While planning this trip we decided to include several small trips within the bigger one. The smaller ones included: visits to old friends in Europe, some new destinations(the Middle East, the Balkans), a stop in Japan to see Yo's family, a few wild cards(Iceland, Hong Kong, Dubai), and a return to our favorite place of all, the Indian Subcontinent. Leaving Egypt the Middle East segment of our trip came to an end. It's a part of the world that I've wanted to see for years, but kept putting off because the situation there always seemed a bit too volatile. Finally I realized that there is always going to be some situation or other going on. It's just the nature of the Middle East. So now seemed as good a time as any. But its funny, the only time I did feel nervous while traveling there was when I happening to see some CNN or BBC. The news really does a good job of making the Middle East look a lot scarier than it is. When I think of the Middle East now it will not be of suicide bombers or Muslim extremists, but rather of old bearded men with callouses on their foreheads from a lifetime of touching their heads to the ground while praying, sitting at outdoor cafes drinking tea, playing dominos and smoking apple flavored tobacco from water pipes. I like this image a lot better.

From Cairo, we flew to India via Dubai on Emirates Airlines, voted the best airline in the world several years running. It was the only time I ever wished that the flight had been longer. Yo and I didn't speak to each other at all on the flight instead playing around on our personal TV's and it's 500 channels. Unfortunately they made us get off the plane in Dubai where we had a 12 hour layover. Instead of hanging out at the airport we caught a bus into town. Dubai is like the Las Vegas of the Middle East. The locals, rich with oil money, make up only 15% of the population. The remaining 85% are foreigners(mostly Indians, Philippinos, Indonesians) who do all the work the locals don't feel like doing, which happens to be most of it. It has all this crazy architecture, buildings that look like sailboats & flowers and are in the process of constructing the biggest building in the world... on a foundation of sand. Sounds scary. We spent all night roaming the city, then it was back to the airport for our 6am flight.

A few weeks ago we thought it might be fun to pop up to Kathmandu before diving into the kookiness that is India. If you've always wanted to go to India, but were a little nervous(and rightly so), I'd recommend coming to Nepal first. It's like India Lite, all the craziest you've come to expect, but with one third less hassels. So when we arrived in Delhi from Dubai, we bought one way tickets to Kathmandu(it was no easy task, but I'll spare you the details). And so it was that we landed in Kathmandu 36 sleepless hours after leaving Cairo. From the Pyramids to the Himalaya in less than two days. We're both a bit wiped out so we'll be chilling out here for a while.

-Shawn