Dakhla Far Back and Beyond

We stayed in Dakhla in the Canadian Dig House. There was a moment of utter confusion where the checkpoint police were saying "Canadian? American? Hollander??" and our driver was insisting "No, three Australians". The penny dropped and he admitted that we were staying in the Canadian house.

The house is marvelous. Barry, architect trained and working on reconstruction, had drawn it on a piece of paper, and given it to the cook, who arranged to have it built. This could only really happen in Egypt. It easily sleeps about forty people - and maybe more.

It is entirely mud brick and timber with the exception of the shower area which has concrete beneath a mud cladding. Perhaps the fear of sodden mud brick collapsing on naked wet archaeologists was more than they could risk. This is an entrancing building. It curves and undulates and is gentle on the eyes at all times of day. A flat roof area is surrounded by bench seating, and ideal for evening drinks at beer o'clock. The toilets are long drops, and doors kept tightly shut to reduce flies and smell. They brought back dashes to outback dunnies in Australia in my childhood, with torn up sheets of newspaper on a clip and attempting to hold my breathe for as long as possible. I never worked out if it was better to breathe lightly and shallowly from the beginning or risk that long deep intake when the air ran out!

A long path runs past the sleeping areas on the upper level, and from here you look out across the oasis. There are the constant date palms, and vegetables below and wheat and fodder crops - green ending abruptly in desert. It is surprisingly flat considering we are in a big depression - it is as if the earth just dripped in a huge disc, leaving the rest sitting up above and wondering where it got to.

On the first day we arrived and ate lunch - delicious with a thick spiced potato and onion soup and fresh salads, bread baked that morning on the premises and a thick and tarry homemade marmalade which has left such a lingering memory that I think I will have to make some. The bread is wonderful. While I like the aish balady - the flatbread - of most of Egypt, it was a joy to bite into thick moist slices of this - it was like an Italian loaf on first sight, but with the softer crust, yellowish and elastic texture inside and so delicious.

We looked at the workrooms and ate dinner with the archaeologists and headed for bed. They had coffins there which had had plaster laid directly onto bandaging, and this was covered in paintwork. No photos as I do not know how much had been published and how much hasn't.

Next morning we climbed into a bus. After a previous experience where a bus had arrived as an empty shell with no seats, this time Colin had organised one with seats. Funny the things you take for granted.

First stop was a dig with an early temple which was completely submerged in clay. Worse, it was the kind of mud that swelled when wet and as it moved through the village that used to be here, swelling, then contracting, it had moved, lifted and destroyed almost everything there. The temple was huge and built with stone, but every stone was broken into many pieces by this alternating compression and release. While embedded it was fine, but excavation meant removing the clay, now set to the strength of concrete, and as the clay was removed the stone risked crumbling away completely. The archaeologist in charge described the process. Dig a trench, shoring up stone and reconstructing as you go. Then draw and record as fast as possible, Then backfill, and dig the next narrow trench. It sounded appalling and painstaking and it was sad to see the grandeur that it must have had, and the way it has been damaged by regular flooding.

above - Bob with the yellow bag and a lot of the young archaeologists from Monash. We are standing at roof level of the old temple.

Note the distortion at the upper levels and the way the whole wall swings out on the right side.

From here we drove through a local village where the team used to live. I loved this. There is an old Roman tomb inside and it is really beautiful and serene. Local archaeologists have excavated part of it to below floor level to show the coffins lined up which would have been under the floor.

The village here is all mud brick - and yes, in the most colonial way I do like my villages picturesque. There is something about the juxtapositions of honeyed walls and desert and scrappy scrub and long vistas that I find deeply appealing.

So - just have a look at a spread of photos without too much comment. I have to point out the little lass in tiger stripes though as the outfit was utterly incongruous.

For today that is your ration. Those who like photos should be happy. tomorrow - more of the digs and that is fun too!

Black Rocks and Regrets

We have been into the desert - slowly working the circuit of the oases but this time by coming in from the other end.

We went to Asyut by plane, leaving home at 6.00am.

Asyut is hardly the heart of the Universe. In fact, our boarding passes for the flight listed the boarding gate as DUM. It was a large and comfortable jet, but only half full.

Our car met us there as the driver had come up the day before. We left Asyut and headed west.
We then drove straight into the desert and towards Kharga Oasis.

Have you ever seen anything so wonderful and stunning that it burns its way into your memory?

The desert was pink and salmon and silver. The area is hot in Summer - and I am not talking about a wimpy 30 degrees centigrade, but about up near fifty centigrade and sometimes even over. Wind whistles though here, and as it goes it picks up sand and carries it in a firm grasp, blasting across the rocky forms in the desert. The rocks are polished - a shape hard satiny sheen in a pale mauve-violet, and oddly faceted like beaten copper.

Occasionally we would sweep around a corner and see marvelous things - round black rocks, nestled in smallish rings as if just ready for a giant game of marbles. I think these were concretions as once explained to me by a geologist. Think of the bottom of a long ago sea. Imagine mud settled and silt falling gently to the bottom, enshrining dead fish and shells and things that become fossils. As the animals rot the gases form in the trapped layers, forcing bubbles in the silt which just do not quite escape. They slide sideways through the mud, forming bigger and bigger bubbles until you have large round pockets of gas in the soft mud. The silt hardens with the bubble trapped, but slowly very fine silt seeps into its space as it disperses into the surrounding hard mud. The finer silt sets harder, and in this case, darker. As the sea dries up the layers form over the concretions, but now it is just chalk and salt and sand. As the deserts form, over the centuries the surface weathers and blows away, allowing the perfectly round concretions to emerge and sit isolated in the sand.

There was one spectacular moment. Around the corner we came, and nestled in the wake of a huge rocky curved mesa was a sea of concretions - nestled tightly together and stretching back perhaps three hundred metres, almost as far as we could see. They were a dull matte black, they looked like perfect spheres, and at least half a metre wide, maybe even bigger. All around was gleaming violet rock and rippled banks of sand and it was absolutely glorious. It looked as if some incredible bird had just left the nest and flown.

And do I have a photo?

No. We had a police chase car behind, and an escort car in front and Bob pointed out that in these conditions it was really awkward to stop. I didn't much care about awkward, but when moving at speed on desert highways by the time you have spent two minutes quietly muttering it is a long way back. I thought there would be others so I didn't push it too hard. By twenty kilometres further I was prepared to accept ten concretions, not hundreds. There was not one more. The desert flattened out to pancake-like flat, with occasional humps and flat topped projections. While a toilet stop showed that these had cascades of fossilised shells under the hard flat crust they were nothing like as spectacular as the beds of concretions. I wanted to stick my bottom lip out and sulk but decided to make the best of it with only an occasional mutter. But - if you ever go from Asyut to Kharga look to the left and be ready to stop.

Five hours later we reached Dakhla.

We were to stay at the Canadian dig house - an archaeological base used by many different dig teams working int he area. I was surprised by Dakhla. My only other experience of a large depression (geological) is the Bahariya depression that cradles the Black Desert and the oasis of Bawiti and Qasr in the Western Desert. It is poor and might have once been a charming town, but the mud brick dwellings that sat easily in the surroundings of date palms and sand have largely been cleared in favour of quarried white stone with dark mortar which is somehow ugly and unforgiving in an already stark landscape.

Once in Wadi Dana in Jordan I commented on the sadness of the fact that the man I spoke to had moved his family from an old stone house with a gentle dome on top, and into something made from concrete bricks. He explained that the mortar was made from straw and mud and donkey dung, and that insects and rodents worked their way through it over time. The second time his mother had a snake in the kitchen that have followed the mice into the house was the limit!

I thought the old house was beautiful and said so. I thought the new house was a lot less so and while I did not say so I guess my voice implied it.

"Do you mean", he said quietly, "that we should be uncomfortable so that you can think we are charming?"

The worst of it was - that was exactly what I did mean.

Dakhla is modern and well-kept as a town, but there is still a surprising lot of mud brick and traditional housing around. Even the graveyards were really beautiful. I have a lot more to say about the trip but I don't want people falling asleep over over-long text, so will finish with some photos of graves looking across to the Escarpment that borders the depression.

More in a day or so!

Venice is always a good idea

We went to Venice for a week in December. I had muttered from time to time that despite our traveling life I had never been there - or to Istanbul - but that will have to wait.

Bob - who has never really lusted to see it - spent ages on the internet researching places to go and stay. He found a gem - one of the Lonely Planet's 'picks'. It was a small hotel called the Galleria right on the Academia bridge. Bob even managed to book THE room - hanging only fifteen feet above the Grand Canal and with a beautiful painted ceiling.

We flew to Milan. I have a love/hate relationship with Malpensa airport. I missed a flight there once. I was told that three quarters of an hour was plenty to make a connection. It wasn't. This was patently obvious from the beginning when the doors stayed resolutely closed as hunched and standing passengers grumbled and groaned as the stairway to the ground had not arrived. It was even more obvious about half an hour later when the stairs had arrived but the bus to the terminal had not. Fifteen minutes later We were put on the bus - and my flight was taking off on the other side of the runway.

I was in that airport for five hours. I could not get a plane until next morning. We queued for hours at a counter with about sixty angry people waiting and one girl very slowly trying to get them onto flights. At one stage she stood up and put on her jacket and started to walk away.
"Where are you going," said someone.

"My shift is finished," she said, and I would swear she walked faster.

"What about us?"

"Someone will come."

It was almost midnight when they finally put us on a bus that took us to a hotel - I still don't know where it was - and fed us a very simple meal and put us to bed for four hours, before loading us onto another bus for the airport again.

Anyway - this time we were actually ending the flight in Milan but as we walked past the counter I saw a very familiar group of annoyed-looking people and one tired girl behind the counter.

We took a train to Venice.

We walked out of the station and there it was spread out before us, like a gift.

It seemed unbelievable that we had arrived by something as land-bound as a train.

Broad stairs take you down from the station to the edge of the Grand Canal. Opposite is a green domed church, and palaces line the canal, drifting off as far as the eye can see where the canal curves away to promise infinity.

Ferries slide in, parking (can a ferry park?) by sound as they jam in hard against the floating docks and passengers lurch and rapidly regain their balance.

It was absolutely magical. It was Winter, and a holiday weekend, but busy, not crowded.

We had one wet day with San Marco flooded and it was hilarious as people walked the boardwalks in single file, like lemmings. Others donned brilliantly plastic long boots and waded through the flood - cold, but quicker.

A gorgeous little girl was feeding pigeons which swirled around her in a flurry of wings.

I loved the way the water marks contoured the body on this sculpture.

The Grand Canal

This is the view from our hotel window - right opposite.

and looking down the canal...

And best of all - we spent one afternoon in Burano. I have wanted to see this since I leant over a friend's shoulder as she flicked through her daughter's photographs. We arrived on the first sunny day after a week of rain and it was washing day. I have not put in a blog entry for so long that I am going to give you a feast of Burano photographs!

OK. There are so many more. Clicking on these will take you to my Flickr site - or you can follow the link on the left. Then click on the Burano set on the left and look at all of them!

Then connect to your friendly travel agent and make your booking.

Ma'aloula

While visiting Syria we drove up to Ma'aloula and Sidnaya - two small towns in the hills that ridge right along Syria just before the serious mountains of the Anti-Lebanon Range. I have always heard this term spoken and had never been sure if it was neant to be Ante-Lebanon as 'before' Lebanon or Anti as in 'against'. Even the internet seems uncertain - I have just checked and found credible sites using both. Perhaps in the last few years Anti is better.

The car wound its way out and up from Damascus, heading steadily north. The rocks that ridged the hill seemed a long way away at first but slowly we seemed to get closer to them - a long scree-covered range of hills (can you have a range of hills?)with a heavy vertically ridged outcrop that crusted the top. Obvious rock falls from time to time showed as long trails of very large rocks on the slopes. Now and again an obvious overhang had my fingers itching to go and search for worked flints - Syria has a lot of caves where early man could shelter, and there is often evidence of tool making in the area.

Ma'aloula settles tightly into the mountains. There is a story that one of the early saints of the Christian Church was a young girl whose name was Tekla, or Tecla or Taqla. She was pursued and persecuted for her Christian faith (this seemed to happen so often that it is a wonder there are not a lot more saints) and chased into these hills. In prayer she asked for a refuge and a part of the rocks in the hill opened into a cave to hide her.

On top of the hill is a church of St Sergius and this is really interesting. It dates back to the time before Christianity was fomalised with the Nicaean council and creed in 325. At this time it was decreed that no sacrifices were to be made in Christian churches and from this point altars in churches had a smooth flat top. There are two altars in St Sergius, and both have high rims to prevent the spilling of blood in a sacrifice. The original entrance to the church must be a door all of about four feet high - to guarantee that you bowed your head towards the altar as you entered.

In both Ma'aloula and Sidnaya the language of the time of Christ - Aramaic - is still spoken. I often wonder if Mel Gibson wandered around here conferring with older locals to brush up his language for The Passion of Christ.

I suspect that the use of Aramaic is not as widespread now as the locals would like you to think. However there was one point where the lovely young woman who was the guide for the church stood and said the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic and it was hard for even the toughest cynic to stay unmoved. I have it on video as this was permitted but do not think my Flickr website that shares images for the blog will support video.

In Sidnaya the Monastery sits heavily on a rocky hill and looks more like a fortress than a Christain site. Carved straight into rock as you drive around the hill on the encircling road is a series of beautiful niches - almost door-sized and topped with a scallop shell arch. No photos I am afraid - we were being monstered by a bus and could not stop.

My mother looked a bit horrified at the four flights of steep steps that zigzagged up the front of the monastery. I could almost hear the words "I'll stay in the car" shaping in her mind, when the driver pointed out a lift.

This monastery was the most popular site for Pilgrammage other than Jerusalem in early Christianity. for those interested in this period William Dalrymple's From the Holy Mountain is wonderful. It also connects early Christian Syria with the Dead Cities of the north which I may write about soon - the photos are waiting.

We climbed up through narrow stone cut alleys and passages once inside. It was dark and cool, almost chilled. The church does not actually feel all that old. There has been pleanty of money for refurbishing and repainting. The ceiling arches overhead ultramarine blue and an impression of clouds and stars. There are a lot of icons, like in St Sergius and some of these look very old. I took two steps inside and the music stopped and held me in thrall. There was a breathtaking moment when I was not even sure I was really hearing it, then I wondered where the choir was. There was no obvious choir so I assumed a tape.

I moved in and sat in a pew.

Then I realised that the group of young people on the other side of the central aisle were singing. They were all Arab, and the young women were not veiled. Many women in the church were veiled and looked very Moslem - then I later found that this church has the local reputation of giving pregnancies to those having trouble conceiving so many Moslems come in hope.

It is hard to describe how wonderful the singing was. Young men in the front seemed to be leading and one had a string instrument of some sort - possibly a guitar or oud. I could not see it without drawing too much attention to myself and I did not want to break the spell. I sat through about five songs until I could ammost feel Bob getting restless at the back of the church. The voices were all good buyt obviously not particularly trained - but mellow and soft and not in any way competing with each other. It was obviously sacred music and in Arabic, but shared some quality with Gregorian chants - a narrow range perhaps, which made it singable for most voices. Either way it was melodic and beautiful and I now have a phone number for the leader who said they are in the process of making a CD.

We had stopped between the two towns to clamber through an unlocked gate. Does a twist of wire count as a lock? On the hill against Ma'aloula were rock cut tombs - some graffitied but still really interesting.

We had seen a lot of others all around and above the main town. Some looked as if they might have doubled as dwellings for the ascetics who were in such fashion in the early days of the church. It always seemed to me to be really odd that St Simeon put himself onto a tall column of rock in the North of Syria to get away from people and startd a whole cathedral complex with supoorting monastries that climbed the hills for miles as people surged out of the region and Europe to be close to him.

In one sheer rock face a wonderful ladder was proped against a half-closed tomb. The ladder was made in the local way - one long piece of wood - probably a straightish trunk from the length of it was split lengthwise. Then smaller branches were inserted at intervals to create the steps. It looked so difficult to climb that I could not believe that anyone would bother to brick in the cave - but then, I don't much like heights. Then the others questions started - why would you brick it in unless you wanted to live here, or to store something that might be damaged if it got wet. Could it be to keep goats in the cave or tomb? Can a goat climb a ladder?

We ate a superlative lunch. Syria must have the best food in the world and we were groaning when we left. It is THE thing to do on a Friday - to leave the city and drive into the hills and eat lunch at a truly superb restaurant. The profits of a good Friday are so lucrative that restaurants of the region vie with each other for the best and freshest food. We came back along different ridges through Bloudan and Zebdaneh and hit heavy traffic.

We might have started the day with a search for the sacred sites, but it definitely ended with the secular!

Snippets from the Nile

I loved our Nile Cruise. We traveled on a new boat run by the same group as the Sonesta Hotels - the Sonesta Star Goddess. We had a suite - a twin bedroom, walk in wardrobe, bathroom and lounge with a small alcove for a study - and a balcony. The balcony allowed us to sit in armchairs overlooking the Nile as the boat moved slowly and silently past the riverbanks and the life on and around them.

At first I photographed features - until I looked through the photographs and realised I had nothing but boats. So then I took a lot of vistas. I could have watched the world go by all day. Sometimes one bank had the barest smattering of green and then huge rocky hills reared up behind. On the other side of the boat was the lushness of acres of date palms with undergrowth and other crops - wheat and khakadeh and cotton and great flat expanses of mud, usually well studded with cows.

Two incidents for you.

Day two on the boat and we headed for the breakfast buffet. My mother likes a good breakfast, but is used to a breakfast of the 'cereal, fruit and toast or pastries' variety.

The only cereals were rice bubbles in tall dispensers complete with a tap. Standing slightly to the side I could see that the tap controlled a horizontal cylinder that was filled from above by gravity, and emptied from below by gravity. THe cylinder has a cross wise division so only one quarter of what it held could empty itself into you bowl - as long as you only turned the tap a little.

My mother turned it a little - then tried to turn it off by going the other way. Each turn delivered a bowlful of rice bubbles onto he single bowl, which started to overflow. In panic she twisted the tap back and forth and managed to give herself two more bowls-worth - this time delivered even further by gravity onto the table, her feet and the floor. Then she finally stopped turning the tap when it was midway between two sides of the divider - two more bowls of cereal.

It was hilarious but it took her four days to be willing to attempt it again.

On Day 3 we arrived at the Isna Lock. There was a long long queue of massive boats waiting to go through the lock, and we had to tie up in the middle of one of the more uninteresting bits of river. Within minutes of docking the shouting started.

"Hello. Hello!!"

We were surrounded by small boats - a flotilla of frantically rocking dinghies with two or three boys balanced on the boats and waving large fabric objects. Most were galabayehs. These are the long garments worn by men in the streets in some communities, and by women for casual dressing in the homes or at family parties. the ships all have galabayeh nights, and all of us knew that that was the next day. If a passenger appeared looking over the edge of the top deck, or on their balcony, the boys started hurling up the bags. Many people did buy - intrigued as much by the payment and delivery systems as by the objects theselves.

If you didn't want the contents you threw the bag back. There were a few desperate lunges to catch them as throws went wide of the small boats, but the plastic bags, on the whole, kept out the water and helped the bags to float until they were retrieved.

Some boys were sitting on the bank nearby.

We had watched for a while, had lunch, and watched boys at almost our level - the dining room was half below the water line. One held up a large scarf for sale and blocked the light for a few minutes.

We decided that we would head for our room. We had had a very early morning start with a dawn visit to the temples as Luxor and Karnak and my mother was weary.

She lay down to read and was asleep in seconds. I picked up my book and went onto the balcony. You could still hear the boys calling to other boats nearby and so that they would not wake her I closed the door behind me.

It slid very quietly then went 'Snick'.

It was definitely an OhNosecond. Tentatively and with trepidition I tried the door.

Very very locked. It was not going to budge.

I sat down in a corner chair and started to read. It was all fine. The weather was perfect and I had a plan. I would wait an hour while she slept then knock on the door and she would wake up and let me in.

Three minutes later one of the boys on a boat spotted me and they swarmed over. Three boats bobbed beneath our second storey deck and the bags started to fly through the air.

"Where are you from" - attempted in about seven languages until I relented and told them I was Australian. I lobbed a few bags back - and most landed in the boats. Some came straight back while others tried other products. At one stage about four flew at me simultaneously and I decided that I was not having fun.

I told them to go away as I wanted to read and I was not going to buy but it didn't seem to get through. I looked along the boat towards the bedroom window where my mother slept. I tried to reach along the boat to the window to tap on it. No way - my arm was about one hand too short.

I tipped up my head to the upper decks as I could hear people moving around. "Hello" I called, very loudly.

"No" - said someone somewhat curtly, "We don't want to buy anything."

I belted open handed on the glass door. My mother is somewhat deaf and had been resisting wearing the hated hearing aids. I belted for what seemed a long time before she heard me. I saw her emerge, slightly staggery, in that 'just woken from a deep sleep' mode and head towards the wrong door - the front door of the suite. For a wild moment I thought she was going to leave through that one - with her locked out in the corridor and me locked out on the balcony.

But - she realised and rescued me.

Enjoy some photos.

Just cruising......

Boys in a mini-felucca with a load of fodder

Cows on the mudflats

The rocks and sand behind

Washing up

Villages and mudflats

Fishermen in the evening

Almost dark, and an appropriate time to sign off!