Off to Ethiopia

Carrouge, Feb. 4 My two weeks in Switzerland have raced past, and I find myself trying to update my blog on my last afternoon here. Two weeks of skiing, ski touring, cross-country skiing and eating lots of cheese (raclette: mmm!) have left me fit and yet with some energy reserves to spare for the epic hills and mountains of Ethiopia. So the plan for further bike travel has mutated. I had originally thought of flying to Qatar and biking around the Arabian coast to Yemen, then taking a ship across to Djibouti and into Ethiopia. However, both financial considerations (flights and accommodation for Qatar and the UAE looked fairly ruinous) and timing (the rainy season is going to hit Ethiopia by April, making cycling and hiking miserable) dictated a change. I am now flying to Addis Ababa tomorrow and planning to ride a loop to the south of the city (to the Bale Mountains park and the old caravan centre of Harar; leave the bike in Harar and do a fast public-transport excursion to Somaliland (the stable-ish northwestern bit of tragic Somalia) and Djibouti; then back to Addis. The second excursion out of Addis would be a ride to the far north, to the historic sites like the rock-cut churches of Lalibela and the ancient temples and obelisks of Axum and the hiking opportunities of the Simien Mountains before looping back south to Lake Tana, the start of the Blue Nile. From there, visa permitting, I would continue on into the Sudan and fly back to Canada from Khartoum, but the Sudanese visa is apparently a non-trivial one to get these days, so if that doesn't work, plan B is to loop back to Addis across the Blue Nile Gorge and then fly out of Addis. I am really looking forward to going back to sub-Saharan Africa for the first time in 15 years. Ethiopia looks fantastic in terms of mountains and hiking and history; the only thing worrying me at the moment are the reports of stone-throwing kids all along the way. I will have to cycle quickly and carry a big stick and hope that I don't get as annoyed as I did in eastern Turkey. I hope to be done and headed back to Canada in early April to start writing the Silk Road book, freshly inspired by a great Abyssinian Adventure!

Libya, Malta, Italy and now Switzerland

Carrouge, Switzerland, January 21 The first three weeks of this new year, along with the last three weeks of 2009, were very busy in terms of travel, and I didn't have much chance to update, so I have a backlog of travel updates, starting from when I stopped cycling in early December. The first stop was Joanne's aunt's place in San Vito al Tagliamento. We visited the old Roman town of Aquileia (wonderful Byzantine floor mosaics in the church) and tried, unsuccessfully, to visit the tomb of Fra Odorico in Udine; Odorico was another European traveller to China, a few decades after Marco Polo, and I wanted to pay my respects to a fellow Silk Roader. We tried twice, but found the little church of Beata Virgine di Carmine locked both times. Then we headed into Venice for four wonderful days. My friend and tennis partner in Yangon, Franco, is a Venetian and he set up for Joanne and I to stay at the apartment of his cousin Manuel. Manuel actually lives at his girlfriend's place, so we had the whole apartment to ourselves. It was a stroke of amazing luck, and we took full advantage of it, cooking up great dinners and spending the days wandering the back streets of this unique city. Venice in the winter is much quieter than in the madness of summer tourist season, and the morning chill and fog make for a feeling of mystery. I am starting to really like Venice, after finding it too touristy, expensive and crowded on previous (summer) visits. From there, it was off to Rome, where we lucked out again and stayed with Joanne's cousin. Four more days of exploring the colossal amounts of multi-layered history that makes up this amazing city. I saw a lot more Roman ruins than I did on my first visit to the Eternal City; I particularly liked the Palatine ruins (the remnants of the gigantic imperial palace) and the Capitoline Museum. The mix of Baroque and ancient sculpture in the Galeria Borghese was impressive as well. Inbetween museum visits, I got my elusive translation of my passport information page into Arabic so I could get my Libyan visas. Dec. 18th saw us heading off to our long-awaited Libyan trip. We spent eleven days in the country, mostly seeing the amazing Roman and Greek ruins that dot the coastline, but also driving inland to the fascinating caravan-trading town of Ghadmes. In a sense we should have gone years ago, before the requirement to have a guide made a trip an expensive proposition. Still, though, despite the expense, it was an unforgettable trip. The Roman ruins at Sabratha are impressive, with their elaborate, well-preserved theatre by the sea the undoubted highlight. In the east, the Greek ruins of Cyrenaica are fantastic, located as they are in the fertile limestone plateaux of the Green Mountains. Cyrene, in particular, was a wonderful ruin that took an entire day to explore. The best, however, was saved for last: Leptis Magna. I had been hearing about this amazing Roman city for years, and was slightly worried that it wasn't going to live up to the hype. I needn't have worried. The city, hometown to the emperor Septimius Severus, benefited from imperial patronage and an orgy of building that resulted in a city of great scale and grandeur. It was buried very deep in sand over the centuries, meaning that walls were preserved to a much greater height than is usual in most ruins. The main forum and the Baths of Hadrian, along with the judicial basilica, brought to life the massive scale of Roman imperial building, with two stories of colonnades and some of the biggest granite and marble columns ever erected (the French consul in the early 1700s stole a lot of the best columns, and they were re-used in building Versailles Palace). The smaller details of the city, though, the wheel ruts in the streets, the graffiti, the rope marks on the marble counters of the market, were what really brought the city to life. I absolutely loved Leptis; it must be one of the top 3 classical ruins anywhere in the former Roman Empire, and it was almost deserted (unlike, say, Ephesus in the summer). Happy with what we had seen, we dropped in on Malta for four nights, an easy way to bag a new country as we had flown down on Air Malta. I was underimpressed with the island as a holiday destination; too much concrete, too little countryside or beach. However, the ancient megalithic temples (dating from as long ago as 3500 BC, eight centuries before the Pyramids were built) and the remains of the culture that built them (visible in the archaeological museums) were fascinating. I also liked tracking the Knights of St. John back to their final lair, having already seen traces of them in Jerusalem, Acre, Krak des Chevaliers, Tartus, Bodrum and Rhodes (from which they had been progressively driven by generations of Turkish armies). On New Year's Day we flew into Sicily and spent a week on a flying tour of the island's impressive ancient sites. Greek colonists settled much of the coastline of Sicily, and left behind some of the most complete and impressive Greek (as opposed to Roman) temples to be seen anywhere. Soluntum, Segesta and Agrigento all boast temples that put the Parthenon in Athens to shame. The Roman mosaics in Piazza Armerina are the most extensive to be found anywhere, and Syracuse, although less visually striking than the big temple sites, was once the most important Greek city anywhere, and the home to one of my favourite mathematicians and scientists, Archimedes; its archaeological museum is vast and overwhelming, but well worth seeing. Palermo, with its air of seediness in the historic centre, was the only blot on the landscape, but the impressive mosaics lining the massive cathedral of Monreale made up for modern decay. We drove up to Naples, spending the night near Rosarno, in Calabria; the day after we left Rosarno, the town exploded into violence, with racist mobs running hundreds of African migrant workers out of town. That seemed appropriate, for the section of Italy running from Calabria up to Naples is the most economically depressed and Mafia-infested part of the country. Naples itself was a shocking dump of a city, a failed civilization that made Albania's capital Tirana look like a miracle of town planning. At least it had great pizza and a fantastic museum, maybe the single best collection of Roman antiquities anywhere on the planet. That's because Naples is surrounded by a series of A-list attractions: Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis, Paestum and the Amalfi Coast. Despite 4 days of heavy rain, the history and well-preserved nature of the towns buried by Mt. Vesuvius really brought everyday life in a Roman town to life. In some ways Herculaneum overshadowed its bigger and better-known neighbour Pompeii: smaller, better preserved, more open to visitors (most of Pompeii was off-limits when we were there) and somehow more evocative. The single villa at Oplontis was enjoyable for its wall paintings and overall state of preservation, although getting there involved driving through the hellish failed city of Torre Annunziata with its decaying buildings, mountains of trash and air of general menace. Paestum, the Greek town south of Naples, contained three more almost intact Greek temples that were like a visual history of the Doric architectural style, from its Egyptian-influenced roots in the Archaic to the elegant perfection of the late 5th century BC. The natural attractions of the Amalfi Coast merited a drive-by, but with the steady rain, we didn't see very much. What little we did see, however, suggests that the hype about "the most beautiful coast in Europe" is warranted: sheer cliffs tumbling into an azure sea, with vineyards, citrus plantations and picturesque villages clinging to the rock. And then, sadly, it was time to flee the rain and drive back to San Vito, where we were fed like royalty by Joanne's Zia Severina for five days. I got my bike wheel fixed, finally got to see Fra Odorico's tomb in Udine (third time lucky) and then drew a line under the Silk Road Ride by riding the repaired bike into Venice and right to the site of Marco Polo's house. Manuel organized the local press to come out and see my arrival, and it resulted in three news articles (in Italian) that you can see here and here and here. As well, there is a short writeup in English here. I came up to Switzerland by train yesterday as far as Vevey, and then rode my bike up to my sister's place in Carrouge through a heavy snowfall. The plan is to stay here for a little while before heading off for one more bike adventure; Ethiopia is the likely next destination. Then a return to Canada to start trying to write a book about the Silk Road Ride. Can't wait to get started! Peace and Tailwinds Graydon

End of Year Thoughts

Tripoli, Libya, Dec. 26 It is a distinctly un-White Christmas outside today, although I have reinforced my burgeoning reputation as a rain god by bringing rain to Libya a few days ago. What with the drying out and spreading of the Sahara, maybe I have a career ahead of me in this field in the Middle East! 2009 has been a banner year for me in terms of travel. I saw in the New Year in the mountains of Japan at my friend Greg's ski lodge in Sugadaira, where I spent almost two weeks skiing, playing chess, tennis and guitar, and generally having a superb break from the tropical heat. I returned to Burma from Japan refreshed, ready for the final 5 months of my teaching contract in Yangon. I spent my free time as usual playing tennis, and my long weekends paying farewell visits to my favourite corners of the country. In January, Joanne and I flew up to Inle Lake for a final look at the prettiest corner of the country, the magical aquatic world of the Inwa. February had two major highlights--the Venetian Carnival celebrated at L'Opera restaurant, in which Joanne and I wore elaborate period costumes that Joanne designed, and a long weekend at pretty Ngapali Beach--and a major lowlight, when I crashed my bicycle while wobbling home from the pub and was lucky to escape with only stitches in my eyebrow and an AC displacement in my shoulder. It was hair-raising to go back to the crash site and see how close I had come to hitting a light pole or going headfirst into a ditch. March was a month of heavy travel. I headed up north to Mandalay, Pyin Oo Lwin and Hsipaw escorting a group of grade 9 students; my stay was curtailed when I drew the short straw and had to escort four miscreant students back to Yangon for being caught drinking in their rooms. Then Joanne and I headed to EARCOS, our annual regional international teachers' conference, in Kota Kinabalu, where I caught up with a few friends from various parts of the world before racing home to play in the playoffs of the L'Opera tennis tounament. Last year I was the singles champion, but this year my damaged shoulder kept me from playing for six weeks beforehand, and I lost tamely in the quarterfinals. I did manage to make it to the doubles finals where my partner Fenton and I lost a heartbreaker that turned on an unfortunate let cord. In April, Joanne's cousin Rob and his friend Geoff came to visit Burma in the savage pre-monsoon heat. I escaped the inferno for 10 days by flying off to Switzerland for a reunion with my sisters Audie and Saakje in the Alps. Lots of fondue, raclette, skiing, ski touring and cycling ensued before I returned for the final six weeks of the school year. The pre-monsoon rains put an end to tennis for the year, although I did manage to sneak in a couple of matches when my friend Greg nipped over from Japan for a quick visit. I spent a long weekend riding my bike from Mandalay to Bagan (I completely melted in the convection oven heat), and another visiting Bangkok to dump luggage in storage and set up the summer's travel plans. The last few weeks flew by, and suddenly Joanne and I were saying goodbye to the palatial apartment we had called home for the past three years. The summer was a whirlwind of airplanes, as I visited Ottawa, Toronto, Thunder Bay, Algonquin Park and Vancouver (where I picked up my new Rocky Mountain touring bike), before heading back across the Pacific to pick up the remainder of my bike touring luggage and continuing westward to Kuwait. The second half of the year had a completely different rhythm to it, as I rode nearly 10,000 km on my bicycle through Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia. I finished my Silk Road bicycle ride, first started way back in 2002 (see silkroadride.blogspot.com for details) and then raced through the Balkans in a cold and somewhat soggy month (again, balkanblitz.blogspot.com has a lot more about the trip). Overall, it was a much-needed break from the routine of working, and a chance to reconnect with the pace of life involved in a bicycle tour. I was fortunate once again in the people that I met along the way, particularly in Iran and Georgia; eastern Turkey, with its sullen stone-throwing children, was a glaring exception to this rule. I finished the trip a few days early with a cracked rear wheel rim in northern Croatia, and rode ignominiously into Trieste on a bus. I was pretty tired and far too thin after my exertions on the bike, so a prolonged break from pedalling seemed called for. I met up with Joanne in Trieste, and after a couple of days at her aunt's house in Friuli, we spent four days in Venice at the vacant apartment of a friend (a huge stroke of luck!) and four days exploring Rome. We are now on the eighth day of a ten-day jaunt through Libya, and will ring in the new year in Malta, bringing my country-bagging total to 90 and bringing down the curtain on a truly excellent year. The year brought home to me once again the ephemeral fragility of life and health, and the need to seize each day and live it to its maximum potential. I learned that my body is not as indestructible and untiring as it once was, but that I can still coax it into riding a bike or skiing down a mountain. I also had the great satisfaction of seeing a big project, the Silk Road ride, through to a successful conclusion after over seven years in progress. The next project, which I hope will take significantly less time, is to write a book about the trip and get it published. I hope to bring that idea to fruition this coming year. I trust that this letter and the holiday season finds everyone healthy, happy and squeezing the most out of life. I hope that everyone, in his or her own way, had as good a 2009 as I did, and I look forward to a 2010 that is even better, for all of us. Peace, tailwinds and a huge hug from Your Travelling Correspondent Graydon PS This blog address will be the permanent home of my travel blogging from now on; I'm tired of creating a new one for each trip. So please bookmark this page and keep an eye on it for further updates from around the globe!