Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 2: The Bedouin Girl
S is 15, beautiful, dark-skinned and slender, with a hawkish desert nose and a full upper lip, dressed in a fuchsia and turquoise traditional dress,...
Category: Places
What Does A Kid Do For Four Days In The Desert?
What DO you do for four days in the Sinai desert, if you’re an eleven-year-old kid? You roll down dunes, slide down dunes, swim down...
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 1: The Coder
A sits by the fire in a Dahab restaurant. The youngest of five children, he’s 26, tall, cleanshaven, and plays PlayStation football with the devotion...
The Friday Photo: Quadbiking the Sinai Desert
As a mode of exploring anywhere, quadbiking checks all the wrong boxes. It’s noisy, polluting, carbon-intensive, touristy and, in some places, environmentally destructive — but...
Now, About Those White Shirts, Child of Mine
Like many 11-year-old boys*, even those who aren’t travelling the world, washing does not figure highly on my spawn’s list of things to do. He’s...
There's An Important Man On That Plane
“There’s an important man on that plane,” says Heny. “What plane? Where?!” I say, dozily. Z already has his eyes on it. It’s a sleek...
Jamie’s Mum
Jamie’s mum sits next to us on our flight from the UK to Egypt. She’s 68, looks mid-50s, did facials for Olivier and Richard Harris,...
The Friday Photo: On the Roof in Dahab, Egypt
It’s been ten years since we last visited Dahab. And, though it was firmly on the banana pancake trail back then, the miasma of hippie...
Next Time I’m Getting A Flu Shot
Until, ooh, about six weeks ago, I was one of those irritating people who’d bang on and on about their marvelous immune system and how...
The Friday Photo: Rice Terraces
This time next week we’ll be in the Middle East, landscapes of deserts, river, rock and mountain. But rice terraces form some of the loveliest...