Hypertravel with Hardie #7: Welcome to East Africa

Welcome to the latest, and seventh, episode of my Hypertravel with Hardie video series, here on YouTube, about all the trips I’ve taken in the last twenty years or so. This trip to East Africa just so happens to perfectly coincide with Chapter Seven of my original Hypertravel book, which I published in 2012, so I’m glad that’s convenient if you’re following along. This came only a few weeks after my Mideast trip, so that’s still in my heart and in my head, with only the Rose Bowl Parade and my girlfriend’s face to define the space between. I could’ve just stayed in London for that interim period, but that’s a decision I had to make. Africa is a bit of a tough nut to crack, after all, so any extra time and space to rest up and catch my breath is more than welcome. Often that happens in TJ, Mexico, actually, even though my wife is in LA, California USA. And this trip is no exception to the ‘Africa is broken’ theme. Because, right off the plane, at 07 am, my hostel driver in Nairobi, Kenya, informs me at the airport that the hostel is full, and the rain is falling, and a no-tell motel won’t tell, BUT..;. My driver’s got a place, though, of course, HIS place, conveniemtly located and ready to rock, all at affordable prices. It’s raining. It’s only for 2-3 nights. So I do it, damn the torpedoes. I’ve got a private bedroom, at least, and a kid that loves me, so who cares if I have to shit and shower in the same place. Welcome to Africa, and don’t forget to spread your legs when you flush! They’re all out partying the first night, of course, they flush with newfound wealth, what once was my wealth. I guess I can’t blame them. ‘The chief’, though, that’s his moniker, is nice enough. I just cant’ help the feeling that this is all a set-up. How would he know the hostel is full at 07 am, after all? This was the year 2010. Internet bookings were new. People come and go every day. This was not a weekend. So, it’s suspicious, but what else would i do? Hire a taxi to the original place? It was raining. At least The Chief took me out to his village, so that was nice. I skipped the parties. This requires full atention. But i got my onward ticket the first day, and assured him that i’d be back. That’ll work. Next stop is Uganda, Kampala by night bus. So, we do the border formalities between the two countries by candle light. Nice. From there it’s only a short hop into the city. And it’s pretty nice there, nicer than most. If I’d known that when I was there, I might’ve stayed longer. I’ve given up on hostel bookings in Africa, though, so I’m going old school again. No, not Lonely planet, older than that. I mean looking around the bus station, as long as it’s central, and finding a nice cheap place there. It works. That’s what i wuold do in the 70’s, long before Lonely Planet. But Kampala reminds me a bit of the old Deep South in the US, the nice part. Kigali, Rwanda, should be so nice. The night ride to there is interesting, especially Mbarara partying all night, but the Customs by canlelight is getting old. It gets worse. If Rwanda is cool and aloof, then, Burundi is downright racist, with calls of ‘Muzungu’ following me around like a bad smell. The views are good, though, these the mountain provinces of the continent. They had a war, of course, rival Tutsis and Hutus, so those feelings may still be a bit hard around the edges. But the strangest thing is the plastic bag policy in Rwanda, which will literally confiscate your plastic ones, and charge you to replace them with paper ones. The cost of an infraction is fifty bucks USD. Ouch. From there I buy a ticket to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Otherwise, it’s an even longer drive to Malawi, so that’ll come later. There’s only one problem: Tanzania doesn’t allow bus travel at night. There are workarounds, though, or maybe runarounds, better said. Dar es Salaam is nice, enough, too, but hot hot hot. It’s a long run to Lilongwe, Malawi, too, a long frieght run, since the whole bus is packed to the gills with goods. That means long waits at the border crossings, of course, which consumed almost a whole day. The re-pack is even worse, so we’re soon a rolling time bomb. I finally find a backpacker hostel, though, South African tent-camp style, so that’s cool. I always liked it when backpackers were once campers, complete with sleeping bag. But it’s basically pretty boring. Mbeya is better, a crossroads town in southern Tanzania, but only if you like clockwork. Muslims apprently do, along with cats and other fetishes. But here all the mosques are chock full of clocks! So, I catch the ferry to Zanzibar, just in time for the Sauti za Busara music festival. And it’s good, but there’s a problem. The power is off all day. Welcome to Pakistan. Welcome to Nepal. Welcome to that cheap-ass room down the hall. Some people work during the day. Digital nomads do it at home, wherever home happens to be. Prices are twice as high as Dar es Salaam, too. So, I go back and then head north to Kilimanjaro, the most famous mountain in Africa. Arusha is the access point, and it’s pretty nice, too, cooler if not cold, and backpacker central in this part of Africa. It’s a bone-jarring affair from there back to Nairobi, though, but that’s the deal, so I find my own place there this time around and report my previous hostel hijacker ASAP, upon departure. The circle is now complete. Stockhom Syndrome? Ha. No way, Jose’. The flight to Madagascar is rainy but nice, as is Antananarivo itself, the capital city. It may not rival San’aa, Yemen, for beauty, but it comes close. And San’aa has since been largely destroyed, too. These are original Asians, we know, from Indonesia’s islands, so one of the major mysteries of world history. There are others of similar bent. But the interesting thing is that they still occupy the highlands while relegating the lowlands to Africans, not only maintaining a distinct look, but also distinct habits, like rice and noodles. Count me in. They also have dual currency, so that’s fun, constantly doing math in the head. But the Big Thrill in Madagascar comes at the very end; hundreds of joggers on the road to the airport at 04 am. Somehow i feel totally vindicated–about everything. Comoros should take lessons. I don’t know if all French colonies are jerks, or what, but these guys have an attitude, just like Djibouti or Tahiti or Cannes. But it’s okay for a few days, adn then I’m back to madagascar, ready to see some new terrain. But my body won/t allow it. I’ve got a case of gout that will barely let me walk, and certainly not travel. So, I just get homey and cozy and resigned to the signs, the signs of age and physical decay that plague us the boomers and boners and never-go-homers that populate the farther reaches of civilization. There’s no rest for the wicked, though. When money disappears out of my pocket, i trace it back to a collection of kids crowding a thoroughfare to make things tight and then slipping and sliding fingers when the timing is right. It works every time, twenty-five bucks for the little yippers and yappers. Then I realize that this is my 121st country. That’s 11 squared. Did you know that the difference between squared numbers increases by two each time, so that you can could by odd numbers between them? If the squares are 4, 9,16, 25, 36, etc, then the numbers between them are 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, etc. There’s always something to celebrate. This trip is over, just back to LA via London, same ol same ol. I hope you liked the story and the video. It’s all true. So please like and subscribe if you did. I’d really appreciate it. Next week we’ll go to the South Pacific, see you there.

Hypertravel with Hardie #6: UK and North Europe

Welcome to the Sixth episode of my Hypertravel with Hardie video series here and on YouTube. This episode corresponds most closely with Chapter 8 of the original Hypertrvel book, that inspired and defines these videos, but we’re slowly drifting away from that model. So this episode begins with Chapter 4, which also closely corresponds to Episode 4. Got it? I doubt it, because the book depicted an actual travel narrative, while these video are more encyclopedic, in an effort to facilitate travel by any others interested in ‘seeing it all’ methodically. Because, whether you cross every border or not, to see 150 or more countries in your lifetime will take some effort and coordination. This series shows how I went about it methodically, and hopefully can be a guide to others, eventually on VR, Virtual Reality. This is all backpack-style traveling, too, so anyone can do it. I did it all alone, with no guides or special skills, and at costs that would be no more than the typical US apartment in the typical US city. This trip will concentrate mostly on North Europe, first in June 2009 and then again in April 2010. Are you ready? Let’s go! It’s sometimes fun to mix and match regions if the timing is convenient, so after my previous trip to the Horn of Africa and the Caucasus, I continued to Scandinavia, where I’d never been, up until then. It’s generally expensive, so a bit antithetical to the concept of backpack travel, but still rewarding nonetheless. Budget flights are good for that. So, I flew in from Istanbul to Stockholm late at night and then made my way to a place called the Boatel? Can you guess the rest? Yes, it floats. Which was all very cool, and so was Stockholm, but the place fills up on weekends, so I was off quickly to Goteborg (Gothenburg) to bide some time. My digital nomad inclinations were given a boost there, too, since it’s all remote and digital, even e-tickets for the Eurolines bus long before China and its fans started bragging about WeChat and Alipay and the QR code of life fulfillment. So, what if the cashless country used credit cards to beat China by a decade? If the average Chinese person had any credit, then they’d be using them, too. Sweden even prohibits smoking. Try that in China. Bhutan is better. Drinking Is ubiquitous. Look it up. Copenhagen, Denmark is cool, too, if you can afford it, Tivoli Gardens and all, kinda like Disneyland for semi-adults. At least you can walk to it. Oslo, Norway, is also okay, but I’d really like to head up the peninsula to see more, so this is just the warm-up. Everybody speaks English, it seems. But it’s pricey, so I beat a hasty retreat to Helsinki by night flight, and dig in a bit more there, with its cheaper digs and all. They have Euros, too, so that’s a convenient way to spend money, and with many street markets there, also. They even have reindeer burgers! But they don’t have an Indo-European language, so any further involvement would be challenging. They’ve got a close cousin across the way, though, that’s Estonia, so that’s my next stop, arrival there by ferry to the cute capital Tallinn. The proximity to Russia seems to be calling me, though, so I make a mental note of that for future reference. They even have gingerbread houses and the munchies to match, any hour of the day, so that’s not a bad way to play, if your budget can handle it. I finally took a bus straight through Riga and Vilnius, Latvia and Lithuania, on to Warsaw, Poland. It’s defined by its contradictions, but I’ll be back. This trip got re-ignited almost a year later, with Russia as the locus. I’d already been to Ukraine by that point, so the north was now the focus, even crossing tracks with some of the previous trip some nine months before. This segment even envisioned a continuing trip to west Africa, but that had some surprises, to be mentioned later. But Russia was the juggernaut, Russia and Moscow, especially, complete with $400 visa charge, which I did in LA, and which included LOI, Letter of Invitation, old-fashioned visa BS. West Africa was a pain, too, visas necessaary for every tiny country, but that’s another story, almost. The high charge for Russia is worth it, maybe, if you are taking the Orient Express to Mongolia and China, but I had no intention of that, though details were left flexible. I only knew that I’d be visiting Moscow and St. Petersburg, and possibly more, with Belarus as dessert, if at all possible. But almost all of these trips include London, either as stopover or connection, even if seldom worth the mention. But this time would be the exception. A half day in LHR at the beginning seemed to confirm that, almost ominous. Even more ominous would be the female suicide bombers on the Moscow subway on March 29, 2010, the same day that I would later saunter in, this only a few months after the Yemen-based Christmas Bomber shot his wad on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. But those two Muslim girls in Moscow killed 38 at two separate stations during rush hour, apparently for the Islamic cause in the Caucasus. So, I come strolling in later the same day with no Russian lingo, and no English to be found, hardly. But I knew some Cyrillic alphabet by then, so that helps, since many of the words are the same in their Greek and our Latin etymologies. It’s 2010, though, and Russia was still Communist in many ways, bureaucratic BS the least of it, registering anything and everything all the time. So, I’m quickly looking for an exit after the tourist sites of Red Square and St. Basil’s cathedral. I even considered heading straight thru Belarus to Poland, but I ended up in St. Petersburg, instead, a more rational decision. So, I caught the train to St. Pete, and that’s very nice, well worth the wait. The scenery from the train isn’t bad, either, straight from the Old West, it seems, so I feel right at home. The Hermitage Museum downtown is the big deal, though, relics from ancient Russia, the steppe lands, and Asia to boot, kinda like strolling through the pages of history. Mostly, though, modern Russia is ready to rock, and if the rock band Mumiy Troll isn’t enough for you, then ageing classic rockers from the US and UK are ready to fill the bill. This was 2010, remember, before Ukraine in 2014, and Russia waas still opening up to the West, before its current tilt to China. St. Pete is the most western city of Russia, with extensive connections to Europe, so that’s gold for indie travel, and means that I can catch a train stright to Vilnius, Lithuania, the same city I briefly saw on the bus from Tallinn, Estonia to Warsaw, Poland, so this time I plan a few days. It’s nice, too, old-fashioned Baltic, with some nice modern flourishes thrown in, like a statue of Frank Zappa! Cool. I see the Belarus consulate, but they don’t look too encouraging for travel. Ex-KGB headquarters is interesting, though, aka the Genocide Museum, and the National Museum is not bad, either. I walk my little feet off, but things are changing all the time. I need to get back early to London to do my visa for Ghana, so I blow off my Warsaw stay and head straight to the airport from Vilnius. Wizz Air charges for everything, so I’m wearing half my luggage with the rest stuffed i my pockets as I board the plane to London. The visa will take a few days, so I now have time to kill and that means Scotland, specifically Loch Ness, since I’d already done Stonehenge the year before, almost lost a bag there, even, so this is good timing. I even hung out in London then, for a film festival and music, so time to revisit the north, which I aborted only a few years before. This was my UK decade, after all, after I almost settled into some business there, based in Hounslow, which I ultimately gave up. The north country is nice, though, Inverness included, pub central. Then the volcano in iceland erupted and the drifting ash is closing airports all over, including London. So, my passport is ready, but the skies are not. So, this is now a UK trip, and thousands of travelers are stuck. I catch a bus to Belfast, though, and take it from there. No one’s going there, except me. And it’s not Dublin, but it’s not bad. I even got to see London Derry, too, on my hostel’s free tour. I’m a confirmed hostel guy by now, for the wifi, if nothing else, but the low prices and travel vibe are nice, too. There was no 5G then, remember, just laptops in the transition from desktops to smart phones, so right up my alley, writer’s alley, camera optional. Finally, the skies clear, and that means I need to re-book my Air Afriqiyah flight from London via Libya to Ghana. Yep, that’s correct. And Ghana’s okay, but Burkina Faso is not, through no fault of its own, my laptop broken into squiggles and giggles just at the thought of my half-baked travel narratives. I can’t travel a month without my laptop. This trip is over. Africa bites the dust, once again, just like my kidney stones in Mali two years ago, thieves in South Africa last year, and now this. If you like the content, please like and subscribe. We’ll have a successful trip to Africa next time, I promise. Bye now.

Hypertravel with Hardie #5: the Mideast

Hi ya’ll, welcome to the fith episode of Hypertravel with Hardie here on YouTube. Actually our fifth episode here was really the sixth episode in the original Hypertravel book, but mostly left out here because of the misfortune I encountered in South Africa, being robbed in broad daylight on the streets of Nelspruit, South Africa, not Jo’burg, but a bucolic smaller city, leafy and green until the streets turned mean and left me standing there with not much to spare but my self-interest and my self-preservation instincts, forcing me to return to Jo’Burg for a temporary passport, but no camera, unfortunately. So, I finished my trip with only a 3-month passport, including all of southern Africa, including Zambia, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique. I even continued to East Europe to make my rounds there, which I dutifully wrote up, but without a camera to document the digs. Ukraine was nice; I remember that much, that slice of a little southwest corner, featuring Lviv, that was the northeastern culmination of my southeastern foray that included Romania, Moldova, and now Ukraine, even Poland. Before it’s all over, I’ll also visit my one-hundredth country Andorra on this trip, but the more important thing is to hustle a quickie passport ASAP back in LA, and that’s possible if you’ve got a trip planned. So, I told them I was going to Mexico. They bought it. So August and September weren’t too good, but October 2009 is looking up. C U down the road. I always stay in Mexico during my interim travel. Maybe I’ll write more on this for another East Europe episode, if I can find some pictures. But this episode is mostly about the Mideast. So, that means a nice return to the one-region/one trip format. But it’ll still be hub-and-spoke with Cairo at the center, not point-to-point like the good ole USA or something similar. No, this is the Mideast, not the Midwest, and I’m lucky to even have good travel conditions considering the shit that’s gone down since. Almost as if by design, there’s a screw-up in Cairo with two competing hotels, but there was a happy ending, and good wifi, so no real problem. The main problem are the multifarious travel options in a tricky region, so that takes up more time than the pyramids for the first few days. But wifi is much easier, and cheaper than travel agents, so it all eventually works out. The pyramids at Giza are incredible, of course, Sphinx and all that, and the Cairo Film Festival is like icing on the cake. The current plan is to take a cheap flight to Lebanon, and then proceed from there, so that’s what I do. Beirut isn’t especially cheap, so somehow I end up in the Christian suburbs, not downtown, where I usually like to be, depending on prices. That means TV porn and Alcohol to boot, neither of which I crave, but that’s okay. Part of the deal is that I can hopefully get a Syrian visa at the land border with a bus from Beirut, so that’s what I do. It costs me hours at the border and a shout-down from the ICE man, but I get onward trans to Damascus, and arrive before dark. Hey, the apostle Paul was blinded on the same road, so I should feel lucky! At least I’ve got decent digs in Damascus, so I’ll see more there than Beirut. It’s old-fashioned, if not Biblical, but fine for the walking, so I even stay another day due to the runs in my buns. Next stop will be a taxi drive to Amman, Jordan, and that comes off withoiut a hitch. Amman, Jordan, is middle-class, neither rich nor poor, so no big deal. The big deal are the ruins of Petra down the road, made famous by Indian Jones, I believe, and well worth the waiting to get there. It’s csrved, BTW, not constructed. From there it’s back to Egypt, by a different route, of course, no return to Beirut necessary, when a ferry ride to southern Egypt will do fine, thank you. That means a ride from Aqaba to Nuweiba, and an option to chill at Dahab, groover central, time permitting. But I passed on by, like a ship in the night, on to Cairo after midnight. From there I’ll go south to Luxor, which is something of a revelation in itself. That’s because of the massive temple columns, a hyperbole to the Greek version, but these came first, so an alternative to the pyramids, and a fashion forward to the future. The Greeks would refine them to architectural perfection, but the Egyptian version were the original. Combine them with arches and you’ve got something truly revolutionary, castles floating in the air! Or so, it might seem. The ruins of Karnak are nearby and the ancient site of Thebes is beneath and underneath, making modern Luxor something truly exotic, what with the Nile River flowing nearby. It’s a chill deal compared to Cairo, too, so worth the ride for the extensive look. The trip gets more complicated now, and that means a cheapo flight to Yemen, San’aa to be exact. This is the icing on the Arabian cake, of course, as timeless as it is timely. The traditional architecture is unbelievable and the traditional people are similarly fashioned. That means daggers, dirhams, and of course the imminently chewable qat. It also means that I got totally lost my first night, wandering the meandering streets without counting my turns carefully enough, dead reckoning, so finally getting totally lost in the darkness. That’s what taxi cabs are for, of course, and business cards, too, if the hotel has them and the counter help is not too busy chewing qat to help find them. Life is far from perfect, no matter the country or religion, but where there is a will, there’s a way, in lieu of any better cliche’, so when the taxi crossed a path that I’d already crossed earier in the day, I yell at him to stop, and i walk it home from there, landmarks succeeding where street names and numbers often fail, business card or not. Yemen is my new travel hub and the next stops are Doha, Qatar, and Dubai, UAE. Doha is flooded, but that will soon pass, and so will the traditional old quarter that almost resembles San’aa, as the new Miracle Mile springs up along the other side of the bay. It looks impressive, but it’s empty, all just speculation as to what the neighborhood is really worth, as the traditional Arabia gives way to the newer more modern model. The only people there are construction workers, so conclusions must wait. This is all ‘old hat’ to Dubai, of course, long accustomed to such speculations and re-workings of old metaphors. UAE is hardly even arabian any more, really, unless you’re counting coups on the soles of old shoes. Because most of the inhabitants are foreigners, now, and more than a few of them Filipino, fleeing their own population boom and income bust, ditto for the Russians and other assorted Slavic country citizens. English is the lingua franca and dollars can easily pass for dirhams. Oman is right down the road and something of an anomaly of its own design. It’s an old sailing port of ancient renown, but left out of the more modern oil-rich money that passes for mideast currency. So, it’s not as poor and traditional as Yemen, but not so rich and modern as UAE. It’s even accessible by bus from Dubai, so something of a walk in the park that is the Arabian peninsula. The Muscat souq has the traditional frankincense and myrrh, even if the malls lack the latest fashion that make the models twirl on runways. But I’m good there for a few days. And the Iranian island of Kish is right across the bay from Dubai , so I go there to stay a few days, also, and let the resident Filipinos fill me in on the scene. It’s enlightening, of course, even more so since it’s the only way I could get into Iran without a guide or visa, and cheap as dirt if I stay with the visa runners. They’re all waiting for their visas, and the local TV station updates them every day, many here longer than a month already, biding their not-so-precious time, as long as their in-laws back home know how to manage their money. That’s the scoop, my friends, I now older but wiser, as the axe would soon fall on all that is Arabia, like chessmen on a chess board, first Tunisia, and then all the rest, finally Syria just a while ago, I forget when, since it’s all so confusing and disheartening, usually, but sometimes good. If you like, then subscribe, and I’ll see you back soon with more from East Africa, and maybe East Europe, too, or at least London and the UK, so ubiquitous as to almost be overlooked. Thanks!

Hyper-travel with Hardie #4: The Horn of Africa and the Caucasus...

 

Welcome to the fourth installment of my Hypertravel with Hardie series, in which I’m showing pictures of my trips for the last twenty years. We’ve already covered southernmost South America, the Caribbean, and Southeast Europe. Now we’ll go to the Caucasus region, including Turkey, and the Horn of Africa, including Ethiopia. This trip goes against the idea that a coherent trip would consist of one continuous region, in that the Cuacasus and the Horn of Africa aren’t really connected. But in the modern jet age of hab-and-spoke travel and inexpensive airlines, that’s very possible. In fact, the original trip also consisted of the Scandinavian region, but I’ve saved that for later, in order to maintain some regional continuity. So, we’ll only cover two nearby regions for this trip. Are you ready? Let’s go! I’ve had the Ethiopian visa for a while, thinking i might branch off from my previous southeast Europe trip to use it, but that didn/t happen, so now it’s time. First stop will be Ethiopia, with a brief stopover in London from LA. i’mstaying with some NGO friends in Addis Ababa, so a bit out of the way and on the outskirts of town, so we do some touristy stuff, the best of which are the culture shows for drinks and dinner, which seem to have made an impact on the local tourist scene. Oliver Mtukudzi is also giving a concert on the weekend, so I’ll stay for that before heading for the border. Because Somalia is the big question mark for this trip, so I’ll deal with that first, specifically a visa to the rump upstart Somaliland, with capital at Hargeisa, accessible by land from Ethiopia and imminently more peaceful that Mogadishu, so I’ll get my visa for there in the meantime. It’s no problem. And the concert with ‘Tuku’ is good, sprawling over the pavement and inviting all to dance. The but to the border should be so welcoming. I’ll make stops at Dire Dawa and Harar, but the terminal at the Italian Merkato At 0500 is shambolic. Some of these people look like they’ve been sleeping on the bus all night, but that’s okay, as long as I don’t get robbed. I’ll get pick-pocketed at least once in Ethiopia, so my fears are well-founded. Merkato is notorious. Things get better out on the open road, though, especially when the large trucks take the turn to Djibouti, while we continue on to Dire Dawa. At some point the bus stops and people buy qat, but not me, not yet. Dire Dawa is not so different from Addis, Christian and full of parties, but Harar only an hour away is totally different, Muslim and prohibitive, semi-narcotic qat only, to stay awake for prayers, uh huh. The big deal for tourists there are the hyena feedings, but the big deal for me is the trail of Rimbaud, the French poet who put Ethiopia on his map when he retired from poetry at the age of twenty-something. They remember him, too. From there it’s all downhill to Jijiga and the border to Somaliland. The border looks like it’s been scratched into the sand willy-nilly. The city of Hargeisa is not bad, though, better than Mogadishu, I’m sure, with wifi, just a taxi from the border with a Muslim inmy lap. But there’s nothing special there, so I book a flight to Djibouti and cross my fingers. It’s a real Russian plane with real Russian pilots and crew, flying low over the sand, with notihhing much better to do. Adn Djibouti is no better, just more French and more expensive, and quite rude to boot, especially if you make the grave mistake of snapping a picture, no matter of what. It’s all prohibited. So I don’t stay long, but bite the bullet and catch a flight back to Addis, rather than sweat two or more days on the slow bus uphill. That gives me time to explore the rest of Ethiopia, which is much preferable to these lowland desert dregs. Classic Ethiopia is in the hills, where it’s cool and the atmosphere is Biblical, shepherds with rods and staffs and robes to conceal themselves. The only problem is the bus system, and i found the solution to that–Selam bus. Back in Addis Ababa I get my own place and a real live modern city, complete with uptown, downtown, and miles of walkable roads between the two. I won’t waste a lot of time right now, though, since it’s a well-worn travel truth that you do the hard miles first, since there will always be chill time on the rebound. So, I catch the bus for Gonder, which will allow me a stopover at Bahir Dar on Lake Tana on the return leg. Glorious Lalibela doesn’t look far as the crow flies on that map, either, but i’ve learned not to trust random crows. This upgrade Selam bus doesn’t leave from the Merkato, either, so that’s good, even though it’ll get me in to Gonder after dark, VERY dark, since there’s rolling brown-outs in Ethiopia, too, almost like a Communist knee-jerk reaction, along with illegal blogs and feral dogs. The espresso makes up for the minor inconveniences, I guess. The check-in guy assures me that the lights will come on at 10 pm, just like Harar, but I’m not impressed, since i don’t sleep with the lights on, thoiugh i guess some do. It’s probably a security thing. The ‘royal enclosure’ that defines Gonder is nice, though, and the people are fine, when they don’t pick my pockets, so I;m digging the Biblical scenes with Joseph and his technicolor dreamcoat, and I even find a rare picture of Mohammad on a village church’s wall. Did you know that Ethiopia is the oldest form of Christianity in the world? They and Armenia, or is it Georgia? Their alphabets are all similar. Muhammad came later, but he’s remembered. I backtrak to Bahir Dar, and the move feels good . Lalibela will have to wait. The big deal there are monasteries dotting the lake, but not so scenic. So, I go down the road to see the falls of the Blue Nile., and that’s cool. The drive back to Addis is much better than the drive out simply because the air is so much cleaner now, so almost like a different trip. And Addis almost feels like home now, so I go to my favorite coffee shop and chill. When someone tries to pickpocket me from behind, I shake their hand in perfect time, their face long lost in the crowd. This part of the trip is over. I’ll go back to Istanbul now. ISTANBUL Istanbul is a metropolis by comparison to Addis Ababa, with dozens of hostels and guesthuoses vying for business in Sultanahmet, where the rival mosques of Haga Sophia and the Blue Mosque, vye for tourist dollars, while the beds and breakfasts vye for rooftop views. Oh, sure, Istanbul has a reputation for sleaze bakc in the days of French connections and lethal injections, and you could probably find a sad old streetwalker if you really need that, but mostly it’s buffet breakfasts and AYCE shashlik served up straight from the street, ready to put the shish back in your kebab. You could probably find something Lebanes and blonde, too, without too much trouble, but Midnight Epress is still fresh in my memory, so I think better of all such propositions. There’s some hard travel to do, too, so time waits for no one, and I set out on a big ass bus, complete with hostess and snacks. There;s a ferry across the Black Sea at some point, maybe Samsun, but I forgo it. And Trabzon is the historic Greek limit of influence, so I stop there, thinking to meander, but end up cathcing a connection to Georgia within five minutes. Geogia is totally different, Batumi a seacoast city, for one thing, and good coffee, for another. Their Turkish coffee is much better than Turkey’s, where Nescafe rules supreme. Market stalls line the streets up and down this town. Then I go to Tbilisi, which is different yet again, big city in a small country. Wifi is scarce everywhere, and i have no reservation, so bite the bullet on a pricey place rather than find an internet cafe and start over. The old ways of Lonely planet and blind logic die hard. So, I don’t stay long, instead looking for the bus stop by tha muddy spot, and hoping for the best on the border to Armenia. They all look like Seinfeld’s Uncle Leo, but that’s okay, I can pay, just ge me to yerevan by sundown. So i get the good bus, finally and a free coffee at the countryside inn, and all is right with the world. There’s a hostel waiting for me at Yerevan and some righteous travelers, too, so that is fine, and i try tostudy russian. Because this is still the USSR, by some accounts, and that keeps the cynics at bay and the critics at sea, and lessens the distinctions betweens you and me, so that all three naions here, Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijani, can stay away from each other’s throats long enough to draw maps, where otherwise none would exist. So, Nagorno-Karabakh bides its time and Naxchivan hangs nine, and waits for another day to be delivered. The duduk flute makers live onthe outskirts of town, so we do that one day, and get drunk, me on one of my few guided tours in some thirty-five years of travel. i can count them on one hand. And the city is cool, too, with parks full of pop-up restos and bars, so what if the drivers are maniacs and the food is nothing special? That’s why Thai town and Little armenia share space in LA, so i can have good bread with my Thai food. From here there’s no Way to cross into Azerbaijan, unless I want to wait for Nagorno-Karabakh to surrender or return to Georgia and backtrack from there. There’s no direct route to Turkiye either. It sounds too complicated for a trip to the birthplace of the oil industry, so I return to Georgia and take it from there, figuring to go to Cappadocia first and then Cyprus for extra credit. That means Goreme, and the fairy chimneys and hoodoo voodoo haunts, which make it famous, with barkers and colored balloons floating overhead like semaphores over Santa Fe from Albuquerque far below, the whole place looking like bedrock for Flintstones, Wilma and Fred, then Betty and Barney Rubble with Dino the dinosaur for good measure. It’s all good fun until I wake up with my laptop lying on the floor, incapable of holding a charge now without some expert care and maintenance. It’s these dams fluffy beds rejecting everything semi-erect and hardened. That means a return to Istanbul, but not so fast. So I hightail it to Cyprus, with a ferry from Tasucu, chastened but not hastened, not too much anyway. The green line between Nicosia and Lefkosa separates more than North Cyprus from the South. It divides Asia from Europe and Muhammad from Jesus, just like Odysseus crossing the Aegean Sea to fight Trojans who would be Persians as soon as the opportunity presented itself, those two Indo-Euiropean brothers long separated by time and space from the northern steppes. And this is my odyssey, crossing the green line where time stood still in 1974, and the prices stay the same in stores and magazines long shuttered but not silent. But the prices are cheaper on the northern side now, so that’s where I stay, with everything but the girl, laptop begging me for succor, while I prepare another boring supper, last one for the passion of Christ, as I prepare my return to civilization. So I return to Istanbul, as my foot breaks out, with another bout of gout, begging for attention while I navigate the situation of my laptop, the factory’s service center on the other side of town, giving me a guided tour of the city’s broader environs that I could never get from the breakfast buffet of the average guest house in Sultanahmet. Yogurt may be the saving grace, but that can only go so far. So, what’s the verdict on a Turkey, with little genetic relation to its ancestral Turks back in Asia, merely a culture and a religion and a language, where not much else really counts? The Turkish coffee is better in Georgia and the Turkish kilims are better in Bosnia. This is arguably Asia, true, but not much, only sort kinda almost maybe. But if that’s enough to keep Odysseus occupied for a decade, then I guess it’s enough for me. This trip is over. C U in Africa. If you like this content, then don’t forget to like and subscribe. That goes a long way to make me happy and gives me the inspriation to make you happy. In the next episode we’ll return to southern Europe and southern Africa, too. C U there. Thanks for watching.