What I really want it also to do is alert me to whenever certain destinations fall below a certain threshold price-wise (not that I have that much flexibility in my schedule, but still).

Check it out if you’re gunning for somewhere to go but are checking the back of your couch for pocket change.

And great for letting you get some ideas and put a little planning round your travel dreams.

(btw, all those wondering why I’m not travelling quite so much down here might take a look at the Syd link and the costs to get out of the gravity well that is Australia to other continents).

Best quote: “Life does not reward you with free time, you need to create it.”

Breaking his advice down into themes, it basically covers these 9 (I think):

1. Time = Wealth
2. Be Where You Are
3. Slow Down
4. Keep It Simple
5. Don’t Set Limits
6. Quality over Quantity
7. The journey is more important than the destination
8. Seek people
9. Life is a journey

PS> If you havent’ read his book, Vagabonding, you owe it to yourself to do so.

(via Tim Ferriss’ blog.)

Seeing Old Age as a Never-Ending Adventure

And this is, in fact, dedicated to my super cool Nan and GrandDad, whatever “Monkey Island” they may be on at this moment, as they confound their children trying to locate them.

Update 3am: You know I was just thinking about this a little more and forgot to mention that when I was in the high Andes on the Camino Inca to Macchu Picu a 65 year old guy with a walking stick walked right past my friend and I. He seemed happy as any person I’d ever seen. And that was nearly 15 years ago now. So…

Warning: There are a lot of very geeky archaeology shots of temples and things. And when I mean, a lot, I’m talking lots. So be forewarned. You might just want to hit the highlights of Cairo, Alexandria and Aswan.

Denver to Singapore (and back) in 5 minutes from David DAngelo on Vimeo.

All those pins since January. Wow.

The top 10 Happiest Cities :

1. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2. Sydney, Australia
3. Barcelona, Spain
4. Amsterdam, Netherlands
5. Melbourne, Australia
6. Madrid, Spain
7. San Francisco, U.S.A.
8. Rome, Italy
9. Paris, France
10. Buenos Aires, Argentina

Well, I can definitely vouch for Paris and we’ll see how Sydney goes, but Amsterdam ? Yeesh… Quite seriously, one of the most miserable places I have ever lived so thought it strange it was on the list. I guess the list may be about perception more than the actuality though.

(via Gadling.)

Kinda excited to see what people do here on the island. I’ve already been seeing some people burning incense sticks and paper votives in buckets outside shops and houses the past few days so wondering what tonight will be like.

Will up some pics if I do see anything super interesting.

One of the weird things about growing up in North America, and especially Canada, is that every ethnic food you are exposed to is changed subtly to both the ingredient availability, tastes and sensibilities of the consumer.

Anyhow, reminded me of this interesting TED Talk you should probably check out to get a clue of what it’s like here for me at the mo.

They’ve recently found nine artifacts that don’t appear in museum records, including stones with hieroglyphs and a sacred table to make offerings to the gods.

This isn’t the first time new old stuff has turned up in the museum. Random bits that have come the museum’s way over the years that archaeologists have considered possible fakes have traditionally been buried in the museum’s garden. These are now being dug up again and examined.

I’m just trying to finish up some blog postings from my trip and get them posted, but it’s been a bit tricky with trying to move, finishing up the gig here in London and working on moving in an antipodean direction. Still, this tells me two things. 1. I must return to Egypt 2. There’s still lots to be discovered out there for us intrepid types.

Note to self: More baksheesh next time.

(via Gadling.)

Anyhow, some beautiful pics of the amazing fairy tale landscape of Görume in Cappadoccia, Turkey from April as part of the larger Turkey trip collection and some very recent photos from my trip last week to Egypt and the great and mighty Karnak complex in Luxor.

Somehow, I’ve found myself out in the middle of the desert in Saqqara, trying to skirt guards to get to a specific pyramid and a few tombs I was interested in. And I’m out of water. Not sure how I did it, but I’m semi-lost. I can see the pyramids I need to get back to way off in the distance, but they look really, really much further than they should be considering how far I think I’d walked.

I realize this is like one of those bad movies. I look up, my sunglasses barely screening out the severity of the sun, just to check if there are vultures circling overhead. Just. in. case.

I’ve managed to find a worn groove in the desert which is what I figure is a goat track (though I can’t imagine where they’d be grazing out here now that I’m writing this). I don’t see any tire tracks anywhere within sight, which is not a good sign at all. I’m an idiot, I think. One of these days, wandering around deserts or climbing up and down cliff faces (see Turkey’s Adamkayalar entries) is going to get me into deep trouble.

Starting off low though, I hear what I swear could be singing. I try to locate it along the low dunes around me since I’m convinced it’s getting louder. Ah, I think… this is what sunstroke feels like. I had already seen the mirages in the deep South on the way to Abu Simbel. Perhaps the mirages are auditory as well.

All of a sudden though, there is a roaring, wracked gear-shifty sound and a large, slightly decrepit yellow bus wheels into view about a kilometer back over a low rise. Definitely a mirage I think.

But it persists. The rumble-wheeze of the bus and the obvious gear shifting it’s driver doing trying to work the bus over whatever is supposed to pass as a track grows louder and gets closer to the point where there is a friendly beep-beep behind me, and loads of people yelling at me and a din that is unseemly for the still heat of the desert. Someone yells in heavily accented English if I’d like a ride and to come on and is waving me over.

I don’t wait for a second invite. Despite spending almost three weeks in Egypt at this point and having one hell of a wicked tan, I can feel my face burning from being out in the desert too long. My lips are parched and I can tell I’ve been in the sun way too long.

Rather bizarrely, my saviours turn out to be this entire busload of architecture students from Khartoum who had come up to see the Serapeum at Saqqra. They think it’s hilarious beyond words to find a Canadian walking alone in the middle of the desert and just about everything I say has them erupting in peals of laughter. They take my picture, ask if I married, mention that a few of the women on their bus are looking for a hubbie and ask when I will make it to Khartoum.

I’m obviously dehydrated because I don’t have the presence of mind to ask simple pleasantries like names and if I can get email addresses so I can thank them later when I rehydrate. In fact, considering the kindness the gods bestowed on me having them rescue me like that, I feel a little ungrateful.

So… to the architecture faculty at the University of Khartoum and the students who were visiting Saqqara that day, thanks for saving my unworthy and sunstroked hide.

This is what iPhoto has on geotagged photos (which doesn’t even cover all the places !).

Greetings from Cairo everyone !

I’m staying downtown on the Sharia Talaat Harb which I can only describe as a show shoppers paradise. Wandering around in the early evening all I could see were throngs of shoe obsessed Cairenes thick on the streets (in fact, I’ve never seen crowds like this on any streets I’ve ever been in, in any city). All I could think of was how my friends Robyn and Margot would have died and gone to heaven if they’d been here.

I’m staying at the lovely Hotel Luna which I have to say is one of the cleanest and nicest hostels I’ve ever stayed at. It’s unbelievably clean, I have a lovely room for a rock bottom price and I’m very happy with its location… oh and the internet access works here which is contrary to every other place I’ve been in Egypt.

I had no trouble at the Ramses train station with my taxi driver and we got here for a very acceptable price and he was even very helpful when I said I wasn’t quite sure precisely where the hotel was so totally breaking the stereotype I’d been given of Cairene taxi drivers (though I have yet to make it to the pyramids yet).

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve started using other Cairenes as human shields while crossing the road. I think they’ve surely figured it out since I wait for someone (without limp) to begin to cross the road and then position myself a polite distance downstream of the traffic roaring towards us. So far, it’s seemed to work.

It’s easy enough to get there if you want to go as a large group. The problem though, everyone told me, is that there is a heaving mass of people all trying to fit into the teeny temple of Abu Simbel at the same time. Oh that, and you have to go as part of the police convoy and there are only two times it leaves 4am and 11am. Almost everyone goes at 4am.

Both of those things me no likey. 3am wake up times and throngs of people so I can’t contemplate the temple both make me cranky. So, I splurged. I mean, really splurged and hired a private driver to get me down there with the 11am convoy. The benefit of this was twofold. One, we headed up the convoy as one of the few private cars, and the second was that we’d be way ahead of the tour groups when we got there which meant I’d have a good half hour to an hour at the temples without anyone there unless I had the misfortune of having one of the Lake Nasser cruises hitting the temple at the same time.

As it was though, it was worth every single extra penny I spent to get down there. Besides watching the desert roll on on both sides of the highway getting down there and seeing the mirages on the horizon making it look like we were going to be driving into the sea anytime soon, the almost good hour I had with Abu Simbel and Nefertari’s temples where I could walk through, take my time and contemplate the ego that would build thing on the Southern frontier and raise himself to godhood was so worth it.

One weird thing was that the police captain rode in my car, which was a bit strange because it felt like I was subsidizing this guy’s gas and A/C on the way down but you tend not to argue with men with submachinegun’s riding shotgun.

My crew has abandoned me and have very one of them stopped and gone to the bow of the boat, just forward of the lateen sail and asked me to hold the boat steady pushing south down the Nile in the fading wind as they intone along with the muezzin’s sunset call and lower themselves to bow and touch their foreheads to the boat’s deck and the East where they approximate mecca to be.

It’s amazing. I’m humbled and a bit awed and struck by the power that Islam has in this country and feel a little less than righteous myself. I admire people with that deep a devotion to anything.

The felucca ride had not gone to plan.

The plan has been to finally let the little kid that had been asking me every day I was in Aswan and whose family owened the boats to let them all take me out. After negotiating quite a good price, he, his little friend and their uncle and myself all clambered onto the lovingly old and shambolic Ali Khan. It was a little later than I had meant it to be, but figured we were ok.

However, the wind gods were not in our favour (not sure who the Egyptian god of wind is actually… there must be one for sailors) and we headed out in to the Nile and past Elephantine Isle in very, very light wind. Perhaps exhausted in the heat of the end of the day to push the felucca, the wind completely gave up while we were well away from the first cataract so the poor little kids had to bring out the oars since our lateen sail was not doing much. I have to admit that I was pretty impressed art the rowing and their uncle sang softly (and quite beautifully) in Nubian to which they, more or less, pulled oars.

We talked about life in Aswan, the little kid’s girlfriend from America that was coming to visit (much to the big, amused smile of the uncle) and everyday things. It was perhaps the most relaxing thing I’d done in my entire stay in Egypt. Chilled me out, peeked past the heat of the day and felt lazy while still doing something.

But as the sun dipped behind the Aga Khan’s tomb on the West Bank of the Nile, the muezzin’s call came clear across the waters. It wasn’t even discussed actually. I was given the tiller and everyone went forward and performed their prayers for the end of the day.

It took us a long time after dark to get back as even zigzagging in the current in the failed wind was a bit of work. Was fun though. Even though I’d haggled hard on the end of the afternoon price, I tipped the uncle and the boys enormously for such an enjoyable ride, shook their hands, promised we’d go out again the next time I was in Aswan and walked into the gathering dark back to my hotel and a dinner rendezvous.

It’s sundown right now though and it was absolutely lovely typing with call to prayer wafting in from outside across the Nile.

The funny thing is, it abruptly stopped just as the power was cut as well since the loudspeakers are electric I imagine.

Power has just come back on and the muezzin is rolling on. Wondering now if it’s recorded or if someone is doing it live.

I lost my hat (which I’ve only had for eight days), the electricity (and thus water I needed) went out just before I jumped in the shower in the hotel as the temperature in my sun facing room started to climb. Coming back from a lovely lunch across the street where I met some very nice fellow travellers (E, A and F), I came back to run off some blog posts, mail and the like, but the internet wat out back at the hotel (though the electric was back on). And finally, the quiet victory sunset drink on the veranda of the Old Cataract Hotel with its view over the Nile was rudely shattered by the fact that it’s been closed for the last 2 years (damn you Lonely Planet and your slow to update editions !).

Undaunted (it’s me after all), I decided the next best thing was to go next door and try the Farial gardens, grab a lemonade and watch the sun go down on the Nile and dunes from the best shady hilltop I could find. There I managed to run into my friends from lunch who had much the same idea and we drank lemonade and chatted until approached by Ismail.

Ismail is a retired diver who worked the Red Sea. A wonderful older man, he chatted with us for hours, invited us back to his house for tea (which ended up being by candlelight as the entire city is having rolling blackouts – I’m assuming due to the electrical demands on AC and fans in this heat) and soundly thrashed us all at backgammon before teaching us a bit of yoga and sending us on our way.

By the time we left it was getting very late and we were lucky to get fed at Aswan moon considering they were closing. But I have to say, it was incredible how the day turned out overall and probably the nicest one I’ve had in Egypt since getting here.

The Nile is stunning at Aswan’s first cataract. A dark, deep ribbon of blue criss-crossed by slow moving feluccas at full sail and split down the middle by Elephantine Island, which was home to ancient, almost primordial, Abu which was a trading post for ivory and elephants for millennia before more modern Aswan moved to this, the East bank of the Nile.

I’ve just gotten to the quaint little Nile Hotel on the East bank which has splendid rooms overlooking the Nile and island though appears to be having a bit of a problem with electricity at the moment with a temporary outage I’m hoping will be fixed soon as the lack of air conditioning in my room is now reaching uncomfortable levels (not to mention the lack of power for my laptop). Hotel options are a bit limited as most tourists stay on the cruise ships that regularly ply the Aswan to Luxor route.

But more so than Luxor, with its touts and in your face tourism, Aswan feels even after only an hour more like the exotic southern Egypt we stereotype in the West; desert, Nile, feluccas, camels and souks even if there are no immediate pyramids to be seen except much farther North.

From here the plan is to explore as much of Nubian culture as I can in a few days and make a trip to the great guardian temple of the Southern frontier Abu Simbel.