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Instant love for Istanbul

22 – 23 aug 2016 ~ Before coming to Istanbul, I thought it would be a pretty city with some beautiful buildings, at a similar level to Budapest. Very shortly after arriving, it turns out I was wrong. Istanbul really is one of the great cities of this world, on a similar level to London,…
Bucharest Blues

16 – 22 aug 2016 ~ Romania is really starting to feel like eastern Europe rather than central Europe. The people were very kind, and really enjoyed eating and drinking together, and often appeared to me as supreme bohemiens.
Lowa Renegade user experience

Ubiquitous for a reason – but how does it hold up with all those seams?
Buda and Pest

14 & 15 aug 2016 ~ Despite the Soviets having done their best to concrete-ify it, and the dilapidation that not having quite enough money brings with it, Budapest still clearly shows that it was once the co-capital of one of Europe’s great empires.
The beginning at the end of the world

3 & 4 April 2014 ~ The orange, pink and yellow mud plaster in Oualata is often decorated with white geometric medallion patterns on the outside; the interior walls are often decorated in curly patterns. I’m not sure whether these patterns are of Berber, Arab, or Soninke heritage, but it gives the town an appearance…
Biergarten

14 aug 2016 ~ living the good life, Bavarian style
Celebrating change

12 – 14 aug 2016 ~ Having traveled south already, and there not being so much land to the west and north, I decided to go east. Looking for unusual and interesting destinations, I ended up looking at Georgia; a smallish country on the Southern Caucasus, just about in Asia. I took the sleeper train…
Fine, just fine

4 – 6 dec 2019 ~ The few tourists who do venture to Dakhla the city will find it to be fine. Apart from it being at the center of the broader political issues surrounding the Western Sahara, there is really nothing bad to say about Dakhla. And yet… for a frontier town in one…
Going nowhere, with saudades

3 – 4 dec 2019 ~ My first solo movement of the trip takes me, appropriately and perhaps unfortunately, on a very, very long bus ride into one of the most desolate territories in the world.
The monumental dumbass (and two lessons in economics)

27 nov – 2 dec 2019 ~ I’m not sure I’ve ever felt as dumb as when I bring Ananda to Marrakesh Airport. My thoughts are not at all with the awesome adventures that lie ahead. Why would any sane person leave for three months in search of “adventure” in some of the least developed…
The Art of Moroccan Salesmanship

29 nov – 2 dec 2019 ~ This time in Marrakesh, I am not alone, still poor, but with a wife that loves a bit of shopping. That also brings me into much closer contact with the curious art of Moroccan salesmanship. It can be equally infuriating, fascinating, and funny.
Four days with La Bahia

29 nov – 2 dec 2019 ~ So… here we go again… A solo backpacking trip in West Africa. Sounds familiar? It’s a continuation of my trip in 2014, but now I have an awesome job to go back to (so no unlimited travel time; 3 months max), and a most wonderful wife, which makes…
La Route du Despair

The pickup truck’s rear is filled up with fridges, food, furniture, construction materials, a few goats, and who knows what else, until the cargo is more than twice the size of the pickup truck itself… and then some ten people clamber on top of the cargo. I’m about to experience one of those quintessentially Saharan…
La Route de l’Espoir

There are many gueltas in the Sahara desert, and they’re often a lifesaver for nomadic herders. What makes this particular guelta special, though, is that it is one of the last places in the Sahara desert where the West African Crocodile still lives.
Why not?

The sea is dotted with hundreds of pirogues, waiting to be brought ashore. The beach is littered with thousands of men, women and children, whose job is apparently to bring the fish from the boats to the traders. It’s a dramatic scene, and one that repeats itself every afternoon.
GTA: Nouakchott

On the morning of my sisters’ birthday, I meet a couple from Bretagne, named Simon and Valerie. She works as an independent fashion designer, and he works on the local water quality authority. Their great passion, however, is west-African music. Their main reason for coming to this part of the world is to interview and…
To the place of the winds

For the most part, this is a thoroughly uninspiring city; it was a fisherman’s village of only a few hundred people until the 1950’s, when Mauritania became independent. Since it had always tagged along as the most neglected colony within the colossal French West Africa, it had never needed a capital, or much of anything…
A fairy tale with an anti-climax

I’m curious about the dinner invitation by Coumba, the sister of the bride at yesterday’s wedding. Cora calls her for me, and as luck would have it, Coumba can make it tomorrow evening. The following day, Edgar and Katie invite Adrian and me to join them on a trip to an oasis, about 50 kilometers…
Happily ever after

Together we carry the table with the cakes onto the hotel courtyard / parking lot that serves as the wedding reception’s venue. A man with a video camera and a painfully bright construction lamp, whose job is to document every last detail of the wedding, follows and records our every move. This, of course, does…
Of women, bandits and a fake tan

Chez Zaida is run, ofcourse, by Zaida. She’s a veritable powerhouse of a woman; black, fairly muscular, dressed somewhat in between Western and traditional styles, and giving her almost all-male staff orders in a calm but extremely authoritative way; there’s no doubting who’s boss here. Not that Mauritanian women are generally the stereotypical meek lambs;…
Echoes of songs

His voice isn’t a pretty one; it’s rough, dry, and has only a limited range before it breaks. Neither is he a particularly talented singer; he’s off-pitch much of the time (and not in the desired quarter-tones of Arab music either), and changes between high and low notes are never smooth. Still, it’s an evocative…
1/5th of a tourist horde

‘About five’ says Cheich, the owner of Rose des Sables, when I ask him how many tourists there’re staying in Chinguetti today. Chinguetti was founded in the 13th century, and it used to be a famous stopover for caravans of salt, gold, ivory and slaves making their way from sub-Saharan Africa to Moroccan and European…
The best job in the world

What follows is a short description of the process involved with sending a package in Atar, Mauritania. Asking around to find the unmarked post office of Atar: 5 minutes. Knocking on the most obvious door, hearing no answer, walking all the way around the building without finding an open door, and asking a mailman where…
Magic Carpet Ride

I feel the urge to pinch myself; am I really going to do this? The train isn’t here yet (although it should be), and the madness of what I’m about to do hasn’t really sunk in either. Finally, more than two hours after its scheduled departure, the train arrives. Three diesel locomotives chug by; five…
NouadhiBoum

‘How long will you stay in Nouadhibou?’ ‘I think just one night.’ ‘Do you know where you’ll be staying? ‘Not yet, there’re a few options in the Lonely Planet that seem okay…’ ‘You can sleep at my house if you want?’ He says it casually, as if it’s nothing special. Considering that I’ve known him…