At least, this is part of California at a particularly wet time of year. I’m told that for most of the year the creek dries up, the grass dies back and there’s dust everywhere. But right now, where I’m staying in Dry Creek about 10 miles north of Santa Rosa, it’s really beautiful.

For most of February I was in Whistler with my friend Clare, staying with some other friends who are working out there. We had some good riding & skiing and beautiful weather but not much snow. Then two days before we were planning to leave it started to snow. And it’s didn’t stop. So we stayed on in Whistler a couple more days to take advantage of it.

Then Clare and I took the Greyhound down to Seattle for the weekend. Another friend of ours had put us in touch with a girl he met in Argentina who lived in Seattle. It turned out she was away in Honduras for a year but she put us in touch with a friend of hers who also lived in Seattle. It turned out *she* was away for the weekend in California but she recommended some bars & clubs to check out. We ended up going to a night called "Tits & Brass". The tits were average but the brass was good fun. I was impressed to find that a friend of an acquaintance of a friend had a similar taste in venues to us! There was a good crowd there too though rather more whooping and shouting than one would expect from a British crowd.

Seattle is full of crazy people. Kinda crazy in a good way though. We both took an immediate liking to it. Did a lot of random walking about. Accidentally walked past Starbucks #1 without realising and when we went back to get a coffee there it was shut. Boeing, Microsoft and UPS all started in Seattle too. Also did a little tourist tour where they take you, literally, underneath the streets. In the early days of Seattle there used to be a bad drainage problem in the low area by the sea. Then in the 1870s there was a big fire that burned down most of the city. So when they rebuilt it they built out of brick rather than wood and also raised the streets up to fix the drainage. But while they were raising the streets, the buildings were already going up so they had shops at old ground level which were covered over by the pavement (repeat after me: "sidewalk") when they raised the streets. The 1st floors of the buildings became the new ground floor and the old ground floor became a basement and was mainly abandoned. So anyway this tour took you round the empty spaces that were left underneath the streets and hadn’t been touched for over a century. Quite good.

Last Monday, Clare went home and I got a lift down to California with someone who had advertised in the ride share section on Craigslist. Hitch-hiking is kinda illegal in a lot of states here but the ride share concept seems to be quite popular. It was a girl called Katie who, it turned out, had been up in Seattle breaking up with her boyfriend. She was keeping it together very well until the driver-side windscreen wiper fell off while we were driving over the mountains on the motorway in the dark and the pouring rain. We had half an hour or so of panic and stress while we discovered that her mum had cancelled the AAA cover and no mechanic would come out to help us. Then, with the help of a penny and a quarter we managed to wedge the wiper back on and set off again. Andrew, a friend from school who’s managing a small farm out here, came out to meet me in Williams and drove me back over the mountain in his massive truck (small by local standards).

This past week he’s been showing me around. It’s an everyone-knows-everyone, no-need-to-lock-your-car kind of place and I’m slowly learning the Californian three-fingered wave (if you want to try it at home, stick out your thumb, index and middle fingers, spread them apart and point the palm of your hand towards the person at whom you are waving). I helped a bit in the garden on Friday but I’m just not used to physical labour any more. I’m still aching a bit today. Andrew’s housemate works in the cellar at the winery down the road so I’ve been getting a few lessons in wine too.

This weekend we drove down to San Francisco. Had a great time wandering around the city and admiring the sights. Went a blues club on Saturday night and admired the sounds. And lots of bars and restaurants to admire the tastes. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the good choice of beers available in most bars here. I had this idea that all of America just drank Coors and Budweiser but I’m glad that’s not so.

Tomorrow I’m hiring a car and driving out to Yosemite. The adventure continues.

After hearing about all the SXSW craziness from various sources for the past few years I made it my resolution to try and go this coming year so it would be silly to be so close (well, ok, 1,800 miles isn’t that close) and misss out. I know a couple fo people who are going this year so it’s sure to be a lot of fun. I also had the idea of renting a car and driving down to Austin from San Francisco. I reckon I could probably find a couple of Valley types willing to join me for the road trip.

On the other hand Interaction’09 appears to be a more civilised affair. As the name suggests it’s all about interaction design which is what I’m really interested in. It’s rather more expensive but on the other hand I was planning on being in Vancouver on those dates anyway (on my way to Whistler to visit friends) so Iwould save on transport.

One solution would be to find a new employer willing to sponsor me to go to both! Any takers?

But, just for fun, lets look at those stats a little closer…

The first thing you’ll notice is that it isn’t to scale. The 10% arrow is much thicker than 5 of the 2% arrows and the 32% one is only a little wider than the 10% arrow.

The numbers from the six categories add up to 100% implying that those six icons represent all greenhouse gas emissions. So the car presumably means all road transport (what about trains & boats?) The factory must represent industry? The trees are deforestation and forest fires and the like (does that include farming?). The plug is power generation. And the cloud is… fuck knows. Miscellaneous? The weather? Bad thoughts? In that context, 2% of global emissions coming from a single industry suddenly seems like quite a lot. Indeed, it is about as much as that generated by all human activity in Africa!

It appears that the 2% figure quoted comes from an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report which is undeniably a reliable source. However that report is from 16 years ago during which time the volume of flights has skyrocketed (no pun intended).

Also very importantly it doesn’t take into account the fact that because the greenhouse gases from flying are released high in the atmosphere, they are 2 to 4 times more damaging than the same gases released at ground level. Nor does it consider that the water vapour produced by aircraft leads to the formation of cirrus clouds that also contribute to global warming. Indeed, carbon dioxide accounts for only a third of aviation’s impact on the atmosphere.

But in the end, even if aviation’s impact on global warming really was that small, why is that a reason not to try and reduce it?

Sonica was nice. Much more like a real festival than EXIT. Tents were pitched haphazardly around the site among variously decorated hippie buses, vans and lorries. The food was decent and there were lots of those stalls selling the kinds of things people buy at festivals but don’t remember why. Lisa and Tom met us at the gates and took us to their camp site on top of the hill with a nice view of the festival and the surrounding countryside.

What made the festival for me was the lake. About 20 minutes walk from the site was Bolsena lake – a huge volcanic crater filled with fresh water. We were on the south shore where a long line of trees provided a wonderful strip of shady grass to sleep on. Then one could either hop over the burning black sandy beach and dip into the cool waters or venture in the other direction for an ice cream, coffee or clean toilet… wonderful!

Rob and Erica left early on Monday morning in order to get back in time for Rob’s rescheduled job interview on Tuesday. Tom, Lisa & I spent Monday, like every other day, on the beach. In the afternoon a storm started brewing up on the other side of the lake. We watched as the sky darkened and the wind rose, wipping up waves on the previously placid lake. The beach cleared out as the rain approached until only the three of us and Ernesto, an Italian guy camped near us at the festival, remained.

Eventually the storm hit us and we all, somehow, became cavemen – jumping around, screaming, falling over, diving into the water and worshipping the elements as seemed appropriate. The lightning was striking all around us and the waves grew to almost surfable proportions. I can’t adequately describe it but it was the highlight of my holiday.

When we got back to the camp I found that my tent had unpegged itself and half collapsed. At first I couldn’t understand why everything was still dry until I realised that Tom’s sleeping bag, which he had stored in my tent that morning, had simply soaked up all the water. No such luck for Ernesto’s tent which had entirely collapsed into a small heap and was wetter inside than out.

Both stages had to stop during the storm meaning that Shpongle and Eat Static – the only two acts I had actually heard of – were unable to play. But as soon as the rain stopped, all the renegade sound-systems sprung up – including one in the Ayurvedic massage tent and another in some 60 year-old’s caravan – and the party continued. A lot of people had already left the site by this time and the remaining crowd were noticeably older: probably stall-holders and other crew who were getting their first chance to relax. The music in the massage tent was great and the atmosphere was amazing. There was dancing and prancing around the candle-lit Buddha and strange monkey-inspired hand-holding running-circles. It made sense at the time.

The following day I left Tom & Lisa by the side of the road with a white board on which they were yet to decide which destination to write and I began to make my way towards Civitavechia where I had been reliably informed I could catch a ferry to Corsica. Two bus rides and several hours later (one of the buses was free because the driver had run out of tickets to sell) I arrived at the port only to be told that all the ferries to Corsica leave from Livorno, hundreds of miles north of Civitavecchia. I sat a while and considered this.

I couldn’t face the thought of another bus journey so I decided to get a ferry to Sardinia and hope for the best. Like all ferry ports, Civitavecchia is a maze of badly marked roads with signs that lead you in great tortuous circles but this one is especially bad as they haven’t made any provisions for foot passengers. The ferry I was on was about a 40 minute walk from the ticket office which isn’t much fun in the humid heat with a big bag and a tent. Having to walk on the road while dodging articulated lorries and motorbikes doesn’t make it any better. Fortunately I got a lift part of the way from a pair of very friendly Argentineans in a beautiful 30 year old wood-paneled truck carrying a whole load of horses to some race in Sardinia.

I got to Olbia in the early morning and there was a bus waiting right outside the ferry terminal which went direct to the port of Santa Theresa where I knew the boats to Corsica left from. Wooo! It’s really exciting when things work.

I got to Santa Theresa and jumped on a ferry to Bonifacio where I could get another bus to Ajaccio. “Nearly there,” I thought, “Now I can just sit back, listen to some tunes and watch the beautiful Coriscan countryside roll by.” No such luck. As soon as we set off, the driver put on a tape of the most chillingly bland lift music I have ever heard. I cranked my iPod up as far as it would go but, as I have previously mentioned, that’s not very far and the evil sounds filtered through. It actually made me go slightly mad. I was very, very angry. I wanted to break things. I managed to wedge my hat into the speaker nearest to me which helped a bit but wasn’t enough. I tried various other techniques involving seat covers, more hats, camera straps and tissue paper but it seemed every time I invented some new way of blocking out the offensive noise, the driver turned the volume up. I would have stuck parsley in my ears but I didn’t have any. Eventually I put on the loudest drum and bass I could find (DJ Hype’s FabricLive) and managed to get a bit of sleep. Jack Kerouac never had to put up with this kind of thing when he was On the Road. Incidentally I forgot to properly thank Lisa for lending me that book, I’m loving it and it has come in very useful with all the waiting around I’ve had to do.

So here I finally am in Corsica. I had my first shower in two weeks and I feel wonderful.

I’d like to leave you with a tally of the items I have lost and those I have found in the past three weeks.

Lost

• 3 lighters
• 6 pairs of boxer shorts
• 1 tshirt

Found

• 4 lighters
• 1 badge
• 1 pair of shorts
• 1 watch
• 1 earring
• 1 hammer

My iPod was also stolen and returned although I wasn’t aware of it at the time. I left it at the beach bar on Vis to charge. When I went back for it a few hours later the barman had changed and the new guy couldn’t find it. I eventually got it back the following evening and saw that someone had been using it cos it wasn’t fully charged and the last played song wasn’t played by me but I assumed the barman had just taken it home for safe-keeping. It turned out that he had ‘assumed I had forgotten it’ and thought he might like to keep it. Apparently he got fired. Oops. He liked Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings though so he can’t have been all bad.

I’ve been lying on a Croatian beach for the past week so maybe the sun and the lager has gone to my head but I’ve been thinking about lots of things. Mostly things that I have thought about before but I’ve been thinking about them in more detail.

The first is that in my line of work it makes no difference where I live. I haven’t even met most of my clients and my two biggest on-going jobs are both on the pacific coast. So why am I moving to London? I may as well go and live in Oslo while I’m at it! I met a guy from Sheffield a few days ago who used to live in London doing video design of some kind. He now lives in Ljubliana, does all his work over the internet, flies back to the UK for nothing with easyJet every now and then, and goes on trips to Croatian islands with his Slovenian friends when the fancy takes him. I’ll have what he’s having!

The second is the idea I had last summer of buying a piece of land near the sea and setting up a hippy campsite/permanent festival. We’ve just been camping on a little illegal (i.e. free) campsite on the island of Vis in Croatia. It’s about 15 minutes walk along the coast from Komiza which is a little village on the far side of the island from the main town – also called Vis. As if that wasn’t enough the neighbouring beach has a bar serving ice-cold bottles of Karlovacko beer and, occasionally, mouth-wateringly tender tuna steaks barbecued to perfection. During the day they feature a neverending playlist of soothing Cafe del Mar tunes and at night it gets a bit harder with DJs playing until 4am. That, at least, is the idea. Tomas, the owner, took a fancy to us – largely thanks to Rob’s charm and perpetual eagerness to help – and, when he wasn’t giving us free mussels or retrieving my stolen iPod, explained how it was his first year running the place and things weren’t quite running to his vision.

Well they weren’t quite running to mine either and I got back to thinking how I would do it. I’m telling you: it would be fine as f…ish.

So we’re on the move again. In Split waiting for the ferry to Italy. Best get back or the others will wonder where I’ve got to.

So, starting from the beginning, I moved out of my house in Manchester and spent a week in London and two in York visiting folks and chilling.

I flew out to Budapest on the 4th July with Miles & Richard and we spent a day wandering around. It was very nice. I expect I’ll be going back at some point (it’s so cheap to fly there). Worth mentioning was Fatâl’s, a restaurant in which you get a mountain of food served in an individual frying pan. Nobody managed to finish theirs even though we hadn’t eaten all day. We met up with Nick, Jackie, Ben, Ben, Steve & Russell and all went down to Novi Sad in Serbia for EXIT festival where we met up with yet more people from Manchester.

The festival camp site was brilliant: nice showers, bearable toilets, plenty of space, free internet, near the beach (on the Danube) and LOTS OF TREES! The shade was especially appreciated since the festival ran from 6pm to 8am every day. We still didn’t get much sleep though. I think I got bitten by something one afternoon. It started with a few little red marks on my ankles which were a bit itchy. However over the next few days the marks grew bigger and my ankles started to swell a bit. I went to the first aid tent who told me to put some ice on it which is all very well but not that easy when you’re camping and don’t happen to have Harrison Ford on hand to make you some.

The festival itself was cool and in an amazing location. When they said it was in an old fortress I had imagined it was in the grounds of the fort. But no, it was actually inside the fort’s battlements. The many rings of roofless 10m high walls around the keep provided enclaves in which each of the 20+ stages were nestled and audibly insulated from each other. The dance arena was especially impressive. There’s nothing quite like watching the sun rise with 30,000 ravers in a medieval fortress which was previously a Roman fortress and a Stone Age settlement before that!

Obviously all kinds of silliness ensued. Far too much to recount here. I’ve got about a dozen Serbian phone numbers in my phone but I can’t remember who any of them are.

Anyhow up until then it was all very easy. The journey really begins the day before yesterday when most people started to head back to home via Budapest. Rob, Erica, me and a few others we met were heading to Croatia for a bit of beach action but Rob & Erica wanted a bit of couple-time and the others were either staying longer or inter-railing which is really not the best of getting around in this part of the world because most of the railways were destroyed in the recent conflicts.

So we all got to the station and I kind of said "where can I go tonight for this much money?" It turned out I could only go to Belgrade or Budapest by train but I could go to Sarajevo by coach so I chose the latter. Of course the air-con was broken and it was over-booked so it wasn’t the best journey but at least I had a seat and about half-way through the some people got off so I had two seats. As the sun rose we were going through absolutely stunning Bosnian mountain countryside. It was how I imagine Switzerland would have looked like 50 years ago. It was so beautiful that I was tempted to get off the coach and just stay there forever.

But I didn’t. Eventually we got to Sarajevo at about 7am. By this time my ankles, which had been mildly painful when I left Serbia, had swollen to the size of watermelons and made walking very painful. I didn’t really know what I was doing but I organised my goals thus:

1. Find ATM
2. Find pharmacy
3. Find internet cafe

Once I had found an internet cafe it seemed I would be safe because that would give me access to a map, hostel info and that kind of thing. I found an ATM and then realised I had no idea how much the money was worth. The smallest amount it offered was 10KM so I went for 50KM.

I started walking back to where I had seen a pharmacy and heard over my shoulder an English voice saying “What the fuck are we doing in Sarajevo?” “My thoughts exactly,” I replied.

It turned out to be three lads from Sheffield who had also been to EXIT but had just got off the coach from Belgrade. So told them I’d found an ATM and when I saw that the pharmacy was still closed I wandered up with them and sat in a café. They had a Lonely Planet but whichever way we looked at the map we just couldn’t work out which bus station we were at. The roads just didn’t fit. I shared out my Noblice biscuits and, when the café opened, we had a drink and took turns to go off on wanders trying to work where we were and how to get somewhere else. Eventually James & Steve returned with some kind of police escort. “Oh god what have they done now?”

Well it turned out that we weren’t even in Sarajevo at all. We were in some Serbian suburb of Sarajevo which was too far away to be marked on the map. But our friendly police-woman/girl, Amela, took it upon herself to be our guide. She walked with us to the bus stop, showed us how to buy tickets, made the half-hour bus ride with us, walked us to the real bus station where we could leave our luggage, exchanged phone numbers and arranged to meet us later for drinks with some of her friends! To serve & protect? You betcha!

By this point we had walked quite a bit and my ankles were really hurting so while the other lads walked into the centre to look around, I broke off to get back to my goals. I completed goal 2 with a bit of pointing and miming of ‘insect’ and ‘bite’. And goal 3 provided me with the name of a hostel and directions to find it from the bus station. So I went back to the station to collect my bags. I had to wait half an hour for the guy to turn up and I was starting to feel really ill. I had a temperature and my ankles were very, very painful and I had difficulty just standing up, let alone walking. At this point those who know me well will be thinking “Ah there goes Tam the hypochondriac,” and to be fair on a scale of 1 to child birth it was probably only about 17 but it still made everything far more overwhelming than it would normally have been. I was actually on the edge of tears as I went back to the info desk for the fourth time to try to get someone to give me my bags back.

But I got them back and got on a tram and headed into town. Except that by this time I had forgotten what the tram stop was called and there were no signs on them to tell you where you were anyway. Stupidly, I hadn’t written anything down because I didn’t have any pen or paper and the concept of trying to enter all the weird accented characters into my phone seemed too daunting. The trams have that stupid system where the ticket that you buy from the driver when you get on isn’t valid until you put it through a machine that stamps it. Fortunately the driver told me ‘put machine’ and I did. Three other foreign guys on my tram didn’t and the transport police came down on them. It didn’t look fun.

So after I’d been going for a while I decided to get off the tram. I sat on a wall for a while and then saw a tram go past with what looked like the name of the stop I had originally been trying to get to. So I got on another tram and asked the driver to tell me when to get off since the tram stops don’t have names. As I tried to explain this he seemed to be telling me that the name I was saying was the name of the bus staion where I had just come from. Bollocks. So I said I was on the wrong tram and was getting off again. I offered to pay and he gave me a ticket but said ‘you use next tram’ meaning I should save the ticket for the right tram (since I had only been one stop). So I got off and saw a map. Woo! Finally a map! I started looking for the names of the stops and was suddenly surrounded by transport police who demanded in broken English why I had got off the tram. I tried to explain and they kept asking me something that I couldn’t understand.

Before I go on I must remind you that I hadn’t slept at all the previous night, had only had an average of about 4 hours bad sleep per night for the past week, was in pain, had a temperature, couldn’t walk and didn’t know where I was or where I was going.

So I broke down in tears. They wanted to see my passport but I still had the presence of mind not to show it to them. Eventually I managed to convince them that I wasn’t trying to cheat the system (why would I bother for a 50p tram fare!) and they left me, literally in a heap on the floor. I took a few minutes to gather my wits and it suddenly struck me: “Why the fuck am I putting myself through all this shit when I have a Visa card?” I resolved to go into the very first hotel I saw, get a room and sleep for three days. I walked 5 paces and what did I see in front of me? Only the hostel that I had originally set out to find! I fell in through the door, tears still streaming down my face and unable to utter anything intelligible.

“Hello, it’s OK you find us! Leave your bags, sit down. You want a cigarette? Some juice?”

Heaven!

“There is bathroom, you go and wash your face.”

So I went and composed myself once more. Then was shown to my bed and slept for 20 hours.

And so here I am!

My ankles are much better but I still can’t walk very far. The hostel staff are utterly insane but very friendly. The guests are also very friendly. Met a few more EXIT people and an American student of Eastern European history who gave some interesting talks on something I know shamefully little about.

Haven’t had a chance to explore Sarajevo yet but what I’ve seen seems nice. I’ll hopefully get to explore more tomorrow. I’m staying one more night and then taking another night bus to Split to meet Rob & Erica who have been in Montenegro.

Now I’m heading back to the hostel to eat some cornflakes.

Now,

• It would have been much quicker to walk – in fact the girl at the check-in counter beat us to the plane even though she left after us
• It would have required less staff – a single person to make sure passengers didn’t wander off was all that was needed
• It would have required less equipment – those buses don’t look cheap and they seem to leave the engines running all the time
• It would have allowed us to board much quicker as there would have been a constant flow of passengers boarding rather than two sudden influxes of them (the bus had to make two trips!)
• It’s not required by some awkward EU regulation since in Corsica they let you use your feet – they don’t have any buses that i know of

It’s just sheer madness!

But… It’s soooooooo dry!

Cairo is dusty, polluted, noisy and dry. Alexandria is much nicer but still very dry. Everywhere we visited was dry. Even the Nile Delta is dry and dusty in between the ridiculously lush, green bits. Then there’s the hassle. As a westerner it is IMPOSSIBLE to blend in anywhere (with the possible exception of predominantly bedouin areas such as central Sinai (which we visited) and the Western Desert (which we didn’t)). Everywhere you go you have Egyptians shouting, whistling and making kissing noises like people do to cats at/to you. The phrase I heard most (around 50 times a day) was “Welcome to Egypt” closely followed by “Welcome to Cairo”, “Welcome to Alexandria” and “Welcome to…” wherever we happened to be.

Now, if you haven’t been there you might think this is touching and a sign of their great hospitality. In some senses you’d be right. I estimate that only around 1/4 to 3/4 of people who ‘welcome’ you are actually trying to sell you something – depending on where you are. The rest are genuinely being friendly and hospitable (and, since westerner friends are highly prized, attempting to thereby raise their social statii). But imagine walking down a street in London and having someone walk up to you and stand in your way and say “Welcome to England” every 15-20 seconds. It would quickly get very annoying would it not? Especially if you’ve already been there for 5 months as Lydia has.

One Egyptian Lydia spoke to said that he really liked London because it was the only place outside of Egypt where he found he could blend in and not be stared at as an oddity. But then he was educated and fairly well travelled so is not very representative.

All in all I didn’t see anything that would make me even consider ever living there (one of Lydia’s egyptian friends was hard selling me her country as the best place for software engineers to work!). There are two places which I would consider returning to visit: Sinai (the eastern mountain/desert bit – essentially just to take photos of the amazing scenery) and Siwa (which we didn’t visit but is meant to be lovely and relaxed – it’s an oasis in the Wesern Desert and is mainly populated by Bedouins so is more relaxed).

But there are sooooooo many places higher on my list of places to visit that I doubt I ever will return.

Anyway, if you’ve never been there, go there; if you have then you can make up your own mind!

So today: it started with Lydia flooding the entire room when she had a shower this morning. I hasten to add that was through no fault of her own and judging by the colour of the carpet outside the bathroom it’s probably a regular occurrence. I should point out that while this is the first hotel we have stayed in with an en suite bathroom it is also by far the dirtiest. We then went to get our included breakfasts which consisted of two pieces of bread, some jam, some processed cheese and some butter. Not so bad really but we were not provided with any cutlery and there was no one around to ask.

OK, so far it’s really not much different from most days – bear with me it gets worse.

We then marched up to the train station to get our tickets for the night train to Cairo this evening. We were told there were no second class seats left so we had to go first (which costs a whopping GBP3 more). We were then told that the ‘computer full’ so the guy wrote us out some tickets by hand. Now this seemed dodgy to both of us. Everyone else was getting proper tickets (the train tickets here are pretty fancy and even include a little hologram sticker!) and the computer was obviously working so we were not too happy handing over our money for a little handwritten piece of paper. We both suspected that the train was full and that they were inventing new seats for us which we would be turfed out of at the first stop (memories of India flooding back…). However there are only three trains a day that foreigners are allowed on and as the others were properly full, the only other option was the coach.

To cut a long (bordering on an hour) story short(er) I eventually decided I didn’t want to spend another night on the coach and risk being subjected to Jean-Claude Van Damme again so I bought the ‘ticket’. We then went in search of bicycles to rent with which we could cycle up to the high dam (the one which created lake Nasser and has done so much for Egypt). As we walked I realised that Lydia really wasn’t happy with the train ticket situation so we decided to go back to the hotel and ask them what they thought of our ticket. They seemed to think it was OK though they didn’t know why the computer was ‘full’.

Sooooo, we set out to look for bikes again on some vague directions from the hotel people. However by this time it was noon which, on a friday, means everyone goes off to pray and the mosques start shouting angry-sounding arabic sermons at each other. To compound matters it’s also Coptic Christmas day today so after a bit more searching we gave up on the idea of bikes and decided to walk it to the Aswan dam: the high dam’s older, smaller and nearer cousin.

Armed with our fruit & biscuit picnic, we set off on what looked on the map like a pleasant ~6km walk along the Nile but rapidly turned into a hot, dusty trek through partially built and very ugly suburbs. Eventually we reached the dam (a reasonably tall brick wall with water on one side) but were told we weren’t allowed to do anything.

We were not allowed to go down to the water (though there were steps); we were not allowed to take any photographs; we were not even, it seemed, allowed to walk around or across the dam (which has a busy road running along the top of it). So we walked around through a neighbouring village down to a little harbour full of little boats. Finally somewhere to sit down and have our picnic.

Oh but no. Arabic police-type guard guy comes running over (doesn’t speak English) and explains that we are not allowed to be here.

Fine, we’ll walk along the lake a bit.

No! You are not allowed anywhere here.

But why?

Because there are people here.

Well yeah obviously there are people: it’s a village!

Then the guard goes all flirty and starts trying to solicit allah-knows-what from Lydia (all of which goes way over my head as it’s all in Arabic) so we walk off back the way we came and skirt around the guard trying to find another way down to the lake. We then get shouted at by four separate groups of guys all at the same time telling us to go in various different directions so we ignore everyone and head for what looks like the tourist launch point for boats to Philae Island (which houses a reconstructed temple saved from the rising waters of the dam by UNESCO).

At last, somewhere to sit and have our picnic. Well, maybe not. We’re not allowed down to the water’s edge without a ticket for the boat and the only cafe wants to charge us EGP10 for a bottle of water which should cost EGP1.5. Well then, let’s head back to Aswan!

On our short walk back to where we thought we could catch a pickup back to the city we heard a mewling coming out of the hedge and found a tiny puppy, all on its own. We tried to approach it but it got scared and tried to get away. It was either injured or very weak as it couldn’t walk properly and kept falling over and I think it might have been at least partially blind. We tried giving it some pieces of biscuit but it didn’t seem interested. We stood for quite a while considering what do to: no use asking an Egyptian as they wouldn’t understand what the problem was – "So? It’s a dying puppy…". There is a Brook Animal Hospital in Aswan but we didn’t know if they dealt with dogs or just with larger animals like donkeys and horses and in any case we couldn’t think of any way of getting it there without scaring it to death.

In the end we just had to leave it. That put a downer on the proceedings which up until now had been remarkably good hearted.

So now we’re waiting for our train and hoping the sky doesn’t fall on our heads.

Over and out.

I didn’t really uinderstand the policy on cameras in tombs: the lp says no flash photography which I understand as it deteriorates the paint but they confiscate all video equipment at the entrance to the site and there are signs saying "No video, no flash, no touch". At the first tomb we went in I started taking photos (no flash) and the guy wrestled my camera off me and started walking away. I chased after him and got it back but not without some raised voices. Some of the larger tombs had unofficial looking signs saying "No touch, no photo" but I saw several people taking sneaky shots inside (some with flash – tut tut). Trouble is it’s quite hard to take sneaky shots with a camera the size of a small childs head that makes an echoing ‘catchunk’ noise when you take a photo. However some well timed coughs and turned backs afforded me a few opportunities.

In the end though the most interesting tombs were not in the Valley of the Kings but in amongst the houses of a local village. It’s a little trickier to navigate as there are no maps and we were followed by hoards of kids trying to sell us various things (some of which I had to laugh at: a small rock being sold as an ‘antiquity’ by a 5 year old for "1 pound" wich went up to "5 pounds" when I showed no interest and then back to "1 pound"!) but definitely worth the effort.