A predawn haze lit the kilometre of road before us. We trudged along it, still groggy from the half hearted slumber of our bus ride from Cairo. Through a small strip ‘of no man’s land’ we entered Israel, and left Egypt behind us. The immigration office was small, with gleaming white tiles on the floor and large cardboard posters dangling on strings from the ceiling. Grinning people were pasted onto the almost life-size cut outs – comically posing: hands on their hips – with their names below in colourful bubble letters. (Read on …)

A train deposited Iain and I in Aswan four hours behind schedule. A crowd of soldiers in combat uniforms guarded the platform, torso sized shields in their fists. A large group of convicts had been transported in the train that had taken us overnight from Cairo.

“We must hurry now,” said Omar, who strode through the station lobby, looking back to see if we were keeping up. “The bus to Aswan Dam will be waiting for you.” We had somewhat reluctantly booked a week long trip from Aswan to Luxor, including a night in a felucca on the Nile and visits to various ancient sites. Police escorted convoys have become compulsory for tourists travelling between the two cities because of Egypt’s recent terrorist attacks. It is difficult and time consuming for independent travellers to join these convoys, and most surrender to a package tour. And so it was that we became two among a group to be shepherded along this over-trodden tourist trail. Already it felt against the grain. (Read on …)

Ports are transitional: the places where countries merge, before coexisting on boats. Men had staggered clumsily through the pitching Ulysses, which took us from Rosslare to Cherbourg. They drank Guinness in the cabaret bar, and watched wide smiling dancers perform can cans or off balance jigs. On the less bumpy journey from Brindisi to Patras, men in fitted suits fingered worry beads, and the ship’s menu offered espressos and my first muddy Greek coffee.

At Aqaba, where we were to board a ferry for Nuweiba, two lazy lines and the Red Sea met: Claire and I could see four countries. To our south was Saudi Arabia. Egypt was visible across the water, pulling us west, away from Shanghai; next to it was Israel. And we were in Jordan, where shouting men moved household furniture and awkward, heavy sacks from the roof of a bus to the trailers behind a haggard tractor. The tractor belched greasy black smoke; it would later drag these trailers to the ferry’s hull, where they would be stacked behind trucks and a few out of place private cars. (Read on …)

Deep in the desert of Jordan we roamed,
In a rose tinted city named Petra, borne from stone.
Three hundred years before Christ it was built,
The Nabataeans mastered carving, the heat did nought but wilt.

Spice and silk passed through Petra to the East,
Trade was commanded by the Nabataeans, long deceased.
Earthquakes shook the city, and people fled
But stone refused surrender, and the city remained unbent. (Read on …)

Heavy water rolled gently towards my toes, over thick layers of caked salt, like rock candy, which had sunk to the seafloor. I stepped gingerly forward, avoiding the sharp edges of broken salt, and the water got quickly deeper, along a slip sliding slope. Soon, I was in disorienting suspension, legs kicking the air, laughing at my own attempts to swim.

Israel was across the water; its dry, sinuous hills rose quickly past brown gravel beaches, identical to the small, Jordanian owned stretch of equally course sand behind me, where Claire lazed beneath a hexagonal wooden umbrella, with only her legs extending into the weak winter sun. The Dead Sea was Yam ha-Mavet there and al-Bahr al-Mayyit here; the Hebrew and Arabic words for death also resembled each other closely. (Read on …)

It was a crisp, cool morning, and Star Crossed Lovers café – where we had drunk our last chai the night before – was already awake. Wooden tree stumps were laid out in the spreading sunlight and the café’s dwarfish owner, wild curls on his balding head, noticed us immediately.

“Good morning!” he called, bustling about the café’s matchbox sized kitchen. “You take chai?” he offered, smiling at us.
“Well…” I looked at Iain. “We’re on our way to see Umayyad mosque,” I told the man, with purpose. He didn’t consider this an answer.
“No charge!” he said, his grin growing.
To refuse an offer of tea in Syria is considered strange, and decidedly antisocial.
“Well… we’ve got time for some chai Iain, don’t we?” (Read on …)

Sharia ath-Thawra was a jumble of shining yellow taxis, fearlessly zipping between moving metal. Their drivers rested weary elbows on horns, hooting, blind to all but their destination. A pedestrian flyover was visible in the distance, beyond a mammoth neon Sony sign, about a ten minute walk away. But Iain and I had slept too late; we had things to see, a city to explore, and so stood, peering onto the street, waiting for a gap. A truck chugged along further down – at a safe speed, it seemed. We took the chance, darted across the road, and began a sprint as one of the faceless yellow vehicles sped toward us, its horn hooting profanities. A leap forward and we were out of its path, balancing on a white line. Cars swished behind and in front of us, displacing bulks of air that slapped you in the face; ‘idiot’ they screamed. I exhaled, stood jelly legged in between the two rows of speeding traffic, and clutched Iain’s hand in terrified futility. (Read on …)

I woke as we neared the Syrian border, my left cheek clammy and wrinkled. Saliva had collected on the headrest of my reclined bus seat, and gone cold. I rubbed life back into rubbery skin, and looked outside. The land was drier than yesterday, when I had watched the sun set over central Turkey through the same window. Olive trees clung to brittle soil, their roots shabbily exposed. Adding theirs to other muted greens, they pushed a withered face above the ground’s gradual undulations. (Read on …)

The bedroom was icy. Fresh breaths of arctic air sifted through unseen cracks, under the door, through the glass. My foot lay exposed. I snuck it back under the weight of blankets piled on top of me: three of them, thick and soft.

A steel cylinder stood in the corner of the room, stuffed with newspaper. A fire, waiting to be lit. It would have to wait. Behind the curtains lay another land: a land of eerie undulations in the earth, pointed stone chambers, forgotten homes. Giant cones of volcanic tuff congregated in clusters, watching over this frozen village, Göreme. (Read on …)

My mother and Willie Turnbull, the author of this article, joined me for a week in Turkey while Claire was away, attending her mother’s wedding. I forced our swift schedule on them; they forced relief from The Budget on me. Willie offered to write this article. I gleefully accepted, but insisted that the title be “Gosh, Prayers and Broken Windows.” “Gosh” because Willie – who hadn’t, like me, been travelling for months – used the word (perhaps too often) to express his newfound wonder. The “Prayers and Broken Windows” had more to do with Willie being Scottish, and await his explanation… (Read on …)