Snapshots of Syria
Posted: May 29, 2012 Filed under: photography, travel | Tags: Homs, photography, Syria, travel 1 Comment »Daily news reports of more violence in Homs; grainy video shows explosions and be-rubbled concrete. I was there, I think. But really, was I? The name familiar but the town recalled now only in the broadest brush strokes, memories reduced to a series of vignettes.
A fairly typical day
Posted: May 11, 2012 Filed under: Pass me the bottle | Tags: Cairo, Egypt, life 2 Comments »I wake early, sweating; the AC went off some time in the night. Down in the street it’s warm too, though it will be hotter later. Running alongside the railway tracks I sweat more. After ten minutes I meet the first pack of dogs. Docile during the day, in the early morning they roam in packs. You might get past them walking but running is asking for trouble. They chase me in a snarling mob, snapping at my heels. One on one they won’t look you in the eye but when the pack’s together there’s a battle cry. I turn and rush at them, sending them scurrying but provoking further fury. The only drop the pursuit when I stoop to pick up a brick. Shortly afterwards I run down an alley into another pack. This time I don’t manage to scare them off so easily and they are too close to run from. A baying standoff ensues that is only broken by a passing tuktuk. The next dogs I see I’m careful to walk past. Read the rest of this entry »
Recent developments
Posted: May 9, 2012 Filed under: Pass me the bottle, travel | Tags: Cairo, Egypt, life 4 Comments »The fun had to stop at some point and since it had already stopped being fun sometime ago, I’m glad it happened when it did. Yes, the funemployment is over and I have a job. Is this the end for the Stranger? Hardly, from adjusting to smoking in the office (very Mad Men) to interviews at country clubs, life has never been odder. Read the rest of this entry »
Photos from downtown Cairo
Posted: March 18, 2012 Filed under: journalism, photography | Tags: Cairo, graffiti, protests, Tahrir 2 Comments »This week I had a photo essay on Cairo’s revolutionary graffiti published on Renounce/Reverb, a cool new website for interesting journalism.
I had a dig around and found a few more photos from protests back in February and uploaded them to my Flickr account.
A strange year in 2011
Posted: January 23, 2012 Filed under: Pass me the bottle 1 Comment »A Stranger Everywhere is a bit of an amorphous blog. Most blogs seem to have a fairly clear sense of purpose but the stranger’s is simply a place for stories that have nowhere else to go. Maybe it’s for that reason that people seem to end up here from some fairly unusual places. A recent perusal of the site stats revealed some of the more unusual routes search engine terms that have led unsuspecting browsers to the stranger’s lair. Here are a sample:
Welcome to Sharm El Sheikh
Posted: January 20, 2012 Filed under: travel | Tags: blues, Egypt, life, Sharm El Sheikh, travel 14 Comments »“Welcome to Sharm El Sheikh.”
A man dressed in a black dish-dash and wrapped in a keffiyeh gestured me to sit with his friends at the coffee stall.
“What you want my friend? Beer? Hasheesh?” the waiter asked.
“No, a tea and a sheesha.”
The waiter lapsed into Arabic but I guessed he was asking my flavour preference. I paused, trying to remember the word.
“T-t-tuffaha? Apple?”
“Yes, yes my friend no problem.”
Scanning the room for food options I saw a man with a plate.
“And a sandwich?”
“Yes, yes, sandwich. Sandwich meat, sandwich chicken?”
“Sandwich meat.” Read the rest of this entry »
General strike paralyses Kathmandu
Posted: December 20, 2011 Filed under: journalism, photography | Tags: bandh, general strike, Journalism, Kathmandu, Nepal, strike Leave a comment »KATHMANDU: A general strike in Nepal has brought the country to a standstill today.
Kathmandu’s normally congested streets were virtually empty and its stores closed after the Nepali Congress (NC) political party orchestrated a nationwide bandh, or strike, to protest the death of a district president of the NC youth wing.
Escaping India
Posted: November 29, 2011 Filed under: travel | Tags: India, Kathmandu, Mumbai, Nepal, trains, travel 2 Comments »I boarded the train and found my seat. I switched my laptop on and settled in for the three and half hour ride back to Mumbai. A dozen or so episodes of Arrested Development later and I started to wonder when we would arrive. A man came past selling meals. People started folding down the bunks. This was concerning; Mumbai was the end of the line and we were supposed to have arrived 15 minutes ago.
“Where are you going?” I asked the moustachioed man sitting next to me in a purple shirt. He had noticed me looking nervously out the window for Mumbai’s skyline.
“Trivandrum. Where you go?”
“Umm, Mumbai…” I replied, realising even as I said it that I was certainly not going to Mumbai.
