Dune Bashing in Dubai. Quite entertaining. Also bloody hot.
Travel
A little bit of Seychelles
There will be more later! At the moment I'm frantically looking for a place to stay in London. Hopefully next week will be a bit less stress-y..
Where to go now?
We left the beautiful Seychellian island of La Digue on Saturday afternoon, took a ferry back to Praslin island, then another ferry to Mahe. It was a violent ride; the sea was not kind to us. On Mahe we wandered around for a bit, waiting for our flight to Dubai which left at midnight. My knife was sarcastically dropped into the forbidden items bucket by customs because I had forgotten to put it in my suitcase. The second time I made that mistake. Finally passing through customs we made our way to the AoMA (Area of Maximum Air-conditioning) and waited. Then in Dubai, we waited again. The next morning we were back in London. The big question in my head right now is: now what?
I already had strong feelings about traveling, but this trip only brought it out even more. The desire to go 'home' has gone and I only want to go forward. See new places. Do new things. For as long as I can until my money and my youth runs out. This is the start of the sprint. I decided not to go back to Holland this time. I'm trying to find an apartment in London for a couple of months, which will give some time to finish up my programming activities and to plan the next destination. I still have my touring bicycle here. I can take it with me on a trip or come back to London any time and start cycling. All that I need to do now is to start reducing the weight. Both of myself and of my luggage. I haven't decided where to go next, but a lot of fun possibilities are swirling around in my head: buying a camper van and traveling around Europe, going to some random tropical island for a month, Chernobyl ( Xi ;) ), Cuba, Japan. So many places to go. Now is the time to do it. Let's go!
The Difference Between a Tourist and a Traveler
I read a great quote in a book about traveling, explaining the difference between tourism and traveling (and perhaps more importantly, the difference between tourists and travelers). Unfortunately I forgot the exact quote so I made up my own.
The difference between a tourist and a traveler is that the traveler goes to a place without any preconceptions, whereas the tourist already decided on how he's going to experience it. The traveler has an open mind and lets the place happen to him. The tourist brings with him his own environment and expectations, thereby diluting (polluting?) the experience.
The beauty of traveling is that you can leave your baggage behind and re-invent yourself every time you go to a new place. I've encountered the tourist/traveler distinction many times while cycling, and I've been on both sides of the spectrum. You can book a hotel in advance, decide in which city (or restaurant, even) to have lunch before you leave, figure out the exact route you will cycle and just get to your destination with the focus on cycling and following your plan. Although cycling does let you experience every intermediate location between your starting point and your ending point, this way of cycling is pretty close to tourism. On the other hand, you can also start cycling in the morning in the direction you want to go and see which roads you will encounter, wander around until you have to ask local people for directions, and then find a place to stay at the last moment, again following local people's advice. The places that you visit might be exactly the same, but the mindset is different. And the mindset is what's most important.
もうすぐ旅立ち
イタリアで自転車旅行してからすぐオランダに戻って、もう３週間が経ちました。来週はまた新しい旅が始まる。イギリスからちょっとだけドバイで遊んで、セイシェルに行く。セイシェルはマダガスカルの北の島々、トロピカルでスゲーところ（なはずだ）。
でも、その後の事はまだあんまり考えてない。いずれは日本に戻りたいけど、どうやってそれを実現するのはぜんぜん分からない。その前にヨーロッパでも旅行しようかな。。と思って、たぶん自転車でロンドンからオランダに帰る。
それでも仕事したくない！まだ普通に日本に行って、普通の仕事して、普通に定住しておじさんになるのはまだ早すぎる！まずはまた自転車旅行、ニュージーランド、南アメリカ、中国、世界で生きたい場所がたくさんある。でもお金が足りないかもしれない。チャンスは今しかないと思うけど、どれだけの貯金を使えるのが問題だ。とりあえず私は’お金がぜんぜんもんだいない！’という考え方で旅まくってたけど、それはもちろん永遠に続けない。ま、そのときはそのときで今は自由に生きているんだ。悪くない。
あばよ！
Sicily Panoramas
Here's two panoramas I shot while cycling. I really loved the scenery of Sicily. It reminded me of Gladiator :D
Valle dei Templi at Agrigento
You can see Kamil and Tim cycling on the bridge in the second photo. There were several of these bridges. They were all very very tall and the guardrails were very very low.
Departing Agrigento, going West
Closing thoughts on Sicily
Alright, so it's been over a week now and I still haven't really blogged about the trip (except for the liveblogging). I've pretty much cooled down so much that I only have a handful of things to say about it. Let's start with an imagedump: Sicily part one, two and three.
Sicily was just awesome. I was expecting to see beautiful landscapes, and I got them. It's truly a great place to cycle around in, especially the countryside. The urban area around Palermo wasn't too bad, although we had to do a 400m climb just to get to the coastline because the only other road was a highway. That's still a lot better than Catania, for which the only road going south was the highway.
Speaking of Catania, I would like to mention how much it sucked for cycling. The trip from the airport to the city center took us through the most dodgy areas I have ever cycled in, and it did look very very slummy. This coming from a guy who loved the city center of Catania and pretty much every other bit of Sicily. It doesn't help that we had to cycle on the bloody highway to get to Augusta, the next big town south of Catania. We encountered an alternate route, which was already on the map, but hadn't been completely built yet. That was a 10km detour. Besides that incident we encountered a lot of examples or modern architecture, road network design and other things like that which just made me think: Italians suck at building things.
The people of Sicily were extremely nice! They were all very friendly and we usually managed to convey our thoughts, despite our obvious dismastery of the language. Interacting with Sicilians is quite fun. Informal, sometimes random, sometimes impunctual, all in all very un-northern-european :D The Sicilian personality shines through in traffic as well, although busy cities like Palermo and Catania are quite different from the countryside. As usual, I prefer the countryside, although I remember my travelmates saying they liked being back in the city when we arrived at Palermo.
Have I mentioned the food? Because it was great. Every little thing I ate in Sicily was blessed with a very strong flavor. Everything just tasted... stronger, than in Holland. I still remember the delicious food we had at an olive farm one night. So delicious. It wasn't too expensive either, and neither were the hotels. The 3 of us could usually get a bed at a B&B or hostel for under 25€ each. I should note that we didn't camp at all, so I can't comment on how easy it is to find camping places or other places to pitch your tent.
The thing that I remember most about the trip though, is the cycling. The feeling of waking up in one town, cycling the whole day and then ending up in another town. That's the real essence of touring cycling. It's such a great feeling to cycle one-way only. It's been in a year since I had that feeling, and I'm glad I found it again. I started out really weak, but as we climbed more and more hills my leg muscles found back the strength from last year, and finally during the last few days of the trip I was able to enjoy the tough bits again. All this cycling inspired me to go on a cycling trip again this summer. I'll probably cycle back from London to Groningen, but I might make a few detours along the way. A plan is slowly forming in my head..
So, to summarize: Sicily: bloody great! Highly recommended and well worth a visit.
Arrived in Sicily!
Catania is such a rathole! I am amazed by the third-world countriness of it all. Despite that I am very impressed by the architecture and the general oldness of everything in the city. The cycle ride from airport to city center took us through a very slummy area that looked like a dodgy place in Africa.
Disclaimer: kamil says that everything in this post is a total exaggeration.
More later!
No inconvenience whatsoever
Damn you iPad. The first story I type, I realize that there's an undo button but not a redo button. I will write my story again.
Everything is going too smoothly! I cycled to the station this afternoon, went back halfway because I forgot my water bottle, then hopped on then train with my bicycle and 3 hours later I was at the airport. Bagging the bike took only 15 minutes instead of the 30 that I thought it would. Next to the place I bagged my bicycle happened to me a baggage cart for me to use, the only one in the vicinity. I took two elevators upwards and arrived at the check-in counter. They escorted me to the odd-sized luggage area where I deposited my bike, and all was done. I went through customs, had dinner and am now typing up this story.
I wonder why they call it odd-sized luggage and not over-sized luggage. Is it to be politically correct? Did some fat piece of luggage get offended? Should we start calling fat people "odd-sized" people?
The iPad keyboard is really a lot more terrible than I thought. I can't just type as I would on a pc. It's slowing me down and it annoys me. It would have been an absolute disaster were it not for the autocorrect. Then again, I've had this thing for over a week and this is the first time I've seriously typed on it. I guess the iPad is more meant for consumption, not production.
On my way to London! And Sicily in two weeks! Epic cycling trip!
Holland and iPads and travel
I'm going back to Holland soon. While I enjoy the time I spend with my friends in London a lot, it is in fact cheaper to visit them once a month than to live here. As all my friends are quite technical, talking to them always leads to interesting areas that may lead to a profitable business. Be it iPhone applications, ideas for a website or service, Android, hardware, anything. The ideas flow freely and I'm free to take my pick and try to develop them. The feeling of freedom is great.
So I've got plenty of time, the ideas started flowing in, now I need to set up my working place. I rather regret that I bought a new PC just before I quit my job. It'll come in handy for whatever I'm going to do next, but I'm really thinking about going ultra-mobile. I guess I just want to go back to that cycling-trip feeling of being able to go wherever I want, whenever I want. I may consider swapping my PC for a powerful laptop. So if anyone's interested in a brand-new i7 950 system with SSD and Radeon HD6870 let me know.
On a side note, I recently had the opportunity to play with an iPad. I tried it before when it first came out in the beginning of 2010, and also a while back at the Apple store in London. As much as I would like to hate Apple for being evil and too expensive and whatnot, there's just nothing bad I can say about the iPad. It really is incredibly good. Everyone I know who has tried the iPad has become addicted to it immediately. I might just have to get one for myself...
Travel plans have been made! This summer is going to be another fun holiday to an exotic destination! I can't wait till summer...