The Journey Begins in Cairo

This is the truck we will be spending a lot of our travel time on!
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The journey begins in Cairo and where we meet our crew and board our truck which will be with us for the next 4 months.

I suppose we should name it!

We are on our way to meet the Pharaohs

The route through Africa we will be making.
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Have been here a few days now and been exploring the city - very busy and grey!

The driving is nearly as bad as china - there are no rules.

Had a misson into the city to get some paper work sorted out and pulled it off successfully - phew!

We have met most of our tour group and the tour leaders all of which seem cool like minded people and seem to have the same mind set - lets challenge ourselves and see what happens!

The great Pyramid at Giza
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Been to the Egyptian museum and seen the mummies and tutankhamun mask etc - pretty cool but alot to see and take in.

Today we went to see our first pyramids at Sakkara and Darshur - pretty impressive and we went into one of the burial chambers. It was very deep, hot, humid, chlostraphobic and stank of amonia! but we can now say we did it and don't have to do it again!

We have one more day in Cairo then we start the trip on Sunday and board the truck on Monday.

We have been enjoying the semi luxury of the hotel and eating and drinking well while we can.

I've Copped!
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The common past time of the locals is smoking the Shisha pipes - so we thought when in Rome!

they are all natural ingrediants of fruit and honey and suprisingly tasty!.Better than fags!

30th Oct 2006

Boarded the truck to begin our trip out from Cairo (with Police escort) out into the western desert. Here we travelled for 6 hours to the first of the oasis (bahariyya) where we set camp and pitched tents for the first time.  Al, Alan, and Rob got the short straw and became the first cooks of the trip making spag boll for 26 people.

Our home for the next 4 months!
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31st Oct - 5th Nov 2006

Drove all day again to the next oasis which we past through as there was nowhere to camp and the police were keeping an eye on us to make sure we didn't dissapear into the desert to bush camp. We ended up in the third Oasis (Dahkla) where we spent the next few days in a Bedouin camp. One day we travelled out into the desert on camels and camped out under the stars with locals, who sang local songs and kept us feed and watered (with Alchohol!). They wanted to hear some european songs so we all ended up doing the Hokey Cokey round a fire in the middle of the western desert which was quite surreal.

The morning after we got back to camp and visited the local hot springs which meant we could have a wash at the same time.

We drove from the to Mout and tried the local Falafal which was very good. From there we drove through to the last Oasis (El Kharga) and camped out near a huge mud brick fort to watch the sun go down. Drove the whole day to Luxor where we spent the next few days doing the tourist thing and visited the Valley of the Kings, Workers and the Hatsheput which was built by Rameses III.

Me and Dunc went up to the Valley of the Kings by Donkey which isn't very pleasent for a bloke being bobbed up and down for an hour.

Tomorrow we pick up a convoy out to Aswan where we have already booked a 2 felucca cruise to Edfu and Kom Ombo with lots of beer!!!