other travellers.

The hotel lobby/corridor is now the place to be and I will certainly be carrying my netbook on future trips.

Gallery: Hoi An and Hue

will — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:50:00 GMT

Hoi An and Hue - Vietnam

will — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:48:00 GMT

This week I entered Vietnam from Southern Laos, through the small border post of Bo Y, which has only recently been opened to foreigners. My bus then headed down highway 14 towards Da Nang following the valley of the PoKo River. I had heard that Southern Vietnam had been hit by Typhoon Ketsana at the end of September but I didn’t know that this area of the Central Highlands had been so badly affected. It was easy to see how high the river had risen and how torrents of water had poured down the hillsides and cut new channels along its banks, many of which looked like they had covered the road and gone through people’s houses. We crossed landslide after landslide, all of them now cleared but in a couple of places the road had completely disappeared, and we had to negotiate temporary roads bulldozed through the mud. It was still raining and all credit to the Vietnamese, the road was open and they were already rebuilding the missing sections but the people here really must have suffered.

My first destination in Vietnam was Hoi An, the historic trading town on the coast, whose centre has streets of wonderful old buildings, many made of wood. I’d met a couple of people who’d been in Hoi An when Ketsana came to call. The power was off and the town was flooded, not much new there I thought, as the last time I was here, fourteen years ago, I had to wade through a meter of water to get to a hotel and the power was intermittent. This time everything was fine, and whatever damage had been caused had been cleared up, although a lot of houses with corrugated roofs still had the sandbags on top of them which were used to hold them down. Hoi An was completely changed from when I was last here, the beautiful historic buildings were much the same, but there has been an explosion in the number of shops particularly, but also hotels and restaurants. If you have the cash you can stay and eat in some wonderful places. All these shops, particularly the tailors, rely on steady streams of tourists, most on packages and predominantly Australian who are bussed in from resorts on the coast. Walking up the street, the cries of ‘You buy something in my shop’ follow you all the way. All this commercialism doesn’t distract of the charm of the place, it is a lovely place to wander around and there a lot of very beautiful things to see. The waterfront now has rows of restaurants and when night falls and they’re all lit up, it’s very photogenic, and a great place to eat.

One thing that’s unique to Vietnam is that the cities don’t seem to have any kind of organized public transport system, there are no city buses. There are also very few private cars, instead everyone gets about either by cycle or by small motorbikes/mopeds, which throng the streets in their thousands. It’s like society had jumped a step, from no transport to private transport, missing out the publicly owned bit in between. What happened to communism? Everything can be carried by motorbike, usually with the driver holding on to it with one hand. I’ve seen pipes, metal rods, plate glass, five pigs (in metal cages), and to cap the lot, a motorbike carrying another motorbike and its driver. Interestingly for a developing country, Vietnam has a helmet law which is enforced and almost universally complied with. Another essential accessory, particularly for women are face masks (‘Hello Kitty’ masks being very popular) to keep out pollution, dirt, the sun and germs; swine flu is a continent wide obsession. Add sunglasses, and the city girls look like they’re all heading out to rob a bank.

My journey from Hoi An up to Hue took me past China Beach, which during the Vietnam War was the R & R ‘resort’ for American soldiers. Now it has been carved up into huge fenced off lots all with pictures outside of the luxury apartments that are going to be built there - For sales call the hotline number now !!!! A few of these behemoths are already been built and it’s clear to see that in a couple of years, China Beach will just be a wall of concrete. What would Uncle Ho have made of it all?

I passed through Da Nang which is a city made new, with lots of hotels and business centres and Hue is very similar, at least in the ‘New City’ which is on the southern bank of the Perfume River. The sights, the citadel and the Purple Forbidden City of the Vietnamese emperors is on the northern bank, and fourteen years ago this is where I spent all my time, I never had a reason to go to the southern bank at all. But now for travellers, the New city is the place to be, as most of the hotels, restaurants and travel agents are clustered in one area, with one street P.N.Lao as its centre. There’s even a backpackers hostel here with its residents permanently sprawled outside the entrance with beer bottles in their hands.

Hue is very flat and great city to cycle around. The size of the citadel is very impressive and easy to explore. Head out to its northern end, which has lots of lakes and a countryside feel about it, few tourists go there. When I went to the Forbidden City in 1995, the area you could visit was very small and there was little to see. Bombed to bits pretty much summed it up. Since then they’ve had the builders in with replica buildings constructed and more going up. Of course very little of it is authentic, but in a couple of year’s visitors with get a sense of the scale and grandeur of the original.

Just outside the citadel is one of Hues great institutions, Lac Thien, the famous restaurant where the owners are deaf and dumb. I went here in ’95, as did just about everybody as they were listed in the Lonely Planet guide, the only one in English at that time. Or I think I did as there were two restaurants next to each other then and outside one was a woman saying ‘Don’t go in there they aren’t the one in Lonely Planet, those people are just pretending to be deaf and dumb!’ Now there are three restaurants next to each other, all with similar names and all boasting the Lonely Planet quote ‘The food is awesom’. They also all have big boards outside listing all the guidebooks they are now in, which is pretty much all of them and have the same ‘world famous’ bottle opener, a piece of wood with a screw in it. Even though they are now a long way from where most travellers stay and eat they seem to be doing OK, and are even on the tour circuit. Two of the restaurants do seem to be owned by the same family, and the one I ate in did have a man who was dumb. Unfortunately, like so many places who are in all the books, they don’t have to try very hard and the food I ate there was pretty poor. So go and have a look, pick one of the three, have a drink opened with the famous bottle opener, but give the food a miss.

View pictures

Islands of the Mekong

will — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:21:00 GMT

Southern Laos used to be one of the backwaters of South East Asia and rarely visited by travelers. For me it was one of the few places in the region I hadn't been too but I’d seen pictures at a lecture some years ago of the rapids on the Mekong that looked well worth exploring, so I made a point of going there this time around.

Travel in Laos and Cambodia has changed a lot since I last visited these countries in the mid nineties. Road travel in both countries was still considered quite dangerous and you could only travel to certain ‘safe’ places. In Laos I traveled around by air. Not only is all that ancient history but the growth of transport links is way ahead of what is described in the guidebooks. It’s now possible to travel all over the region by VIP long distance buses and routes and border crossings that would have seen fanciful in the past are now wide open. It helps that many counties allow visas to be bought at border crossings allowing travelers to be more flexible.

I crossed from Ubon in Thailand to Paske in Laos buying a visa at the border (fees vary according to nationality). Of course as Laos was once part of the French Empire one of the first things I saw as a woman selling baguettes. From Paske I took a songthaew (a big pickup converted into a bus) to the town of Champasak. This involves crossing the Mekong on a ferry which was made of three boats nailed together with bits of wood. In Champasak there are various guesthouses and a new boutique hotel – the ‘Inthina Hotel’ (rooms $50 a night). Champasak is a small agricultural town, the reason to go there are the ruins of Wat Phou, which is a Khmer temple built before Ankor Wat. It is much smaller of course but it is very atmospheric as you climb a grand staircase up to a sanctuary built beneath a cliff face. There is also a very good museum, with some of the finer stone sculptures on display. Another pleasure is getting to the Wat, the 8 km cycle through the countryside with its backdrop of forest covered hills.

There are now well established mini bus links for travelers between Pakse and the Cambodian border and I took one down to Ban Nakasang, the main ‘port’ for the Mekong Islands.

At the most southern point of Laos the Mekong broadens out and splits up into what are known as ‘The 4000 islands’. Don Muang is the largest and the most developed but the two that attract the most visitors are Don Deth and Don Khone. Both these islands are now firmly on the backpacker itinerary and have both seen a lot of development.

Don Deth has the most guesthouses which stretch from its northern tip almost all the way around is shoreline to the south. Most of these have bungalows with either shared or en suite bathrooms and you pay for the comfort levels. In the cheaper places the water comes from the Mekong with squat toilets, some have fans. Very few places have 24 hour electricity and most places run generators from 1800 to 2200. Prices for rooms go from $2 to $12 per night depending on the amount of comfort. This may all change soon, as the islands have been wired up for mains power and there was talk of it arriving in the next month or so and this will probably lead to more facilities and higher prices. Don Deth is where most people stay and it the northern tip is the party place. A few places have slow and pricy internet connections. (I’m writing this in Pakse).

Don Khone is the larger island but is much less developed. The two islands are connected by a bridge built by the French in the 1920’s for a railway line the remains of which run across both islands. This was built to by pass the rapids and most of the guest houses and restaurants cluster around the bridge at the northern end. This is where I stayed as it’s quieter and more laid back than Don Deth.

Most guesthouses rent out bikes although the islands are small enough to explore on foot. Don Deth is very rural, mainly paddy fields, the homes of the local people are scattered amongst the guesthouses. Most of Don Khone is forested with only the northern tip cultivated and most of the population live in villages at the north and south of the island. One way to see a cross section of the islands is to walk or cycle the railway line.

Located at the north west edge of Don Khone is what I had really come to see, the Li Phi Falls. Falls doesn’t really describe them, they are more like grand rapids and although there is a good viewpoint they actually extend far further than you can see. They are impressive. On the other side of the island are more rapids, which are even bigger but few people make the trip out to see them as they are much less accessible and difficult to see. Here local fishermen have built massive fish traps where tons of fish are caught when the river reverses it flow in June and July. If you’re really keen (like me) you can take a trip out to the Khong Phapheng Falls downriver which are even bigger.

The islands are one of those places where people just keep on extending their stay, they’re great places to hang out. Moving on is pretty easy too, most guesthouses and restaurants sell bus tickets, and from here you can get a bus to anywhere in Laos south of Vientiane, to Phnom Penh, Siem Reap (one and half days away) in Cambodia and even Bangkok. So if you are traveling in this region make time to see the Mekong islands, it’s worth the effort.

See Pictures

Gallery: Southern Laos

will — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:11:00 GMT

Khao San Road - Bangkok

will — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:29:00 GMT

More pictures

Many travelers have mixed feelings about Khao San Road, the travelers ‘district’ in Bangkok. Its not the real Bangkok, its tawdry and commercial and is pitched only at the Westerns who are just passing through. It’s fairly unique though, I can only think of Themal in Katmandu and maybe parts of Cusco that have such an enclave that is pitched only at travelers.

For myself I’ve always rather liked it, when I was traveling around Asia in the mid nineties I used it as a base, visiting Laos, Burma, the Philippines and other parts of Thailand from there. It was familiar, the Thais in my regular hotel and eating spots knew me, and after spending time in places like Manila, it felt very safe. Khao San Road isn’t a destination, it’s a base camp, somewhere you can get things done; stock up on books, catch up on the news and then head off. This is where trips and adventures being. A few years I was in a travel agency in Copenhagen where they had a live web cam to Khao San, it was evening, people were walking about. I couldn’t imagine a stronger inducement to hand over the cash and run to the airport, I wanted to be there right then.

I was last here in 1998 and arriving here again was quite a shock, I was totally unprepared for the amount of change that had occurred in the intervening years. I could barely walk down the road the evening I arrived, the place was heaving with people, the street is a good as predestinated now, and closed off to most traffic. Chelsea and Liverpool were playing, and every bar was showing the match, which was also displayed on giant screens so every passerby could watch. In the past I’d always stayed at the back of Wat Chana Songkhram, a quiet area with a few guest houses and eating places. The road to it, Soi Ram Bhuttri, was even quieter, which made my shock even greater. The Soi and the whole area has become an extension of Khao San Road, huge bars, blaring music, hawkers’ stands, new restaurants and hotels, buildings completely demolished and rebuilt. There is even a British café that specializes in Fish and Chips and pies. I was stunned.

What’s interesting is that the people have changed too. The Road is filled with young Thais in the evening, looking for bargains, a night out, cheap drinks and some fun. There are more Asians too, Chinese and Koreans and even a few Africans milling about. You can even spot the occasional grey haired hippy no doubt thinking the whole place has gone to the dogs.

One group that has really arrived are the Indians, who run the tailors shops on every street corner and like to hustle, ‘You look in my shop’ or ‘A suit for you today’. The will do a complete outfit, suit, shirt and tie for $100, which reminds of one classic line from a Hong Kong guidebook, that a suit made overnight is going to look like a suit made overnight. What is completely new is that they also run restaurants, which seem to be popular with the Thais but are a little overpriced for the backpacker market.

Most people go to Khao San for the cheap hotels, a chance to eat some Western food, in addition to the banana pancake places,Starbucks, Macdonalds and Burger King have all arrived, and to buy cheap goods. The counterfeit knock off culture is alive and well with phony branded clothes, DVDS, CDs and general tat. There are more hawkers, ladies dressed in Andean costumes prowl the streets with jewelry and carved frogs, which make a kind of croaking sound with the back is rubbed, which of course they do endlessly and men walk around flashing laser pens. It seems that many people don’t leave without having a least one tattoo.

At night it’s all very loud, a real assault on the senses. Music blares from bars, people thrust placards in your face, cheap drinks, strong cocktails. People walk about with beer bottles in their hands. Men in Fez’s try to persuade you to visit their Moroccan restaurant. One common placard is one for a fish massage, called icthyotherapy. This is where you put your feet in a trough full of small fish who then nibble your feet and eat all the dead skin, apparently it tickles. In the bars the girls all wear branded cocktail dresses, and each tries to outdo the others in selling more of the beer brand that’s on their dress. I’ve never stayed up long enough to see when it all stops, but many places boast of being open 24 hours a day. Because it is so hectic few bars and cafes show movies anymore, which used to be a mainstay attraction.

One oasis of peace still remains and that’s the Wat Chana Songkhram, a beautiful Wat and seminary, which is now completely surrounded by commercialism. A few noodle stalls and T shirt sellers have got a foothold at one end but otherwise it’s very quiet. In the past the Wat was a refuge for unwanted animals, including at one time an emaciated pony that could barely stand up and a pack of mangy dogs, some of whom were down to their bare skin and still scratching away. It would have been a mercy to put them all down and maybe someone did because apart for a couple of dogs, they’ve all gone.

So love it or hate it, its worth seeing once, if only to buy some cheap clothes, buy a bus ticket or just to watch the people go by. It’s no longer purely for travelers, if anything the Thais and other foreigners are taking over, but as a traveler’s district – it’s still pretty unique.

Gallery: Khao San Road

will — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:09:00 GMT

Back to Malaysia

will — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:30:00 GMT

In the mid nineties I traveled all over South East Asia passing through Malaysia several times and I managed to explore most of the country including getting over to Borneo. It has always been a favorite of mine, a mix of cultures with a positive feel to it, although most travelers just pass through, regarding it as expensive and not that interesting. I was last here in 1998, when the roaring of the Asian tigers was muted as they were going through the Asian financial crisis at the time, a local version of what we are all now experiencing. Abandoned building sites were fairly common, as the money ran out. Returning this week after eleven years I was eager to see what had changed.

Zooming into the city from KL Airport on the super fast express train, you do feel that you’re in a country that’s still going places. Out of the window we pass by palm oil plantations and the odd stands of forest and bananas, watered by big brown rivers. Mixed in with all these are developments, huge apartment blocks, some of them twenty to thirty stories high, have been built with new ones being added. For some reason in a country that has a lot of land in proportion to its population, these monoliths are all clumped together, so a group of them probably contain the population of a small town.

Beside the railway you also see brightly colored buildings, Chinese and Hindu temples, and the more subdued mosques. Malaysia has a mix of races that all seem to get along together, although this has not always been the case. As a traveler it’s difficult to tell what tensions lie under the surface, but it has always appeared to me to be a tolerant place, it certainly makes it colourful.

As the train approaches Kuala Lumpur, their big ass status symbol appears on the horizon, the Petronus towers, the largest buildings in the world. This is Malaysia’s statement – we have arrived and if the number of new apartments still going up is anything to go by, the country continues to boom on.

In KL itself, little seems to have changed. Malaysia has a distinct smell, it’s the smell of spices, very subtle, not overpowering, mixed with cloves, again not too much; almost as it has just wafted over from Indonesia. The train station is filled with little kiosks piled up with goods, and the buildings are dimly lit, as if they couldn’t find any higher wattage light bulbs. I find my hostel in Chinatown, which is as hostels always seem to be in this country, tiled floors, no windows, a fan and nothing on the walls.

The night market in Chinatown has changed very little, although they do seem to have built a roof over it but very high up, so you still feel as if you are outdoors in a street and not in a building. Stalls are piled high with counterfeited goods, clothes, DVD’s,CD’s, watches and bags; though the software hawkers seem to have gone. Waiters try to hustle into their restaurants to drink their overprice beer, all is noise and bustle.

But it’s the little things that bring it all back, the chopped up fruit sold by the bag with a cocktail stick to eat it with, fried rice with a fried egg on top for breakfast. People walking by with plastic bags of Milo, the chocolate drink; yes - this is a familiar place.

There are some changes, Starbucks and Nandos have arrived as has Macdonalds, which were here before but now seem to be on every street corner. People use them for directions - turn left at Macdonalds, after all you can hardly miss them. Also continuing their plan for world domination, Tescos has arrived big time; their own brand products are omnipresent.

Travelling up to Georgetown, the Malaysians don’t seem to have a problem with their colonial past so haven’t gone in for renaming places, the countryside seems much as I remember it. There are still quite large stands of wild looking forest at the side of the road, mixed in with the palm oil plantations. As we pass towns, more of the high rise apartments are going up everywhere. On the outskirts of towns cookie cutter estates are being built for the middle classes which to a western eye these look rather soulless places, as the developers forgot to plant any trees or gardens.

When I tell people I haven’t been here for eleven years they all say, you must have noticed a lot of changes. Well the answer to that is no. Some new buildings have gone up, but where in the world haven’t they? It’s not the swanky new buildings that make a country, its the people, the smells and the small everyday things. I wonder if this will continue to be the same, as I make my way up the peninsular to the countries further north.

More Travel Writing

will — Thu, 3 Sep 2009 04:15:00 GMT

I have created a second blog at TravellerWill which is for shorter pieces of travel writing and general thoughts. Take a look. On my forthcoming trip to South East Asia I shall be jumping between blogs, with the World Nomads blog being reserved for the meatier stuff.

Frey Bentos

will — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:41:00 GMT

Years ago, when I was first planning my trip to South America I was looking at a map and saw that on the Argentine/Uruguay border was a small town called Frey Bentos. A name from past, when corned beef was a staple part of the British diet but one still found on supermarket shelves. It’s always interesting to discover a town which gave its name to a brand, so when I was in Uruguay I thought go and see what was there.

Frey Bentos itself is a quiet, pleasant town on the banks of the Rio Uruguay and it is named for its connections to the meat industry because on its outskirts is probably the biggest industrial archaeology site in South America – the Anglo meat packing works.

This massive complex of industrial buildings was a company town, complete with workers houses, grander dwellings for the managers, a hospital, a football club and even a golf course. The factory, which was one of the first industrial concerns in South America and was originally set up in the 1860’s by a German to produce a meat extract from Uruguayan cows, whose carcasses had until then been dumped, after their hides were taken for leather. The Liebig Extract of Meat Company was set up with British money to render down the meat to a product known to the world as OXO; and in 1873 it also started producing corned beef.

It is now possible to visit and tour the buildings which have been pretty much left as they were when the plant shut in 1979. An excellent museum has been created in the former abattoir, which displays the history of the site with a particular focus on the immigrants from all over the world who worked there. The captions in the museum are in Spanish but there are examples of wonderful old ads and Fray Bentos tins. In its heyday the plant employed 4000 workers and processed 400 cows an hour, as well as thousands of sheep, pigs and chickens; as the site is next to the Rio Uruguay, ocean going ships could take the products directly to Europe and the US.

I had my very own guided tour around the buildings (in Spanish only), which are much as they were when production stopped. None of the big machines have been removed and the huge compressors for the refrigeration plant and the meat cookers have just been left as they were. In one room thousands of meat hooks were piled up. There were separate walkways for cows and sheep, where they had a shower to clean them up before they were killed. In the factory’s switch room are banks of ancient electrical equipment, all imported from Great Britain and down at the riverside, were cranes and an old pumping house that brought water up to the plant from the river, all the machines British made. One massive building stored the carcasses ready to be shipped out; this was usually staffed by Russians and Scotsmen as only they could put up with the cold. Also on show are the company offices, which look perfect, if somewhat old fashioned, as if the workers had just popped out for a fire drill.

After being taken over by a British firm in 1924 and renamed the ‘Anglo’ the factory was expanded (helped along by the jump in demand during the two World Wars) to produce cheap meat for the world, which it did until 1979, when it finally closed. Britain’s entry into the EU effected sales and in 1971 the plant was given to the Uruguayan Government, who closed it in 1979. By that time it had become obsolete and unable to compete with modern Brazilian plants.

I visited the plant in 2006, but in October 2008 a Brazilian meatpacking company, Marfrig, reopened part of the factory and is exporting corned beef again. It has a much smaller capacity and only employs 100 people. I imagine the museum is still open to visitors if not the tours and if you are in the area, it’s very worth while checking out.

View Pictures here.

Gallery: Frey Bentos

will — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:37:00 GMT

Views ot the Anglo Meat Factory

Trekking in Western Crete

will — Wed, 5 Aug 2009 10:50:00 GMT

One of my favourite places to trek in Europe is around Loutro a village/resort in district of Sfakia on Crete’s South Coast. It nestles around a small bay, the only natural harbour on the South Coast and there has been a settlement here since Roman times. Nowadays only a few hundred people live here, and the place is almost deserted in the winter months. One of Loutros main attractions is that you can only get there by foot or by boat, the foothills of the Lefka Ori - the White Mountains, rise up directly behind the village, effectively cutting it off. As well as making it a very quiet and pleasant place, it is convenient base for some great trekking, particularly as it’s on the E4 trans European walking path. I have been coming here since 1988, walking my favourite routes many times as well as exploring the rest of the E4 and the Lefka Ori.

I have described some of easier trekking routes around Loutro, which I first wrote up for the Lonely Planet guide to Crete (3^rd and 4^th editions) but I have expanded and revised these online versions.

Two Easy Walks

Loutro has a small pebbly beach which can get quite crowded at weekends. Luckily there are here are two good beaches to the west and east of Loutro, both about an hours walk away. Both have small tavernas where you can food and drink, and have a boat service to Loutro if you can’t face the walk back, which is how the majority of visitors get to and from them.

Loutro to Marble Beach (Marmara Bay)

Marble Beach is a small beach at the mouth of the Aradhena gorge which lies 3 km to the west of Loutro and takes about an hour to walk to. There is almost no shade on the trail but there are places to stop and get drinks. The route starts in ally next to the Hotel Dhaskaloyiannis, in Loutro and climbs up to a gate and the top of the headland. To your right are the ruins of the sizeable Venetian fort. The Venetians scattered forts all along this coast the remains of which can be discovered in even very remote spots. The headland jutting in to sea is the site of ancient Finikas, a major town in Roman times, but there is nothing left to see now.

Bare left and follow the signs to Phoenix, note the black and yellow paint marks and poles which waymark the E4 path. Walk over the top of the headland bearing west until you are looking down on the next bay which contains the small settlement of Phoenix. The route now descends down a rough path to a junction with a sign to Phoenix. Take the right hand path that goes around the houses and which leads up to a dirt road. Cross the road and head up hill to the corner of a fence where there is a path junction with a very battered sign to Livaniana, which is the village you can see on the hillside above you. Bare left and head towards the gate in the fence.

The route descends down to Likos which is just a few houses, and is the place to stay if you want to get away from it all. You may be surprised to see a few cars here and in Finix. Roads were pushed through from Anopoli in 1996 which has led to some development particularly in Finix, although it must be a nerve racking drive and not the place to bring the hire car.

The trail now passes by the tavernas on the beach, including one called the ‘Small Paradise’ which is lovely spot for a drink. Walk past the last house and head towards the large cave and black/yellow paint markers at the end of the beach. You now climb up to a rock arch, care is needed here as the rock is very polished, (especially if you are coming the other way) and the easiest way not always apparent. Walk on with care as there is sheer drop to the sea on your left.

Shortly afterwards there is another short climb, then the path begins to open up. You will pass a junction with a path on your right which goes up to Livaniana, you continue on until you reach an open hillside. The path then descends easily, down to Marble Beach.

The beach is fairly small and pebbly but it’s a great place to swim. There are caves to explore and an area of rock beside the main beach is colonised by nudists. You can rent sun lounges and umbrellas and when you’ve had enough of the beach you can retreat to taverna on the headland above which does very good meals. You can even stay here in their very simple (no electricity) rooms. There is regular boat to take people back to Loutro each afternoon, if you don’t want to walk back.

Loutro to Sweetwater Bay

This is a very easy walk with no climb involved, about 3km distance and which takes about an hour. The path begins on the eastern edge of Loutro, ask for directions for the path as it starts behind the houses. You should end up at a gate with a small shrine and goat pen just beyond it. This is also the junction for the walk up to Anopoli. You are walking directly ahead along the coast, a little further on the path has a short climb up over a small spur at the bottom of which the village burns some of its rubbish.

Continue on for about an hour, the path is obvious all the way along. At one point it descends to the sea and a small beach if you fancy a swim. Just before it reaches Sweetwater the path crosses a headland with the small church of Timios Stavros on it. The concrete benches are for when people come here on his feast day. The path then descends steeply to the bay.

Sweetwater Beach is so named because there is fresh(ish) water here but you have to dig for it, as it’s around half a meter down. You will see rock pools that have been dug out by the semi permanent residents who live here, they are quite possessive of their water so don’t stick your water bottle in their pools. The beach is all pebbles and there is very little shade, though the taverna now rents out umbrellas. It’s also a nudist beach, so feel free to take your clothes off. Because there is water here, some people live on the beach all summer long, heading into Loutro of Sfakia only for provisions.

Try to avoid being too close to the cliff face, as stones do come down, particularly if it’s been raining and in the Spring and Autumn. One local told me that people run along this beach if they have to come this way out of season, because of the risk of falling rock.

When I first came here in 1988, an English man was selling food and drinks out of a cool box; by the mid nineties a hut was built on a concrete block which is still there selling drinks and simple meals. There is also a regular boat service to Loutro, which leaves in the late afternoon.

If you want to continue onto Sfakia, pick up the trail at the end of the beach. The path now continues across a large rock fall, which involves some climbing around, although it is waymarked. The route then climbs upwards until you are walking on ledge which has been cut out of a cliff face. Soon afterwards you join the tarmac road that goes up to Anopoli from Sfakia. Sfakia is 2.5km further on along the coast. Loutro to Sfakia, non stop will take about 2hrs.

Loutro to Marble Beach via Livaniana (3 ½ hours) 6.5 kms.

An alternative route from Loutro to Marble Beach that goes via the small mountain village of Livaniana and the lower reaches of the Aradhena gorge. This walk takes around 3 ½ hours and is 6.5 km long.

Take the path beside the Hotel Daskalogiannis up to the Venican fort. Follow the yellow/black E4 paint spots over the headland to Phoenix. As you descend there is a sign to Phoenix, take the right hand path that goes around the houses. Cross the dirt road and head directly up the hill towards Livaniana in the distance. At the top of the hill there is a junction with one path signposted to Livaniana. Follow the blue paint marks, the path now heads uphill and crosses the road again before entering a small gorge.

The old mule path then traverses up the gorge and links up the road again on the outskirts of the village. (One hour) 200 meters on is a simple taverna that sells cold drinks.

When I first passed through Livaniana in 1989 the village falling into ruins and was only inhabited by a few old people who moved like black ghosts amongst the derelict houses. All the young people had left for the towns. It’s notable feature was the remains of an enormous olive press, which is still there. In 1996 the road to the outside world arrived and this has allowed some redevelopment like the taverna and renovation of some of the houses.

To continue, walk past the taverna and up the hill into the village aiming for the church at the top. Walk past the church, following the blue spots to a fence where there is a sign pointing to Marble Beach and Anopoli. Follow the sign to Marble Beach, the blue spots will take you around the field and along the edge of the old olive terrace. After 100 meters you come to a gap in a fence, from where you can look down into the Aradhena Gorge.

The olive terraces you now see before you are hundreds of years old and from these generations of villagers extracted a living. After been nurtured by tens of thousands of hours of back breaking work, they have now been left to nature.

Turn left and follow the blue paint beside the fence, the path then lead you down towards the floor of the gorge. (35 mins) At one point you are directly under the gorge wall so watch out for falling stones and hurry through this section. If you look above you, you may see Bonelli’s Eagles riding the thermals. These large raptors nest on the gorge walls in this area and are commonly seen.

At the bottom there is sign up to Livaniana, beside a large tree. Turn left here down the gorge towards the sea and Marble Beach. After a few minuets you will pass a trough where you can collect water. The route now crosses an area where the gorge is filled large boulders. Often the path is not obvious but if route seems particularly difficult, then you have probably gone the wrong way. At one point the path reaches a sheer drop and turns left through some trees. Red and blue waymarking paint spots mark the way, with the red being the most reliable. As the path levels out it passes close to a sheer cliff, again move quickly here as there are goats above who can dislodge rocks; you will pass the remains of goats which have fallen off. The last few hundred meters are flat and easy and you then arrive at Marble Beach and its welcome taverna. 1 ½ km (45 mins).

To return to Loutro, follow the E4 path that starts behind the beach and the yellow/black paint spots. After half an hour you reach the hamlet of Likkos. Walk through the tavernas then follow the path (blue paint spots) which lead over the headland where you meet the path to Livaniana.

Loutro to Anopoli and the Aradena Gorge. 7km (9km if walking back to Loutro on the E4) (5 – 6 hrs).

A strenuous, full days walk, which takes in an authentic country village, and spectacular gorge with a beach at the end of it.

Make an early start (I usually get going about 0700) as all the hard effort is at the beginning, a 680 meter climb from the sea up to the plain of Anopoli. The path starts behind the Kri Kri taverna in Loutro, follow the path up to a fence with a new metal gate. On the other side is small shrine and goat pen. A path continues along the coast which leads to Sweetwater Bay (see Two easy routes). You turn left here and follow the good path which traverses back and fro across the hillside. After twenty minutes you will reach a junction by a small gorge, this path leads to Phoenix, you bare right here and continue climbing. Your objective is the small chapel you can see high above you.

After one hour you reach a dirt road with bee hives on it, cross it and keep going until you meet it again higher up. Then turn right and walk 100 meters until you reach a cistern on your left where you pick up the path again. At this point I am usually racing to beat the sun which is just over the horizon.

When walking this route in Summer 08 a new development was a goat fence that had been strung across the path. Turn left when you meet it and continue up the hill on a newly made path which soon reaches the original path higher up, turn left again when you reach it. Continue walking up, you are aiming for the point below the walled compound you can see above you. At the top (1 ½ hours, 4.7km) you have a fantastic view of the coast and the plain of Anopoli with the Lefha Ori mountains behind. Follow the tarmac road, which leads to the town square at the centre of Anopoli. (20 mins, 800 meters)

Anopoli is a small country town which sees few tourists. This is a place where you will still see old men dressed in black with large boots and hair nets, although they are dieing out fast. There are a couple of tavernas where you can get a simple breakfast and stay the night if you really want to get away from it all.

The easiest way to get to the Aradena gorge is simply to follow the road. Walk on following the road sign to Aradena. You soon reach the hamlet of Aghios Dhimitrios which has a shop and small guest house. Walk through the hamlet, the road soon switches back on itself by a large sheep fold.

Just as the ruins of Aradena come into view. 1 ½ kms (20 mins) look for a small charin and path on the right side of the road marked with faded blue spots. This is just after a bend. Walk along the path, it points directly at Aradena, until you reach a small shrine and the start of the path that traverses down into the gorge. Until the bailey bridge was built in 1986, the only way to get to Aradena and Ayios Ionnis further on was to walk down into the gorge and up the other side. The bridge is now used for bungee jumping.

At the bottom of the gorge turn left and walk on passing under the road bridge which is 130 meters above you. After 20 mins you will reach a wooden fence and the start of a staircase cut into the side of the gorge, complete with handrail - follow it with care as the path is not in good condition. After 300 meters you descend into the gorge again.

In the past the Aradena Gorge was a tough proposition as getting around this section meant scrambling using fixed ropes and ladders. The staircase was built in the mid nineties to make it more accessible, with the aim of popularising it for groups, which has not really happened because of poor transport connections, you still have a fair hike when you get to the bottom. Thankfully Aradena is still a wilderness walk, unlike the Imbos gorge near Sfakia which when I first did it in the late eighties was rarely walked. Now it is an ‘alternative’ Samaria, with ticket offices, a collection of tavernas at the bottom and coach loads of walkers marching down it every day.

Continue down the gorge following the cairns and faded red paint spots as the path passes over rock falls. Just before an area of vegetation you will see blue paint marks which indicate a path up to Livaniana and on right side of the gorge the same blue paint marking a path up to Aghios Ioanis. Walk on down the gorge until you reach a second junction just below a hillside with olive terraces. There is a large tree here and a sign for the taverna in Livaniana, which is above you.

Walk on and after a few minuets you will pass a trough where you can collect water. The route now crosses an area where the gorge is filled with large boulders. Often the path is not obvious but if route seems particularly difficult, then you have probably gone the wrong way. At one point the path reaches a sheer drop and turns left through some trees. Red and blue waymarking paint spots mark the way, with the red being the most reliable. As the path levels out it passes close to a sheer cliff, again move quickly here as there are goats above who can dislodge rocks; you will pass the remains of those who fell over. The last few hundred meters are flat and easy and you then arrive at Marble Beach and its welcome taverna. The gorge length is 5.5km from the bridge to the sea and the walk should take 2 to 2.5 hrs.

If you got up early, after a swim it’s probably time for lunch. A boat from the taverna backs to Loutro in the late afternoon or you can walk back, see Two easy routes.

Practicalities

Crete is a tough environment, particularly in summer, which in many ways is part of its appeal. Most of these routes are fairly rugged and it helps to have a decent pair of boots. Although on these treks you are never to far from civilisation you must carry some water, I work on an average of one litre per hours walking. You can usually buy more along the way. Also essential is a hat and plenty of blocker. Try and get the climbs done as early in the day as possible, slogging up in the midday sun is no fun.

Try and tell somebody, such as your guest house owner, where you are going and when you expect to be back. A twisted ankle could be a major problem if you run out of water. On some routes like Aradena don’t expect too many people to be passing by.

Maps. Maps of Greece used to be a state secret as they always imagined that the Turks would use them to invade the country. With the advent of Google Earth you can count the hangers at the Air Force base in Chania, making restricting maps a bit pointless. The Greek map publisher Anavasi now covers the Lefka Ori on three excellent maps to a scale of 1:25,000. On one side is a topographic map and on the reverse the same area showing the trekking routes including distances and walking times. The routes above are all covered on sheet 11.11. These maps can be bought locally or from Standfords in London.

GPS. The Anavasi maps use the Greek Geodetic Reference System. I took a GPS unit to Crete for the first time this year and tried to set my unit up to use the Greek system. This is extremely complicated (even with expert advice) and I didn’t manage to do it. Of course you can still use the lat/long coordinates and they are marked on the maps. On the walks described, a GPS really isn’t necessary, a good eye for the path most trodden and paint spots are a better instrument for finding the way ahead.

See pictures of landmarks along the route

Gallery: Trekking in Western Crete

will — Wed, 5 Aug 2009 04:52:00 GMT

Some of the landmarks you'll see if you follow the trekking routes described.

Gallery: Tunisia

will — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 07:44:00 GMT

Tunisia

will — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 07:35:00 GMT

Unusually for me I have just visited Tunisia on a package tour, the first bucket and spade package I’ve ever been on. Convenience and cost were a factor of course plus the fact it was a new country only 2 ½ hours flying time away; but Tunisia has been on my ‘to see’ list for a long time, and it was a good opportunity to see the sun before winter began in earnest at home, which it did the following week.

Arriving at night you are soon aware that you have arrived in a developing country. The bus takes you through streets with flats made of poured concrete with the washing hanging up in the windows, and the streets are shuttered up and deserted. The only people about are men sitting out in front of cafes, which are just a bare rooms filled with plastic tables and chairs, just as they do all around the Mediterranean. On the roads there are lots of police, hanging around roundabouts and junctions, stopping cars at random. Large areas of blackness separate the housing blocks.

But Tunisia is very civilised. One surprise is how very French it is. Even though the colonial masters have been gone for 52 years, everyone speaks French to some degree, all the signs are in Arabic and French, as are all documents. And as in every former French colony I’ve been to, from Vietnam to Senegal, in the early morning people walk back from the bakers - carrying baguettes.

It also appears a very tolerant place, Islam is very unobtrusive here. There are mosques of course but apart from the odd minaret, one is unaware of them. The Adhan – the call to prayer is seldom heard and there isn’t the sunset ‘prayer rush’ that you see in other Muslim countries. The dress code for women seems to be pretty much up to them, from completely covered up, to West European. The older people wear traditional dress, women in brown robes with a headscarf, men dark jackets usually, but a few old men wear jelibias with the Tunisian fez, a blood red colour but more of a felt cap than the more traditional ‘bucket’ type fez seen in the rest of the Middle East.

I imagine that this tolerance comes from Tunisia being a truly rainbow nation. The descendents of slaves brought from across the Sahara have mixed their genes with the Mediterranean peoples, including the Phoenicians who came originally from the Levant, to produce a mix of colours from completely black or white to all shades in between.

I was staying at the beach resort of Hammamet, and made a couple of excursions out to Tunis, the capital, which is only an hour away by local bus. The motorway passes through a lot of vineyards, for a Muslim country Tunisia produces a lot of wine, another legacy of the French and their Rosé is pretty good. Along the way a old woman herding a flock of sheep along the hard shoulder - the traffic didn’t slow down for a moment.

Arrival in Tunis and you know you are in a developing country, the smell of low grade petrol and lots of battered yellow taxis, all French models of course. Surprisingly the taxis not only had meters that worked and which were used but the speedometers were connected!

The centre of Tunis has two distinct parts, the medieval medina and the new French city. The medina really was an unexpected surprise, as interesting and colourful as any others I’ve seen in the Arab world. The tourist tours to Tunis from the coast consist of half day ‘shopping trips’ to the Medina, where groups of tourists are herded around the streets that surround the Great Mosque (which you can look into, mornings only). The stalls sell the usual tourist fare, jewellery and handicrafts and after a while you realize that most of the shops are selling pretty much the same stuff.

If you get away from the ‘shopping streets’ and head into the souks around them, then you discover a vibrant community where people have lived and worked for centuries. Tucked up small alleys are artisans making furniture and jewellery in simple workshops, herbalists hang their wares outside their shops, all of which are tiny; and everything else that people need to live, the butchers, bakers, and the rest are scattered down the narrow lanes. The streets are so narrow many are built over, forming arcades, rather like an enclosed village and as no vehicles can get down them, everything is delivered by barrow boys. Tucked away are small community mosques and coffee shops were fez wearing waiters take the orders, and men puff away the day on hubble bubbles.

When you out of the medina into the New Town you are immediately confronted by miniature version of the Arc de Triumph, so that you are in no doubt; this part of the city is French. The main drag, the Avenue Bourguiba, in an impressive tree lined boulevard with wide pavements and ornate cast iron lights. Cafes spill onto the pavements and sitting under the trees, you could at a push - imagine yourself in France. Its like walking from 12th Century North Africa into late 19th Century Northern Europe.

On another day I went on an excursion to another part of Tunis, to visit the ancient city of Carthage, or what little remains of it. Tunis has a good tram and suburban train system which is very cheap and efficient and I took a train from the city centre, across Lake Tunis on a causeway and out to the suburb of Carthage. This is where the rich live, lots of large houses surrounded by high walls and barred windows, and looking just like wealthy enclaves on the Northern side of the Med.

The archaeological sites of old Carthage are scattered around a large area and seeing them involves quite a bit of walking around. The main site is on Byrsa Hill which has the remains of some houses and a very impressive museum. I was always under the impression that when the Romans finally defeated Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War they had effectively trashed the place, famously sowing the soil with salt to make sure it never rose again. What I discovered was that the Romans rebuilt it, making it even bigger and grander than before and the remains that you see are of this Roman city.

When you’re tired of archaeology, and you do need lots of imagination to imagine a great city here, then it’s time to head up to Sidi Bov Said, another must for the tour buses. This is a little village on a promontory overlooking the sea, a very pretty place with lots of white and blue and grand studded front doors that are a feature of Tunisia. It’s no wonder it’s been attracting artists and bohemian types for centuries. Walking up from the station you have to walk the gauntlet of traders flogging tourist tat but the village itself is lovely and surprisingly quiet. There are great views of the coast, the ferries coming into port, and the massive Palace of Ali Bey the President, whose beaming face is on almost every wall.

As this was for me more of a relaxation holiday I didn’t venture further. You can travel out to the edges of the Sahara, either independently or on tours but this involves a couple of days on a bus. I was happy with my trips to Tunis and pleasant days on the beach. Tunisia has sun and sand but even if you are staying at a resort with a little more effort you can discover a lot more.

Colombia - the real risk

will — Fri, 25 May 2007 03:15:00 GMT

I’ve had a number of mails recently from people asking about safety in Colombia and I thought it would be useful to place things in context. The picture above is a chart in a Colombian bus station, which are displayed in all the bus stations in the country. On it are the names of the bus companies operating from that station and the number of passengers who were killed or injured travelling with them in the previous month. Every company managed to mangle someone. Of course Colombia, despite its reputation, is a fairly efficiently run place, so it can insist on these statistics being collected and displayed. Who knows what the figures would be in other countries in South America, let alone Africa or South Asia, where only the most spectacular crashes (body count 10+) make the headlines. Travelling on the roads anywhere in the developing world is risky, especially at night. It’s probably the most dangerous thing you will ever do. The risk of being robbed or kidnapped on a bus does exist in Colombia, as it does in other countries of the world; but this risk is dwarfed by those you run - just riding it in the first place.

When it's time to head home....

will — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 02:50:00 GMT

There comes a point in every trip when you realize that there are only a few weeks left and you have to come to terms with going home. For most of us that means reconnecting with their previous life and going back to work, the free and easy days of travel and doing what you want when you want are over.

Arriving back can be a ghastly crash landing as I discovered after my first long period abroad. My friends were sitting in the same pub talking about their car sunroofs and had no comprehension of the experiences that I’d had, nor were they interested in finding out. To cap it all there was a pile of letters from the Inland Revenue waiting for me at home and the next day it was pouring with rain. It took a couple of weeks for me to reconnect with my old life.
With a little planning, the trip back can be an enjoyable part of the whole travel experience; you may well be heading home with a new appreciation of what you are going back to; there will be friends and family to meet up with and simple and forgotten pleasures to be enjoyed. So make the most of it.

Iron rule number one - always come home to some money. I have met people who were endlessly ringing up to change that last flight, prolonging their trip until there were as good as broke, with their cards maxed out. Trying to survive with almost no money is difficult in any country, your own is no exception. No matter how much in demand your skills may be, finding a job and actually getting a pay check is likely to take several weeks. Especially if you have been away for a long time, it’s nice to rediscover your home slowly, meet up with people and have a few drinks. Even simple expenses like getting about and paying for food will soon mount up, let along putting down deposits for flats or buying a car. Soon you will be regretting that extra rafting trip you took, when you are counting every penny.

Try and plan coming home into your overall trip plan. I have always come home in the Spring, a positive time of year when you will feel like restarting your ‘home’ life again, and you have the summer ahead of you. If you have been in the tropics and you head home in the middle of winter, to dark days, cold and rain; there’s no way you are going to feel good about it.

If you don’t feel that your backpacking days are over then you probably feel some regret at having to finish your trip, but try and get things in perspective. Look at your time at home as an interlude, a period where you can plan your next campaign and more importantly raise the cash to make it happen. I’ve always enjoyed the reading and scheming for the next trip almost as much as travelling itself. Always believe there will be a next time.
Psyche yourself up for the change in lifestyle. Arrival home can be a nice surprise, think of all the things that you’ve missed while you were away, the company of family and friends. Even simple things can give a great deal of pleasure, small indulgences like having your favourite food or drink again. Make a list of these things while you are on the plane home.

Arrival back in the ‘real’ world may be quite a shock especially if it is early morning and after a long flight. Try not to take on the world all at once. If you can, have a friend pick you up at the Airport and get some rest in a quiet place. There’s time enough to hit town later.

When you do get out and about don’t expect anyone to really understand what you’ve experienced. For most people, travel is a two week holiday on a beach. Going off the beaten track or even being abroad for a long time is something that many people cannot get to grips with, and they probably won’t even make the attempt. Tell a couple of colourful anecdotes, which will keep most people interested and try not to go on and on about your trip. Many of your friends will be envious and you won’t endear yourself to people if you become in their eyes, a travel bore.

You probably met some great people on your travels and many of them became friends. Some of them you will keep up with but be prepared for most of them to fall by the wayside, for the simple reason that the one thing you had in common with them- you were all travelling, no longer exists. My partner and I travelled in China with another English couple for several weeks before going our separate ways. Back in the UK we met them again by chance in a cinema queue. We exchanged news but after the film was over no arrangements were made to meet again as we all realized we had nothing more to say to each other.

If you are returning to a rich, western country you will probably start appreciating it for the first time. After my first trip, where I lived in the Sudan for a year, I was just staggered when I got home by how rich Britain was. I’d supposed I’d never realized before. You may have been to countries with better weather or a more laid back lifestyle but if you living in any first world country in the early twenty first century, you have won a prize in life’s lottery. I’ve had rows with people at home when they come out with trivial moans about life, or rant on about how much tax they pay. Most of the world’s population would give their right arms to have their opportunities and problems. If you’ve seen women in Africa digging into riverbeds for water before carrying it for miles, you’re not going to have much time for people whinging about their mobiles not working.

As T.S. Elliot put it, “to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time.”

Make the most of it.

The New India

will — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 18:32:00 GMT

I’ve now been in India for almost three months. It’s always been a favourite country of mine, a place that’s always been very good for the ‘WOW’ factor, always full of surprises. Even in the centre of the cities you can see people on the streets that looked like they’ve just walked out of the Old Testament or just come down from the hills of the North West frontier. Orange robed and painted fakirs wander around, as do lots of cows and even the occasional elephant. I was last here nine years ago and my first visit was in 1989, and what is really surprising is how little has changed over that time.

India is thought of in the west as the next economic powerhouse where the cheaper well educated workers will soon be taking all our jobs. Seeing the country as a traveler there is little evidence of all this, just an increased prosperity for some sections of the population. Just as everywhere in the world, everyone who can afford one now has a mobile phone, with five million new subscribers being added every month. There are lots more new cars on the road but they are easily outnumbered by scooters and motorbikes which are much more affordable. This has added to the noise and stress levels in towns as every scooter rider feels he (although sometimes she) has the right to drive down the street as fast as he can with horn blaring. The onus is on the pedestrians to get out of the way. In India every street supports a small pack of dogs (as well as a couple of cows), but what is really new are people having dogs as pets, mostly small breeds, as most Indians live in cramped houses. Their owners walk them in the streets on tight leashes, and often carry a big stick as well, to keep the rough street doggies away from their pooches.

India is a country that rejects rules and has an aversion to change; which has made it a land of great liberties. A European equivalent would be Italy. Laws may exist on the statue book but people only heed the ones that suit them or which they cannot get away with. Lax policing and a live and let live attitude keeps the whole system running. For example, drivers can and do pull out into the road, even major highways, without a signal or even bothering to look in their mirror (if they have one). There is an expectation that the traffic in the road will make way for them even if it risks an accident, and I’ve seen lots of close calls. Usually the only admonishment from the other drivers who have to swerve or brake will be a blast on the horn, because they know that the next time they also want to pull out, they will do exactly the same thing, and so life goes on - in a semi chaotic way.

When journalists write about the new India they are usually referring to the shiny new offices and businesses parks on the outskirts of the cities. These look like they have been dropped from somewhere in Europe and are full of earnest young people for whom the good times really are rolling. The middle classes have forsaken the trains and now get around country on the start up airlines that are competing hard for their business. Some of them (I particularly recommend Kingfisher Airlines) are really excellent. Another showcase of the New India is the Delhi Metro. This is work in progress with several lines being built that will by 2012 cover the whole city even reaching the international airport, (which technically is in another state), with most of the lines being built on cheaper elevated track. Most of this is being paid for by Japanese money, and unusually most of the equipment is imported rather than made in India. And it is impressive, unlike everywhere else in Delhi, it shines, you could eat your dinner off the floor in the stations and potted plants line the sides of the walls. Constant announcements tell people not to walk across the tracks(!), spit or throw rubbish and unusually for India, people heed them. One of reasons may be because security is so tight, with police with sub machine guns patrolling the trains and metal detector and bag searches just to get onto the platforms.

Outside these showcases life in India goes on much as it did when I first came here in 1989; this is particularly so in the countryside where most Indians still live. At dawn, people still walk out into the fields to do their ablutions; water comes from wells and bullock pull huge carts filled with straw. Cooking is done on Indian fuel cells which are made of cow dung mixed with straw and which are heaped in piles and sold on the side of the road. Also on the roadsides are brickworks where the bricks are still made by hand and fired in primitive kilns. The families who do this work live in the most desperate poverty, their ‘houses’ are little more than primitive tents made from rags and rubbish in the corner of the brickyard. One of the reasons these people live on the job, is because they cannot leave, they are indentured workers who work to pay off a past debt, sometimes from a previous generation, in conditions of virtual slavery. In one region I saw another agricultural/industrial process, the rendering down of sugar from sugar cane. These primitive factories on the roadsides crush the cane bought in from the surrounding fields with the ‘juice’ then boiled up in huge pans. Lines of these factories belching black smoke, with workers ladling the hot sugar out of the vats gives the impression of an early industrial scene, rather like the first days of Coalbrookdale. Yet this is modern India.

Where India is particularly unchanging is in anything in which the state is has any involvement, and as a hangover from the socialist planning era, it’s involved in a great deal. Its interests range from banks and insurance to (on a state level) running juice stands but by far its biggest interest is running the railways. Apart from there no longer being any steam engines around the railway system doesn’t seem to have changed at all over the last eighteen years. The train carriages have a chunky, metal, built to last feel to them, which is just as well as there doesn’t seem to been a penny of new investment for decades. Booking a berth involves filling in a cheap paper form then joining the queuing hoards so that someone can input your details into a seventies era computer system. Indian railways are the largest employer in the world with 1.6 million on the staff, and it looks just like a giant job creation scheme. As elsewhere in government run India, there are lots of ‘supervisors’ sitting around reading the paper and everyone knocks off for lunch. Surprisingly, the whole system does work very well, even if everything (even the journeys) usually happens very slowly.

In Delhi, Ambassador cars still line up outside the Lutyens Government buildings. These cars are based on the 1948 Morris Oxford design and are still made in India today. Although the President now has a BMW, the lower ranks will be motoring around in their sixty year old cars for some time. One of reasons Ambassador have kept on going is because they are strong enough to cope with India’s roads. Road widening is now commonly seen as the poor roads are seen as a brake on economic growth. Much of the digging work is done by (locally made) JCB’s, but a lot is still done by labourers, usually women who excavate earth in baskets and carry it away on their heads. What would these people do if they were all replaced by machines? In many ways everyone has a vested interest in resisting change, as doing these people out of their jobs who just mean more beggars living on the streets of the cities.

For the tourist India can be overwhelming, and it has certainly become a more stressful place to visit. Touts seem to be almost everywhere and the traveler is bombarded by questions all the time. ’Do you want a rickshaw?’ ‘Look in my shop?’ ‘What country?’ or simply ‘What do you want?’ Even more irritating are the people who seem to think they know want you want, so they give you orders like, ‘You need to go over there now’ or having supposedly read your mind, tell you where the ticket office is, even as you walk down the street minding your own business. Normally there is an ulterior motive for all this free advice, usually a postcard or rickshaw sales pitch. Add to all this, the children following you down the street shouting ‘Hello, Hello’ and tourists often feel they are under siege.

Also the Indian tourist industry hasn’t worked out what foreign tourists really want. So in a country awash with cheap labour, hotel walls are grubby, and things often look like they haven’t had a good clean for years. Of course if you pay out real money you can expect the best but for most Indians in the tourist trade, if they think they can offer it to you cheaply, then everything will be all right, no matter if every corner is cut. After all, it wouldn’t do to interfere with all that newspaper reading time. In Nepal, they’ve worked out the standards that tourists expect and consequently, overall, it offers a much better travel experience. Not surprisingly, it’s a country that allows foreigners to own a business, which pulls the standards up; in India this is almost impossible.

So what’s the future for India? The economy is supposed to be overheating and a downturn is expected. Inflation is on the increase and the Congress party recently got hammered in state polls because of the price of onions, which shows what really matters for most Indians. I think though, due to strength of numbers alone the economy will continue to grow and people will get richer in relative terms. I can’t imagine large parts of the country will be like the Delhi metro anytime soon; there are too many vested interests in keeping things the same. But the cities will become even more frantic, with more traffic and gridlock and the blare of the horns being heard on the other side of the world. See it now.

Namaste – Impressions of Nepal

will — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 18:22:00 GMT

Nepal has had rather a mixed press over the last few years; countries going through a Civil War tend not to be on the list of ‘must see’ places for most travelers. Since late 2006, the countryside has been quiet with the Maoists now in the government and their guerrilla army in camps. So now is the time to make that trip.

I was last in Nepal in 1998 and I had forgotten what a pleasant and welcoming country it is. Arriving from India the differences soon become apparent once you get past the border zone. The country is better tended, the streets for the most part are clean and there is less traffic and noise. When the people here say ‘Namaste’ (the all purpose greeting) they genuinely greeting you, not saying ‘Namaste’, would you like to look in my shop, do you want a taxi etc,etc. Women also play a bigger role in daily life, working in shops, taking part in discussions in the street and even waiting on tables, which gives the whole society a more mellow feel.

Where Nepal is far ahead of India is in the provision of tourist services. This is a country that lives on tourism and has worked out what tourists want. So the hotels really are clean and there really is hot water. Although the tourist menus are pretty much the same everywhere, the quality is consistently good. Even up in the villages on the trekking trails you can always get something tasty to eat.

In Pokhara I was surprised by how much the Lakeside tourist area had expanded, obviously things had been going well until the downturn during the war. What was very different were the tourists themselves. On my last visit, most of the tourists and trekkers were European, now they are outnumbered two to one by Asian travelers. The Nepali’s had worked out that if the Westerners were going to be scared off , they should try and attract tourists from countries closer to home, where people were keen to travel - like the Chinese. Nepal offers free Visas to the Mainland Chinese and there are direct flights to Kathmandu while the Koreans have direct charter flights all through the peak season. Many businesses had signs up in Chinese, Japanese and Korean and some restaurants and hotels catered only for one particular nationality.

The Chinese were mainly groups of young women (I suppose the men are all at home building the economic miracle), all of whom spoke good English and were from the prosperous Eastern cities. They are all kitted out in brand new outdoor clothes and nearly all carried a big digital camera. Unfortunately, city life had not prepared them for the rigours of mountain trekking, and even with guides and porters carrying their bags, many of them found it very hard work. As one poor girl said to me as she was helped through the snow by a porter, ‘I don’t think I’m going to make it out of these mountains alive!’

No doubt these are the vanguard of the new Chinese middle class tourists, who as more countries open up to them, we will be bumping into more and more often around the world. This is great as they are pleasant and good company.

Despite the tourists coming back, there are still signs everywhere of the problems the country has had. Army posts and principal buildings are surrounded by coils of razor wire and heavily armed soldiers man sand bagged gun emplacements. The Maoists are now part of the government and their soldiers have surrendered their arms to the UN on a temporary/permanent basis. What they need now are jobs. To help things along the USA has now cut their aid budget to Nepal by 25% as it regards the Maoists as ‘terrorists’, which will make things interesting if they should win the forthcoming election. I didn’t dare ask the young Chinese what they thought of Maoism, no doubt they would have no idea what it meant and the great helmsman himself would just be a figure from history.

With the new government and the removal of the monarchy from power the ‘Royal’ word is being expunged from society, so the Royal has been painted out of some of the signs for what was the ‘Royal Chitwan National Park’. It was interesting to see that many businesses and houses, particularly up in the mountains, had pictures of the Royal family on the walls. Unfortunately all those in the picture died on the same night on 1^st June 2001 when they were gunned down by the Royal Prince. It seems that the Royal Family per se were quite popular, hence all those pin ups, it was the last King, the evil uncle Gyanendra who really alienated the country.

As elections are on the way, various interested interests are jockeying for position. In Nepal that means that if you are traveling around the country you will soon be taking part in the great Nepali Participation event – the road block or strike. My trip was delayed a couple of times by bus strikes, which doesn’t always mean the drivers are on strike but that the main roads have been blocked by stone wielding youths. I had the same thing happen when I was last in Nepal so nothing much has changed in that regard. On one journey on this trip I had to wait for a couple of hours in a mini van because of a road block. This had been caused by a bus hitting and injuring some children as it passed through a road side village. Given the terrible standard of Nepali driving, this sort of thing is fairly common; I saw the wreck of one bus that had crashed into a river valley a few days previously, killing 16 people, and two overturned Lorries on one 100 km stretch of main road. In a country with no third party insurance this means that the local lads blockade the road until some agreement for compensation is made, which involves getting a senior policeman from the nearest main town, plus a couple of passing monks to make a deal with a bunch of emotional youths. This all takes a long time.

Most of these kinds of problems can happen in any third world country; I endured plenty of such incidents when traveling in the Andes last year. What Nepal does offer is a World Class outdoor experience, from trekking with varying degrees of difficultly, rafting, mountain biking and paragliding. It also has accessible wildlife in the Chitwan National Park and historic towns. This along with affordable and good quality services for tourists and very friendly people make it a great country to travel in. So don’t let recent headlines stop you from making the trip, like me you will find yourself going back again and again.

To see pictures click here