North Africa ‘Plus’ Travel Diary

2011

 

I am writing this final diary entry at Istanbul Airport, where I have a nine hour transit stop between my flight from Odessa to Istanbul and my connecting flight home to Hong Kong.

If you have read all 29 previous days’ pages before you read this, congratulations for your endurance!  Having read the entire diary, I am sure you will understand that this has been a fabulous trip with a sensational range of diverse experiences.

Before the trip began, I was somewhat worried whether or not everything would work out - a revolution in Tunisia, riots and demonstrations in Algeria and a war in Libya made the plans I had formulated last December appear to be in tatters for a while.  The difficulties (a.k.a. “impossibility”) of getting a visa for Moldova (the ‘normal’ gateway to Transnistria) also caused me grief, although in the end, obtaining a multiple entry visa for Ukraine enabled me to overcome that obstacle.  By April, it had become clear that Libya would have to be deleted from the itinerary, but the substitute (a week in Turkey) turned out to be a brilliant alternative.

Then, when I was hospitalised with my hip injury in mid-March, more doubts were raised in my mind.  Would it be possible to go to these exotic ‘hardship’ locations if I was still on crutches?  Fortunately, my hip healed more quickly than I could have hoped or expected, and although it is still weak and sometimes painful, it has withstood the demands of the trip very well, admittedly with the help of some anti-inflammatory tablets from time to time.

My hip injury worried me most during the first few days of the trip.  As a result of my weak hip, I fell twice when crossing rough ground, once on Day 2 at the Red Basilica in Pergamum and then on Day 3 on an amphitheatre at Ephesus.  The first fall caused only minor bruising to my arm, leg and ego, but the second fall resulted in significant damage to my camera lens, jamming it and making impossible to zoom or focus.  Fortunately, after a few minutes of my amateurish on-the-spot repairs, the zooming problem was fixed, and I was able to get the lens working again for the rest of the trip by manual focussing, thus reviving some ancient photo taking skills that I thought I had been able to abandon a couple of decades ago.  And so the photo taking was able to continue, but at a much slower rate than usual, which meant there were a few quick point-and-shoot photos that I sadly had to miss from time to time.  I didn’t mention these falls in my daily diaries at the time because I didn’t want want my family at home to worry that I might not be able to get good photos of the trip :-)

Tim and I were reflecting on the highlights of the trip over dinner on our last night together in Istanbul.  We both agreed that neither of us would have left out any of the places we had visited.

For both of us, the highlight was (by a narrow margin, in a trip with so many highlights) - Ghardaïa in Algeria.  This wasn’t because it had the worst beds on the trip, or because it was hot and dusty, or because it was the one place where getting internet access was impossible - hooking up to the internet was often difficult in many of the places we visited, but only in Ghardaïa did it prove to be impossible.  Ghardaïa was remarkable because it was so different from anywhere else either of us had ever visited, with a strong intact culture and extraordinary natural environment.  There was a real sense of privilege in being invited into the villages; these are not places that are used to seeing many outsiders, and the hospitality was warm, genuine and gracious, if at times guarded.

And the runner-up destinations?  For Tim, the number two location was Esfahan (Iran), but for me it was Göreme (Turkey).

Having made these observations, though, Tim and I agreed that one of the great joys of the trip was having the opportunity to talk in depth with local people who understood their country and culture.  This was especially so in Algeria where we had three outstanding people to guide us - Badjou, Yong and Briham.  In a similar vein, it was great to meet with one of my students (Maroua) and her father in Tunisia, despite the brevity of our time together.  Sadly, our plans to meet with the mother of one of Iranian students (Bita) in Tehran failed to eventuate because of communication problems arising from Iran’s Facebook ban.

On some occasions, the meetings we had with local people were unplanned, such as when we were visiting the Catholic cathedral in Algiers.  To our surprise, quite a number of Muslim people were there having a look at the building (it is almost unknown for Muslims in Algeria to enter Christian churches), and to our even greater surprise, a young Muslim woman approached us (three men!) and began asking questions about the scenes shown in the Biblical paintings on the walls.  This in turn led to a deeper discussion about the key points of Christian belief compared with the teachings of Islam.  That one conversation shattered several of my stereotypes, and gave me immense hope that genuine inter-faith dialogue might indeed have a future.

Surprisingly, and unlike most of my previous trips, everything went quite smoothly on this trip (that is, unless you count deleting Libya because of an armed conflict and substituting Turkey as a bit of a blip).   Admittedly, the destinations included in this itinerary were more economically developed than some of the places I have visited during recent summer trips.  Nonetheless, once our travels began, there were no major delays, no unplanned changes to the itinerary, no police detentions - indeed, no major problems at all.  Tim was great company, and I really appreciated his ready willingness to spend a few weeks of his hard-earned holidays travelling with his Dad, as well as his easy-going, co-operative nature on the trip.  I think we had a great time together.

As people who know me understand, the love of experiencing new places is part of my essence as a life-long learner and as a geographer.  In that sense, journeys that some people might find arduous are, to me, energising.  And as I approach the end of this trip, I do indeed feel energised - despite having had to spend an hour or two on most days answering work-related e-mails, and despite spending about the same amount of time each day writing travel diary page in order tho share the experience.

I could not hope to sum it up better than the Sufi mystic and poet, Khwaju Kermani, who I mentioned in my diary entry for Day 20 in Shiraz (Iran).  As he said, “Travelling is like the root of a tree”, because just as the tree becomes healthier and more vibrant as the roots spread and bring in new nutrients, so people become healthier and more vibrant as they travel and are nourished by new ideas and experiences.

Yes, I agree: “Travelling is like the root of a tree”.

Day 30 - Odessa to Hong Kong

Tuesday

12 July 2011