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February 09 2014

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"For the people who live there, the upheavals in the Middle East have been disastrous. But for travelers they have also placed many of the region’s great archaeological sites out of bounds, leaving big blanks in the atlas of cultural tours."

Georgia and Armenia: a spiritual journey
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January 31 2014

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Real People #29: Just a regular night at a Cotton Candy rooftop party in Beirut. And yes, one girl had dressed up in a wedding dress “just because she felt like it.”

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Real People #28: It’s hard to imagine that a small country like Lebanon has regional cuisine, but it does, and Beirut’s Tawlet (our favorite) specializes in it. Each week they have guest chef from a different region. The expert staff was proudly serving dishes from Zahle.

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Real People #27: The guy passing the sleeping woman was at the Beirut art opening for his friend’s short film premiere and was quite amused by the effects of the free beer and wine. Or perhaps this woman was just tired?

January 25 2014

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Real People #26: We met this ambitious young woman through mutual friends. She runs an excellent arts and crafts shop in Kampala, Uganda, and studies on the side.

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Real people #25: The chef here in an apron is famous in Mbarara, Uganda, for his goat meat. He served it with great pride, and after tasting the meat, it was easy to see why.

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Real people #24: With all of our plastic brooms and trinkets, we have a lot to learn from this Ugandan man’s ingenious use of natural resources.

January 10 2014

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A cool basketball court mural in a small Mayan town by Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. The symbol on the man’s headpiece means wisdom. 

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Real People #23: This woman claimed to be 94-years-old, but she was still going strong, dancing and weaving baskets. Must be the beautiful surroundings on an island on Lake Bunyonyi.

January 04 2014

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Real People #22: On a small, remote island on Lake Bunyonyi, close to the border with Rwanda, we were followed by these cheerful children and were even serenaded by them.

My Top 10 Travel Moments of 2013

As 2013 is coming to an end, I figured it’s a good idea to list my favorite moments on the road this year.  It wasn’t an easy list to make, but here’s my best effort, in no particular order.  And I have to say that the outcome makes me feel very grateful: what a fantastic year.

At the pyramids with no tourists at sight.

At the pyramids with no tourists at sight.

1. Having a long moment alone inside the great pyramid of Giza.  And I really mean alone. Even the guide went outside to give me a moment.  Such tangible, mysterious energy.  (I visited Egypt right after President Morsi was ousted.  Interesting times but worked out well for me: there were no tourists around and yet all was peaceful.)

2. Attending Roger Waters’ The Wall concert in Istanbul and seeing how he incorporated the recent demonstrations there to the show.  The audience’s reaction was as worth seeing as the concert.

The incredible timkat festival in beautiful Lalibela, Ethiopia.

The incredible timkat festival in beautiful Lalibela, Ethiopia.

3. OK this one was pure luck: I happened to arrive in Lalibela, Ethiopia, during the colorful and fascinating timkat festival, which is the Ethiopian Orthodox church’s Epiphany celebration. I even got to join in some of the dancing.

4. Being invited to share a Ramadan dinner with a Nubian family in Aswan, Egypt.  Such incredible hospitality and excellent, spicy Nubian dishes.

The hippos were taking over in the Murchison Falls park: they were everywhere!

The hippos were taking over in the Murchison Falls park: they were everywhere!

5. Sleeping in a safari tent on the banks of River Nile in the Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda and being woken up by a roaring hippo in the middle of the night. It seemed to be right next to our tent!  A little scary, I have to admit, but also memorable.

The mighty Mount Kazbeg: the view from the Rooms Hotel balcony in Georgia.

The mighty Mount Kazbeg: the view from the Rooms Hotel balcony in Georgia.

6. Waking up in the beautiful Rooms Hotel in Kazbegi, Georgia and seeing the majestic Caucasus Mountains the first thing in the morning from the balcony. I’m a sucker for mountains and this was a top-notch view.

7. A lovely day cycling and having a Turkish mezze picnic with a friend at Princes’ Islands just outside of Istanbul.  A perfect summer day.

The perfect picnic spot on one of the Princes' Islands just outside Istanbul.

The perfect picnic spot on one of the Princes’ Islands just outside Istanbul.

8. After two hours of hiking in a national park forest in Uganda, witnessing chimpanzees in their natural environment.  And trying to get our photographer friend to leave (it was as hard as finding the chimps)!

9. Getting to try khat for the first time with my guide and his friends at their home in Harar, Ethiopia. Fun times! (You really shouldn’t go to Harar and not do it: it’s such a part of their daily lives and khat is exported all over the world from there. Just be warned it takes at least 2 hours to chew the leaves to reach the desired effect.)

At Phesant's Tears dinner in Sighnaghi, Georgia.

At Phesant’s Tears dinner in Sighnaghi, Georgia, learning about the wines from the sommelier.

10. Visiting the vineyards of Pheasant’s Tears boutique winery in Sighnaghi, Georgia, followed by a multi course, organic dinner with wine pairing.  An incredibly tasty evening.

Happy holidays everyone and have an exciting year of 2014, filled with joyous and  unforgettable moments both at home and on the road!

December 21 2013

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Real People #21: We met this woman while visiting a Sufi center with a friend in Harar. It’s the first time I had ever seen a female Sufi and she told our guide if we wanted to watch the ceremony we had to chew khat, the region’s favorite, all natural stimulant.

December 19 2013

The Zoroastrian Revival

Posted on Nomad Stories by Danny

Walking on the rooftops from one of the many photogenic mosques

Walking on the rooftops from one of the many photogenic mosques

Ever since I had visited Baku in Azerbaijan, I had been dreaming about going to Yazd in Central Iran, to learn more about Zoroastrianism, the ancient religion of Iran and Azerbaijan before the advent of Islam, probably more than 8000 years old.  Nowadays a lot of higher educated Iranians claim to be Zoroastrian, mostly as an antidote to the strict Islamic rules.  The official amount of Zoroastrians is only about 25000 in Iran, mainly in Tehran and Yazd, the major city in the desert of central Iran where most of the shrines are.

The main Fire Temple in Yazd where the fire has been burning for over 1500 years

The main Fire Temple in Yazd where the fire has been burning for over 1500 years

Yazd is a mud brick city with a maze of little alleys and gorgeous mosques, surrounded by a vast desert. One thing I learned from a German guide, while visiting the fire temple in Yazd was that Zoroastrianism deeply influenced Judaism, Christianity and Islam. When Cyrus The Great, the most important king in Iranian history, liberated the Jews from Babylon in the 6th century BC, he brought them to Persia. There they learned about Zoroastrianism and its concepts of heaven and hell, which they incorporated into Judaism. So if you really want to escape hell, you’d better opt for yet another belief system…

In the back the Towers of Silence, in front a water reservoir with badgirs or windtowers for cooling

In the back the Towers of Silence, in front a water reservoir with badgirs or windtowers for cooling

Nowadays the Jewish community in Iran is very small, mainly in Tehran and Esfahan, but they have been in the country for about 2500 years. We met a Jewish mother with her daughter while searching for a Zurkhaneh in Esfahan. She turned out to be the only person around having heard of this place, hidden in a basement behind a small door in a back alley.

Zurkhaneh is the ancient form of gymnastics, practiced for over 2000 years and through history influenced by Mithraism, Sufism and sacred masonry. In more recent centuries, it got adjusted to the Islamic framework. I had first heard on my second week in Iran while being in a teahouse in the center of Esfahan. My attention was drawn old photographs on the while picturing amazing looking strong men with moustaches. But nowadays young Iranians consider the Zurkhaneh old fashioned and the gorgeous men from before have died a long time ago. Their photographs have become collectors items for vintage lovers.

Inside the Zurkhaneh. Since the practitioners didn't show up, we had to take over.

Inside the Zurkhaneh. Since the practitioners didn’t show up, we had to take over.

This didn’t stop us from trying to find a place in one of the back alleys of Esfahan. Once arrived, it turned out that none of the practitioners showed up, so we had to become the performers. We clearly still needed a lot of practice. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to have a gym with life drumming sessions? Anyone? We got a second change to watch it a few days later in Yazd, but sadly enough the place got invaded by retired tourist groups from Russia and Germany, arriving late and leaving early like a hoard of buffaloes. Tourism for sure has a positive influence on the preservation of old traditions, but this had become a bit pathetic. I hope there comes a real revival of this.

The youtube video gives a good idea of the real thing, just skip the first 2 minutes of explanation.

December 13 2013

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Real People# 20: This man is just returning from a morning service in one of the 11 churches, carved into rock about 800 years ago, in Lalibela, Ethiopia. He faithfully attends every day, as do many other locals and pilgrims.   

December 10 2013

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Real People #19: These two high school girls were on their way home for lunch in Harar. Their giggles at my questions brought the quiet street in the tranquil, walled town alive.

December 07 2013

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Real People #18: The “hyena man” feeds wild spotted hyenas every night at sundown in Harar, Ethiopia. His family started the tradition in the 60s to divert the hyenas’ attention from their livestock.

December 03 2013

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Real People #17: These women invited me to their home and showed me how to roast coffee beans before grinding them. Freshest coffee I’ve ever had. They were also into chewing khat, a plant that’s considered a stimulant and which most people in Harar chew for about two hours at lunch break (it takes a lot of chewing to achieve the desired effect).

December 01 2013

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Real People #16: I was looking for a modern art gallery in Addis Ababa but found this amazing artist’s workshop instead. He creates art pieces from scrap metal and other found materials and makes his own outfits, too. If that’s not impressive enough, he also runs an arts workshop for orphans.

November 30 2013

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Real People #15: The savvy businessman on the bicycle sold me his last bananas for a suspiciously high price at the morning market in Siwa, a desert oasis close to Libya, but I wasn’t in the mood for bargaining. At least he seemed to get a kick out of it. 

November 26 2013

One Night in Kampala

Interesting Ugandan beer ad but where are the women?

Interesting Ugandan beer ad but where are the women?

Perhaps this is not what you were imagining when you thought of Uganda’s capital.  Perhaps you didn’t even know what its name was, yet alone that it might have a thriving nightlife.  If you were like most people who have never visited Africa, you probably weren’t thinking about cities at all.  For some reason especially the Western media likes to keep its news and articles about Africa safely on conflicts, disease and poverty, and of course on wild life.  Nobody can think of Africa without lions and savannahs, right? All these exist of course, and I don’t mean to diminish their importance or severity in any way, but I find it curious that they seem to take up all there is to Africa in people’s imaginations.  After all, the Nobel Prize winning intellectuals like Kofi Annan and Wole Soyinka also come from this continent that many people automatically associate with huts with no electricity – and maybe with soccer thanks to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa – rather than with cities, culture, universities, and nightlife.

Kampala's music scene is thriving, including many aspiring hip hop artists.

Kampala’s music scene is thriving, including many aspiring hip hop artists.

Once we manage to exit the nightclub we feel the kind of demanding hunger hitting us that can only find you after a few too many beers.  Surprisingly enough we run into a boda driver, Amuli, who we both knew: he’s just been driving our group all around Western Uganda on our road trip just a few days before, including on a safari in the Murchison Falls National Park, where we saw, among many other animals, a lion. But now we were in the city and he was driving a boda, a motorcycle, which is the most common kind of a taxi in Uganda, and the easiest to get around in the traffic jams of Kampala.  We were all as excited to run into each other and he took us on a hunt for a night snack.  We wanted some barbequed meat, a ubiquitous snack that is easy to find even at 4.30AM, except that I really wanted liver, which complicated things. But I really liked and craved the Ugandan way of roasting cubes of liver on a stick, and besides, I was leaving Uganda the next day and wanted my last fix of it. Luckily Amuli seemed to know a place.

At a food stand, picking out favorite BBQ meats.

At a food stand, picking out favorite BBQ meats.

Once we arrived at the food stand, it must have been closer to 5AM.  We were checking the stand for its offerings but were also spotted by a bunch of revelers, who seemed to have a house party next to us.  They were shouting “muzungus, muzungus” and came to grab us to the party.  Once again we were a desired party addition.  “Muzungu” quite literally means a “foreigner,” but in practice, particularly a white foreigner.  If you’re white and traveling in Uganda, you’ll hear this term many times a day, but it’s more descriptive than derogative, so you won’t mind hearing it.  Here too, it caused more excitement than anything else: “Foreigners in this neighborhood at this hour! They should come to our party!” We were very tempted by the enthusiasm by which we were invited but had to turn the offer down, only because we still had not found our desired snack.  By the time we did, and came by the party house again, it had closed down.  In retrospect, as it was now probably about 5.30AM, this was just for the better.

The previous day, during a boda tour of Kampala.

The previous day, during a boda tour of Kampala.

The next day, as I was getting ready for my flight to Ethiopia, we were entertaining my friend’s wife with our stories from the previous night, as she had gone home much earlier.  Before it hit 4.30AM, we had run into other friends with whom we shared many laughs while drinking waragi, a Ugandan gin. Later we visited a reggae bar where an intoxicated Italian told me to visit the Rastafarian community in Ethiopia because they have the best marijuana in the world (apparently I was a complete loser if I didn’t) and who associated my name, Piia, with the sound that a gun makes when fired. Go figure. We had also had to pretend to be married so my friend wasn’t hijacked by an eager working girl, who claimed to be very very lonely, but was also visibly very very drunk. And in one club a woman got angry at me for taking her chair while ordering drinks but after I promptly gave it back to her, she insisted becoming my Facebook friend and I still receive messages from her.

Just another night in Kampala.

Besides using Western methods, Ugandans make home made beer out of one of the many types of bananas that grow there.

Besides using Western methods, Ugandans make home made beer out of one of the many types of bananas that grow there.

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