Tag Archives: Egypt

Vegan Meals: Part II

Having done half of our journey, it is time to reflect on the vegan meals since our last blog post about food specifically.

Crossing into Muslim countries we were slightly unlucky in our timing, because we hit Ramadan dead centre. For those of you who don’t know, Ramadan is the month of fasting for Muslims, and this entails no food or drink when the sun is up. This means that from sunrise to sunset it was virtually impossible to find open restaurants or cafes, and when we did find open ones, there would be nobody in them at all. Some cafes would have men sitting under the shade, talking, reading the newspaper, but nobody would be getting anything off the menu. Of course as travelers we stuck out among the locals in any place we went to, and therefore were not entirely expected to follow the fast, but you can imagine it is very uncomfortable to be eating in front of people who haven’t had anything in their mouth since sunrise.

The amazing thing about Turkey was all the fresh produce we could find on every road, being sold in fruit stands, supermarkets, small shops, and so on. The tomatoes had real taste and texture, the peppers were fragrant, the garlic enormous. We cooked most of our meals in the car, and I am glad we did, because it is rare to find such amazing fresh food in the UK so cheaply.

In Istanbul we tried our first falafel – and were greatly disappointed. It was just a usual fast food stand, they have billions of them in Turkey, mostly serving meat. The falafel was yellow on the inside instead of the usual green, it was soggy and fell apart easily, and the wrap had sad looking lettuce in it, and for some reason they put french fries in the mix? What a disappointment! The saving allure of Turkey was the coffee, which is my favorite type of coffee, brewed in a special little pot, sometimes with sugar and spices.

Next on the list of countries is Egypt, although something to be said about food in the Iskenderun-Port Said ferry: it was awful. The first day we were excited about food, because they served amazing bread, big tomatoes and olives – what more can a vegan want! But as the days wore on, the meals became more meaty and creamy and smellier, and the seasickness didn’t help either. We resorted to making tomato soup from a packet we still had in Troopy, basically a life saver.

Port Said Asian restaurant with horrible horrible curry... worst curry ever.
Port Said Asian restaurant with horrible horrible curry… worst curry ever.

Egypt for the most part was also a blur of self-catered meals or random snacks. The time spent in Port Said we either ate figs, grapes, packet soup or noodles, or went to the only restaurant serving beer during Ramadan, and the first time I ordered a “curry”, I got a mostly disgusting dish of curry powder and cornflour sauce with barely any vegetables floating in it. The second time I got a salad, which was a thousand times nicer. The third night out in Port Said we went to an Italian style restaurant and had a vegetarian pizza with no cheese, it was quite nice!

Port Said survival fruits
Port Said survival fruits

The rest of Egypt was a hit or miss. In Cairo we visited an amazing Lebanese restaurant Taboula, possibly one of our favorite restaurants so far on this trip. They had very fresh salads, and tiny pickled aubergines, very tasty hummus, and the other similar Middle-Eastern vegan delights. Shame we didn’t manage to walk there for the second time, because apparently their wines were nice as well. I think the only time we tried “real” Egyptian food was in Luxor, when I ordered a strange pot full of veggies, tomato-pepper sauce and overall it reminded me of ratatouille. In Aswan we mostly resorted to falafel and other sandwich-based meals. The falafel was amazing though! It was prepared by a brooding old man, who charged us pennies for our falafel pockets, and added grilled veggies inside the pita, and always asked if we liked it or not. Delightful! The other food was less impressive, from a different food stand, nevertheless it was sustenance during my giardia-ridden days, when any food looked like the enemy to me.

Kitty in Luxor restaurant played up the innocent side and got food out of it.
Kitty in Luxor restaurant played up the innocent side and got food out of it.

Enter Sudan, and we entered the land of the endless “ful” – fava beans cooked in water. Staying in Wadi Halfa for a week, with barely any variety of food to eat, vegan or not, we thought we might actually go off food altogether and start “juicing”. If you are into the juice fad, Sudan is the perfect place to go – orange, mango, guava juice stands on every corner, even in the desert town of Wadi Halfa. If you don’t want sugar in your juice, tea, coffee, any beverage at all, you might find it very hard to convince the person preparing your beverage that you really don’t want it sweet. They put so much sugar in everything – even the local brand of coke tastes mostly of sugar rather than syrup or any other flavor. But back to “ful”.

There are many varieties of ful, and many versions of how to prepare it. For some reason, every time we got ful, it was fava beans cooked in plain water, probably for a whole day, with no other spices or flavoring, and then when it was served in a bowl, about half a bottle of vegetable oil was dumped on in. You get pita bread to go with it. Sound like a tasty meal to you? We had it every day, although we got more sneaky and started adding fresh vegetables and salt. The only other thing we could have in Wadi Halfa was the falafel – the first day it was served with a nice salad in the pita, but every day after that it was just dry falafel in stale pita bread – sometimes with a “chili” sauce that just made everything mushy.

Best ful we ever had, consisting of mostly ingredients that we bought extra to go with the ful... it looks innocent here
Best ful we ever had, consisting of mostly ingredients that we bought extra to go with the ful… it looks innocent here

Moving onto Ethiopia. If you have never tried injera, you are seriously missing out. It is a traditional flat bread-pancake sort of thing, and you can have it with many different things. The point is to dump your sauce or veggies (or meat) onto the injera and tear off pieces of the bread to pick up the sauce with. The good thing about Ethiopia is that as an Orthodox Christian majority country, they have a lot of fasting days. The longest fast is before Easter, and then every Wednesday and Friday are also fasting days for most of the year. On fasting days you are not allowed to eat animal products, although in some places they still serve fish and honey as those are not understood as “animal” per se. Which is why you can walk into most Ethiopian restaurants and ask for “fasting” food, and you will have no problem as a vegan. The bad side of this whole thing is that Ethiopian tradition is bathed in meat and animal raising for killing. You don’t have to go far outside your hotel just to see it, and after every fast there is a big meal with many slaughtered animals.

Live sheep being transported to be sold in markets or (and) slaughtered. We saw a lot of these in Ethiopia
Live sheep being transported to be sold in markets or (and) slaughtered. We saw a lot of these in Ethiopia

We tried a few traditional “vegan” meals, and loved all of them. Tegabino and shiro are initially made from the same ingredients, but prepared slightly differently, and they consist of pea (or chickpea) flour with a mix of special spices, prepared with onions and other similar vegetables. Fasting fir-fir is a bowl of already torn injera pieces soaked in a similar red-orange sauce, a lot of people have it for breakfast. Then there is beyaynetu – a selection of different stews and sometimes unconventional items, like pasta, served on top of the injera. Possibly meant for one person, it is easier to share with someone, because you get a lot of food, and a great variety as well! Our favorite was at the Seven Olives Hotel in Lalibela. 

If you want to know more about vegan dining in Ethiopia, definitely check out Mesfin’s blog post about it, he knows better than us!

Mesfin with us! Vegan Ethiopia!
Mesfin with us! Vegan Ethiopia!

Overall, we are strong and have maintained our veganism. Some countries have been a lot harder than others, but the good thing is you can always find fresh fruits and vegetables in markets, and you can always find canned beans and pot noodles. The general idea in the Middle East is that you eat salads, hummus, falafel, and similar dishes.

Lebanese restaurant in Cairo Taboula, vegan meal
Lebanese restaurant in Cairo Taboula, vegan meal

A lot of countries we visited since Europe rely on beans, chickpeas, tomatoes and a variety of different breads. We are looking forward to discovering vegan options in the next countries, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and others further down south. Keep reading and hopefully you will get inspired to go vegan too!

The Rest Of Egypt

After the fiasco with two roads through the Sahara that we couldn’t take because we didn’t have various permits, we tried to cross the desert for the third time, north to south. We started out of Giza’s Meridien Hotel with soured hopes, I was feeling really ill all morning, and we had to postpone our start until early afternoon. As we drove out of Giza and onto the desert road south, my mood perked up. We headed to Bawiti and hoped to camp there for the night, starting out to the Black Desert and the White Desert the next day. Having passed a few checkpoints on the way with no problems (finally!), we rolled into Bawiti just before sunset. The town was busy with other “Troopys” flying over speed bumps, getting fixed in garages and people shouting, relaxing and shopping. I was particularly in awe of a huge Fanta mountain outside one shop – a massive construction of boxes of many soft drinks, mostly Fanta. We saw a shop with a “Stella” sign outside of it, and Jonathan went in to buy five bottles of this Egyptian drink. I personally wouldn’t go as far as calling it beer. The first time you try it in a Muslim country, after having searched for alcohol for days in vain, you fall in love with it. The consequences of the next morning hit you pretty hard, and every time you drink it again, the less of it you consume and yet the more drunk you get. It is quite vile tasting and the night spent in the White Desert will become my last night of drinking it.

We checked into a really quaint dusty hotel on the edge of town, called Desert Safari Home. The rate was cheap, and for some reason I opted out of the air-con option, thinking the fan would suffice. The owner – or somebody who spoke English – was very kind to us, explained everything, and the next morning accompanied us to a car parts shop and helped Jonathan buy a tyre pressure gauge, all out of the goodness of his heart. We were really impressed by this little oasis, so unlike the busy hassles of Cairo and most of the populated areas of Egypt, where kindness comes with an expectation of a monetary reward. After settling in, we walked around the town looking for food, but ultimately Jonathan had to cook dinner in the car. The night was hot but the breakfast was very nice, the caretaker even went out on his motorbike specifically to buy us coffee.

As you leave Bawiti, you technically enter the Black Desert, although visually it starts some kilometers before the oasis. It is called “Black” partially in contrast to the whiteness of the White Desert, but also because the sand is covered in black pebbles and rocks. The sand of the Black Desert is strikingly dark yellow, almost orange, and contrasts nicely with the black crackle on top. There are tall cone-shaped “mountains”, formed out of sand and covered tightly in black rocks on the top. These reminded me of volcanoes more than of anything else I’ve ever seen. We stopped at one of those cone shapes and decided to climb it to take in the view of the whole desert. Some might say this was a ridiculous idea to go climbing up the sand in the middle of the day in the open sun in the hottest time of the year for the desert, and having done this, I am partial to that opinion. We didn’t take nearly enough water with us, but once we had climbed, the view was spectacular. Because the ground is flat, we had an aerial view all the way to the horizon, with these black cone shapes, which added a degree of alien to the landscape. This wasn’t quite like Mars; this was, for sure, a planet from another galaxy.

Climbing up a small mountain in the Black Desert was excruciatingly hot and difficult
Climbing up a small mountain in the Black Desert was excruciatingly hot and difficult

After the Black Desert came the White Desert, with its own checkpoint on the way in and out. To experience the White Desert properly, you are allowed off the main road and into the sand. The map at the entrance of this rough-track journey was too old and quite unhelpful. There are three “tracks”, but only one of them was marked clearly on the ground. We started following the track that goes all the way south passed the “Mushroom” rock formation and then north-east and then west, and comes out a few kilometers north onto the main road. Jonathan let me drive for a while, as he took in the view and did some video taping. I enjoyed driving in the flat sand, it was softer than anything I’ve ever driven on. Oh, but the scenery! I don’t think words can do justice, and neither can photographs. The chalky white and peachy stones interspaced with yellow sand create such a unique landscape, I don’t think any place on Earth looks like this. At first the structures remind you of mushrooms, but then they get totally weird. Not even the craziest abstract artist could create these on a whim. The stone is actually very fragile and can turn into a white dust cloud if you accidentally drive over it.

Jonathan and Troopy in the White Desert
Jonathan and Troopy in the White Desert

Of course we got ourselves “lost” – not quite lost because we knew exactly where we were and had a compass, but we lost the main track and got ourselves stuck in the sand. Jonathan went around digging out the car while I ventured out on a short walk to find the lost track, but without results. Once the car was released, we had to drive back a few kilometers and start following the well-known track instead. By well-known, I mean that it was clearly marked and there were many wheel tracks visible in the sand. I remembered our friends’ advice, who were driving around the same tracks just a few days before us, and headed for the acacia tree, and from then on back to the main road through some really rough black rocks. From there we decided to go up north and try out our firstly chosen track backwards, from north to south. The track was not marked, so with a lot of guess work we re-entered the rough patch from the main road and finally came to a beautiful valley, the ground of which was covered in dark yellow sand, with fading tyre tracks leading forward, and massive stone structures overlooking the valley. Here I could really feel small and insignificant compared to these white giants, centuries old and untouched, with only sand, wind and the sun for company. I couldn’t imagine rain ever coming down here.

White Desert off tracks
White Desert off tracks

The rest of the journey on that side of the main road was about the same: we got stuck, we dug ourselves out, we drove with trepidation through patches of tricky sand, and with hearts jumping up and down through stony patches. We had to rejoin the track we had taken before (with the acacia tree) because it was easier to get onto the main road and find ourselves a camping spot for the night. Off the main road on the other side (the west side) there were even less tyre tracks, and having driven through really disjointed white rocks on the ground, we came to a place under a massive white structure, which shielded us from the sun somewhat, and had a spectacular view of other, smaller, white giants. Unfortunately, we also endured crazy sand-blowing wind, and I slept very little because the car was rocking side to side, the wind was mostly hot and full of sand, and the car felt like a sauna.

The next morning I felt ill again but we continued to drive onwards towards the left-over oases, finally coming to Kharga. Here we stayed in a “fancier” hotel – with air-con, TV and a fridge, and I ended up just watching a dumb movie and sticking to a liquid diet of soup and guava juice, trying to get better for the next day. We were afraid the direct road from Kharga to Luxor would be closed, according to our friends Jack and Cynthia who drove through a few days before us, but we got lucky that the road was miraculously open and we got to Luxor and then Aswan in no time. Sometimes in Egypt it seems as if things happen randomly, somebody sits in a room making decisions based on nothing, like pulling cards out of a pack, although I am sure it is more complicated than that.

This Luxor kitten came to suckle on my trousers, but when a bowl of milk was brought, forgot all about me. Scam Cat.
This Luxor kitten came to suckle on my trousers, but when a bowl of milk was brought, forgot all about me. Scam Cat.

Our first visit to Luxor flew by us as we only stayed for tea to visit our friend Jane, (on that later) and from Luxor we took the desert road to Aswan. In Aswan we rejoined Cynthia and Jack, and met Tony, another overlander, and Nick, a sort of guide who drives 17 people around Africa in  a truck. Nick was waiting for his truck to arrive from Wadi Halfa (Sudan) on a barge, while all of us overlanders were waiting for a barge to sail south. Poor Tony had been in Aswan for almost a month, being promised at least 3 times that the barge was going to sail, but it never did, and Nick was there for two weeks waiting for his barge to arrive, apparently it was stuck somewhere with a broken engine.

Aswan, just like the rest of Egypt, is dirty and there are a few hasslers as well. The hotel had excellent internet connection though, and “Stella” beer – which I didn’t partake in any more. After spending a day in bed really ill, we (as a group) discussed that I should take antibiotics or anti-parasite medication, and I bought pills from the pharmacy that happened to have both in one. After a few days I finally recovered, having sufficiently killed whatever was living inside of me. Our “fixer” Kamal took me and Jonathan to the Sudanese embassy for our visa, after two day we got our visas (with another marriage proposal under my belt),  and as there is nothing to do in Aswan, we decided to go back to Luxor to visit Jane properly and do some sight-seeing.

Jane is in charge of “Flats in Luxor”, an apartment building for visitors, sort of like a hotel but with your own kitchen, bedroom, bathrooms, and so on. There was even an outside pool, which is surely a luxury in the 42+ degree heat. We visited the Valley of the Kings, a spectacular ancient burial site for 18th, 19th and 20th dynasties of pharaohs, and we were able to visit 4 of the tombs there. Then we visited the Temple of Hatshepsut, a magnificent ancient building with many features intact, built just at the foot of the major cliffs on the outside of the valley, making it appear to be built right out of the cliffs instead of next to them. We also passed some more derelict ancient temples on the way and visited the Luxor Temple on the east bank of the Nile. There is a row of sphinxes that apparently used to stretch for 3 km, a long straight road with identical sphinxes evenly spaced out, staring dead ahead, and now there are still a lot of these left, although not for 3km, but the impact remains the same.

Flats in Luxor: our luxurious stay!
Flats in Luxor: our luxurious stay!

After two nights in Luxor we went back to Aswan and were told that our barge would be loading the next day and we would be getting on the passenger ferry the same day also. We ran out of luck on the way back to Aswan: we got a flat tyre whilst we were on the desert road. It wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but it was midday heat, no shelter, busy windy road, and as we had only one spare, we don’t have a spare tyre any more, and this variety is very hard to come by, at least here. But otherwise we really did load our car onto a barge on Sunday, spent basically a day at the port dealing with various bits of bureaucracy, and then got on the passenger ferry, and now we are stuck in Wadi Halfa in Sudan. I think these particular experiences require their own post.

"The pains of being... in Egypt": the passport photo guy in Kodak got carried away with his photoshopping
“The pains of being… in Egypt”: the passport photo guy in Kodak got carried away with his photoshopping

Cairo to Cairo

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.

El Alamein
El Alamein

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.

Peaceful Camping in the Dunes
Peaceful Camping in the Dunes

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.

A quiet evening...
A quiet evening…

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.

Desert Road
Desert 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.

On The Bright Side

“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.

We drove here!
We drove here!

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.

Have we collected all the magic stamps?
Have we collected all the magic stamps?

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!

A Tale of Two Cities

“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.

Waiting to Load
Waiting to Load

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.

Finally Arriving in Port Said
Finally Arriving in Port Said

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.

Still Smiling
Still Smiling

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 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.
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.