To the manor born at Hartington Hall

Our latest home exchange in Britain is drawing to a close. By now we've seen much of the Midlands so it's opportune to venture further afield - except that this has been the wettest April recorded in England for a hundred years. Last Friday evening we drove up through the rain to Hartington, an out-of-the-way Peak District village, and checked into our lodgings at this grand 14th-century Tudor manor house... which is now a hostel.

Hartington Hall at dusk

A lounge at Hartington Hall

A couple of surprises about 21st-century hostelling hereabouts: the standard (and the cost) of private SC rooms, and of meals, compares with those of a good average pub or B&B; no-one gives a fig whether or not you're a member; and the bar stays open until late. Most convivial.

Here are a few more pictures of Hartington and of our British journeys.

Burma regains a place in the sun

Burma is the latest destination to be (re)discovered by the western world, basking in the warmth of a new-found approval by the PC brigade. The last Australian current affairs program Foreign Correspondent visited Aung San Suu Kyi, the reporter slipped into the country under the guise of a tourist visa. Now, foreign journalists can visit openly and 'The Lady' is again (who knows for how long?) free to leave her home, campaigning across the nation to the cheers of rapturous followers.

There are very few destinations I passed through in 1974 from which my cardboard-mounted Kodachromes could still pass for current images. Burma is one. 

Still aloof from the world, Myanmar, as they call it, remains a land of mysteries, some dark, others whimsical.  A golden boulder perches inches from perdition; a train lumbers into view, hours late; Buddhist monks busy themselves training cats to leap through hoops.

Sitting in a concrete-floored shop as horse-carts clatter past the door: an internet connection seems miraculous after three days of frustration. 

Just a gentle paddle away, the ethereal waters of Inle Lake are home to the Intha, Burma's famed leg-rowers.  I must hurry back - no country can or should remain frozen forever in a timewarp. I know that I (and my dollars) will be as welcome as ever.

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Poor bagger my country

Sign at the Haji Ali Mosque, Mumbai

Back home from a flying visit to Mumbai and a week spent in the State of Gujarat, to the north.

The defining feature of Gujarat, where London’s East India Company first engaged with the Moghul Empire, remains its staunch Indian-ness.  Hindu and Muslim communities form a volatile blend. In Ahmedabad, now said to be one of the world's fastest growing cities, Gandhi founded the ashram from which he set forth to challenge British rule on the famous Salt March.

West of the state capital the land becomes progressively more arid. Wild asses still graze in the grasslands of the Little Rann of Kutch and still further west, eerily empty salt flats stretch towards the heavily-guarded border with Pakistan.

Now the 21st century is upon us, but Gujarat clings to its dour prohibition of alcohol.

Mumbai, in total contrast, is truly a world city where anything goes at a price. Roads sweep around the bays then cut across the intervening headlands, rather like the bayside Sydney suburbs.

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Negotiating the labyrinth - a visa for India

I'm heading for India soon, an opportunity too good to miss. But first, the formalities...

Indian border security conjures up images of khaki-clad troops and paramilitary police, propped on folding chairs outside semi-permanent tent camps, flipping idly through passports or fingering their cumbersome rifles. Flies buzz, gaunt cattle graze lazily, ancient trucks and buses lumber past... scenes unchanged for decades. Pakistan and the Khyber Pass are back that-a-way, and for Kathmandu, follow the sacred Ganges then turn north.

But no longer. Now, your journey to India begins by plunging into a virtual labyrinth of backwards-and-forwards online bureaucracy.  As with certain 'western' nations, including my own, India's diplomats have insulated themselves from the tedium of counter service by licensing a private-sector outfit to provide their first line of defence.  All tourists require a visa, and must complete an application online before passports, fees and photographs are received at a city-centre office located amongst English-language colleges and seedy travel agencies.

The online application process incorporates more twists and turns than a bird's nest of Bombay alleyways. The application checklist is reiterated twice, if not three times - but see how long it takes you to find the link to the actual application form!

Back to Swanston Street, twelve floors up, take a number, take a seat. Go to counter 9...

So now I am cleared to enter the Republic of India. A security-printed visa sticker has been pasted into my passport, incorporating my miniaturised passport photo. I had begun to forget how convoluted it all was, until this morning's phone call from a friend confronting by the same maze. Perhaps it's all intended to discourage those simple seekers after spiritual awareness, although one blue-eyed, middle-aged Krishna devotee (homespun cotton shirt and pants, sandals, shaven head and topknot) awaits his interview.

There's a final twist: where once one might have contemplated a side-trip into Nepal or other neighbouring countries, now  Indian authorities arbitrarily ban return visits within two months of leaving India.

Desert dreams, discoveries and dalliances

This is less about places I’ve been than places I may never reach – but we all need to dream, sometimes.  The Egyptian deserts forming the backdrop for the movie The English Patient (okay, they made the movie in Tunisia) are as inhospitable and as fascinating as anywhere in the Sahara or the Arabian deserts. 

In Wadi al-Hitan, the Valley of the Whales, southwest of Cairo, I caught a glimpse of the surreal landforms of the Western Desert. Until then, I had no idea that organised desert safari tours – which only operate for a few months of the year – reach into the magnificent rock art sites, the lost oases and the captivating dunes of this region.  There are also relics of the early twentieth-century exploring parties and of Second World War commando patrol exploits. 

Jebel Uwaynat (or Uweinat) is indisputably the most remote place in Egypt. Like a tent peg, this desert plateaux anchors Egypt’s borders with Libya and the Sudan. Immediately to its north lies Gilf Kebir (Great Barrier) where the intrepid few can see for themselves the enigmatic Cave of Swimmers. 

One evening in Aswan I picked up a reprint of the travel classic, The Lost Oases, recounting the author’s camel expeditions in the 1920s. Egyptian diplomat and royal advisor, Ahmed Hassanein Bey, a former Oxford scholar and sportsman, spent eight months journeying through the trackless desert to rediscover the ‘lost oases’ of the far southwest corner of Egypt. He also met with the mysterious Senussi brotherhood across the border in Italian-occupied Libya. Later, Hassanein would be followed by European explorers and adventurers, including the Hungarian Laszlo Almassy, the eponymous character in The English Patient.

Phillip Island critters march to a different drum

Swamp wallaby, Swan Lake

“Can you hear the ‘plonk bonk’ of the Pobblebonk Frog?” asked the display sign. No, we couldn’t quite, but the late afternoon stroll down to the shores of Swan Lake still proved delightful.

Forget those poor regimented little penguins, condemned to their nightly tramp up out of the water under the gaze of thousands of eyes. Here, a few kilometres up the road, the wild things march to the beat of a different drum. And you, the human intruder, can wait, watch quietly, and capture the scene for eternity without fear of retribution.

Cape Barren geese and swamp wallabies graze in the grasslands, whilst ducks, moorhens and black swans slide across placid waters.  And as the last alien invaders leave, the waterfowl will raise a cacophony of voices in celebration.Swan Lake is best visited at either end of the day, and the turnoff lies just east of the penguin reserve.  Birdwatching hide cabins overlook the lake, which is enclosed within the dunes.

Is it safe to go to Egypt?

Honest, officer, I’m a big boy now. I can do it all by myself… but the Tourist Police officer seemed less certain, as he walked me to the public toilet in Cairo’s bustling Khan el-Khalili quarter and positioned himself outside the cubicle.

Khan el Khalili quarter, Cairo

The Australian government urges you to ‘reconsider your need’ to visit Egypt. But unsettled times, when package tours retreat to more predictable destinations, are often precisely when more discriminating travellers can be assured of the warmest welcome – and the most assiduous concern for their safety.

Following the 1997 terrorist attacks at major monuments in southern Egypt, troops began to escort each and every tour group and the same concern remains evident in security measures which continue to this day.

All quiet on the Nile

More recently, since the ‘Arab Spring’ upheaval spread across North Africa in January 2011, Egypt’s long-established tourist industry has struggled to dispel images of erupting gunfire, wafting tear gas and blood spilling on the streets around Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo.

In November I found that visitor numbers, whilst definitely reduced from previous highs, were by no means decimated. The Pyramids, St Catherine’s Monastery, the Valley of the Kings… all bustled with tourists. Were these people really taking undue risks? Hardly - apart from visiting the Egyptian Antiquities Museum, most kept well away from Tahrir Square.  

A full-length story appeared in the West Australian newspaper.

Alexandria's past glories

The Mediterranean seaport of Alexandria was one of the great cities of ancient times, but very little tangible evidence has survived. Up until the early Fifties, Alexandria was an Egyptian Beirut or Shanghai, a famously - notoriously - cosmpolitan city whose social, cultural and business life was dominated by expatriates. Literary lions E.M.Forster, Lawrence Durrell and (the Australian Nobel laureate) Patrick White all lived here during the 1940s. Non-Egyptians fled en masse during Nasser's revolution and life in Alexandria became relatively austere.

Eastern Harbour and Qait Bey Fort, Alexandria

Alexandria today is a city of several millions, sprawling 20 kilometres along the coast and stitched up by crumbling expressways, but the downtown area remains a Thirties and Forties timewarp. Foreigners savour its enduring historical and literary mystique, whilst Egyptians themselves visit for the mild climate and seaside ambience.

 The Bibliotecha Alexandrina is an ultra-modern showpiece conceived to evoke the grandeur of the long-vanished ancient Library.

 It remained closed during my visit as staff met to protest the
legacy of the Mubarak era.

Bibliotecha Alexandrina

Eid el Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice holiday, in Egypt

Eid el Adha is the Islamic Feast of Sacrifice, inspired by the legend of Abraham preparing to sacrifice his own son until God provided a sheep at the last minute. Tethered sheep appear in the back streets and lanes of Egyptian towns and cities, ready for slaughter and subsequent family feasts. Thousands gather for mass morning prayers in a festive environment.

Most of these pictures were taken in the normally frenetic six-lane Arab League Street, the main avenue of the Cairo suburb of Mohandiseen.

First thing on the morning of 6 November I was out and about by six and soon caught up in the carnival atmosphere of mass family prayers blocking off the avenue, with colourful balloons, posters, vendors selling baked sweet potato, teenage girls with faces made up (and headscarves) and swaggering youths. Must have been several thousand people, scarcely a policeman in sight and no call for them either.

Egypt's remote Siwa Oasis

Time out in Siwa

Siwa's ruined mudbrick fortress of Shali

Images of Siwa, one of my favourite places in Egyptand reached only after a long drive through the starkly barren Western Desert. Siwa is an oasis of 80km by 20km close to the Libyan border, the villages set amongst groves of date palms. The Siwan people are North African Berber rather than Arab and retain a language and traditions of their own. The history of the oasis goes back at least to the days of Alexander the Great, who made the journey here especially to consult a famous oracle. Behind Siwa rises a crumbling ruin, the ancient fortified mudbrick town of Shali perched on a rocky crag, destroyed by unprecedented rains in 1926.

Into the Nile Delta with Zawahery

Mohammed explains the hieroglyphics...

Today's excursion took us out into the Nile Delta to a farming area which happens to be the home district of my guide, Mohammed Al Zawahery.

Where have we seen that name before? One of his many, many uncles/cousins is the notorious Al Qaeda operative! Fortunately for my young friend, his family is also well-known in this country for its more distinguished members, who include lawyers, professors and medical specialists. Mohammed is a graduate in Egyptology and holds forth on hieroglyphics and symbolism in ancient Egyptian reliefs. As he did today, at a very dusty, gritty archaeological site which only an enthusiast could love.

The San El Hoggar site at Tanis is a barren wasteland with big granite blocks strewn about or arranged in a rough order to help one conjure up the magnificent Pharaonic temple which once stood there. A few pieces are still magnificent examples of sculpture and hieroglyphics, from the very earliest times (Old Kingdom, 3000 BC). Grubby urchins scrambled all over the antiquities, in spite of attempts by our escorting policeman to shoo them off.

Farm homestead

Outside Tanis I met several of Mohammed's family in their farmhouse, a roughly-plastered 2-storey pile in the midst of about 15 acres of farmlands, which rely on irrigation water from the Nile. The family farm raises geese, a couple of cows, chickens, grow olives and citrus fruit and have fields planted out in cotton and sugar beet (sugar cane at other times). We admired the cotton buds ready for picking. Mohammed's cousin, a veterinarian, is married to another cousin, a pretty young mother with a curly-haired bub a few months old.

Uncle, hamming it up with the buffalo.

Only one male adult, in his fifties, relies entirely on the farm for his livelihood.

Easy does it in Egypt

Early morning on the Nile

Cleaning up after two nights floating down the Nile aboard a lateen-rigged felucca - a delightful experience, sleeping under canvas on deck, even if getting up and scrabbling around in the pre-dawn darkness for the obligatory pee was something of an ordeal when we were floating out in the murky shallows. Embarking at Aswan, we spent two nights aboard before disembarking near the Kom Ombo Temple.

Time out on a sandy river beach

Captain Sika and his offsider, young Fahid, were a treat to watch, both of them Nubians (an African people from Upper Egypt). The captain could usually find time for a shisha pipe but earned his time out after hauling on the huge, clumsy oars - no motor. Feluccas usually tack back and forth across the river, so progess is never rapid. We picnicked yesterday on a stretch of sandy riverbank that could have been a tropical island retreat, with palm trees and cool, clean flowing water.

Meanwhile, back in Tahrir Square, Cairo... but that's a million miles away. Now for some of the grandest temples of Ancient Egypt, en route to and at Luxor.