Africality Interview

August 6, 2014 Katana Leave a comment

Vegan Without Frontiers is about spreading a positive message about all aspects of veganism, whether it is choosing not to eat animals, or saving endangered species from poachers in Africa. We met Humperdinck Jackman and Cynthia Gibson on our ferry journey to Port Said and spent a considerable time with them at the port getting our documents sorted. Humperdinck is traveling through Africa with his charity Africality to raise money for game rangers and save elephants and rhinos. This was a good opportunity to learn more about poaching and Humperdinck agreed to be interviewed for our blog.

Humperdinck: I am Humperdinck Jackman and I am driving from Europe and around Africa on behalf of the charity Africality.

Katana: Where have you been already and what have you experienced? The good bits.

Humperdinck: So far I’ve driven about 10,000 miles in my Land Rover from England, two months in France, Italy, and then around the Balkans and Turkey, now sitting in Egypt (Port Said).

Katana: First let’s talk about Africality. Could you talk a little bit about what it does?

Humperdinck: Africality is a British charity with one purpose, which is to raise money to employ more game rangers in Africa, particularly in Kenya and Ethiopia. When people talk about saving the elephants and saving the rhinos, this is very specific. For every thousand euros we raise, that enables us to hire one more game ranger. That is the salary for the whole year, accommodation and food. This is for people who are going to get shot at.

Katana: Why especially are the game keepers so important to stop the elephants being killed?

Humperdinck: Because poaching is out of control. In 2013 it was the worst year of elephant poaching in history. Just looking at elephants for a moment, the latest census is that there are about 400,000 elephants left in Africa. And in 2013 the most conservative estimate is that 40,000 were poached. So we have the year 2023 until there are no more elephants left, if it is left unchecked, and history shows that it could well go to that point. When the elephant population drops below 150,000, they are effectively extinct. One female elephant gives birth three or four times a lifetime.

Katana: Only one baby elephant per time.

Humperdinck: When you look at the extinction of an animal, of a species, there has to be enough of the herds left, or they are effectively extinct, they are doomed. So the next five years are absolutely imperative, or elephants will be only seen in zoos. What prompted all this was when I planning the trip. I wanted the trip to be more than just me being a “rich tourist” in Africa, looking at an elephant and knowing that I will be one of the last people to see this. And I looked at many different causes, female slavery to female genital mutilation to all sorts of things. In August of 2013 there was a particular incident in Zimbabwe when 300 elephants were poisoned by cyanide. A few weeks later, although officially it happened a year before, (it only became widely publicized last August or September) the West African Black Rhino was declared extinct. I looked at how one person making a journey could make a difference, so we came up with an idea, using the statistics available, that a game ranger costs about 1,000 pounds or euros a year. Then raise 75,000 pounds for a journey that is 75,000 miles, join the dots and not just go to the fun parts of Africa, make it a whole circuit in navigation, and that was the basis for a charity. Raise 75,000 pounds, one person doing a 50 nation journey that was 75,000 miles over one or two years.

What’s happened in the last year is that now the official policy for game rangers, in Botswana and Kenya for sure, is to shoot poachers on sight. There is no trial, there is no arrest. If they are in a gun battle, they shoot to kill.

Katana: Before our trip I was reading about going on safaris to look at animals, and tips on how to spot potential poachers, because a lot of them go in with the rest of the tourists, but what they are actually doing is scouting potential elephants for poaching.

Jonathan: One of the useful tips is to turn off geo tagging on all your photographs, because if you end up posting those online, they are basically pinpointed targets for poachers to go and kill.

Humperdinck: It is a crisis, and I am not going to change the destiny of elephants, but if people like me, and there are so many people like me trying to make a little difference… Governments can only do so much to stop the trade. In 1965 there were roughly six and a half million elephants roaming Africa, and we are now at 400,000. They are doomed without help.

Katana: The lions are getting shot by stupid people hunting big game, thinking it is a big deal to point a gun at an unsuspecting lion and come out victorious in this ridiculous “battle”.

Humperdinck: Also the lions are getting shot by pastoral farmers who get upset over a lion having attack one of their cattle. So they go out and they hunt down the lion and kill it. What we’ve been doing (and this is in Kenya) is trying to encourage these same farmers to view a lion as an asset in their land. If you have a sick cow, it is going to die anyway, you can’t sell it. Maybe it has TB, which is epidemic in Africa. What you could do is drive it out of the pasture land to where the lions are, and feed the lions. Then you have the lions which bring the tourism, and it is what they eat. One of the leading conservationists has taken a slightly different approach. She funded somebody to create a cartoon series about an elephant, about how great they are, with magical powers, you know, a friendly caricature. These comic books have been given to school children in Kenya. So over the next few years these children are going to be saying, “No, you can’t kill elephants!”

Katana: Are you planning on visiting some of the game rangers?

Humperdinck: Africality has been endorsed by the Born Free Foundation, whom we support fully, and Born Free have invited me to visit them in Ethiopia, Kenya and Burkina Faso. I will spend a week with each of their groups of game rangers, and what they want me to do is add some publicity to what they are doing and also when I am there to video them, and send an edited video back to their offices so they have more up-to-date material for their website. Our charity, because we are small fry, as we raise more money, we will be giving grants also to Born Free. Because one thing about Born Free is you know the money is going exactly how it is needed. Their offices are extremely modest, every penny is watched. Our intention is also to hire game rangers ourselves, so direct employment, no middle man. This will be in Kenya, where myself and one of the other trustees of the charity have been invited by the local government to manage a large game reserve, to make a difference, to bring the tourists, and when the local people see that there is tourist money coming in from the wildlife, then the local people are more likely to turn on the poachers.

Katana: Why are there so many poachers, or rather why are so many elephants and rhinos getting killed?

Humperdinck: There aren’t that many poachers, but it only takes a few. The trade is largely the Chinese, Vietnamese, the Taiwanese and the Thais, for traditional medicine and for carving. They cut the tusks and they abandon the rest. They chop the tusks off with axes or chainsaws. You might find one poacher with 150 tusks, 75 elephants slaughtered. Here is something for you: you might have heard of a tusker. It is also the name of the beer in Kenya, it means elephant. And the joke is, “let’s go kill a tusker”, let’s go kill an elephant, aka let’s go sink some beers. But until the beginning of this year, there were thought to be seven “tuskers” left in Africa. A tusker is an elephant whose tusks are so fantastically long, three meters or so, that they actually start to join. There were seven left. Two of them in Kenya, guarded 24 hours a day, have been killed so far this year. And some people think, we can just sedate an elephant and remove their tusks, but the stress this causes an elephant through the sedation… elephants are very delicate creatures, so when they are drugged and fall over, they cause themselves tremendous injury. What they are doing with rhinos right now is they are putting RFID tags into the rhino horn, so they can at least identify where the rhino horn came from. Did you know, the rhino horn trades at 65,000 US dollars a kilo? That’s between gold and cocaine.

Katana: That’s a lot of money for poachers to be had.

Humperdinck: Most people don’t realize what rhino horn is.

Jonathan: Compacted hair, isn’t it.

Humperdinck: Yeah, it’s toenail. It has no value to anybody or anything except the rhino.

The First Adventure

Cairo to Cairo

August 3, 2014 Jonathan 1 Comment

Finally we are on the road again! It felt really good to be driving out of Cairo into the desert – we were back on track after an extended period in hotels and cities. This is what we came to do and it was with a positive attitude and smiles that we drove North West towards the coast. The plan was to take a big loop through the desert via Siwa to experience the Sahara and see the giant dunes of the Great Sand Sea, before heading South again towards the White Desert.

We stopped by the memorials and cemetery at El Alamein after a few hours, and then Katana was into camp-site navigation mode. We took a track off the main road which led through some low sandy hills, past a wandering flock of sheep and a slightly surprised shepherd down to the sea. In the line of dunes bordering the sea we found a cleared parking area providing shelter and mostly hidden from the surroundings. The dunes were a mixture of soft sand and crusty sandstone formations sculpted by the wind, and the beach was wide and deserted as far as the eye could see in either direction. Sadly, as with much of Egypt where people have been, it was liberally decorated with plastic bags.

We were pretty starving by this point so Katana set about making a spicy lentil and tomato ‘thing’ (we eat a lot of made up ‘things’, according to what veg we have available and how the day’s chef feels at the time). After dinner we were pretty much ready to sleep so settled in for the night, with the breeze in the dunes and the faint breaking waves the only sounds.

All was peaceful, even when I got up before dawn as I couldn’t sleep and went for a walk around – trying to take a photograph of the pre-dawn glow on my phone camera (not successful!). So I just sat in a camp chair to look at the fading stars and take in the beauty of the desert. In the dunes behind me I heard something move. There was a time I would have been jumpy about this – Katana got fed up with my paranoia before I settled into the wild camping and relaxed more – but I had seen animal footprints and figured it was a fox or a dog. Anyway it seemed to wander off, and walking around I couldn’t see it and went back to Troopy and sat down again. Minutes later though I heard what sounded like more solid feet in the sand, and turning round I saw the silhouette of a person against the lightening sky on top of the dunes. Shepherd maybe I thought. He seemed to turn and go back away and out of sight, so I left it a couple of minutes and then climbed up the dunes to see if there was anyone there, but there was nothing to see and again I went back to Troopy. At this point though, I thought I saw movement again…something low on the ground silhouetted against the sky again, and began to feel uncomfortable so stood behind the back of the car to watch. Movement again – 2 or more people perhaps, watching our camp. Alarm level was going up at this point, but moments later it went to absolute terror. All of a sudden there was a lot of harsh shouting in Arabic from above and 2 figures appeared coming down the slope towards me with assault rifles pointed right at me. Throwing myself face flat in the sand and expecting to hear gunfire at any moment, I repeated back ‘English…I don’t understand….English’. The shouting continued as one went round behind me and the other stood 20 feet in front of me.

The next hour or so featured varying levels of fear, panic and calm…the 2 figures turned into combat clothed lads in their late teens I would guess. No markings on their ‘uniform’, but they soon said they were Egyptian Army and one spoke English. Katana was told to come out…but then sent back inside Troopy.

“I was woken up by some shouting, and unable to see anything, I figured it was bad anyway, so I just lay as still as possible, blending in with the sleeping bags upstairs. I was told to come outside, but since it was a hot night, I was only wearing minimal clothing, so I ended up coming out covered in two towels: might as well respect the level of decency appropriate for this country, even if we were perhaps about to get shot. When I was sent back in, I lay there pondering where my set of car keys were, in case I had to do a quick getaway if Jonathan got shot or if bullets came flying.” Katana.

I was told to sit, and whilst one in front of me loaded more bullets into his magazine the other wandered off out of sight. He came back a bit later and asked if I had a charger for his phone so he could call in for backup. Phone plugged in, he called and we waited for someone else to turn up. The one who didn’t speak much English explained while we waited that he thought we were terrorists wanting to kill soldiers, and that he was a maths teacher really when not doing his national service. In the end an officer turned up and questioned me before telling us to pack up and go back to the road.

So we found ourselves making an early start for our trip across the Sahara to Siwa Oasis. The long road South from Marsa Matrouh took us the best part of the day – stopping to take pictures of camels (alive and dead), and experiencing the oppressive heat of the vast sand and gravel desert for the first time. It was a strange feeling after the start to the day, as we were stopped again at several checkpoints along the way. It became clear that the forces were a little nervous about something, but pretty much universally friendly and cheerful. Rolling into Siwa late in the afternoon we were again looking for somewhere to camp, but our route was intended to be East across the edge of the area of really big dunes towards Bawiti so we headed out along that road. This is however as far as we would ever get on our outbound trip from Cairo. We were stopped at the first military checkpoint and sent back to Siwa, needing a permit to use the main road East.

The short version – we didn’t get a permit, and after spending the night in the garden of a nice little hotel in Siwa and having a tasty couscous and vegetable meal cooked by the Bedouin owner, we had to turn North again and cross the Sahara back to Matrouh. This we did with closed windows and aircon – we didn’t feel the need to ‘experience’ the heat of the desert on this enforced retrace to El Alamein where another road heads South to Bawiti. So as the next day trailed off into evening we found ourselves bumping along on and off what passes for the main road South of El Alamein – off into the desert when it was smoother than the road. We passed through 40km of oilfields and some pretty desert scenery and spirits were once again repaired after the previous day’s scare and disappointment. Then we hit the military checkpoint. They were all very friendly and gave us water and juice and chatted about our trip, and then sent us back to El Alamein under escort as we didn’t have a permit for the road. At least we made it 40km further than Rommel. The escort obviously took the ‘drive it like you rent it’ approach so we go back very quickly, but the bumps had left our stuff in a heap of jumble in the back of Troopy. After that there was only 1 option – back to Cairo and start again.

The final episode of this saga saw us being made to wait in the lobby of Le Meridien Pyramids hotel for an hour and a half until after 11pm to be checked in.

“I have never been so rude to hotel staff before. He kept saying something about five minutes, so I showed him my watch and said that I was timing him.” Katana.

Cairo to Cairo – we had been frustrated, covered in dust, turned back twice and feared for our safety. But through all of it until arriving at the hotel the people we met were friendly, generous and cheerful (once they weren’t scared of us) – Cairo is different and neither of us was in any way happy to be back.

The First Adventure

On The Bright Side

July 28, 2014 Jonathan Leave a comment

“Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse
When you’re chewing on life’s gristle
Don’t grumble, give a whistle
And this’ll help things turn out for the best…”

Oh how we could have done with a dose of Python this week. So, retrospectively in some cases, here’s to all the good stuff that happened during our protracted entry into Egypt and our stay so far. We got through the confusing, expensive and sometimes bizarre process and have made it to the desert. This is where we set out to come and we’re here! It began to sink in driving down the Port Said Desert Road towards Cairo that we are indeed looking at the Sahara, and we drove here. This is quite a big deal in a small way for us and there were some wide, slightly disbelieving smiles on our faces.

The last week had been tough, but even whilst in Port Said where having a glass half full was not allowed until after dark due to it being Ramadan, we did manage to enjoy some of the experience. We were able to hang out with some fellow travellers over a beer or two during the saga. We met some really good people who are a credit to Egypt, and got time to relax and adjust to the way things work here. Whilst it was tricky finding any food during the day, let alone particularly good vegan options, there was a huge choice of fresh, cheap fruit. We slept in beds and had proper showers (that said, as nice as it is to have the luxury of hotels, we are both looking forward to getting back in Troopy…you just get used to your own place after this long on the road and we miss it).

The last day in Port Said was actually an interesting experience I think, if a bit in-at-the-deep-end in how things work here in Africa. In the morning I set off down to the port again with Jack from Africality, with the aim of meeting up with our agent and getting the cars through customs and onto the Egyptian roads. More on the roads later, and why I think it was good to spend a few days here before driving myself! But for now, we needed to get into the port which was as easy as being escorted in by an agent the other day, but today we *apparently* needed a pass from the Police. This provided our morning’s entertainment. There is a room in the police station where the saga is played out – on 1 side, the senior officer sits behind an impressively large desk in an office. A boy sits outside the office ready to make photocopies when called, or to lock and unlock the office as the boss goes in and out. The rest of the room consists of a central space surrounded by perspex screens with 8 or so hatches. Behind the hatches sit various women and stacks of files. In 1 corner of the space there is a table where a man sits chatting to friends and hands out sticky stamps in exchange for cash. The game is quite simple – in order to get a pass to enter the port, we need to get enough signatures, rubber stamps and sticky stamps on a piece of paper for the officer to exchange that paper for a slip authorizing the issue of a pass. It is slightly more complicated by the fact that we have to use an agent to do this, and the agent has to disappear upstairs at unpredictable moments (presumably to another such office) to get more stamps/signatures. We don’t have any language in common. There are also no indications as to which hatch you have to go to for which purpose, and the only way to find out seems to be for the agent to push our paper through various hatches and see if he gets a stamp or shouted at to go away. It reminds me very much of a certain genre of computer game. After several rounds of this (interspersed by periods of sitting in a courtyard playing with stray cats), we seem to have collected the correct combination of stamps to win a pass and proceeded to the next level.

After that it was pretty straightforward and after some more sitting around the customs house we were able to drive out of the port gates soon after 2pm.

Onto the roads. Now this is where I am particularly glad to have had those days in Port Said, walking and travelling about by taxi to get accustomed to the roads. Things don’t work here like they do back home. It’s a free-for-all and nobody seems to follow rules or signs, but I have embraced it fully. If I were to do a U-turn across a concrete central barrier just short of traffic lights back home, I would expect a ticket. It may have been my worst bit of driving ever, but here it just made sense and actually unblocked some traffic. Honest. We are warned not to drive in Cairo, but I actually quite like it – its just another video game, and so much less tedious than London! The only thing we had a collision with was a horse over at the pyramids – its just so packed with horses, carts and camels that its inevitable that you’ll get a little nudge from something that’s trying to squeeze past you. Just glad it was soft and furry and not a tour bus, so no damage to either! Always look on the bright side of life?

Before it got busy... — Before it got busy…

And now this most excellent adventure continues – we get to go explore the desert!

The First Adventure

A Tale of Two Cities

July 25, 2014 Katana 4 Comments

“Dark and at times surreal, The Castle is often understood to be about alienation, bureaucracy, the seemingly endless frustrations of man’s attempts to stand against the system, and the futile and hopeless pursuit of an unobtainable goal.” Wikipedia’s description of Kafka’s novel might as well be describing our last few days.

Iskenderun to Port Said. Turkey to Egypt. One ferry, 40 truckers, 4 travellers with 4 passports and 2 vehicles, one purpose: get into Egypt.

We drove to Iskenderun after having called the shipping company, UN Ro-Ro, who said the ferry will sail on Saturday and we have a chance of being on it. On Saturday morning we got ready for the big adventure across the water, left our campsite and drove to Iskenderun. The misadventures began right there: the port is not sign-posted anywhere on the main road. We know the port is down by the sea, but how do we enter it? Which one of these roads leads to the right entrance? We accidentally almost drove into a military port, circled around twice, finally made it into some part of the port, had to get a security guard to help us find the right office. After much faffing around we finally got an escort to drive us to the customs office, who then pointed us in the direction of the office we needed.

“I remember during preparation for the trip that another traveller had posted a map with the entrance marked on it (Liman C). If my feet weren’t busy driving I’d have been kicking myself for forgetting to look that up again.” Jonathan.

As we drove towards the office, we spotted another over-lander vehicle. This must be the place, we thought. Soon after we were introduced to the boys in the Catoni office, and the people of the other over-lander came by: Humperdinck Jackman, travelling around the African continent to stop poaching with the charity Africality, and his travelling companion Cynthia Gibson. At this point it was still morning, everyone was smiling, Jonathan had to clear customs for the vehicle, and so on. We were told that the UN Ro-Ro has suspended its activities, but they have another boat they can put us on, which incidentally was not sailing to Damietta, as we had been told before, but instead to Port Said.

What followed was a whole day spent sitting around in the blistering sun, waiting for things to happen. But nothing was happening. We couldn’t even see the 40 promised trucks, or the truck drivers. The ferry was there but nobody else was, just us and some port officials. We spent the day talking, eating snacks, drinking coffee and juice, and waiting. Around 6pm things started happening, some trucks were being loaded onto the ferry, and around 8pm we were told we could drive on as the last vehicles. The ferry was definitely not luxurious: we were first given passenger rooms, which were spacious with a sink and bunk-beds, but the toilets were communal, needless to say, they were squat toilets.

The ferry didn’t leave shore up until about 10pm. That evening we were moved to “crew cabins” which were smaller, also with bunk beds, but they had private toilets. Soon after that we were told that dinner was being served, consisting of sliced tomatoes, olives, bread, cheese, and tea and coffee. Not bad for us, vegans (minus the cheese)! However, we soon discovered that the private toilets reeked badly of old plumbing. We flushed it several times with hot water, and that worked for a bit.

The next 36+ hours were quite miserable. The private toilets started reeking of rotten eggs the next morning, so we had to rescue our things from it and put a towel under the door. The ferry was very hot, outside and inside. The rocking motion soon became a bit much for my stomach, as I got quite nauseous. The food only got progressively worse. We were served various lumps and scoops of stuff, most of it creamy or with meat. Jonathan and I lived on bread, rice and our own tomato packet soup for the rest of the ferry time. I was juggling being nauseous and starving.

Monday morning we arrived in Port Said. And by “arrived” I mean we spent the day anchored nearby while we waited our turn to be docked. Finally as the sun was setting, we made it to shore. By “shore” I mean all the people were let out from the ferry onto the ferry ramp and the little area around it, to be attacked by people selling sim cards that semi-worked and charging ridiculous amounts of money for them. Everybody needed internet at that point, so we fell into that trap. We still didn’t have our passports by the way – and nobody knew exactly who or which authority had them. We sat around on the hard steel for hours in the dark, waiting for something to happen. Eventually a guy called Sherif showed up and tried to help us by figuring out what was going on and phoning people. We met the immigration people by chance for two seconds, and were told there was no problem. Then we were told to drive off the ferry. The real nightmare began then.

We drove off and had no idea where to go, we were getting directed by people who had no idea who we were, through the shipping container yard, full of screeching trucks, towing trucks, cars, screaming people, mopeds, all done in semi-darkness and without any signs of anything around, just containers upon containers. We were directed into a gated area full of Turkish trucks (not the ones we were on the ferry with), a very very dark ominous area with no lighting, no shelter, no food or water, no toilets, nothing at all. Forget being spooky, this was a place people get thrown in to be shot in movies. Or refugees get thrown in to rot forever. We still didn’t have our passports and we had no idea what or who had them and when we would get them. We couldn’t leave the port, we had no idea where to go, and nobody spoke any English or any other language that any of us combined could understand. The mood hit ultimate low for me at this point. I am not going to lie, I broke down and cried in the front seat. It was the worst moment of my entire life. Writing about this and reliving the memory is bringing tears to my eyes as I write this.

Eventually somebody came by and told us there was a problem with our visas: we couldn’t get visas upon arrival at this port because it wasn’t a tourist port. This is of course a complete lie, because every port of entry to Egypt must provide visas upon entry. I lost it a bit on this particular guy, and I am sorry to say, on some of our companions also. The guy told us we could go sleep on the ferry and we might be shipped back to Turkey the following day. At this point anything was better than that gated container yard. We drove back to the ferry, but it was being loaded with new trucks and we weren’t allowed on it until they were done. We decided to sleep in our cars just outside the ferry, at least there were more people around and more lights. Still surrounded by containers, homeless looking people, rabid scary dogs, massive trucks… I don’t think anybody really slept that night.

The best place we could find to camp in the Mad Max meets Waterworld nightmare that was the Container port.

The next day nothing improved. We still didn’t have our passports for hours. We had no one to even call or ask what was going on. We had no shelter other than our hot cars, barely any shade, no water or food, again no facilities whatsoever. We could go up to the ferry for toilets but that was about it. The mood was beyond low at this point: it was frustrated, annoyed, angry. Sherif appeared out of nowhere and told us that the Admiral was phoning the shipping company to help us out, or something of that sort. Perhaps Jonathan can explain this all better. We were still lost Westerners with no hope of getting out. Somebody took pity on us and brought us water and some snacks, and then turned out to be an absolute angel helping us out with customs later on.

“I’m not going to go into the details of who played what part here, as some of them went beyond the call of duty and put themselves in vulnerable positions to help us out. There was basically a battle between reason and extortion going on, between friends and enemies, and meanwhile we were left in the dirt and rubbish of the container port to bake in the sun. If it weren’t for a few good people, we might still be there, or be heading home due to deportation or being bankrupted by the vultures.” Jonathan.

Some guy came up to us with passports and our visas were stamped into them. Each visa cost $25. He was asking for $100 for each passport plus $500 for who knows what, and that was even before the agent for customs clearance announced how much he wanted from us. Thankfully the passport guy was kind of dumb, because I managed to trick him into giving us our passports but then we just held on to them and didn’t give him the ridiculous amount he was asking. One small win in the big battle. Eventually we got rid of both of them and our angel friend showed us where we could go to start clearing customs. We drove around the extremely confusing port, stopping and asking and going back and forth. Eventually we found the correct office and Jonathan and Humperdinck went in to try and sort some stuff out.

Some time after (no idea how many hours…. hours have turned into days by then) we finally got out of the port (without our cars, we can’t get them still) and found a hotel. After days of no food, no facilities, all of the human stress imaginable on our shoulders, we collapsed on the beds and I slept for 12 hours. I didn’t even want to get up to get dinner, even though we hadn’t eaten properly in days.

The next day was a holiday so there was nothing we could do to get out of this hellhole, so we just waited. The day was spent walking around, scavenging for some food (Ramadan is still in full effect, and in Egypt it is very strict. You can’t find a single restaurant or cafe open or serving food), playing cards and drinking non-alcoholic beer. In the evening we tried out an Asian restaurant which served real alcohol, and we had our first full real vegan meal in probably a week. It was a strange night: there were two Russian men who worked for some shipping company or some such, basically they spend most of their time at sea. They were offering vodka (of course) and advice. The vodka was vile and probably shouldn’t have been drunk, but the company was pleasant enough.

The next day Jonathan and Humperdinck had to go back to the port, leaving the “women” behind. Probably for the best, because I spent the morning dry heaving over the toilet, and I don’t think the vodka was the only culprit here: eating a large meal after half-starving for a week was probably not the best, plus the stress and the agony.

“Yup, throwing up in the hotel room was luxury – I was similarly afflicted but found myself trying to discreetly chuck in a corner of the ubiquitous decaying rubbish outside the police station we were at on some wild goose chase. For me it was just vodka and the hot sun.” Jonathan.

Passing time with the cats in the Customs House while waiting.

The day spent at the port was not any better, the nightmare did not lift one bit. The problem is that nobody knows what fees we should be paying, they seem to be making up numbers and fees on the spot, and doubling and tripling after confirming the original price. The whole thing is just absolutely ridiculous and there seems to be no end to this. We paid yesterday some crazy fees (not as crazy as we originally were asked), but the cars are still at the port and we are still at the hotel. Today is another holiday so nothing will get done. Tomorrow, hopefully tomorrow, we can clear customs and drive out of here. But as in a Kafka novel, I think there might be no end to our nightmares.

The First Adventure

Crossing a Minor Continent

July 18, 2014 Jonathan Leave a comment

This week has seen us cross Turkey from the West Coast to Iskenderun, probably completing our travels through Asia Minor. I say probably because nothing from here on is going to be as guaranteed as we’re used to back home. We intend to take the ferry to Egypt tomorrow, but (whilst there are lots of them running around on this little campsite) we are not counting our chickens. I’m leaving this week’s blog empty of photos for now as the photo gallery covers that. Actually, its late and we are tired and need sleep – I might add some later and also tag all the photos, but for now – here it is!

Looking back, we haven’t updated you on our travels since we left Athens so I’ll have a go at bring you up to date with the progress you can see on our map.

After Athens, we drove North towards Thessaloniki and camped in the hills South of Alexandria, where we were woken in the middle of the night by 2 uniformed officers of what they described as ‘Police for Hunters’, checking that we weren’t doing any illegal hunting…all very friendly and slightly amusing when they understood the Vegan Without Frontiers logo down the side of Troopy. All I got to shoot was some practice wildlife pics of some giant bugs that came wandering by in the morning! Check out our week 5 pics below.

Week 5

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After that we made good progress across northern Greece, stopping to look at Storks nesting on lamp posts and going for a swim in the sea, and then crossed into Turkey. As night fell we approached Istanbul with very basic maps and a little confusion, but Katana’s navigation once again came up trumps and we rolled up to the target camp site, where we were let through the gates and shown to a plot, shown around the facilities and wished goodnight. They turned on the lights just for us as again we were the only guests, but the contrast between this beautiful little site and the Athens creep-show could not have been greater. This was our base for visiting Istanbul and a happy refuge once we had endured the Ramadan traffic to get ‘home’ at the end of the day. Ramadan on top of a lack of available vegan food options did not make for happy stomachs, but was an interesting time to visit the Blue Mosque and see the city.

The evening’s entertainment was provided by an exuberant, friendly kitten we dubbed Zorro-Cat after his first appearance with a dynamic flourish at the rear window bounding onto the spare wheel.

After another day spent travelling mostly through Istanbul (we crossed out of Europe by ferry across the Bosphorus), we camped off road and off tracks on a hill with some goats. This set the pattern for much of our travels since, as we have tended to alternate a day on a camp site with a couple in the wilds. Katya seems good at finding the right sort of area, and we together have picked out some beautiful places to spend our evenings and wake up to. I am only half suspicious that she picks long winding dirt-tracks so she can get to practice driving, but its all good for me as I get to be a passenger and look at the scenery.

We visited Bursa, Çanakkale, the ruins of Troy and various ancient sites along the coast. We spent a day just vegging in the sun by the sea. We got on each others nerves, we got baked on the long road as we headed inland and stuck to our seats and were invaded by flies the minute we stopped anywhere. We camped by the roadside outside a mountain village and met lots of friendly locals – including Ufuk and Burhan who brought us watermelon and lemonade and joined us for a good conversation and some food, even though we didn’t speak the same language. We met some overfriendly locals, whose written note to Katana after 5 minutes of non-communication (translated by google as ‘you are so good – so beautiful’), blown kisses, and unrefusable wish to show us some remote springs in the mountains had us making excuses and running away to Pammukale. There we walked barefoot in the ‘Cotton Palace’ calcite formations before heading further East, lunching by salt lakes and sunken volcano craters. We camped by mountain streams and took refreshingly freezing morning showers, got stuck in village traffic jams of motorised fully laden cherry carts – and now we are at the end of our Turkish adventure. Subject, of course, to tomorrow going to plan…

Katana here taking over for my additional impressions on the last few days. As far as veganism goes, I think the concept of not eating animals is understood here better than how most Westerners imagine. When we have communicated to various people that we do not consume animals, it was understood without any questions. One person even said “So? We have vegetables!” as if the suggestion that they might not have non-meat things was absurd. The other side of that is, people know exactly what consuming animals entails: it is impossible not to come in contact with animals alive, animal abuse, and animal carcasses and various bits of actual animal bodies lying around in shops. I think in a lot of ways Westernised culture has desensitised people to view meat as just a packaged “food” rather than once alive being. We saw cows and sheep grazing happily in fields, and then we saw a cow being driven to slaughter. I also accidentally saw three or four skinless sheep carcasses being hosed down right on the street.

As for the “female traveller” part that everybody always talks about when Middle East is the destination, I have mixed views. Unfortunately, I am viewed as a rarity, an easy target, I am constantly gawked at on the streets walking or when we are driving, and the incident with the note was also very upsetting. I do feel that a certain part of my freedom is restricted, but after a particularly low point I decided that I just don’t care. In some ways, it is what it is. On the other hand, I have found most Turkish people particularly friendly and welcoming, and also very polite and willing to chat even when there is no common language. The positive aspects of this huge and varied country far outweigh the negatives!

Vegan Adventure Travel – Holidays, Expeditions – Overland Africa