The Nile (trip No 4) Oct 30–Nov 9

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PICTURE THIS...
The first and only time I was ever given a bonus at work, I went straight out to Museum Street opposite the British Museum and bought two lithographs by David Roberts: A Coffee Shop in Cairo (right) and Feluccas on the Nile. They seemed to me then – and still seem to me today, after I have finally made the journey – the ideal of romance. Of course by now I also wanted to find out what had happened to the old Hotel Bristol in Cairo ("children and servants half price, evening dress optional," says an old Baedeker). But lack of time combined with ferocious traffic (in a city of 20 million, there is not a traffic light in sight) kept me from the site where it once stood. I suspect it went up in smoke like it's more famous neighbour, Sheppards' Hotel, and other British outposts, on one particular incendiary nationalistic night, Saturday January 26, 1952.

THE ITINERARY
Money being no object, we went for a tailor-made tour from Bales, booked through North South Travel: three nights in Cairo, then fly to Luxor for four nights on a cruise boat that would take us up to Aswan, where we would have three nights in a hotel. We had guides when we wanted them – to show us around the main sights – and free time to mooch in the soukhs, walk the promenades, and get into trouble. We took mosquito repellent and probiotics to prevent stomach upsets.

THE SIGHTS
In Cairo we visited the Pyramids at Giza and the Egyptian Museum; left to our own devices we headed for the Coptic quarter and the Khan al-Khalili soukh, a fantastic warren that is perhaps bigger than the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. At the start of the cruise there were the temples of Luxor and Karnak, and the tombs and temples of the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens to tackle. And the Luxor soukh. Heading upriver we stopped at the temples of Edfu and Kom Ombo, and Aswan, the last stop, revealed the Philae Temple, beautifully re-established on its own island, with an instructive sound and light show – to be on the water in the dark is magic. We learnt a lot from Sally in Cairo and Mona on excursions from the boat, both steeped in knowledge of ancient gods and pharaohs. Other side trips were on offer (Saqqara, Memphis, Abu Simbel) but this seemed quite enough.


THE RIVER
A disappointment was that although we had four night on the boat, only one day was spent actually underway, and it was just the best bit, watching the bankside life, the biblical scenes of small villages, donkeys, sugar cane cutters and spear fishermen. There were many black-and-white kingfishers, egrets, squacco and night heron. The world's longest river is a majestic waterway and, particularly when seen from the air (on the hour-long flight from Cairo to Luxor, where we picked up the boat), it is strange to see that this is just about all there is to Egypt - the cultivated strip along its banks. Everything else, 96 percent, is desert.

ACCOMMODATION
We paid extra for our room at Le Méridien Pyramids in Giza to have a Pyramid view. You could even see them from the pool. From here it was a lively 30-minute drive to the centre of the city. At Luxor we stayed a night in the riverfront Sonesta St George, with a balcony overlooking the Nile. Our boat, the Nile Beauty (above) was comfortable, spacious and a decade or two old. When moored, we often had to walk through other boats to reach ours, some as bling as tarts' boudoirs. Our cabin was on the lower deck and had a window at water level that blacked out when another boat was moored up against us. The Pyramisa Isis Island in Aswan was our final destination, a large, impersonal modern 'resort' hotel that could not be better sited, on its own island, a backwater of peace, with pools and restaurants and not many people. A boat plied endlessly back and forth to the 'cityside'.

FOOD
Brilliant and generous, both on the boat and in the hotels. This is not a great meat-eating country, but the vegetables are healthy and hearty, innovatively prepared, with echoes of Turkish food, lighty spiced and full of flavour. Tasty breads, pastries and yoghut dishes, too.

BAZAARS AND BACKSHEESH
Everywhere, people touted for business and asked for backsheesh - tourist police, taxi drivers, caleche coachmen, bazaar traders. Pleas included...
"No hassle, no bloody hassle."
"Everything free today."
"Come and look inside, nice shirt, scarfs, bags, gelebayas, rubbish..."

• All photography inside the tombs is forbidden, and cameras must be handed in at the entrance to each tomb. At the tomb of Tutankhamun, the guard who took my camera looked furtively around. Few people were about. "Picture?" he said, turning the camera on me. So a few piastres bought me an illicit photograph of myself at the entrance to the tomb.

• Early one morning a fisherman was rowing by some 20 metres from the shore. I waved and he waved back, calling out "backsheesh, backsheesh!" like a gull's weary cry.

• About to enter a cafe on the Luxor promenade, I was stopped by an elderly fellah, who wanted to know what I was going to drink. The cafe charged too much for beer, he said. If I gave him the money he would go and buy some cans from a local shop at a fraction of the price and I could sit with him and his friends and enjoy many drinks. It was an irresistible offer, and I imagined myself back home accosting a visiting businessman on his way to the Hilton's Zeta bar with a similar proposition: "Why, for the price of your cocktail, my good sir, we could take a couple of bottles of the finest Bulgarian red into Hyde Park and put the world to rights."



BEST BITS
Felucca trips A cataract is an agglomeration of rocks and islands that, before the Aswan Dam was built, made the river hard to navigate: the first cataract on the Nile is at Aswan just below the dam, a pleasant area to sail around. This picture of a felucca was taken from Isis island where our hotel was.

Ancient Egypt None of the sights were a disappointment. On the contrary, they were magnificent, and still pretty much as David Roberts drew them; he was not exaggerating. From the haunting, medieval back streets of Cairo to the towering forest of the hypostyles, from the beautiful paintings and reliefs (and the delightful stick figures in the tomb of Thutmosis III in the Valley of the Kings) to the inventive hieroglyphics, we 'enjoyed our eyes' as the Egyptians say. The journey put history into perspective, working down through the centuries as we went up the Nile from the Old Kingdom Pyramids towards the Greek and Roman temples.

An impression A surprise was to see the violence that had been inflicted by the early Christians on the beautiful relief figures on temples in the Upper Nile (as at Philae, right). It was similar to the gouging out of saints' eyes by Muslims in Byzantine churches, or the decapitation of saints on the facade of Ely Cathedral by Protestants, and of course reminiscent of the destruction of the Bamyan Buddha in Afghanistan. There is no religion without fanaticism.

Souvenirs Silver jewellery, essence of Lotus (as worn by Tutenkhamun). The soukhs were extraordinary, the spice stalls in Aswan unsurpassed – we bought cumin, dried lotus flowers, hibiscus and tamarind tea, and powdered indigo – to add a dash to our washing and make it whiter than white, as Egyptians told us their mothers used to do.

Festive moments Wedding receptions in the hotels were always a highlight: pipes, trumpets, drums, ululating, dancing hobby horses – exuberance without alcohol.

But of course the river was the star...

Istanbul (trip No.3) Sept 11–19

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THE PLAN
A week in Istanbul, a city I have long wanted to visit, not least because I work for two magazines with a Turkish flavour, Cornucopia and Taste Anatolia. Nothing was planned. I just wanted to stroll around, getting a slow drip, seeing the sights, taking boat rides, eating street food. I thought I wouldn't take many pictures this time. People don't seem to be able to look at things without holding up their digitals. I would take a tape recorder with a stereo microphone instead.

Note to Dreamtrip Prize organisers Dorling Kindersley and Rough Guides:
Why not give away free ambient CDs with your books: street sounds, music, chatter, the clack of backgammon, the ting of trams, honk of taxis, shouts of street vendors ("Excuse me, Sir, where you from?") so readers get the atmosphere as they study their travel guides...

I also packed a pocket book to write a diary (see below, click to enlarge). Of course I took a copy of Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories of a City, and I used some prize money to buy this pair of expensive, Camper, mooching shoes.


THE HOTEL
The Turkoman was right opposite the Blue Mosque and could not have been better located. Next to the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, the rooftop terrace had a view over the Mosque, the Hippodrome's Column of Constantine VII and the Sea of Marmara (right). The mezzuen caller had just been judged the best in the city, and his call to prayer came around 5.25 each morning. I was glad I had the tape recorder.

It turned out to be Ramadan (Ramazan in Turkish). Every evening after sundown the whole Hippodrome area of Sultanahmet outside the Blue Mosque was a carnival of stalls, street food, and entertainment. There were free nightly shows of concerts, costumed bands, popular groups and whirling dirvishes and nobody got drunk. I kept the tape running.

There is lots of music in Istanbul. Not Western music, but genuinely popular Turkish music. A whole street in Beyoglu is taken up with shops selling musical instruments, all kinds of flutes to blow and string devices to pluck and strum. One night a waiter picked up a wine glass and used it as a microphone as he sang to the diners.


THE SIGHTS
It is easy to see the sights in Istanbul: you know where you are going before the start: Haghia Sophia, Topkapi, the Blue Mosque, the Bazaars, the Chora Monastery, Galata Bridge, Istiklâl Street in the New Town, where of course I visited the Pera Museum, not long ago converted from the old Hotel Bristol. (The engaging couple pictured on the far left are from a 2nd century BC sarcophagus from Salonika, in the Archaeological Museum)
Comparing Haghia Sophia with St Peter's in Rome, Robert Byron wrote: "The existence of St Sophia is atmospheric; that of St Peter's, overpoweringly, imminently substantial. One is a church to God; the other a salon for his agents. One is consecrated to reality, the other, to illusion. St Sophia, in fact, is large, and St Peter's is vilely, tragically small." Haghia Sophia did not disappoint; and I was very glad to see it at last. Topkapi Palace, too, with its passages and courtyards, its luminous tiles and seductive divans, its kiosks and balconies, pavilions and gardens was a breath of enlightenment. In Gülhane Park beside Topkapi a rabbit told my fortune: "You are entering a time of your life that is active and full of success," it said.
I mostly stayed around the old town, and found it was a succession of small communities, beyond the Süleymaniye Mosque, for example, where there are a few remaining wooden Ottoman houses, and the Kumkapi district where there is a fish market and restaurants by the Sea of Marmara. Even in the New Town there was a sense of community. In blocks of flats where immigrant Kurds and gypsies lived, food sellers regularly come by and people let down baskets on ropes to buy their wares.
Tourists were not numerous, mostly Spanish and Italian, and did not stray far from the main sights. People were great everywhere, and I felt safe as houses. Nothing was expensive, and I was hard-pressed to spend the £400 prize booty I had brought for the week.

THE BOAT TRIPS
Unquestionably a highlight.

1. A Bosphorus trip, starting at Eminönü quay at 10.30am, travelling up past the beautiuful yali waterside manors and small fishing villages with a 3-hour lunch stop at Anadolu Kavagi (pictured below left) on the Asian shore at the mouth of the Black Sea.

2. Princes' Islands. Catch an almost empty 8am ferry at Kalabas by the Dolmabahçe Palace for the two-hour trip to the islands (about £4 return), stopping at the last one, Büyükada, the largest. Unspoilt with no cars allowed, this is a beautiful backwater of handsome villas (Trotsky was exiled here), pine wood hills and rocky shores. I took a 90-minute phaeton carriage ride around the edge of it.


I did take a camera, and when I reached home I was surprised to find I had taken 400 pictures.

Istanbul diary

Normandy August 2007

I am Joby, Roger's daughter, and I am looking so pleased because my generous dad gave some of his winnings to me and I went to France with my friend Will. We stayed in a gargantuan chateau in a little village called Aumeville in Normandy. An apartment in the chateau was lent to us by my friend Bizz's generous dad Geoffrey. We walked along blustery Norman beaches and swam in the sea. We dunked croissants in coffee. We swallowed oysters from the harbour at St Vaast. We swigged apply pommeau. We saw the graves of German and American soldiers at Combe and Omaha. We went to Honfleur and to the wedding of my friend George and her now husband John, where we celebrated and ate well and danced badly. Now I am home and looking less pleased. No more croissants for me. Thank you dad.

Russia: looking back

Things I've thought and talked about since getting back:

1. How useful the BBC Active language course had been (book and 2 CDs). Though I didn't get far with it, it made an excellent, easy start.

2, How lucky we are, with our ease of travel. Many Russians don't seem to grasp tourists' needs because they have never been tourists themselves.

2. The cathedrals and churches of the Kremlin made the most enduring impression. They were so ancient and shockingly rich in frescoes and iconography. There is no good book about them available in Britain, and I kick myself for not buying one of the souvenir books on sale – I wish I had bought a catalogue for St Petersburg's Russian Museum, too. Usually I am a sucker for souvenir picture books, telling myself that I may never pass this way again.

3. St Petersburg was enjoyable but it is Moscow that I continue to wonder about. I would happily go there again.

4. I have not read Pushkin since I got back, but I am reading Natasha's Dance, and I have read Martin Cruz Smith's new Arkady Renko thriller. Stalin's Ghost is a galloping crime novel with spades of interesting background and a central plot about a fledgling political movement of Chechnya war veterans whose American PR advisers tell them to call their movement the Patriotic Party – a name that won't fail, especially if they hijack the memory of an increasingly venerated Stalin. Without visiting Russia I would have thought the idea implausible.

5. In St Petersburg we learned of the extraordinary life of the poet Anna Akhmatova, who has a house-museum in the Sheremetev Palace, and how, for fear of persecution, she did not write most of her poetry down, but committed it to memory among her friends. This is not borne out in D.M. Thomas's introduction to the Penguin Classic of her work. She is anyway a local heroine, for having refused to desert Leningrad during the 29-month siege in World War II. Not surprisingly most of her work is dark. This poem, from 1914, is different:

I've a lot of feeling for you. You're kind.
We'll kiss, grow old, walk around.
Light months will fly over us
Like snowy stars.

Hotel Bristol, St Petersburg

"A SIGN OF THE TIMES IN RUSSIA: THE BOMB EXPLOSION AT THE HOTEL BRISTOL, ST. PETERSBURG"
This was a story in the Daily Graphic on March 25, 1905. The report beneath the illustration read: "The bomb explosion at the hotel here shook the building to its very foundation. Windows were smashed, and some of the walls were cracked. The man who carried the bomb is supposed to have carelessly dropped it, and he paid for his blundering with his own life. At first he was reported to be an Englishman, but it has since been established that he was a revolutionist. A number of people in the hotel were injured by the explosion, and many passers by at the time were hurled to the ground."

In my tireless quest for news of all Bristol hotels, funded by my prize money, I looked for evidence of the former Bristol along the Moika River where it once stood, and though there are other smart hotels there today, like the Kempinski and the Pushkin, there was no sign of it, and nobody I asked could tell me anything about it. On the whole, the name Bristol did not survive the revolution in the Soviet Union, though I thought it might have resurfaced, as it has at the refurbished Hotel Bristol in Odessa. more

Misty swamps

Moscow & St Petersburg, July 7–14, 2007

I dreamed of this sleep. I dreamed of the swaying bunk and the iron-willed rails carrying me north through the night from Moscow to St Petersburg. Birch forests, tundra, misty swamps. Serfs and tsars, revolutionaries and oligarchs. Red days, white nights.
MOSCOW BESTS: Kremlin churches, icons, Red Square space, Stalin skyscrapers, metros, river trip, those pavement cafes on the street behind the Bolshoi (closed for renovation). Elku Pulku and Mou-Mou self service restaurants: healthy local food without a menu or a waiter. (In 1905 waiters went on strike against the ignominy of having to accept tips.)
ST PETERSBURG BEST BITS: White nights, rivers and canals, Russian Museum, writers’ house-museums. Food for thought: Chaika, by the canal, with jazz and Baltic fish; The Idiot – me too for not going there.
Disappointing not to hear any music in this land of towering composers, but in high summer cities are often emptied of their orchestras.
So much to read now: Natasha’s Dance, Pushkin, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam...