Last episode finished off at night 1 of the 4 night cruise down The Nile.  The cruise ships really are the easiest and most cost effective way to explore the most famous parts of Upper Egypt (which is southern Egypt, but that’s the direction The Nile flows from and is thus considered ‘up.’)  The ships are kind of ridiculous and slightly tacky, but once you’re sailing, it doesn’t matter.  The luscious fertile Nile corridor is breath taking – its perfect balance of cool water, green farmlands and date palm perimeter, giving way to golden sandy hills and azure skies.  Highlight: sailing through the protected waterways on a separate, smaller private boat to visit a Nubian Village.  Other highlights of Upper Egypt were The Valley of The Kings and Karnak Temple.  I could never have imagined how prolific the hieroglyphics are across all of the temples and tombs, or how detailed and well preserved they were, even colourful at times.

After the cruise, Mum, Jodie and I caught the all day bus to Siwa to begin our desert trip – and instantly I fell in love with its mud-brick houses, donkey-drawn taxis, friendly people and local produce.  Siwa is approximately 150km from the Libyan border and truly is an oasis in the middle of the desert, right beside the Great Sea of Sand.  The Siwans are a culture unto themselves, with their own languages, laws and traditions, although of course they now have a long history being influenced by the rest of Egypt and Islam.  A young Siwan man, Naser, was our guide for our whole desert trip and took us out into the desert to camp overnight in the ancient ex-ocean, the Great Sea of Sand that is now miles of rolling soft sand dunes with fossilised remnants of its underwater past.  Sleeping on the desert sand with no tent, beneath the stars and the full moon, were perhaps the most sacred hours of my young life, as were the sunny sandy days, interspersed with fun moments of sand boarding and swimming in serene cool and hot springs.  I am aching to return to the Great Sea of Sand and to Siwa.  Visiting the Black and White desert outside Bahariya and spending time with Naser was also unforgettable.

Week three of three was spent mostly in Cairo, with a short trip to the famous port of Alexandria, where I bought a bejewelled evening gown and fantasised about its glamorous poetic past, all the while being actually unimpressed by the grimy reality of its modern times.  Cairo is equally filthy, but amongst the soot and the rubbish, it oozes with character.  As with Istanbul, Cairo’s not quite how it’s made out to be.  Sure there’s the tourist haggling and pyramid gimmicks, but it also has a real small town, family feel around its 22 million people. The streets feel safe, the vibe is random and disorganised (aside from the Islamic conventions that most adhere to) and it was great to speak with people about the revolution. Staying with Jodie and Ahmed also helped to make our time their special, as we felt like honorary locals being with them and their family.  Highlight of Cairo was EATING EATING EATING and more eating.  Latest addiction is Kushari (not sure exactly how to spell it) which is carbohydrate heaven and dangerously cheap – macaroni, vermicelli, rice, lentils and crispy fried onion with chilli tomato sauce – words can’t describe how tasty and how fattening it is.  I loved learning bits and pieces of Arabic too and became fascinated by Islamic art – that romantic, scrolling, hypnotic text, the detail in all the relief work, the dainty application of colour and painstaking precision in the woodwork.  To be honest, I enjoyed the Museum of Islamic Art more than I enjoyed the Egyptian museum.  Do make the effort to find it if you are ever in Cairo.  Although the Egyptian Museum was a great experience too – it’s like a factory outlet for ancient relics!  Hardly anything has labels or any sort of order – it’s just an all in brawl! Ha!

The people I encountered in Egypt were equally as unforgettable as all the ancient wonders – Naser and the Siwans, Ahmed’s family, the cheeky and heartbreakingly handsome cruise ship staff, the numerous taxi drivers, tour guides and the COUNTLESS Mohammed’s. And of course, the street kids. It was confronting to see such poverty first hand, as it always is.  And surprising to see it butting up so closely with the wealthy – the dirty-faced, hungry children and the wealthy Arab women with their gold accessories peeking out from behind their veiled silhouettes – their worlds are so close and yet so far apart.  I must admit though, it made me think of my own country often, and our Indigenous people who remain so dispossessed, and how oblivious the world is to this situation in Australia.  A lot of people I encountered didn’t even know there was a race of people native to Australia.  You can imagine how shattering this is to hear, as an Australian.

I’ll summarise from my warehouse room in London by saying – if you haven’t been to Egypt, do make the effort to go. And if you go, do make the effort to get off the tourist trail and let the real Egypt get under your skin.  The next opportunity I have to return there, I will.

Turkey photos are up at www.facebook.com/pottergeorgia and Egypt will be up asap also…
Til next episode, bosa habeebi!

x
Georgia

Turkey was exactly how it had been described to me, which is the opposite of how you would imagine it if you didn’t know better. It is super relaxed, extremely clean, safe, friendly, organised and inexplicably pretty.

I spent the first 3 days in Sultanahmet, which is the main tourist area of Istanbul.  It has all the old terrace-style buildings and cobblestone streets etc – looks like it’s straight out of a fairytale.  It was a bustling time to be there as the snow & cruel cold had only been gone a couple of weeks, which meant everyone was out on the streets touching up paint and planting colourful annuals along the footpath in preparation for the high tourist season.  I arrived in perfect timing for the beginning of the tulip festival! Tulips are actually native to Turkey and were exported to Holland.  It was quite a sight, Tulips, everywhere, across the whole city, in enormous Ottoman-esque ornate colour coded designs.  The whole country in fact was blossoming with the beginning of spring – peach, pear, apricot, apple tree in full blooms, sweetly pink and white, figs and pistachio trees laden with the beginning of their crop, wild chamomile on every street edge (it grows like the dandilion) and my personal favourite… wild red poppies, en masse, everywhere.

Istanbul has an incredible vibe and three days was nowhere near adequate. My heart ached leaving and I can’t wait to return.  Highlights were the Haiga Sophia (Pink Mosque for Saint Sophia), Topkapi Palace (never been to a real palace before – everything was encrusted with real gold, rubies and emeralds) and eating dinner in the restaurants under the Galata Bridge near the Galata Tower, with fishing lines hanging down from the bridge above, 200 drunk Turks in the bar behind us dancing to a traditional band and having my first true glass of Turkish Raki.  I now have a small addiction to both Turkish Coffee (if you want it sweet you have to ask, because it can’t be stirred again once it is poured due to the muddy sediment at the bottom) and Raki, which is basically like Ouzo, only if you ask a Turk they will say Raki is better because they invented it first.

Then I caught a flight to Izmir and a bus to Ephesus, the famous ancient runes of the largest, richest city in the whole of the Roman Empire.  When I first arrived, I thought it was awesome to see such old rocks, some with the remnants of ornate carvings, BUT as you progress down the gentle hill, the ever increasing grandeur of the ruins was truly impressive and I enjoyed imagining myself in a past life wandering down the main drag in my toga carrying a pomegranate towards the enormous sandstone and marble library.  I overnighted in the quaint nearby Selcuk (Seljuk), ate local wild food and smoked shisha alongside eating baklava on a rooftop.

Bus to Pamakule. Seriously – google image that shit!  Huge calcite/calcium deposits on the top of a mountain that make it look like it’s snow capped, with a hot spring!  It was an ancient health spa/hospice where people came to be healed or spend their final days in the mineral water pools.  The antique pool you swim in still has the genuine ancient ruins in it and is 36 degrees, although it was a bitch getting out! Freezing! Then the staggered ‘terraces’ which you can see in the photos fill up with the warm water too, and you can walk all the way down the terraces back to the town , which I did, shoes off and all.  In Australia, there is no way you would be allowed to teeter over the edge of a cliff standing in knee high water then continue to walk along that edge for a kilometre barefooted. But in Turkey… no worries! Love it.

Overnight bus to Cappadocia (Kapadokya which is local spelling and how it is pronounced)– about 8 hours. Once again – google image that shit!  You’ll see from the photos, the whole area is like outer space, formed by some crazy volcano action about 60 million years ago. But the Christians used it to hide themselves and their religion by digging a myriad of cave cities in the ‘fairy chimneys.’  Lots of the caves are now heritage listed so local people can’t live in them, but there are so many across such a large area that you will see the occasional one that is being squatted in or being used to store grain etc.  The caves in the town areas (Cappadocia is broken up into a few towns) are still used and lots have been turned into restaurants and hotels. So, yes, I stayed in a cave. Literally, a cold stone gave dug into the side of the mountain!  I stayed at the Shoestring Pension, which is super homely and if you get the chance to go there, Sulyman will look after you.  I spent 3 days there and I now feel like a have some true friends in Turkey.  Some caves are simple caves, others are more sophisticated, some are ancient carved churches with painted interiors and there is also an enormous 8 level underground city called Derinkuyu Yeralti Sehri, four of those levels are open to the public. The city was used to hide from enemies etc and it is remarkably sophisticated! Hard to explain without photos, but there are stables, kitchens, ventilation shafts, a graveyard (it still smells), irrigation and defence mechanisms throughout the whole underground city.  Sometimes even little me had to bend in half to fit through the hallways and doorways. Highlights of Goreme were horse riding through Rose Valley (Rose because of the colour of the stone mountains), being pummelled by an old Turkish woman at the Bath House (Hamaam) who called me Jee-Jo (a good kind of pummelled) and hot air ballooning over the whole Cappadocia region at sunrise, with a crash landing to finish!

This is my second night in Egypt and I am typing this from the Salon on a cruise ship.  Because there are hardly any tourists post-revolution I have been upgraded for free at every turn and the cruise ship I am on is far swankier than what I would ever book for myself. But The Nile and the Egyptian desert still surrounds me so I am happy.  Egypt is like nowhere I have ever experienced, in a good way, but I won’t bother reflecting on it too much until more time has passed. As you all will have experienced, it’s a strange feeling, seeing sights you’ve looked at on print for a lifetime, suddenly before your eyes – today’s sunset from the deck of the boat was special, as the Nile here is clean and the air is fresh, and the luscious riverbanks soon give way desert terrain…..with oasis style palm tree everywhere and men in turbans with donkeys and goats…!  It’s just like the Wilbur Smith novels…

Photos will be up on facebook.com/pottergeorgia asap
Til next episode, elveda!

Love,
Jee-Jo.

Georgia Anne Muldrow – Run Way

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RBjMrRXTxI

Frank Ocean – Swim Good (he’s writing for Beyonce’s new album)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZHztmRxpyU

Tyler The Creator – Yonkers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSbZidsgMfw

and in general oddfuture.com is floating my boat…

plus James Blake’s cover of Feist’s Limit To Your Love

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOT2-OTebx0

The city that is not my home but has my heart, beautiful Melbourne is the location for my last Australian show before I head overseas.

This Saturday February 19, a stellar all-Brisbane lineup will hit Melbourne’s most exciting new venue, Revolt. The night is a celebration of Tin Can Radio’s latest single release, and features support sets by yours truly (I’m bringing the whole band), Pear & the Awkward Orchestra and Killbot Kindergarten. Details below! (Click the links I dare you!)

Qld’ers and Northern NSW’ers, THANKYOU to those of you who made it to my last Brisbane show at The Zoo. It was an inspiring night that I will remember forever. Pretty please! Spread the word to your Melbourne crew about our show there this Saturday. Much appreciation.

love Georgia xo

Final Australian Show in Melbourne
supporting Tin Can Radio (Single Launch)
Saturday February 19 at REVOLT Melbourne

12 Elizabeth St, Kensington, Melbourne

Special guests Pear & the Awkward Orchestra & Killbot Kindergarten
Doors 7:30pm – $15
Buy a TICKET asap through revoltproductions.com
RSVP on facebook

I promise I’m not going to start doing a John Farnham. I reallly am going overseas and won’t be performing in Australia for a significant time. BUT how could I say no when the opportunity came up to play an additional show in Melbourne before my departure! Details below (keep scrolling Melbourne.) Remember, heaps of words in these message are links so click if you dare!

For those of you in Qld and Northern NSW, our final show in Qld is now just one week away! This is shaping up to be a killer night and if you haven’t seen me for a while, you are in for a surprise! Tickets are going like pikelets with fresh cream so jump on the links below to get one.

love Georgia xo

Final Queensland Show!
Thursday February 10 at The Zoo

Ann St, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane

Special guests Hunz & Killbot Kindergarten
Doors 7:30pm – $12
Buy a TICKET asap through Oztix & thezoo.com.au
RSVP on facebook

Final Australia Show in Melbourne
supporting Tin Can Radio (Single Launch)
Saturday February 19 at REVOLT Melbourne

12 Elizabeth St, Kensington, Melbourne

Special guests Pear & the Awkward Orchestra & Killbot Kindergarten
Doors 7:30pm – $15
Buy a TICKET asap through revoltproductions.com
RSVP on facebook