louiseinlimbo

The reason I was in Egypt was actually to take a flight from Cairo to Seiyun, in Yemen, with a tour group. It’s not a country you can visit as an individual, but visas are granted to tour groups meeting specified criteria, so I’d signed up for a tour – a week in mainland south Yemen, followed by a week on the island of Socotra.  Then earlier this year, trouble broke out in Yemen, between the UAE-backed separatist Southern Transitional Council (based in the more northerly part of the country…) and the Saudi-backed and internationally-recognised Presidential Leadership Council (the government), with the former rapidly taking over significant parts of the country but then being pushed back, with the main results being their expulsion from the Leadership Council and the withdrawal of their UAE support.  Thankfully this was all over before my trip was due to take place, so I could still go to ‘southern’ Yemen, but the withdrawal of the UAE included the cancellation of their weekly ...

Siwa was not actually a place I had heard of until a room-mate in Thailand heard that I was travelling next to Egypt, and told me, “You have to go to Siwa Oasis!”, and having looked the place up online I decided that I would do so.  Only 50km from the Libya border, it is a town of the Berbers, where the local language (Siwi) is still dominant.  It reminded me in some ways of northern Mali, with the ancient mosque (dating from 1203) constructed in a very similar style to those in Timbuktu.  In an oasis some 25 metres below sea level, it apparently has more than 300,000 palm trees and 70,000 olive trees – but these are nourished by spring-water (via streams), not by rainfall, which is rare.  However in 1926 there were three days of rain, and most of the town existing at that point was badly damaged, as the buildings were made from large chunks of salt mixed with rock and plastered with local clay. The ruins are still there in the centre of town (with newer buildings ar...

My time with the cats finally came to an end and I took a long overnight bus trip to the city of Alexandria, having decided to see those corners of the country I’d previously missed (as well as the new Grand Egyptian Museum).  Alexandria was really interesting, with so much of the country’s ancient history (founded by Alexander the Great, succeeded by the Pharaohs, Romans, Mamluks, Ottomans, French – even the Brits, for a short period) having left its mark here – in the case of the Romans, allowing me to combine my interest in viewing historical remnants with that of birdwatching, when I saw this swamphen amongst the Roman mosaics remaining in the city! It was fun travelling around too.  I did a lot of walking as the city is stretched out along the Mediterranean coast, but also enjoyed travelling in the 12-seater white minivans which you can flag down and take to most places for just ten Egyptian pounds (the equivalent of 14p in British terms).  Oh yes! …talking of which ...

So, here I am (in Dahab, in the Sinai peninsula) volunteering with cats again - to save money (as my accommodation at the cat shelter is free) so as to help finance the expensive guided tours I have booked for later this year, but also because I do like cats!  Although I have to admit that there are times, with cats fighting to be the one sitting on my lap, or helping themselves to my food (who knew that some cats will chew through a plastic bag in order to eat a bread roll!) that I ask myself whether it is worth it.  Not helped that much by the weather - sunny and dry, yes, but with lots of wind, so strong today that although it is currently 21°C it 'feels like' 16°C.  Maybe it was silly to sign up for just over six weeks of this; I should be like the other volunteers, mostly passing through for just two weeks, which would be much easier.  The owner of the cat sanctuary has let me off the usual €1-per-day contribution to costs, given the length of my visit, but...

Whilst I've very much enjoyed my time in Chiang Mai, I felt that I should also visit a couple of other places in the area.  Firstly the hippy village of Pai, although when I asked a fellow traveller what to expect of the place, he asked whether I was going "for the nature or for the drugs"!  & for sure, smoking weed is a big part of the culture there (I took one drag of someone's joint in my eight days there, it's not really my thing as I prefer to be fully present in all these places).  It really is a hippy place, and whilst there are some nice countryside sights (such as Pai canyon to the right here), it is almost worth visiting just to gawp at the hippy culture in the same way as you might for ancient cultures.  So many of the people there - both those originally from the West and a fair number of the locals - look quite distinctive, with their waist-length dreadlocks, their piercings and their extensive tattoos, including many on their faces. But one reaso...

Whilst I have spent time sitting around reading, watching videos, and catching up with emails, I have also walked around Chiang Mai - to many of the Buddhist temples as well as a few quieter corners that I've managed to find. The temples are so over-the-top.  So much gold paint everywhere, crazy guardian creatures outside of the meeting halls - many dragons, but also strange mixtures of dragon, elephant, peacock, deer and other creatures - and some very realistic-looking waxwork monks in some temples, like this guy to the right.  Some days I can get 'templed out', but then when I go wandering the next day I find myself exploring more of them. Thailand is another of those countries that has turned the philosophy of the Buddha into a religion (which I find irritating), and has fully incorporated the Hindu deity Ganesh, I suppose because elephants are such a big 'thing' in the Thai culture.  I'm not sure where the gold fits into their beliefs, but perhaps this sign...

After so many tours during the latter part of 2025, demanding both lots of mental energy and lots of money, I needed some 'down time' - to recharge my batteries and to pause the financial outflows.  Looking for somewhere reasonably cheap and without too many 'sights' to visit, I decided on the north of Thailand.  I had long felt that Chiang Mai and the nearby area was somewhere I ought to see, although it was never going to reach the top of my wish-list, but being close to Bangladesh, quite cheap, and this being a good time of year to come, it seemed to fill the gap nicely. However, about equidistant between Bangkok and Chiang Mai is the UNESCO-listed ancient historical site of Sukhothai, with a collection of well over a hundred ruins of 13th and 14th century palaces and temples of the Kingdom of Siam's first capital.  & a visit there nicely broke up the journey, giving me two quite manageable seven-hour bus rides. Whilst the majority of the ruins are within a w...

The friendliness of the local people continued even now that I was with a tour group ... this picture shows me with a lady from a Bangladeshi village (visiting the capital and here specifically at the Pink Palace), who had never seen a white person before ... she communicated with me through her son, expressed her happiness at meeting me - and did not want to let me go! Our tour visited the highlights of the capital, then moved on to the Sundarbans, where we spent a few days on a boat.  Whilst this area is well-known for its tigers, it seems that they are rarely seen - our guide has seen one just once, back in 2003!  But having seen tigers in India, I was not worried ... I just enjoyed the occasional deer, the wild boars, and the amazing kingfishers.  I do not have a picture of a brown-winged kingfisher, as I was too awed at their stunning appearance to think to pick up my camera, but I'm so glad I saw them. We also took boat trips along rivers (the country is very water-...

My introduction to Bangladesh was challenging, but rewarding.  I'd booked the first few nights in a cheap part of town near a big bus interchange, to help me find my way around the city, and I knew that it was possible to take a bus directly there from the airport.  So I stepped out of the aiport into the hot, sticky, polluted air of Dhaka, to the bus stop, and fended off the rickshaw drivers by telling them I was going "far ... to Jatrabari".  The bus stop was chaotic, with so many different buses pulling in, none of them with anything written in Western lettering, so I couldn't read the bus company names nor the destinations.  But it didn't matter, as one of the rickshaw drivers caught my attention and pointed to a bus pulling in - "Jatrabari bus!" he said, and indeed it was.  People made space for me at the front of the bus, two people who spoke some English tried to make conversation, and I was told when we were arriving at my stop.  Another place fu...

I took a short internal flight to Kolkata, thinking (i) that I should see this important city, and (ii) that it would give me relatively easy access across the border to Bangladesh, where I intended to go next.  As well as some ten days to catch up with admin (sorting out photos, sending overdue emails, checking Bangladesh entry requirements, etc) and sleep, with the added bonus of having found a reasonably comfortable hostel for £3.50 a day including breakfast! The first thing on my agenda was to complete the online Bangladesh visa form and take a printed copy of that and various supporting documents to their visa application centre.  However … the lady there who went through my documents informed me that it takes 18-21 days to get the visa, and I had only nine days left before my India visa expired, so this route was not open to me (not to mention her feedback that they could not process the application without my providing them with an Indian phone number!).  So, sadly...

It didn't bode well - cloudy skies, occasional showers ... not good, apparently, for tiger-spotting.  But we drove out into Pench Tiger Reserve, keeping our fingers crossed.  & happily there was plenty of other wildlife to see - spotted deer everywhere, various other deer species including sambar deer and swamp deer, jackals, gaur, wild boar, and a few birds.  Then we saw a couple of other jeeps parked, their occupants looking high up into the trees - a leopard!  Or at least a couple of leopard legs dangling from a branch, a tail occasionally coming into view ... in some ways not a great sighting, but apparently it is quite rare to see a leopard in a tree so we were supposed to be particularly grateful for this sighting! The next day we had another sighting of a leopard in a tree, with the face coming into view a couple of times, and plenty more nice views of other animals, but still no tiger.  On day three we heard the alarm calls of the langur monkeys, and...

I had another organised tour booked in India, to try for something else on my bucket list - seeing a tiger in the wild!!  But before that, I had a spare week - enough time to see the UNESCO-listed Ajanta and Ellora Caves. So I started in Aurangabad, the nearest city to these caves, where my hostel seemed to have no international travellers staying, but plenty of friendly Indians, who persuaded me to join forces with them so that we could pool resources to hire a large taxi for the day rather than wasting time with buses to get to the rather distant Ajanta.  Probably worthwhile, as there are some thirty Buddhist caves excavated around a horseshoe-shaped river gorge, full of wall and ceiling paintings, and statues - we even hired a site guide, who did point out some corners that I would otherwise have missed (and gave us great information on the history ... information which I'm afraid went in one ear and out the other). So I agreed to also spend the next day with a couple of th...

                          Another group tour … 18 days from Xi’an to Kashgar, largely following one of the old Silk Road routes and taking in beautiful landscapes (bare, stark mountains and sandy deserts), ancient Buddhist grottoes in caves, old walls and forts, encounters with bactrian camels (including a brief camel trek), a day wandering around a massive Buddhist monastery, visits to a few former mosques (including to understand the largely unspoken reason for this ‘former’ status), and dealing with various different aspects of Chinese culture.  Not to mention the Great (fire)Wall, where internet access to the BBC, to Facebook, to my photo storage accounts, to my Yahoo email account, to Google maps, etc is blocked unless you planned ahead and installed a foreign e-Sim or a VPN.  I’m drafting this whilst on my outward flight, and the early parts of the tour really feel as though they were months (if not years) ...