Segway from India to Egypt....

Originally written August 1st-

I never really got to it on blogging about Nepal. When I got there I was overwhelmed with the depth of the culture and the variety of the nature there. I was on the way to do a trek in the Himalayas and then I was going to sit down and write about it all. But when I got back from the trekking I was so overstimulated by all that I saw that I couldn't even begin to write about it. I got blocked, and then I wrote nothing. That is unfortunate because Nepal is, without a doubt, the coolest place I have ever visited. A combination of the people, the nature, the Buddhism and the energy there completely won me over. Despite nights spent in hotel rooms full of ants and roaches...with daily power outages and incredible levels of pollution, the place was, hands down, the most amazing I have visited.

Maybe at some point I will get to describing more of how it was. But for now I want to get to how things are going in Egypt. To do that, I have to finish the end of the India/Nepal story. It will be kept brief.

I went back to India from Kathmandu and flew down to Bombay. It was raining really hard when I got there, the heart of the monsoon. Mumbai was interesting enough, but I don't think I need to go back there. While I was in Colaba, Hillary Clinton made a diplomatic visit and stayed at the Taj Hotel, which was just a few doors down from my much more humble hotel. We visited a lot of the same places. India Gate and the Jain Temple in Malabar Hill. I also went to Dhobi Ghat, the Laxmi Temple, Haji Ali Mosque and a few other religious places. When the rain came it was incredible. Enough to fill buckets in mere minutes. On the way back from seeing the Ali Mosque I was on the jetty that connects it to the mainland when the rain came in from the Arabian Sea. You could see the black clouds coming, but they caught us by surprise moving so quickly. The next thing I knew I was moving at full speed in a large crowd of muslims and in seconds we were all soaked to the bone. Never seen rain like that.

When I left Mumbai, like Hillary, I went to Delhi. Back to the Pahar Ganj ghetto. I was there for a few days. I went to see the Taj Mahal in Agra and took some cooking classes. I like Delhi. It is completely nuts, but in a good way.

So then I took the old overnight flight back to Abu Dhabi, and then Cairo. I got picked up by Ryan and Catherine and her driver Mohamet. Everyone seems to be named Mohamet. There are to be 5 in my kitchen alone. I have had this week to get ready for work. Buy new clothes, shoes and a stereo. From here on I will use this blog as a place to write short updates on things that stand out as strange or funny or somehow interesting. This culture is very different from that of the west and many times I see things that seem fun to share. My impressions so far are that this culture is very misunderstood by the West. I hope that my picking out of the more strange happenings doesn't serve to enhance that misunderstanding. People here are people. It is a good culture with many positives. Nothing like the demonized version the West percieves.

Here is the first anecdote. Ryan's wife Esther and I went to the Carrefour one day. It is like a SuperWalmart, but the brand is French. On the way there we were driving across the Mars-like terrain and saw a little boy on the side of the road trying to hitch a ride. He looked to be about 5 or 6 years old. The cabbie asked us if we could pick him up and we said yes. It was at least 100 degrees and the boy was little. But when he got in he was like a little man. His face and the way he responded to the things the driver said made him seem much older. It turned out that he also wanted to go to Carrefour. The driver let him out a little way away and I thought that we would not see him again. But we did. It turns out he was there to play in the store! He was drinking soda, picking up toys and at one point he had a box of whopper candy that he dropped and they went in all directions. But he picked them up and ate them all. Of course he was never going to pay for any of these things. It wasn't so much what he was doing there that was interesting. It was the backstory that gave us the questions. Why would a little boy of that age be out by himself? Was he going to Carrefour because his mother had sent him? Or did he sneak out? Did he go on this journey often? Was it just to have fun? I will never know.