Buffalo arse on the road to enlightenment.

Buffalo arse formed the most vivid memory of the traffic jam. It was this that was responsible for much of the predicament, along with the dozens of dark, dusty grey creatures they were attached to of course, ambling at a stately plod over the dusty, potholed tarmac on the outskirts of Larkana, Pakistan. Sitting in the back of an auto rickshaw conveniently gives you an almost perfect eye level view of this feature of the animal. When confronted with such…

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Raving in the name of Allah

The first, deep resonant boom of the bass drum echoed around the courtyard, the cue for the men to begin to stand. The second boom commenced a slow deliberate beat, soon all were standing, swaying, letting the rhythm gently guide their motion. Little by little the beat picked up pace, the dancers responding to its energy until it morphed into an insistent roll and the movements became more agitated. The beat dropped into the breakdown, the piercing, discordant wail of…

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I went to Oman and all I got were these bloody doors and a chicken tikka massala.

I’d love to tell you about Omani culture but after ten days in the country I still hadn’t really seen any. If I was significantly more wealthy I would have done, as I could have hired a car and driver to go and find all the wonderful historical places that are denied the pleasure of public transport. Struggling to find any kind of accommodation under $40 a night didn’t leave much of a budget to do anything else, especially after…

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Racism and the making of an English traveller

The traveling community is hardly packed with racists, it would seem almost contrary to the basic spirit of the thing. That’s not to say we always get race relations right, navigating an ill defined path through the confusion of a multitude of different cultures. As an Englishman our past shows quite clearly we got it wrong a lot more than right. My school was white, very white, which probably accounted for the fact that it wasn’t until the age of…

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Soul of the city: Alexandria, Egypt

Digging under the surface of Egypt’s famous city    Probably the most important thing about Egypt’s second city according to its residents, is that it certainly isn’t Cairo. In particular they’ll tell you that it’s not as busy, dirty or noisy as the capital, which might come as a bit of a surprise to a westerner arriving in Alexandria who had yet to see Cairo, for by European standards it is all these things, even if it pales in comparison…

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My Top Travel Skills (that are completely useless back home)

If you are not picking up skills on your adventures, it means you are only on holiday and not pushing the experience envelope.  Hopefully, somewhere along the way you will have developed supreme self-confidence, an acute sense of direction and astute bargaining skills, all of which should come in useful once in a while when you are back home, fending off the suicidal urges of your day job. Along with these, if you have been properly immersing yourself in all…

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Nine Glimpses of Lebanon

Things aren’t always what you might think they would be in Lebanon 1. The Chevrolet Camaro is a man’s car, a real man’s car. Its muscular solidity just shouts America! at you. There’s no mistaking its form for some limp wristed, feminine, European design. But this is Lebanon, not Buttfuck Tenessee and the driver isn’t a hooch swilling redneck but an immaculately dressed Muslim lady, her head a mass of impossibly elegant hijab folds, a dazzle of shimmering colour. Her…

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Divided by similarities in Kurdistan

The people of Iraqi Kurdistan show us that just as much divides Kurdish people as unites them. Trying to decipher the goings on in the Kurdish regions spread across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran is confusing battle of acronyms: PKK, PYG, PUKD, YPG, KNC etc etc. Each region has its own jumbles of letters representing political parties and military groups, some of whose interests cross borders to link with other groups of capital letters. Sometimes they work together, sometimes they…

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Annoying travel personalities No.2: The Country Counter

More shameless insults hurled at travel personalities. Given my lowly place in the nether regions of the travel blogging world I haven’t got much to lose by slagging off some of the popular heroes of the travel world, as well as some of the targets more worthy of derision. But lets start with the type of country counter most of us will probably agree are totally tedious aresewipes. Thankfully this breed is relatively rare but if you’ve spent a bit…

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Who are the Yazidis?

Visiting Lalesh in Iraqi Kurdistan Some people make the headlines for all the wrong reasons, usually for doing something awful to a nice bunch of people. For others it’s only because the awful things are being done to them. Such is the fate of the Yazidis for whom persecution is so much part of their history that a list of 72 persecutions, principally carried out by the Ottomans, is an established aspect of the faith, though presumably it’s now 73…

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