doctor, heal thyself

hello lovelies!

i have a feeling that this is going to be a mammoth entry - tusks and all - so if you don't have time for a long read, maybe come back to this later. get a cup of coffee and take the phone off the hook etc. fasten your seatbelt. i feel like i've done quite a bit, so i'll break it up into smaller, more palatable portions.

1) THE LEAVING (and leaves) OF LUXOR

it wasn't any secret that i was feeling a bit bitter and twisted after my weeks in the bilharzia valley region. having given up on learning arabic, i figured that i didn't need my brain any more, so i bought myself a big package of grass and kept myself in a state of semi-permanent stoned-dom for about a week. it made the 18 hour bus ride from luxor to dahab a little bit more tolerable, but when i got the munchies half way through the journey, i cracked open my 2kg bag of date biscuits and almost ate my way into a diabetic coma.

i decided that i cherished my capacity for thought, expression of emotion and rapid response to situations at hand far too much for a boring high, and after being attacked in a restaurant by a death squad of wild cats and having two slices of my marguerita pizza dragged away, i felt that enough was enough and gave up the silly weed (i.e. smoked the rest in one mega session).

2) DAHAB DESERT DANCE

dahab is a bit of a tourist town on the sinai peninsula, right on the red sea coast (gulf of aqaba). it's full of gorgeous russian girls (prostitutes) and hippies with dred-locks in their head hair, beard hair, and presumably everywhere else hair too. i went there for a bit of relaxation before a proposed jaunt into the deserts of sinai. as is often the case, after i got there one thing led to another, and before i knew it i was sitting on a bus with 40 other dahabians heading into the desert to be filmed taking part in a rave for an advertisement commissioned by the egyptian tourist board. i even got paid US $30. sounds great doesn't it? getting paid to dance in the desert? the reality was a bit different...

as soon as i got on the bus i felt decidedly right wing. everyone seemed to be reading books called 'inner peace' or 'the mind inside', wearing tye-dye clothing and talking absolute crap about whatever subject you'd care to mention. it was really different. the bus seemed to be broken into two groups - the russian prostitutes (and their pimps), and everyone else. for some reason i ended up sitting with the russian prostitutes. my contact was a gorgeous girl called julia who spoke russian, arabic, english and italian on her mobile that never stopped ringing, and for some reason kept thanking me (and no-one else) for coming to the rave. it was all very confusing.

the site for the rave was perfect - a sandy area in a gorge between two craggy hills surrounded by palm trees (you'd almost believe it was real). we posted ourselves in a little seating area for 4 hours whilst the more gorgeous people got made up. we were the first bus-load to arrive, but every subsequent bus-load seemed to bring more and more beautiful people: it was a cattle-call of perfect abs, pecs, legs and hair worn by semi-clad boys and girls from all over the world. here again there were two main groups - the gorgeous people, and rent-a-crowd. i was rent-a-crowd. my rent-a-crowd friend for the day, a guy called tepe from japan, turned to me at one stage and said "have you noticed how many gorgeous russian girls there are here...i think they're all prostitutes..."

eventually we were allowed onto the 'dance floor' where they blasted the music and forced us to put our hands in the air and smile and laugh and dance wildly while 60 second sequences were filmed. just when we were getting into the groove they'd call CUT!, we'd stop, someone's tits would be readjusted, and we'd do it all again. after around 40 or 50 takes, i was drained of all energy and good will. after the final take we all just piled onto the buses and went home.

as an aside - this ad will be shown in britain and maybe other european countries. there are a few of you in europe, so if you happen to see an ad for egypt involving a rave, look for me right at the back just in front of the dj wearing a light green shirt and jeans and dancing like an absolute nut...

3) SINAI SUNSET, SINAI SUNRISE

the following day i caught a bus to st katherine - the little town at the base of mt sinai (or mt moses as it's known in egypt - gebel musa). this is the place where moses allegedly received the 10 commandments from god. i met an austrian hippy girl on the bus, and we decided to head to the summit right there and then. when we got to the top, we threw some old blankets down on a little ledge just below the summit and lay our sleeping bags down on that. we put on every single piece of clothing we had with us, and watched the sunset eating flat bread with feta, tomato and cucumber, and then slept below the stars. it was freezing, but it was perfect. during the night i awaited a visit from god with a new set of commandments (i even brought paper and pen in case he forgot the stone tablets) but he failed to deliver. it was all very disappointing. when the estimated 300 people rocked up at 4am to watch the sunrise (this is what happens there) i realised that we had the best position on the whole peak - all we had to do was open our eyes and watch the sun rise at our feet over the mountains of saudi arabia :)

i came back down the mountain via the 'steps of repentance'. someone told me they are also called 'the six thousand steps'. i decided to rename them 'the six thousand easy steps to total knee reconstruction'. enough said.

at the bottom i visited st katherine's monastery where they have a big bush growing on a platform. this is apparently the direct descendant of 'the burning bush'. despite sounding like a b-grade porn flick from lithuania, the burning bush was apparently a shrub from the bible that was seen to be 'burning but not being consumed' (whatever that means), and then god's head appeared in it and started talking. (or something like that - no-one i asked seemed to know the real story). the monastery also had a wonderful collection of ancient manuscripts in ancient greek, arabic and many other languages which i loved, and the world's largest collection of holy icons, including one picture (my favourite) of 'the ladder to heaven' in which grey-haired men race up a ladder to heaven whilst devils lasoo them and ride them down to a hole in the ground representing hell. it included a bunch of rent-boy cherubs on a cloud in one corner and a group of older men that looked decidedly paedophilic being engulfed in flames in another corner.

4) BONDY AND THE BEDOUIN CAMP

one thing led to another, and before i knew it i was sitting around a fire in a bedouin camp in the middle of the sinai desert surrounded by non-english speaking bedouin, camels and goats. i didn't really know what my role was there, so i propped myself against a post and let the evening unfold. i found myself drifting between states of intense concentration and complete abstraction. suddenly the tent was empty except for me and a guy who was coughing and spluttering, and had wheeze that i could hear from the foot of the bed (i mean tent...). he had a cold exacerbating his asthma, but what was i supposed to do about it? it made me realise how very little practical use a medical education is without resources. i used sign language to tell him he needed some ventolin, and he pulled a puffer out of his pocket and managed to tell me that he only used it if he was really bad. i wanted to take a full history, write up an asthma management plan, consider introducing some maintenance therapy and check his inhaler technique, but i've never been that good at charades. i ended up giving him some panadol, which he refused to take until i proved that it was safe by grabbing the nearest glass of water and banging back a couple of pills with a loud arabic 'delicious!'.

as the sun set i wandered around the camp thinking to myself "what the fuck am i doing? i have no idea where i am...i have no idea who these people are...they have no idea who i am..." but i got over that pretty quickly because the camp was so fascinating. it was made up of three largish tents - wooden poles with fabric strung over them - and a little enclosure for goats in the middle. all around were the bedouin's camels with their legs tied so they wouldn't run away. nearby was a road, and all around were the huge rocky mountains of sinai. it was in the middle of no-where.

after sunset i returned to the tent with the fire in it and sat down in the circle of bedouin men. no-one addressed me. i didn't speak. hours passed. i felt like i was in 'a christmas carol' by charles dickens, in which the ghost of christmas present takes scrooge to his worker's house where they attend dinner, but no-one can see them or knows that they are there. (at least i think that's what happens - i've only ever seen 'a muppets christmas carol starring kermit the frog as scrooge's supposedly poverty-stricken employee, despite supporting the enormous weight of his wife miss piggy. i can already hear you crying 'philistine!'). anyway, dinner came - we ate soup with bread cooked in the fire (it tasted like dirt), and then i threw a blanket on the sand and went to sleep.

5) THE TREK

now the main reason i was there was so that i could go on a three-day trek though the sinai desert with a camel and a bedouin guide. i was hoping for either a gorgeous young bedouin man with homosexual tendancies, or an older man who spoke no english, so that we wouldn't have to speak and i could travel within myself too. i got the latter - a lovely man called raashed who looked about 15 years older than his 45, and with whom i communicated in a cocktail of arabic, english and german phrases, with heaps of sign-language to boot. our camel had an unpronouncable arabic name, so i renamed her 'the hungry slut'. the esurient beast ate everything she came across - including cardboard boxes and thorn bushes so sharp they pricked your eyes just to look at them. she had a very meaty, prominent vulva that protruded when she sat down. i couldn't help wondering what would happen if i flicked it with a rubber band, and was prompted to recall with some clarity my ability as a child to shoot a small lip balm from a table from 5 metres with a standard post-office issue red rubber band. such talent has gone to waste in my consolation prize of a medical career.

at the end of the second day raashed told me that the hungry slut was actually a boy-camel. i re-inspected her genitalia and my mind boggled. the hungry slut carried everything - raashed and i were left to wander about freely.

our first day was spent trekking through large open deserts surrounded by distant rocky mountains. it was punctuated by frequent bouts of diarrhoea on a background of crampy abdominal pain and nausea. i suspect the glass of water i used to prove the safety of the panadol was the culprit, and the irony did not escape me.

after so many weeks pampering my hole with the nozzle, i was in a state. luckily, i brought some soft antibacterial wet-wipes, which proved to be my 'nozzle in a packet'.

that night we camped in a dry river bed. i remembered an interesting fact: more people die of drowning each year in the sahara than dehydration. everyone knows to bring water - it's the sahara for god's sake - but no-one expects the freak storm and the flash flood. we cooked some rice and potatoes on a camp fire and drank very sweet tea - the egyptian way.

as i lay in my sleeping bag, i felt that i could see every single star in the whole universe. suddenly i had a million questions in my head and i needed JH there to answer them. because the sky was so clear, i got the feeling that there was no atmosphere, and that i could topple off the earth and float out into space at the slightest provokation. i felt like i was in space. i watched orion - my favourite constellation - as he danced across the sky, and was delighted to see the big dipper in the north, which we can't see in australia.

in the morning, raashed mixed flour and water in a pot and then spread the damper under some hot embers. we cracked open the steaming bread when it was ready and ate it with cheese and jam, washed down again with sweet tea.

the second day we passed through the rocky mountains themselves - sand dunes gave way to eruptions of light red rock - twisted and folding and crumbling cliffs that sprang 300 metres directly up out of the earth. the scale was too large to comprehend. i took millions of photos, but they will come to nothing - could one tour the hermitage museum by way of a keyhole? we had lunch, and later camped, in the shadows of such cliffs.

the third day was completely different. we made our way back through a dried river bed surrounded by very boring black mountains that looked like piles of rubble. when i looked down, however, the combinations of colours were exciting. not only were there swirls of colour in the bedrock, but the entire river-bed was covered in rocks of every shade imagineable. rocks that were black as night were sitting right next to white rocks, and red rocks were scattered with purple boulders that evoked the eye-shadow of an 80's rock star. it suprised me that all the colours were together, not separated into groups - as if a giant bag of jelly-beans had been emptied into the riverbed.

at this point i was becoming really comfortable with raashed and the hungry slut - so comfortable that i almost forgot they were there. at one stage, whilst inspecting some bed-rock, i let off the grandmother of all farts. suddenly i remembered that i was not alone, and looked up to find raashed staring at me with a mixed expression of suprise and respect on his face.

i lost all concept of time and distance during the trek - as i wandered through the desert my mind wandered about and turned things over, looking at, dwelling upon and leaving things at its leisure. the trek, the camping, the views - it was magical.

at the end of the third day i returned to st katherine township in a jeep. i had a sore throat and my diarrhoea was still going strong. my head was spinning and i was physically exhausted. what i needed to do was rest. the stupidest thing i coud think of doing was trying to climb mt katherine - egypt's highest mountain.

6) THE CONQUERING OF MT KATHERINE

the following morning, i set off early to climb mt katherine. rising to 2642, it was apparently the site at which a group of monks found st katherine's body 300 years after she was martyred in alexandria. her remains were carted off to the aforementioned st katherine's monastery, of burning bush fame.

there were the usual protests: "you need a guide!", "people have died!", "you'll get lost!". we've heard that all before haven't we? it's illegal to climb the mountain without a permit and a guide, but the owner of my camp told me to ignore that and just head up the valley, turn left at the garden and i'll be right.

sure enough, when i got to the garden i turned left and got well and truly lost. i used photos that i had taken from the top of mt sinai, stored on my mp3 player, and compared them to the skyline to find that i was heading in the opposite direction to what i should have been. i wasted about an hour, but that was the only mishap - when i got to the base of the mountain proper, the track was as clear as my will, and i powered up to the peak.

even though it's not the hardest climb in the world, i found it quite demanding. i squirted my way to the top, my head was spinning, and there were times when i thought i might have to turn back (if i broke both legs and had a pneumothorax). but reaching a peak is secondary to the climb itself, and i felt free and amazing and alive whilst i was doing it. and that feeling is worth everything.

when i got to the top, i found two austrian boys with their two egyptian guides. they were all smoking pot. i said:

"my goodness! you'll fall down the mountain"
"no man, we'll fly down"

i had a quick nap, and after the boys flew away, i had the mountain to myself. i could see the gulf of suez and the rest of egypt on one side, and the gulf of aqaba and saudi arabia on the other. mt sinai was behind me and the red sea before me. i put on bjork's 'all is full of love' (which is like the theme song to my life) and i danced and sang and laughed. again - it was magical. here is a picture of me as i stand on the highest piece of land in egypt. ondrej on the peak of gebel katarina. on the left in the background is mt sinai. amazing

i descended the mountain, and the following morning i took a horrendous amount of imodium before taking 11 hours worth of bus to alexandria.

7) ALEXANDRIA

from suez all the way through cairo and now in alex, there is something like a sand/pollution storm, so that it's been difficult to see anything. the sun looks like a dim light bulb in a dark, steamy bathroom. here is a photo i took yesterday afternoon on the alexandria seafront. bear in mind that it's 4 in the afternoon!

there was a tv in the bus which showed 3 movies. the first two movies were both about cross-dressers - the first was a man dressed as a woman who got arrested and was sent to a women's jail (and later became a talk show host) and the second was about two guys who dressed as chicks so that they could stay at a women's boarding house. the third movie wasn't about cross-dressers, but it featured a transvestite in a minor role. the statement about sexuality in egypt was loud and clear.

i'm staying in a soviet-style hotel full of stuffed birds and men wearing suits and smiles. the rooms have decent beds and the bathroom has a real shower. the toilet has this big fuck-off nozzle so you have to hold onto the sides of the bowl so you aren't launched into orbit. it almost makes having diarrhoea a pleasure (apart from the satisfaction of knowing that i've lost all the weight i gained on account of my indescretion with the date biscuits). in any case, it's letting up.

i've got a balcony right over the sea - i decided to spoil myself - and though i'm paying only $15 a night here, it's by far the most expensive place i've stayed so far. but it's worth it, and obviously: i'm worth it.

i've been in egypt 31 days now - one whole month. i think this means that i've spent at least one month on every continent except for antarctica so far (a situation i'll have to remedy after my sister does for fear of her head exploding with jealousy - antarctica has always been a touchy subject) ;)

i'm going to relax a bit, put my feet up, stare out my window and do nothing. gather my strength and get ready for the next challenge: china!