Dagen jag lämnade Damaskus var märklig. Inte bara för ombytet från boendet hos Pascal (Tack!) på svenska ambassaden till livet på vägen, utan också då ‘regeringspolisen’ skuggade mig på motorcykel de sista 40 kilometrarna innan gränsen. Det hela slutade i boende på ett sjaskigt hotell i utkanten av Dar’a, och dessförinnan ett kortvarigt knivhot från en nervös man som tack och lov gav sig iväg då förbipasserande närmade sig.

Jordanien var vackert och emellanåt lika magiskt som namnet självt. Förbi historiska Jarash, Jordanfloden som numera vattnar plantage av bl.a. tomater och bananer – plantage som i sin tur täcker dalen i smutsbrun plast. Ett obligatoriskt dopp i salta Döda Havet och dusch efteråt i brännande het källa invid. Den fortsatta vägen söderut var ganska öde och trist, men tack vare god medvind fann jag mig snart i Aqaba – kustorten vid Röda Havet.

Resan över Sinai – den östra delen av Egypten som delar Röda Havet i Aqababukten i öster och Suezkanalen/bukten i väster – är ödslig, blåsig, långsam. Dock bjuder de få människorna jag möter – mestadels beduiner – på lika mycket mänsklig värme som landskapet bjuder dess frånvaro. Likadan är motorvägen från Suez till Kairo – snarast (halv-)öken hela vägen. Här i Kairo vilar jag nu ut hos tyska vännen och tillika långfärdscyklisten Sebastian (www.vom-wind-getragen.de) och ser fram emot en lång resa längs Nilen, ända till mellersta Sudan. Om den egyptiska polisen/militären tillåter, vill säga.

In Cairo, I’m greatly hosted by German cycling friend Sebastian (whom I first met on the road in Angola together with Japanese Mitch, when I was biking with Lina). I’ll stay here a few days to arrange visas for several countries ahead, then continue along the Nile River.

Seeing the pyramids was the one must-do in Cairo, I guess. It takes an hour to get there by bus – they’re located just where suburb Giza ends, with the vast desert landscape to the southwest.

Have a look at Sebastian’s website for his photos and writing from the cycling tour to South Africa (including a boat-trip along the Congo River!): www.vom-wind-getragen.de.

Information on Visa to Eritrea
6 El-Fallah, Mohandiseen
Referred me to their embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, although after finding out that the border Eritrea/Djibouti is closed, I’ve given this country up for good)

Information on Visa to Ethiopia
6 Abdel Rahman Hussein, Dokki
1 photo, 30 US dollar (no other currency accepted), 1 filled-in form. Got it the next day; valid for three months.

Information on Visa to Djibouti
15 Doctor Mohamed Abdou El-Said/near Doctor Mishi Bakhum/Nadi al-Sid intersection, Dokki
3 photos, 3 filled-in forms, one passport copy, 148 Egyptian pound. Got it after three working-days after much waiting at the embassy; valid for three months.

Information on Visa to Sudan
3 El-Ibrahimi, Garden City
2 photos, x filled-in forms, 100 US dollar.

By the highway, I’m invited by the four people staff of a roadside ambulance station to spend the night inside.

Long day across the flat lands of the Sinai. Wind, just like it has been ever since Nuweiba, is strong in my face. I pass the Suez Canal through the narrow Ahmed Hamdi Tunnel beneath on a lorry, and camp nearby the checkpoints on the west side of the canal.

Sleep on the ground of an open-air café by the main intersection in small town Nakhl. Visit the local hospital as my stomach is once again making trouble. New pills. Medicines of the past week: Metronidazole, Balakatrin, Trinethoprin, Sulphamethoxazole, Antiver, Mebendazole, Antinal, Difoxanide Furoate, Randidine. Sounds delicious.

Stay with two soldiers in their small room-toilet-kitchen hut, right next to a fancy base of the Colombian UN forces. ‘They even have a gym’, the two Egyptian soldiers say, looking at the base with big, envy eyes.

Sleep outside one of two roadside shops in small village Cheikh Hatiya.
I’ve bought an ORT (salts and sugars solution) to drink – I think the heat in the Dead Sea Valley really got me, and it doesn’t get much cooler on the Sinai.

The Bedouins are usually a pleasant meeting, despite the constant message from the local police and military that they’re dangerous thieve. The latter would make sense though, just as the exaggeration does. The situation much resembles the history of other indigenous peoples. Driven off their land – especially the most fertile such (oases, seasonal rivers) – they find it increasingly difficult to make a living from their traditional herding while at the same time modern society, occupying those fertile lands, comes temptingly close. I’ve met several Bedouins who are now into drinking and smoking weed, and for those that take on the tourist business of camel safaris, joints would probably need to be part of it.

As long as the vast majority of people keep regarding life as a mere race for expansion, wealth, and fame, people like the Bedouins who’ve known their lands for millenniums, and been able to live from them sustainably, will be slowly driven to adopt the way of life of the majority. I’d hope we could learn from them about life, and not the other way around.

The ferry to Nuweiba is a steep 52 dinar (around 70 euro), but at least the bike is free of charge. After a two-hour boat ride and about the same time spent waiting at each port, I’m finally in Egypt; back in Africa. I need rest and decide to treat myself with a two-day stay in a cheap bungalow at one of several touristic but surprisingly calm camps that line the beach.

A week-long journey cross the Sinai – under the Suez Canal and across the desert to Cairo – lies ahead.

Border details
Out of Jordan: 5 dinar.
Ferry to Aqaba (Jordan) – Nuweiba (Egypt): 52 dinar (around 70 euro).
Visa to Egypt: 85 Egyptian Pounds (about 15 US dollars); bought at the bank in Nuweiba harbor.

Med vinden I ryggen tar jag mig de 140 kilometerna som återstår ner till röda havs- kusten och orten Aqaba. Medan jag rullar in I staden går solen ner I röda havet; färgar himlen röd. Snart är det mörkt; kolsvart. Nästa morgon går färjan över till Egypten – så nu gäller det bara att hitta ett hem även denna natt.

Aqaba är Jordaniens enda hamnstad, ligger bara 15 kilometer från gränsen till Saudiarabien, och är dessutom sedan några år tillbaka en frihandelszon. En riktig smältdeg med andra ord, och så långt kändes allt bra för mig. Nu är tyvärr staden också en viktig turistort, välfylld med hotell som Mövenpick, Golden Tulip, Intercontinental och Kempinski. Med andra ord: Inget för min budget.

Istället frågar jag några polismän om råd, och tipsas om en strand söderut. Jag lämnar den upplysta staden bakom mig – gatorna och restaurangerna välbesökta av finklädda turister – och fortsätter i mörkret längs en nästintill otrafikerad motorväg genom hamn- och industriområden.

Bara några få kilometer söder om den femstjärniga lyxen hittar jag så mitt paradis. På stranden campar saudier och jordanier sida vid sida på sin väg mot ettdera landet. Det måste vara ett par dussin familjer som spritt ut sig över sanden – rest ett tält eller som oftast bara lagt ut en matta eller ett par filtar att sova på. Den egyptiske toalettvakten ger mig snart sin matta – det finns ingen vits med att resa tältet här. Inte ett moln finns i sikte, och en frisk vind blåser bort flugor och mygg. En äldre man och hans son håller en liten affär öppen till sent – säljer läsk, chips, popcorn, te och kaffe från en liten vagn med gaslykta. Jag tänker på hur mycket jag får se; lära – och på lyxturisterna som bara dom skulle palla sig någon kilometer bort från strand, sidenlakan och “Breakfast Continental” skulle ha något att berätta där hemma sen. Dom anar inte hur mycket dom missar.

Camp at a military checkpoint, 23 kilometers before Beer Mazkur and 90 km before Rahma.

A quick dip in the Dead Sea – a must along this way I guess – followed by a burning hot hot spring on the other side of the road to wash off the salt. All free of charge, thankfully, except for the shop owner whom I paid a euro to watch my stuff while I went swimming.

Stay the night with the Civil Defense (military ambulance and fire department). They give me an empty room on the third floor. In the evening, they bring the TV out on the front yard where they sit on carpets drinking tea, eating rice with chicken and roasted almonds for dinner. They enjoy watching music videos from Iraq, with girls that doesn’t have too much clothes on.

Having followed the River of Jordan (Nahar al Urdun) for a good part of the day – its name much more magical than its muddy waters now feeding the man-made landscape of plastic-covered plantations – I end up staying with some friendly brothers at their family’s house. For once, I meet locals that don’t complain about money – ‘bananas+water=lots of money’, says one of them while explaining their farming business as we wander through the fields of banana trees.

Easy border crossing, a ten euro visa, but then once again police that ruin my day. After getting some new pills at the local hospital in Jarash (my stomach still hasn’t bettered completely), police (at least in uniform this time) arrives to check passport and then like yesterday force me to stay in hotel. The city hotel was way too expensive, so they take me out west to another one some five kilometers away. Again too expensive, the police has already left (tired at my bargaining), and I can at least continue and find a local to stay with. But they’d forced me out of the town and its ancient ruins that I had come to see, so that’s for the ‘for your own sake’ part of the police squabble.

A gentle man, deeply devoted to his Muslim faith, hosts me in his house. His wife’s face is covered in a black hood through-out the evening; her sweet, kind voice at contrast. Great dinner, great sleep. Wonderful people. Seven kilometers after Jarash. Twoeters before Al Monsoura.

Border details
Stamp out of Syria, 500 lira.
Visa to Jordan at the border, 10 dinar.

Leaving Pascal, his humbleness, our great morning and evening talks and his generosity, isn’t easy, but with just some 100 kilometers to the border of Jordan, at least I’ve got something new to look forward to. With wind in the back and a flat, surfaced road, the day starts out well, too. But barely forty kilometers from the border, peace is no more.

A casually dressed man drives up beside me on his motorbike, says he is from the police and wants to see my passport. Dodgy as he looks, I ask to see his ID first, but it’s not much more than a piece of paper with Arabic on it. He explains his lack of uniform by claiming that he is from the ‘government police.’ After reviewing my passport, he seems satisfied anyway and lets me continue. But things get worse. He and later colleagues of his take turns in following me at a distance. Whenever a local guy, friendly as usual, stops to chat or invite me to stay at his place, they approach quickly and make him leave. Once, the local guy’s hands where trembling so much he could barely grab the steer of his motorcycle, whilst quickly saying that ‘sorry, I have to go home. I just felt some fear just now.’ Anyway, I finally meet some locals working in Kuwait in the oil business, thus quite good in English and able to translate the will of the police for me. ‘For your own safety, because of dodgy people from Saudi Arabia and UAE that passes these roads, they want you to stay in a hotel,’ the local guy explains. But the nearest hotel is in Dar’a, and it’s already getting dark. They promise me a stay cheap enough, but as I reach town, those policemen – all in mustache by the way – are all gone. And hotels seem to start at some twenty euro. No way. Past central Dar’a, down a swale with no light, no houses, no people, and up again a steep rise, some small suburb of town promises a cheaper place to stay. But on a street just before reaching that hostel, some man runs after me, I halt to ask why and get a nervously waving knife up my face. But only for a few seconds – luckily, approaching by passers scare him off, running away to one of the dark alleys he came from.

The hotel is closed, and only after two hours’ waiting, the manager comes and lets me inside. A shop owner on the other side of the road kept me company meanwhile, fed me and even helped me pay a little of my room (which didn’t even have a lock!). Now that is for ‘my own safety’, huh? Syria didn’t leave me a very positive image this last day.

I pedal the final 90 or so kilometers to Damascus – the highway more and more busy the closer I get. Once there, I’m met by friend of friends Pascal, who works at the Swedish Embassy in town. I get to stay with him for the next few days – rest up and recharge after a slightly battering journey with a bad stomach and a terrible flu, along some 300+ kilometers of busy highway. The vehicles are old, and the petrol of somewhat bad quality, so the smog alone can make one feel dizzy at times.

I spend my days in Damascus visiting the old city, go shopping with Pascal and his fiance, and holding a short speech at the embassy about my trip.