From Cairo to the Connemara: A Sojournal

  EGYPT 22 nd February – 6 th March EXTREMELY CAIRO   I like flying at night. Maybe it’s the sensation of floating majestically through the outer reaches of the solar system; maybe it’s because there’s no horizon, only a seamless black vault where what you see as you look down is a continuation of the night sky with its dark wells, its lone stars, its occasional clusters and its shimmering constellations. Tonight, having performed all the anal calculations I could dream up like the number of hours elapsed since we’d last slept seriously (41), time differences (WA time minus 6 hours) and how many times the brat behind me had kicked my seat (roughly 10 to the power of 7), I found myself dreaming out the window this was the starship Enterprise travelling at warp speed through the Zark Quadrant. It wasn’t too far from the mark – our fellow travellers were exotic creatures, time was fluid and we were completely warped with exhaustion. I’m sure anyone watching our 737-500 ...

 Pt1 - 3:  THE JITTERS IN JEDDAH   The figures are necessarily vague but on an educated average the Saudi regime executes, mutilates or flogs between a hundred and a hundred and fifty miscreants a year for crimes as diverse as adultery (females beheaded by the sword), drugs (anything from 200 lashes to death), theft (amputation of one or both hands) and preaching Christianity (70 lashes in a single session and 18 months imprisonment – Riyadh is a Mormon-free zone). From our point of view there were two very scary things about all this: most of these unfortunate souls are foreign nationals and alcohol is outlawed in Saudi. We were dimly aware of the Saudi’s reputation for repression, but if we’d known the nitty gritty as we planed gracefully across the Najd, the country’s central plateau that from the air looks like nuked sandpaper passing slowly under a microscope, we’d have been far less relaxed about the impending stopover in Jeddah. We’d been aloft for nine and...

  Pt1 - 2: DON’T BURN YOUR CHICKENS   Kuala Lumpur is the sort of place that makes your hotel room look inviting. The thrusting architecture in central KL is vaguely interesting as an expression of Dr Mahathir’s personal ambition to have the tallest this and the shiniest that, but since we could see Petronas Towers from the window of our room we didn’t feel the need to tackle the teeming, honking streets to go see the world’s tallest building. We’d only stopped over here to break up the long flight to Cairo anyway and weren’t much fussed about seeing the city, so we spent the day hanging around the hotel. Because we were in an exotic location it didn’t feel like waiting, but that’s exactly what we were doing. A driver was due to pick us up at 8pm for the transfer back to Subang Airport where we’d enjoy another four hour wait before MH150 departed for Jeddah. We had to vacate the room mid-afternoon so we descended to the lobby where we could tread water in new surrounding...

FROM CAIRO TO THE CONNEMARA A SOJOURNAL  by Rob Cox FOREWORD Revisited twenty four years after the events it describes and fashioned from the meticulous ninety thousand word journal I maintained for the duration, many hours of video footage and soundscapes captured at regular intervals on microcassette, this is the story of an Awfully Big Adventure. On the 20 th February 1997 my then wife Tess and I boarded a flight to Kuala Lumpur on the first leg of an expedition which would last nine months and take us through seventeen countries from Egypt to Ireland. Although we functioned as a formidable team, were together twenty-four/seven and relied heavily on each other to successfully navigate the many considerable challenges along the way we each, in a very real sense and on many levels, travelled different journeys. We have long ago gone our separate ways and so, while it’s a source of great regret to me that we cannot share the rich memories of what was without doubt the experience...