As the child bride and I get closer to Cairo, the frequency of Australian accents becomes valuable currency. If this trip is to end in tears, we want to be able to spread them around rather than be the only two infidels at the riot. We have just found out there are 9 on our extra trip to Alexandria and the full complement of 40 for the rest of the trip. How’s that for steadfastness in the face of rather challenging circumstances. If we all lived in New Hampshire in the USA we’d have their state motto tatooed on our foreheads – “live free or die”.

Speaking of challenging, wifi isn’t working as I write this in our room in Alexandria’s delightfully dated Steigenberger Cecil Hotel, built in 1936 I believe. The child bride and I shall be heading to the bar shortly because it’s a dry….you know the rest. Besides, there’s bugger-all on the 83 TV channels. TV in the Steigenberger consists of the BBC, CNN, numerous channels beginning with Al, lots of European channels (excluding the UK) and a documentary showing a re-run of 1973’s Yom Kippur war with a surprise ending.

We’ve now moved onto the first day-proper of this tour of duty and have already done a few things where you stand back, take in the full majesty or significance of what’s spread out before you, and say to each other, “this is why we came here”. We did it as the sun came up over the Anapurnas in Nepal. Here it was the Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa and/or Pompey’s Pillar, take your pick. In respect of the latter, its historical significance and its imposing presence should not be diminished by the murder there of two Jewish tourists and their guide by a terrorist policeman on Sunday, four days ago. You wouldn’t know now because we walked through the same area where this atrocity occurred. But outside, as we left in the bus, the security presence was palpable. I didn’t notice when we arrived but we were early. Maybe they only work banker’s hours.

Speaking of security, we have our own. Despite not noticing the full extent of the security presence as we arrived at the various attractions, I had noticed quite a few young, fit looking grey suited gentlemen in addition to those wearing uniforms and bullet-proof vests and carrying automatic weapons. We had one of these grey-suited gentlemen on our bus (as did others, I assume) and he accompanied us to and from and around. He had an easily identifiable bulge on his hip under his jacket also. I’m not sure if his presence makes me feel better or worse – he’ll be with us tomorrow when we go to El Alamein. Concealed carry is a controversial subject in the USA. I’m pretty okay with it here as long as the concealment is in my favour.

If we can now take this discussion in the complete opposite direction, something rather pleasant and amusing was happening to us all as we made our tortuous way through streets made by people who never in their wildest dreams imagined a full-size passenger bus. Our driver managed u turns in places where I wouldn’t drive a shopping trolley. So slow was it that we would have been able to discuss the weather (let’s keep it non-controversial, remembering where we are) with passers-by if we could wind the windows down. No, these people were all smiling at us and waving to us – kids going to school, vendors sitting outside their shops smoking durries, old blokes watching the world go by as they sat drinking coffee. How nice I thought as we all waved back. But later, in keeping with the times I thought “do they know something we don’t?” Shame, really.

Well the CB and I are on the road again. But only just. We’ve had a somewhat chequered history with the travel company organising this tour. In 2020 we tried to spend a month in South America with them, then covid struck and it was adios amigos. Last October 2022 we had a three week trip round Japan and Korea lined up but the Japanese still weren’t on board with the various covid conspiracy theories doing the rounds on twitter. They still thought that mask mandates worked and vaccines prevented catching and passing-on the nasty, spiky little virus. So for longer than most, they retained a reluctance to allow people in without at least the minimum number of jabs. I forget how many that was and frankly, no longer care. So it was sayonara to that one. This trip was originally Egypt, Jordan and Israel. Israel’s been dropped for obvious reasons and I have to admit to a little trepidation regarding the other destinations at this stage as we taxi down the Brisbane Airport runway. This is not how you should feel when heading off on vacation. I used to feel this way occasionally when heading off on work trips. To Iran for example, which is somewhat topical at the moment and somewhere I’ve been five times.

Which brings us somewhat dubiously to The Dry Argument. I haven’t called this series of travel related streams of consciousness that because we don’t expect to get the odd, okay occasional, okay frequent bevvie. Heaven forbid, I’d rather go to Bali. No, the area is dominated by sand and the the regional arguments are legendary. Hence….. Maybe I should have called this The Dry Merciless or something similar after the atrocious events of recent days.

I have experienced the (very) occasional Dry Argument I have to say if you don’t count the Monday to Wednesday AFD’s – that’d be “alcohol free days” to the drunks reading this. The last and longest was 16 days and the circumstances of the Great London Dry of April’23 are outlined in the essay immediately below this one.

The five trips to Iran were dryish…hat tip Australian Embassy. I’m confident that statement won’t cause the sort of diplomatic incident moving a container load of booze out of the embassy yard to various high-fenced homes caused many years back. Besides, it was sometime last century and there’s surely a statute of limitations on such things.

Pakistan could be a bit that way as well but there was always the old “medicinal purposes” argument that used to cover duty-free back in the day and got one of your bottles of scotch through customs. Or you could temporarily swap your passport for a (“Murrie” I think it was called) beer at the hotel. They already either had your passport or a copy of it at the hotel reception, so it depended on how thirsty you were, whether you complied.

The state of Andhra Pradesh in India once mind-bogglingly elected a prohibition supporting government just prior to one of my many visits to their largest steel plant. This, I’m reasonably sure, was coincidental and not because I was going there. Apparently all of the women voted for it. Had we lived there at the time I know of at least one female vote they wouldn’t have got.

The stories I could tell….over a few beers.

Trepidation notwithstanding, we are on our way. We are on an organised tour so there are at least some locals checking things out prior to our arrival. Locals tend to blend in a lot more than us pasty Australians so if the shit hits the fan we may be on our own anyway, like I was most of the time when I travelled for a living. At least back then the company had kidnapping insurance which is a bit after-the-fact, I know, but while you were fearing for your life there was a glimmer of hope that some ex-SAS types were tracking you down. Not sure how much we can rely on prime minister Albo if those circumstances arise in the next few weeks. They’ll probably have to vet our social media first so I’m f….d.

While we’re on the “dry argument” subject, we’re at Melbourne airport and I just bought a beer and a chardy, big ones admittedly – $36. Bloody Nora! It’s almost worth buying a business class seat just to get into the lounge and access the free booze. I’ll max out the credit card before we leave Melbourne at this rate.

This is the third time I’ve attempted to finish this intro but we’ve just passed through Dubai airport and there are things here you just have to talk about. For the uninitiated, it’s the world’s longest shopping mall. Thank God we weren’t in a similar hurry to our dash through Heathrow six months ago (see below) because we had to get from one end of the airport to almost the other. Instead of a stroke I just tweaked a calf – the old-man’s injury. With hours to spare we passed through at the speed of a goat through an anaconda so the step-count was up but the blood pressure was kept manageable.

Five minutes after getting off the Dubai flight from Aus I was mightily pissed off at the 6 and 8 seater golf-type buggies chirping their way in and out of numerous traffic snarls. Half an hour into our treck to the next Emirate (flight or country, take your pick), I understood why they were there.