Egypt

These are some photos of a trip to Dahab, Cairo, Sakkara, Luxor and Abu Simbel via trains, buses and boat.

In 2000 I joined an overland truck trip in Turkey and travelled via Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel to Egypt.

Israel

As my passport was about to run out and Egypt still allowed you in with an Israeli visa I decided to head to Jerusalem. After ridiculous questions about why I wanted to visit Israel from the border guards and meeting some absolutely obnoxious Israelis we got to Jerusalem. We stayed on the roof of a hotel just inside Jaffa gate for $1 a night with great views of the mosque. The old town was superb although the Christian religious churches were disgusting - manifesting everything foul about religion - devisive, stupid and self obsessed. The people visiting the area to see Jesus's footsteps were just being exploited by the various churches all clamouring to claim their little piece of Jesus. The Palestinians living in the city were the friendliest by far despite being under curfew and stateless - not allowed to have an Israeli passport, few freedoms apart from trading if they weren't under curfew. No wonder there's a war still going on 7 years later. The wailing wall was just extremist nonsense - fools worshipping a wall that just continued to divide these blinkered people. I was glad to leave Israel, and just hoped that one day the religious bigotry on all sides would end.

Petra Patterns

Jordan

After travelling through Syria we entered Jordan, visiting the Dead Sea and the whole area where a lot of the bible stories took place. We then headed to Petra and spent a couple of days wandering around. You enter down a 1km crack in the rock with enormous sheer sides to be greeted by the amazing Treasury - a temple carved into the rock (also used in the Indiana Jones film) and then climbed high up to the Monastery - a huge carving high up on the hill - I sat on the top if it!!! The patterns in the rock were absolutely beautiful. From there we went to Wadi Rum and spent a couple of days playing in the desert - camping on the dunes and finding shade under the giant monolithic mountains that are dotted all over the place. I loved Jordan.

Lebanon

I visited Lebanon from Syria on a 2 day trip to Baalbek and Beirut. The place was interesting, seemed positive despite all the obvious evidence of fighting. Baalbek was really good - Hizbollah territory - with a fantasticly biased museum of the struggle against Israel. The poor people of this region are just bombarded by propoganda at every step - there's too many people making millions out of the mysery for it to stop any time soon. The ruins at Baalbek were some of the best I've seen anywhere in the world. There was a play being performed in the ruins so we got to play with the costumes.

Syria

We travelled into Syria from close to Adana in Turkey. We spent a few days driving through the desert to Aleppo and it's ruins befor heading South to Damascus, Crac des Chevaliers and loads of other places. The country was great although we needed police permits to travel independently. Assad's picture was everywhere - sad really - a nation perpetuating a sort of cult idea like Iraq with Saddam Hussein.