Getting your hair cut in foreign countries where you don’t know the local way to say “short on the sides, long on top” can be a pretty harrowing experience. Incorrect pronunciation or insufficiently illustrative hand-gestures could lead to a long night of searching for MC Hammer pants to go with your new Kid ‘n [...]

We’re now 3 weeks into our potentially years-long London experience; Nazma has started her tepid wade back into the workforce; and I’m on the computer for what feels like 26 hours a day—shirtless and deadbeat, some would say. I would protest, however, that I’m actually neck-deep in rental listings, looking for that perfect (or [...]

We’ve spent a lot of time in the last few weeks driving around East Africa. Lots of time to reflect on just how great (and how relatively unexciting) the Oak Street Bridge is after a few freeze-thaw cycles compared to a normal day driving here.
Roads
First of all, be grateful [...]

Our planned road trip into Tanzania was scuttled when we found out the roads after the rainy season in the western part of Tanzania aren’t so good, which would have meant 12 hours on a ferry and another 12 hours of 4×4 mogulling with attendant retching. That and the border areas between Burundi and [...]

We got back from our first safari last night: all the way out to the western tip of Uganda, spitting distance from Rwanda and the DR Congo and all their associated troubled histories. Several tourists were kidnapped in the area a few years ago, but I think things have calmed down a bit now, [...]

Hearts racing, we bounced and jumbled our way up the hill and there they were.

Judging by the few ant-speck humans around the base (we were at the back end: no tourist hordes in sight), you really get a sense of just how massive these things are and how there’s nothing you could do [...]

There’re any number of ways the scam could run when booking a tour in Egypt, and it’s too hot right now for me to come up with truly imaginative ways.

The car might be missing essential safety equipment: it may not have seat belts. Or brakes.
You may, without prior consent, be sharing the [...]

Here we are in Alexandria after our first 3 days in Cairo. What a country so far. We were warned about the people, the ceaseless hassling for baksheesh, but it hasn’t been that bad at all. In Cairo most people were either friendly or too involved with living in Cairo to bother [...]

The movers have come and gone, the house is (more or less) empty, and we’re living out of our suitcases from now till Thursday. Too busy wrapping up all the loose ends of a decadent, materialistic Western life to blog about our wonderful time in minimalist-by-circumstance Cuba. Once the dust settles, stories will [...]

We’ve met some pretty hardcore, backpacker-Nazi types on the road who shun packaged-travel and all who would even dream of partaking. Apparently it’s a badge of honour to stay at a place costing 50¢ a night where you have to shit in a coffee tin in the corner.
Though we’re nowhere near that [...]