Please to make a Hotel Reservation July 23, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Beach Resorts, Destination, Flight Schedule, Hostels, Hotels, India, Lodges, Motel, Passport, Tickets, Tour , 3comments“Excuse me, do you speak English?” “Oh yes, certainly.”
“I want to reserve three seats on a train from Calcutta to Patna.” “Please?”
“I want to reserve . . .”
“Where are you wanting to go?” “Patna.”
“Have you a reservation?”
“No. That is what I want.” “Please you wait over there.”
“I want to go during the day so that we can all see the countryside.” (more…)
Passing on Victoria Water Falls, Shooting the Zambezi, Escape into Africa July 10, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Botswana, Hotels, Lodges, Passport, South Africa, Tour, USA, United Kingdom, Victoria Falls, Zambia , 4commentsA white line still bisected the bridge, but its meaning had gone and the menace with it. Now the only sentry was a baboon sitting on a fence barking at a warthog on the other side of the road.
Early morning, sun up but cool, just two of us on the bridge at Victoria Falls, between Zimbabwe and Zambia. We looked down at the pale green Zambesi 300 feet below. Cecil Rhodes had wanted the bridge built close enough to the Falls to catch the spray. Usually it does. However, this was September and the “Falls” in front of us were just a curtain of rock. The rains had been good; not good enough, though, to make up for years of drought.
Only on the Zimbabwean side did the river reach over and plunge in. Its noise was like distant motorway traffic.
We were about to go down the river on a rubber raft. We were to start at the bottom of the Falls and travel six miles down the Zambesi through zigzagging gorges . . . and over nine rapids. Why on earth had we agreed to it? Sarah didn’t even like putting her head under water in the bath. As for me, the wake of a passing launch under a scull on the Thames was the nearest I’d ever got to white water. (more…)
Five days in Guinea, Discovering World Wide Attractions, Traveling, Fun, Tour, Rail Passing July 6, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Africa, Cash, Passport, Tour, Travellers Cheque , 5commentsDuring the night the rats stole my soap. A garrison of them lived beneath the floorboards and above the sagging, mildewed ceiling of my room. They swaggered about the place as though they owned it — which I suppose they did really: few people must have stayed in the old barrack-house since Nova Lamego was a beleaguered outpost of the Portuguese empire in Africa, surrounded by guerrilla-held bush, as the long war of liberation surged back and forth across the frontier with its neurotic Marxist neighbour, the People’s Republic of Guinea.
I rubbed the sleep of history from my eyes and stepped outside into the present: nowadays Nova Lamego is the peaceful market town of Gabu, in the east of independent Guinea-Bissau, and a couple of battered old civilian vehicles wheeze across that frontier each week.
Blinking in the unwashed light of dawn, I located the formidable old Russian lorry that came close to my idea of the archetypal truck. It had one headlight missing and was blind in the other; sported a complete set of bald tyres, and was incontinent on all counts: punctured exhaust, cracked radiator, and oozing a fuse of oil and petrol whenever it moved — which wasn’t for some time, as it took all morning to attract a full cargo of thirty passengers and their belongings. (more…)
Five days in Guinea, Discovering World Wide Attractions, Traveling, Fun, Tour, Rail Passing July 6, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Africa, Cash, Passport, Tour, Travellers Cheque , 5commentsDuring the night the rats stole my soap. A garrison of them lived beneath the floorboards and above the sagging, mildewed ceiling of my room. They swaggered about the place as though they owned it — which I suppose they did really: few people must have stayed in the old barrack-house since Nova Lamego was a beleaguered outpost of the Portuguese empire in Africa, surrounded by guerrilla-held bush, as the long war of liberation surged back and forth across the frontier with its neurotic Marxist neighbour, the People’s Republic of Guinea.
I rubbed the sleep of history from my eyes and stepped outside into the present: nowadays Nova Lamego is the peaceful market town of Gabu, in the east of independent Guinea-Bissau, and a couple of battered old civilian vehicles wheeze across that frontier each week.
Blinking in the unwashed light of dawn, I located the formidable old Russian lorry that came close to my idea of the archetypal truck. It had one headlight missing and was blind in the other; sported a complete set of bald tyres, and was incontinent on all counts: punctured exhaust, cracked radiator, and oozing a fuse of oil and petrol whenever it moved — which wasn’t for some time, as it took all morning to attract a full cargo of thirty passengers and their belongings. (more…)
