Trevi

Jacqueline and I passed by Trevi Fountain during a long afternoon walk through the city. So, as expected of all tourists, we made our way into the crush of people and got out two coins to toss in. Back turned, Jacqueline made her wish and threw her euro over her shoulder, over several rows of tourists and *splash* into the fountain. My turn. I turned my back to the fountain. I hurled my coin, maybe with a little more force than I needed. Jacqueline grabbed my hand and started pulling me away-- "Let's get out of here. You just pegged someone in the head."

Roman holiday

Props to Paolo, best concierge ever!

We cashed in some Starwood points to stay for cheap at the otherwise very expensive Sheraton Roma, a large business hotel in southern Rome near the airport. Our first morning, we had some questions for the concierge. We wanted to know where to get subway passes, where to get a train timetable, and where we might find a laundromat, etc.

Paolo at the concierge desk answered each of our questions with an indifferent "I don't know" and would start to turn away from us until we said "wait, sorry, we have another question..." this scene repeated itself a few times. Paolo's ignorance of pretty much everything was so strange, Jacqueline actually said "I'm sorry, I thought you were the concierge. Can we speak to the concierge?" Paolo replied blankly "I am the concierge."

After about 3 more questions and 3 more "I don't knows" we gave up and Paolo strted to turn away. I had 2 euros in my hand I reflexively started to slide across the counter to him, but I caught myself ("what the hell am I doing!?") and took the money back. The best part, Paolo saw me do it :-)

Pics from the Dead Sea

Slideshow: Petra

Click here to see it full-size.



No surprise, Petra is absolutely stunning. When you complete your walk down the narrow, mile-long Siq (sheer rock cliffs that have been rent apart by tectonic forces), and get your first glimpse of the giant Treasury facade carved from the rose rock cliff face, it takes your breath away.

What was utterly surprising for us was the immense size of the park itself. I had always thought that Petra was simply the photogenic Treasury, but it was a bustling Nabatean city 2,000 years ago, a city that sprawled through the valley and into the surrounding cliffsides. Petra has many impressive tombs (some of the larger ones look similar to the Treasury), carved in a manner inspired by the Greco-Roman style. There are large boulevards lined with columns, a giant amphitheatre that used to sit 3,000, and a religious temple (the Monastery) located on a twisting narrow path consisting of rubble, boulders, and 800 switchback steps carved into the remaining rock. Many of the cliffside temples and buildings had been eroded from centuries of wind and rain, and had surreal Dali-esque facades that looked like they could have been partially-melted ice cream.

It was on our second day at Petra that we decided to climb the long steep path up to the Monastery. Somewhat fatigued from our previous day’s 5-hour walk in the 95 degree heat (most of the day consisted of repeated exclamations like “WOW” and “Keith, look at that!”), we had a good night’s sleep, lots of water and sunblock, and some provisions for the trail. We were continually harassed by the Bedouin donkey-riders who take tourists up and down the trail for about five Dinars. The walk was full of great vistas and photo ops, some good exercise, and repeated recitations of laa shukran (no thanks, we don’t want to ride the donkey). After a good hour’s worth of climbing, when we were almost to the top, there was a boy of about 3 years that greeted us with raspberries—not of the fruit kind, but rather the spitty kind. These, naturally were met with raspberries from me, and this one-upmanship went on for a few minutes, ending with the boy giggling madly. Keith and I reached the top soon after; we sat to admire the view, rehydrate, and dig into the fruit and cookies we brought. The boy and his slightly older brother had made it up to the top too, in order to sell trinkets to the tourists disembarking from their donkey-saddles.

I held out a cookie for the younger boy to come and eat. He ran over to us at full throttle. He had bare feet, filthy clothes, and flies over his face, looking like one of those “Would you spend 50 cents a day to feed this child?” ads—but he was so happy and full of life. He had some paper in his hand—some random computer page printout from a German tour itinerary. He held it like it was precious to him, but I thought it would be more so if Keith used some of his skills to draw on the back of the paper. Keith drew cats and dogs for him. Peals of laughter from the kid. His brother came over and we offered him cookies too. Keith asked "Ramadan? Is this OK? OK with mom?" as if kids would actually turn down a cookie in any circumstance (they happily ate our cookies without hesitation). As we started packing up to make our way back down the trail, the older boy asked us: "English?" Keith answered: "No, American". And as we started to walk away, he said "Americans...are nice" quietly, almost more to himself than to us, as if he was making a pronouncement in order to imprint it upon his memory.

Travel thrusts us into other people’s lives unexpectedly, and can leave lasting impressions. I hope the ones we leave are always as good.

Crossing (into) Jordan

What a contrast to Egypt! Cleaner, with a better infrastructure and less-aggressive touts, and people here seem genuinely proud of their country and their (relative) stability, and are happy to have tourists come visit. It seems that Jordan had been a popular destination (and very busy for our taxi driver) throughout most of the 90s, but the past year or so they have suffered from tourism slowdown. Jordanians seem unsure about the reasons why (the Iraq war has already been going on for a while now, and the Middle East in general has been dicey since...well...a long time. There was a well coordinated terrorist attack on several hotels last year--some 60+ people were killed—-though several people we spoke to insisted things had slowed down prior to that). We assured our driver that with the naming of Petra as one of the "New Seven Wonders of the World", business was sure to pick up.

Jordan has been a whirlwind of car travel. With less than a week in the country, and lots of ground to cover in order to see the major sights, we have spent a lot of time in a taxi. The good news is that Jordan is a small county: it only takes about 6-7 hours or so to go from the northern border to the southern one. There's not much in the way of buses, but taxis are popular, affordable, and they travel nationwide. We got into Amman in the afternoon and took a taxi to the hotel (You can hire a taxi for the day, and cross the country for about 80 Dinars. The Jordanian Dinar is worth about 1.4 USD, similar to the Euro, so things weren’t necessarily cheap. Many people in the country are very poor.)

We’ve been madly accumulating Starwood points (from our Amex card) the past five months in anticipation of our trip. We have been trying to minimize our hotel expenses by cashing in our points, or by using a clever combination of cash and points (usually 2000-3000 points plus $45 USD for nice hotels). This scheme really delivered in Amman, where we scored a huge suite at Le Meridien for $45. Our first afternoon was spent napping, doing some minor laundry, cleaning up, checking email and bills online, and repacking (we planned to leave some luggage in Amman so we could travel light while camping in Wadi Rum). That first night in Amman we ate at Benihana—weird, yes, but after weeks of disappointing Egyptian food, we had a craving for something Asian. The meal was the best we’d had in a while. It was an interesting experience, eating at an American chain restaurant staffed entirely by Filipinos pretending to be Japanese for the sake of their Arab clientèle.

Wadi Rum

Even boarding the new, clean Royal Jordanian Airlines plane in Cairo, we started to notice a difference. We spoke briefly with a fellow passenger, a Jordanian woman relieved to be going home... "How long were you in Egypt?" Jacqueline asked... "Ten days....long enough to get homesick!" She added "Jordan is beautiful, you will LOVE it here!!"

After the unrelenting heat and dust of Egypt, Jordan's cooler climate was a relief... As far as climate & topography, Amman feels more like Southern California or New Mexico than it does your stereotypical Arab desert. Amman is a modern city with tree-lined boulevards, high-rises and large suburban neighborhoods reminiscent of Beverly Hills... the strong infrastucture and relative calm of this place is impressive considering the violence that surrounds it (I'll post more on that later, hopefully).

We spent two days exploring the ruins at Petra; that'll have to wait for a later post. For now though, at least I was able to upload some pictures to flickr. Here's a slideshow of our Bedouin campout in Wadi Rum:



You can see these pics larger and with captions on flickr.

Tomorrow we fly to Rome...

Why Egypt reminds me of the 70’s

No matter where we go in Egypt, I think of what it must have been like to happen upon these ruins 150 years ago. Riding camels in the desert to the pyramids, taking tea in the shade of the Sphinx—no touts, no plastic scarab beetles or fake papyrus scrolls—just you and your small group, your guide, and some cantankerous, cranky camels. You would have had more time then, time to explore; to burn the image of the temple in your mind, to ponder how many men have lived and died during the time these monuments have stood.

But there is another period of time that I keep thinking about here in Egypt. The seventies. What is it about the seventies? Well, the King Tut exhibit was traveling throughout the world—it was a big deal. Omar Sharif, one of the most famous Egyptians ever, was very dashing, and very seventies. What about the movie Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor? Sixties, I know, but there’s something very seventies about Liz. Remember that disco song, “Midnight at the Oasis”—disco is very seventies. Keith was just reminding me of the Steve Martin bit and the King Tut song (he’s got a few years on me). When was Steve Martin an SNL guest host all the time? I think it was the SEVENTIES. All of these Sound & Light shows have lasers. When were lasers really new? Why, the seventies of course!







And, we passed by this weird funky seventies structure while cruising the Nile; it would make a perfect hideout for some sleazy seventies Bond villain!

Egyptian snacks

Pleasant surprise: Chicken-flavored potato chips are really good.

Disappointment: Cumin-flavored pretzels taste just like regular pretzels.

Also I should note that every Egyptian wine-- red, rose, or white-- tastes like cooking sherry (and the beer is a little underwhelming here too. Not a big nation of drinkers).

Esna

One of the stranger moments on the trip so far: it’s our second day of three on our brilliantly tacky monster-sized Nile cruiser, and we have to queue up among six other tourist boats to use the lock on our way to Luxor. It’s Ramadan, it’s dusk, we’re temporarily tied up to the dock at Esna, and most of us are sitting around on the top deck, looking right over at the street scenes of Esna, watching goats, mule-carts, and scooters pass by, watching ourselves being watched from the streets and crumbling buildings. The call to prayer emanates from three different mosques that seem equidistant from us; they are each staggered by a few seconds, so the sound loudly reverberates over us, ghostly as the sun sets. In a brilliant Fellini-esque juxtaposition, three young Asian women (possibly Korean?) are loudly laughing, shrieking and splashing in the pool, oblivious in the special way Asian tourists can be, taking snapshots of each other, and noticing the call to prayer only long enough to laugh and mockingly imitate the muezzin’s intonations.

I would stare at the giggling water-nymphs, and look back at the crumbling buildings on the shore, imagining robed men on the rooftops, assembling rocket launchers to rain fire down upon all of us disrespectful infidels.

It *is* just a river in Egypt!

We are in the midst of the second of two cruise experiences in Egypt. Currently, we have been herded on a Nile ship (the Crown Emperor) that is like a low-budget, floating, shabby Vegas hotel—- a Vegas hotel that is close to four mosques during Ramadan (I am listening to four independent call to prayers right now, each one started at a slightly different time, so there is a weird echo and discordance to the whole affair). We also happen to be one of the few Americans on this particular ship, which isn’t necessarily bad, but due to the high concentration of Japanese, Taiwanese, and Germans on board, we feel strangely isolated. The upside is that the female taiwanese tourists have no problem with floating in the pool while loudly making fun of the call to prayer (by imitating the warbling ‘Allah Ackbarrrrrrrrrrrrrr’). Inappropriate? Yes. Amusing given the piousness of Muslim men and the overall treatment of women in this part of the world? Yes.

Cruising on the Nile in modern times has absolutely NONE of the romanticized experiences that one would expect. Green and blue Astroturf lines the top deck, a crush of bodies (our boat, one of the largest, is designed to accommodate approximately 250 people) wait expectantly at the dining room doors until the gates are opened, and then, like cattle, rush to get plates and heap tasteless (and questionably prepared?) buffet food on top.

I have taken to quietly moo-ing in line while waiting for the unsatisfying feeding frenzy to commence. Keith and I actually skipped two meals in order to regain an appetite, just to have it satisfied by the weight of the food, and not the taste.

One can look past the Astroturf to see the banks of the Nile streaming slowly past. Fisherman in traditional feluccas cast their nets, laughing children jump into the Nile, white and gray ibises land in marshy areas here and there. There are brave souls in rowboats that try to cross the water-freeway that is the Nile, (like a high stakes, waterlogged Frogger). These risk-takers are discouraged, but not thwarted, by the blaring horns of the cruise ships that chug three abreast down the river. Gone are the quiet days of gliding in small vessels, accompanied by thoughtful and well-read folks who self-selected based on the tremendous expense of visiting a place like Egypt. Now, Egypt is the low-budget travelers dream come true—lots of bland meals, guided excursions, and favorable exchange rates make North Africa the Mexico of Europe.

Perhaps this typical Egyptian-tourist experience would not have been so depressing if we had done the Nile before our Lake Nasser trip. The M.S.Eugenie is a revelation as compared to those “other” cruises, not only in regards to the size of the ship, but specifically because of the isolation experienced cruising the world’s largest artificial lake.





We began in Aswan, (the site of the great dam, constructed to stop the predictable seasonal flooding of the Nile banks) and continued for four days down to our final destination, Abu Simbel, the great temple of Ramses II. Each room had a private deck with chairs, allowing us both privacy and utility, (we spent an entire morning washing clothes out in our tiny sink, and conveniently used the light housing on the deck ceiling to support hangers with drippy shirts and the like).



We passed two boats in four days. It was hot—really hot. Like when you have been cooking a chicken in the oven for an hour, and stick your face in to baste it--hot. But we had an air-conditioned room a foot away, and found it easy to hose off in the shower, run outside to the deck, and let the evaporation cool us. Days of cruising were interspersed with quick (1.5 to 2 hour) excursions to shore, where we clamored into the 30-seater motor boat that dangled from the stern, jumped off onto shore, and saw a large sampling of the various UNESCO salvaged (i.e. saved from the dam-generated flood waters) Nubian temples. We saw scorpions, poisonous snakes, and alligators—none in the wild, but kept in empty water bottles by the local Bedouin in order to extract some baksheesh (cash in the form of a tip) from the tourists, in exchange for a picture with the fear-inducing specimens.

On the third day, we approached Abu Simbel, from the water. As we got closer, everyone scampered around the deck, free cocktails were passed about (non-alcoholic, of course, for this is predominantly a Muslim country), and to really cater to the audience, Carmina Burana (a la “The Omen”) blasted from the loudspeakers as these massive figures came into view...

Pedestrians

Upon successfully crossing a wide boulevard in Alexandria, I'm inspired to post a brief Adam Sachs passage about Cairo pedestrians--
"...In Stockholm, they look both ways, judge the distance and speed of the approaching Volvos, and formulate a rational decision about when it is safe to cross. In Madrid, they look with disdain and cross with bravado, taking back what some bastard would deny them. In Cairo, they look inside the onrushing cars to read the soul of the drivers. They wade into traffic as though it were a refreshing mountain stream. They are drawn to brush against and bond with the swerving, swarming tons of steel the way people at aquatic theme parks are drawn to brush against and bond with the trained dolphins...."

Pictures Coming-honest

Hey everyone-we have had non-existent internet service due to our boat trips. Right now we are sitting in an internet cafe in Luxor to check on things-expect lots of content in the next few days-as long as we have internet access in Jordan-we have been taking tons of pictures and writting as well. Miss you and we love reading your comments-thanks.

40

...hmmm, not bad as far as birthdays go. Admired Ramses' dessicated corpse in the Egyptian Museum Mummy Room; contemplated Tutankhamun's coffin nails; walked barefoot through the Muhammad Ali Mosque; stared at the Cairo skyline from the Citadel walls; sat in the Ben Ezra Synagogue; drank turkish coffee, socialized and smoked water pipes in the Souq.










We'll hopefully post something a little more detailed later. We didn't have much in the way of web connections in Cairo... we're in Alexandria at the moment; Jacqueline's doing much better with her cold but I think we're still a little ragged from the time change etc...Thanks everyone, for your posted comments & well-wishes!

Arabic translation

We’ve been picking up some rudimentary Arabic—nothing that impressive, just your basic pleasantries like thank you (shokran), please (min fadlak), sorry (aasef), hello (as-salaam alaykum), okay (mashi), let’s go! (yalabina!)…

Laa shokran (no thanks) is proving the most useful phrase to know, given the large number of touts that descend upon us at any tourist site. Samar told us to use halas!! ("end it!") if someone is especially pushy, but we haven’t had to drop the h-bomb yet.



Most of our practicing, though, involves numbers. Western numerals are, technically, of Arabic origin, but they look different enough in Arabic to be confusing. The trickier ones are 3 (actually 4) and 0 (actually 5). Zeros are designated by a dot. Samar and our driver have been happily quizzing us, competing to see how quickly we can read off license plates, receipts, phone numbers etc.

Getting around in a strange place

We generally like to avoid group tours—I’m always the guy who wanders off or tries to duck out of things—but traveling within Egypt is very difficult for outsiders if you’re not at least affiliated with some guide or company. The many tour companies and guides here are heavily regulated by the government. The government has been concerned about tourist safety since a number of terrorist attacks occurred on tourist sites in the nineties; they try to put on a show of monitoring and tracking visitors, offering security guards, escorts and endless rows of metal detectors (We’re convinced very few of these metal detectors actually work, and to be honest, teenagers with automatic weapons and ill-fitting uniforms don’t exactly inspire confidence).

We hooked up with a tour company recommended to us by Travel Betty (thanks Tracy!) called Egypt 7000. Happily, we aren’t in any ‘group’ situation, Egypt 7000 have been driving us around and helping us with scheduling, reservations and logistics… Mohammed (more on him later) met us at the airport, made sure we checked in to our hotel, and has been great making sure we don’t get lost among Cairo’s teeming streets. It’s quite a relief to have their help; otherwise we’d completely exhaust ourselves, and we don’t want to burn out so early in the trip…

Mena House

For our first few nights in Cairo we arranged to stay at Mena House; we wanted to see the famous old Giza hotel in the shadow of the pyramids. It’s been an iconic Egyptian destination since the 19th century, and is evocative of the days of the ‘grand tour’. It’s been the location of a variety of political summits, the romantic backdrop to several old films, and has hosted plenty of people over the years, from Winston Churchill to Barbara Bush. The hotel itself has been pretty well preserved and modernized. It’s tacky in a charming sort of way, ornate with gilt and marble; it has a strong institutional scent of soap, jasmine and cigarette smoke that reminds us of Turkey.

Culturally, Egypt may be the most “foreign” place we’ve been. Turkey is practically Greek by comparison, and we’ve always been reasonably comfortable in our various travels to places like China, Japan, Thailand & Cambodia—Asia feels familiar to us after years of living, working and socializing in a predominantly Asian city like San Francisco.

London misc

We ate lunch a the Borough Market, a popular artisan-food farmers market held fridays and saturdays... a great way to spend an afternoon.





Also did the obligatory Tower of London visit and said hi to the ravens. We learned the origin of the famed British "V" flip off. It's an old threat-- simply a display of your bow fingers... who knew?

Keep left

Most of the streets here have explicit directions written on the curb. Cities don't spend time and resources on that sort of thing "just to be nice"-- I'm sure there have been many many pedestrian accidents.

Crossing streets in London is completely couterintuitive, and each time I do it I look the wrong way despite the written directions. I end up looking wildly everywhere-- right, left, up in the sky, down to the pavement-- expecting danger from all directions. I think some of this is exacerbated by the nature of the streets here too; there are very few straightforward intersections. Most streets merge, curve, peel off, join again, change from one-way to two-way and back again. It's possible even Londoners get disoriented once in a while. I'd never try to drive a car here.

The Amazing Race

London. First off, let me say we feel relaxed and right at home amongst so many pale doughy people.

So, about a month ago I skimmed an Economist article ("The Hell That is Heathrow") about all the various logistical and customer-service problems plaguing both Heathrow and British Airways. I assumed it was mostly hyperbole, so we were a little unprepared for the hot, crowded 2-hour wait to shuffle through customs & passport control. As we eventualy made our way closer in line, we noticed a "Disease Control" section where various passengers had been pulled aside. Feeling a bit paranoid after an hour in the bleak Orwellian queue, we half-wondered if maybe Jacqueline's coughing would get us quarantined. We figured I would do all the talking to customs so as to not blow Jacqueline's "cover" (Jacqueline ended up doing a lot of the talking anyway, and of course her cold didn't matter at all).

From Heathrow, we took the underground straight to Kensington for the US embassy. The prerecorded female voice in the train announced, in a perfectly formal crisp British accent: "this is the Piccadilly line, service to Cockfosters" ...this was after each stop, so she must have said it at least eight times, and every time she said it I started laughing (okay, okay, "cockfosters" probably sounds funnier than it reads). I may be turning forty, but my juvenile sense of humor keeps me young.

We had a narrow window of opportunity to get extra pages for our passports. The embassy only takes walk-ins until noon; this was our only chance to get it done before flying to Cairo on the 9th. Because our plane was delayed an hour, and because customs took so long, we had barely 20 minutes to find the embassy once we got off the train near Hyde Park. We scrambled to find a cab.

When I try to visualize myself visiting a sophisticated, cosmopolitan city like London, I like to imagine myself relaxed, strolling confidently, wearing tailored clothes and a worldly smirk... the reality of it is, we perfectly re-enacted a scene from "The Amazing Race", sweating and fleece-clad, lumbering awkwardly from the weight of the backpacks & rolling luggage, waving down cabs... "We need to get to the US embassy!! Now!", "Will you take the fare or not?", "Can you get us to the embassy? Please, we're in a hurry!"

Long story short, we got to the embassy just in time, got our pages, and then took a cab over to our hotel. We celebrated with a steak sandwich and a bottle of wine, mmmmmmm... more London posts (and some London pics) coming later...

-k

The fun's just starting

On the second leg of our SF -> London flight, barely 15 minutes out of Chicago, a 60-something Indian gentleman seated near us got up to use the lavatory. Jacqueline followed; she was next to enter the lavatory after him, and she was taken aback by the disturbingly large amounts of spittle and stomach bile spattered over the sink, mirror and toilet seat. We're not exactly sure what happened in there, but the gentleman seemed otherwise very happy and healthy the rest of the flight.

We're treating this as the first of many great bathroom anecdotes we'll accumulate on the trip-!

18 hours until take off

Tomorrow at 9:30AM we will be taking off for Chicago, our layover on the way to London.

There are a lot of strange emotions that are washing over us today... mostly panic (Did I pre-pay that bill? Do we have enough cash? Do we have copies of our passports?).

Unfortunately, one of us (Jacqueline) is sick, which will make the 20+ hours of plane travel a real treat. Our first priority once we land at Heathrow is to go to the US Embassy, and get additional pages for our passports. We didn't want to do it here-- given the huge processing backlog in the US, we didn't trust that we'd get our passports back in time for the trip.

We have reading materials, some protein bars for the plane, and everything we think we will need. All that is left is a last-minute Walgreens run and some house cleaning (vacuuming, bathroom etc). We have hope that internet access abroad can assist us with any administrative tasks we may have forgotten.

It is daunting to leave a city you love for unknown discomforts.

Can someone remind us why we are doing this?

Oh yeah--to see the world, and to start to feel human again. The older we get, the more each day becomes a flash--one day closer to the next meeting, the next presentation, the next deadline. We're looking forward to just "experiencing" life for a while.

It's like when you were five and every day in the yard was a delight and promised a new discovery. Here's to feeling that way again. Stay tuned...

-j

San Francisco

In the past, after returning from other trips abroad, San Francisco would seem newly exotic to me, like I was seeing it in a different context as a foreigner or outsider.

The experience now seems to be happening in reverse. We've lived in the city almost all our adult lives, and we feel pretty rooted here. Jacqueline and I half-joke about feeling homesick before we even leave, but there's some vague truth to that. When you know you're leaving for a long time, everything starts to feel a little different. I find myself looking differently at things, noticing details a little more, trying to take it all in... the quality of light and shadow on buildings and on the water; the salt air; the hills; the sights, smells and sounds; the places we like to eat; the neighborhoods we walk through; the conversations we overhear (in Cantonese or Russian as often as English sometimes).

And of course since it's August it seems that half of Italy is here on their vacation; I enjoy watching them wander around with their maps, completely lost but still quite happy about it.

I don't think I'm wistful about leaving so much as anxious about everything we need to do...we've been running around trying to get everything organized.... mail, bills, insurance, laundry, visas, tickets.... *ack* we're trying not to freak out too much.

'bye SF, see y'all in February.

Security for Ike & Tina

Ike and Tina need protection in some of our more exotic locations (Ike and Tina are our backpacks; the previous post will explain the moniker).

Some of our plans include circumstances one might call "sketchy". Egyptian overnight train? Sketchy. Indian train? Sketchy (and pretty gross from what I have heard--stained sheets in the sleeping berths, families of las cucarachas).

Traveling with an ultra-light laptop and an 80G iPod increases our awareness about the possibility of theft, and after doing a bit of research, we found this cool product called PacSafe. This steel mesh webbing fits over the entire pack, and the cable can be locked around a stationary object. We're thinking hotel room sink pipes and train-seat posts, although I am sure we will find all sorts of things to secure our bags to... helpfully, the PacSafe website shows the product cabled to a stripper pole... very handy for a stay in Bangkok perhaps.

Travel Gear

Last night we packed up everything to get us through six months of travel. It was a little scary. It's no small feat finding and packing the right clothes for temperature and travel extremes, as our trip takes us from late summer in Egypt to winter in the Himalayas--and then onward still, to summer in Australia.

Our first task (and a popular discussion topic on other RTW blogs): "the backpack". Do we get backpacks with a frame, or without? What about wheels? I don't at all consider myself a "backpacker" type of person, though I may inevitably have to become one during the course of our adventure.

After a long day at REI, and an afternoon at the North Face on Union Square, we picked out what we think is a great solution, a combination backpack/roller luggage. This Eagle Creek bag is is a wheeled carry-on, but you can hide the telescoping handle away, unzip the back panel, and pull out all those backpack/waist strap/chest strap things and run from the police if you need to (OK, maybe just run for a train). It's only 22", so it's allowed as carry-on for most airlines. We compared it with other brands-- it's the lightest, most durable model with the most cubic inches of packing space: a whopping 3900!

Here are some pictures of our travel companions. We nicknamed them Ike & Tina because we know they're going to get the crap beat out of them during the trip!