Momento Mori

I've come to the conclusion that the more adventurous kind of travel is perhaps not suitable for me at my stage of life. All the banging about over bush tracks with rocks sticking out of them in jeeps has done a number on my back and I've got sciatica, which means the 12-hour journey to Sydney in about 48 hours is going to be torture. Sitting is painful. 

My left leg is threatening to go numb at any moment. I feel pins and needles. I'm just wondering if I can talk Chus into letting me hang upside down from her table--and watch over me so that I don't crash down--so that I can get traction on my back and release the trapped nerve. 

Out with a Bang (and a whimper)

My sojourn here is coming to an end, and I can only be happy that recent events did not happen earlier.  

At Satpura National Park we went on five bone-crushing safari rides, looking for the elusive tigers. No tigers were available to please the tourists. Plenty of deer, birds, wild boar and finally, a sloth bear. The tigers, we were told, are more likely to be seen in summer. (With temperatures in the high forties in the summer, it's extremely unlikely that I will ever see a Bengal tiger in the wild.) 

Yesterday afternoon, we took a ferry to the "core zone" in Satpura National Park, and then another bumpy ride, but still no tigers, though I did see a pygmy spotted owl--and managed a photo in the headlights of the gypsy (jeep), though sadly, my photo will never reach the light of day. More about that later.

As we got on the ferry to cross the river and return to our accommodation at Forsyth Lodge in Satpura N.P., I heard one of my fellow travellers burping very loudly, many times. I thought it was strange because he had been generally quite a polite man. Then he began projectile vomiting into the river. When we got to shore, I discovered that his wife had also thrown up. I wondered when the rest of us would succumb.

We had dinner, minus the vomiting couple, while we watched a David Attenborough doco shot in Satpura N.P. Then I went back to my room and began vomiting myself. I slept very little that night.

The next morning, after a four-hour drive to the station, we took a seven-hour train ride to Agra. I drank Sprite all day and couldn't eat anything. I dozed a little--very little--on the train, but slept well, almost immediately, in the hotel in Agra. 

I was so tired that I didn't realise that I hadn't brought my camera off that train. So, while I still have my wildlife camera, I don't have my street camera and lenses. I'm sad, but It's a job for the insurance company now.

In Satpura National Park

 Yesterday we came here to Satpura NP from Jabalpur. Here it’s quiet, beautiful. Jabalpur was noisy, smelly, but I took the opportunity to have my wishes granted by the goddess  when I sent out a floating oil lamp on the sacred river Narmada. We witnessed the prayer ceremony on the ghats. 

This morning we went for a morning boat ride on the river, looking for wildlife. Very soon we’re going on an afternoon safari. We still haven’t seen any tigers. Keep you fingers crossed for me!🤞

Here in beautiful(?) downtown Jabalpur

 Just arrived to very strong internet connection. Apparently Jabalpur is a centre of arms manufacture, full of military bods. So, after 5 days revving around the jungle, today is a city day. Soon we'll go on a photo walk to the old part of town. Tonight we're going to some kind of religious ceremony on the banks of the Narmada River, so should be interesting. 

On the way here today, we stopped into a town full of indigenous tribespeople, who were all very friendly to us, and let us take photos of them. The local potter showed us how he made pots in the baking sun, not because he was being paid, but he was just being kind. 

Above, you can see some of my favourite photos of the last few days. I haven't had time to go through the thousands of photos I've made so far. We have a very busy schedule with just a couple of hours down every couple of days. By the time I have dinner, I can't do anything but sleep. But that's ok. Plenty of time to sleep when I'm dead. 

Tigers, where are you?

 The wifi is hopelessly slow in our villa in the jungle, so I won't attach photos until I can get a better connection. 

We've been at two national parks, now: Panna and Bandhavgarh (where we are now). We've been chasing the elusive Bengal tiger for four days, twice a day, for about 10 hours a day, over rocky dirt tracks in an open jeep--and we haven't seen one. We did meet someone on the road who said they'd seen some and showed us photos. Beautiful photos! We're not sure whether we believe him. 

So, as you see, we've been very busy. There's hardly any time when you deduct time chasing tigers, meal times, sleep time. And after dinner, I'm not good for anything except to go to bed. Hence the poor output of the blog.

So, we've seen many different types of deer, two different species of monkey, many different and colourful birds, a snake. . . but, as I said, no tigers. We've seen tiger tracks and leopard tracks too. Fresh ones, but not fresh enough. 

The other four people on the tour are upbeat, friendly and helpful, just horrendously right wing. I stay out of their redneck conversations and look at the photos on my camera when they start talking about the ratbag left, and how everything was better when you could make pooftah jokes. 

Love the food and the accommodation is all luxurious. 

Well, I'd better leave off now because soon it will be lunch time, and at 2:30 we're going out tiger hunting again. I haven't managed to look at many of the photos I've taken over the last four days, and I'd like to see if I got any keepers, so that's what I'll try to do as soon as I sign off here. 

Goodbye Chus. . .Hello tigers.

 Tomorrow I spend my last few hours with Chus, José and Pablo. I join the safari in the evening. Chus has been very hospitable to me and her poor family have had to put up with another person always hanging around like a bad smell, but they have only been very generous and kind to me. 

The last couple of days, I've been to two parks: Nehru and Lodi Parks. In Nehru Park I got lost. I had a deadline to meet the driver who would be taking me back to meet Chus, but I exited the park at the wrong road. Didn't realise it was surrounded by four roads, not just the one I had been dropped off on. I had left the car with my camera, no phone, and only 60 rupees (just over a dollar) in my pocket. I didn't know the registration number of the car, nor a phone number I could call for help. Not a very successful Boy Scout.

I walked down a street along one side of the park but couldn't see the gate I came in by. It was 33 degrees and the time of the agreed pick up was nearing, so I hailed a tuk tuk driver. He answered my question about whether he spoke English with a "Yes!" and waggled his head. 

The extent of his understanding was soon obvious. He did know "round the park", "Stop!" but not "go slowly" nor "keep going".  I coerced him around the park, getting out every now and then to check the parked cars on the side of the road for the driver I came with. No luck. The tuk tuk guy got a bit more worried, I think, every time I got out to peer at the men in the cars. 

He stopped at the exit to a parking lot and I asked a guy there if he could speak English. He also said yes, but he wasn't lying through his teeth, like the tuk tuk guy. He explained the situation to the driver and told him to try the two car parks on that road. Tuk tuk guy chucked a U-ie and I found the driver at the beginning of the first car park. 

Another sticky situation resolved with the help of strangers. 

Today in Lodi Park (33 degrees again) I was surrounded by schoolchildren, all wanting to shake my hand. In fact, it started reminding me of "Suddenly last summer", that movie with Elizabeth Taylor about the young man who was eaten by the beach boys (or it was something equally horrific). Anyway, the little boys were getting a little too close for comfort, and more and more of them seemed to be coming at the same time, some of them saying "money", "money". I found a teacher and sat down next to her, and they petered off eventually. 

Well, I can't keep going because it's late and I have to get up and leave early tomorrow. So that's it until I have a little more time, probably tomorrow. 

Heat and Dust

I'm having a great time in Delhi!

Chus has an app on her phone to check the air quality, and it's never good. Not as bad as it will be in November, when we will not be able to walk in the street. We will have to go to enclosed areas, such as museums, if we want to leave the house, and preferably by car. 

It's hot every day--33 degrees--but it is what it is. We have been out and about every day. Yesterday we visited Chadni Chowk, the ancient market area, the spice market, the Red Fort, and an ancient step well called Agrasen ki Baoli. 

At the Red Fort, Indian tourists asked to take photos with us. We were the tourist attraction!

Then, as a treat after all our hard sightseeing, we went to the Imperial Hotel for tea and cake.

In Old Delhi, I found this lovely young woman standing in a doorway, with a young photographer taking photos of her. I asked if I could take a photo, and then the photographer wanted to take a photo of me, and another of me and his beautiful model. Well I never!

On Monday we went to Humayun's tomb, and the India Gate, which was disappearing in a cloud of pollution. 

Today we're going to the Lotus Temple (I think it’s a Jain temple) and the Gurdwhara ( a Sikh temple) where I’m not allowed to take photos 🥲.

Back in India

 Arrived yesterday about this time, after 13 hours in an Air India sardine can. Chus and Jose were at the airport to meet me, and it was so lovely to let myself be picked up and swept away, so effortlessly. They took me around to their friends' place, where we had spectacular sushi. 

Delhi is hot, hot, hot and I bought too many clothes to keep me warm. I think I'll be leaving them here. Today I bought some tee-shirts and another pair of pants, 

Tomorrow Chus and I will visit Humayun's Tomb, The Gate to India and a temple.

Here is the view from Chus' balcony. 

A Quiet Day staying by Las Leyendas

My accommodation is called Hotel Las Leyendas, and I'm staying close by here today, resting the Istanbul war injury, preparing for the afternoon of travel back to Madrid tomorrow. When I went out to get some more photos of the stork family this morning, my knee was giving my trouble again, so I decided to take it a bit easy today, stay put as much as I can.

Katya, the hotel receptionist is from Russia and speaks beautiful Spanish, at least as far as I can tell. She's been very kind to me, inviting me to sit in the breakfast room while I worked on my photos, told me to make myself tea, when I had to vacate my room so it could be cleaned. She's one of the few people I've had a conversation with in the last week. Feeling a little bit sola but that's how I travel. In fact, I don't really feel it so much here because the Spanish don't find my situation so unusual, I think. At least, they seem to treat me like any other customer. 

These are a few wildflowers I saw this morning on my way back to the hotel after my communion with the storks. 

Last night, I went out to see Ávila with the lights on the walls. I'm glad I did because I'm not sure I'll be able to do it tonight. Glad I didn't miss it. 

Oops! A time traveller's error

 So, I had in my mind that I was going back to Sydney on the 13th. Didn't think to check the tickets. That is when I arrive back, but, of course, that means I have to leave here the day before. Bought tickets on the train leaving here on the 11th, thinking I didn't want to be late to the party, as I was in London, a couple of years ago. I would have had two nights inMadrod before flying out. But my flight leaves the morning of the 12th. However, that means I still have some time to make other arrangements in the case of electrical disasters on the line. 🤞! Because Ávila is a lot closer to Madrid--only an hour or so from there by road--than I was to London when the Gods  cut the transport.

So today dawned drizzly and cool.Perfect for me because I've already bought an umbrella and I have my trusty grey acrylic jumper of advanced  age. Nothing can stop me.

I've been shooting storks in the towers and a monastery. What else to do? 

Ávila: smaller, quieter but also with Roman walls

Arrived here yesterday, with no major dramas. The hotel where I'm staying has a backdoor which exits onto a path which follows the outside of the wall around, and a front door which exits onto a parallel street, which makes it handy for darting round the walls. 

This is the parallel street exit.

Yesterday, when I arrived, the receptionist told me the sky was so grey because of sand storms in Saudi Arabia. I remember in Mexico City, a year ago, feeling the sudden effects of one of those. 

Well, today dawned brisk, windy with some rain. I bought an umbrella. Now, however, the skies are blue and I'm off to walk along the walls now, hoping to get some nice blue-sky landscapes, maybe to add to this post when I return. See you then!

Walked a long way along the ramparts, taking photos, but none so good as this one taken just before I started.

Three trains and a Bus

 Today has been the longest travel day yet, and it's not over. I started with a bus to the station in Toledo, at about 10:30. Then came a train to Madrid Atocha. Then a train to Madrid Principe Pio to meet my train to Ávila. I'm now sitting on the this train, which is just about to leave. I've checked many times eith different people that I'm on the right train, but no-one has checked my ticket thus far, so I'll just continue to hope my informants are correct.

With Don Quixote in Toledo

 Writing this from Almacen 51. Could not see my way to ordering caramancas ( which is a regional specialty) for brunch. (Not a fan of pork.) However, I'm trying the favourite drink of Spain--Sidra--a dry cider. It's going to take me all day to drink it at this rate.

Don Quixote started his epic journey from Toledo. His image is everywhere.

I decided that I didn't feel like doing the train trip out so soon, so I tried to get 5 more days in the accommodation. I could only get two more days, so I leave here on the 7th to spend 3 days in Ávila, which has the Roman walls, as here in Toledo, but I think it may be quieter.

Returning to Madrid on 11th of June,, so I'll have every opportunity to make my flight home on the 13th. (Not about to risk missing the plane for a train problem as happened in London a couple of years ago.)

I love Toledo, but the number of tourists makes it exhausting! The narrow lanes are full of cars, school children on excursions, fat Americans in groups, loud Chinese with their obnoxious mobile phones, shooting everything they see after placing themselves between my lens and my subject. 

Toledo is really being loved to death! The fact that it's only a 36-minute train ride from Madrid makes it too easy to visit. 

From the Basque Country to Toledo

 I got into Toledo today, but I'll talk about that in the next entry.

 It has been a while since I was able to write. I was quite busy, walking, walking, walking (sometimes in the rain) in San Sebastián and Bilbao. Of course, I had some good company in Yolanda, so less time alone, writing the blog. The other thing was that in Bilbao, I was staying in a one-star hotel. There was no desk to write on. I tried sitting up in bed and writing, but that put out my lower back. So, while dealing with a throbbing knee, I did not want to bring on a bad back.

My knee is improving. I took it 

relatively easy for a couple of days, taking the tram instead of walking. And Yolanda was very good to me, carrying my bag whenever she was there, and this morning she took my bag down the stairs and accompanied me to the bus station on the tram so she could carry it all the way into the bus. 

Loved the pinxhos in San Sebastián. 

We ended up eating at Pepe's Bar, which was around the corner from my hotel, a few times. And we walked into town every day, which was about two kilometres from my hotel, along the Paso Nuevo which follows the beach. 

Beautiful beaches and clean streets in San Sebastián. Elegant buildings. You can see there's lots of money, and lots of civic pride. No graffiti. 

Then, on different days because we'd planned it separately, both Yolanda and I went to Bilbao. Wonderful city. A little bit grittier than San Sebastián. I went there because I wanted to see the Guggenheim. It was impressive! Yolanda went to Bilbao because that's where the international airport is, and she will fly out of there tomorrow to join her family in Amsterdam.

Here is a photo I took early in the morning in Bilbao, a city with hundreds of bridges.

The Guggenheim Museum took up almost half the day yesterday. 

Well, it's nearly my bedtime, so I'm going to cut this short, have a shower and go to bed. I was too worried about the long trip today to get much sleep last night. 

The not-so-seasoned traveller comes undone

6:30 am. Wednesday 29/05/2024

(I stepped out of the station for a few minutes to take a tourist snap of Valencia, the only one I will have this trip. My train is about to leave.)

At the Chamartín Station bright and early for my train to   San Sebastián- Donostia. Alarm for 5a.m. so that I could catch the taxi at 6 to the station. At Chamartín,  waiting, waiting, waiting with other impatient passengers for the platform number to appear on the indicator board. It finally appeared at about 5 minutes before the train was due to leave, so joined the rush  down the escalators to platform 17. 

I found carriage 7, dragged my now very heavy suitcase in the door, stowed it and started looking for my seat. A passenger told me to try upstairs. I didn't know there was an upstairs, but up I go. Couldn't find 13D anywhere. 

Then a conductor found me and I showed her my ticket. She said this train wasn't going to San Sebastián. No, it's going  to Valencia! Apparently there were two trains on platform 17, and I caught the wrong one! While I  checked the carriage number very successfully, I didn't check the name of railway company. I needed Renfe and I'm on an Ouigo train, or something like that.

Well, she said I'd have to pay for the journey, to Valencia, but neither of my bankcards worked on her machine, so I scored a gratuitous trip to Valencia. So lucky. I only have to pay for two trips, not three.

So now I'm sitting on the train to San Sebastian in Valencia, after cooling my heels here in the station for an hour and a half. Got a new ticket, for three times as much as the first wasted ticket cost me. I have insurance but not sure how to collect. 

A Stunning Achievement!

 Just a short note about a great success I had here purchasing a 10-trip card for the train. (Remember my failure in Istanbul?) I did it all by myself in Madrid, from a machine! Amazing what 8 years of Spanish class will do for you. I've used the metro to explore a couple of neighbourhoods around here that would have been too taxing to walk to.

Still walking painfully slowly, but I’ve signed up to go on a tapas and alcohol crawl tonight. As long as the others crawl as slowly as I do, I’ll be all right. Tomorrow I’m off bright and early to San Sebastián. 

 

Going at a snail's pace now, but still alive. . .

I couldn't post the blog because the Osmanhan Hotel didn’t provide enough bandwidth for text and photos yesterday, or so I thought. The fact that Telstra is extorting an extra $10 a day from me didn’t seem to mean that I had enough bandwidth to post photos, either. 

However, today I am able to post text and photos. I think what happened was it took so long to load that I gave up. I didn't check it again until today, and then I saw that the post I tried to do yesterday was successfully published. 

The following is an account of what I have been doing since I got here, to Istanbul.

 Wednesday, my first day here, is easy to remember. Didn’t manage to sleep at all on the flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi. It would have been around 9 a.m. Sydney time when we landed. In Abu Dhabi it was 5 a.m. The flight left for Istanbul at 9:30. I walked around in wonder for an hour, taking photos, and then twiddled my thumbs for three.

 

After the four-hour connecting flight from Abu Dhabi, I landed in Istanbul and took the one-hour taxi trip to the hotel. 

 

By the time I got here to the hotel, it was around 2 or 3pm. I went to sleep pretty soon and didn’t wake until 3 a.m. At about 6:00, I walked down to Kennedy Caddesi to look at the Bosphorus. Saw some dolphins and a bunch of half-naked old men from the swimming club. Walked back to the hotel for breakfast and then down to the Sultan Ahmet area to visit the Basilica Cistern. Wow! What a sight. Missing Vivid now, but this was spectacular! 

Yes, I've just realised I managed to publish the entry about the Basilica Cistern out of order, but there you have it. 

The next day, Thursday, I walked around the Sultan Ahmet area a bit and tried to work out how to buy and charge an Istanbulkart, so that I could use it on the public transport. There are machines for doing that at the tram stop. But they’re incredibly difficult for a non-speaker of Turkish to use. First, depending on the time of day and the position of the sun, the user has a hard time reading what’s on the screen because the glare hides the text. Second, I never worked out how to hear the instructions in English. There is a button you can tap to do this, but I suspect the label is in Turkish because I never found it, even after I used the machines a couple of times. I always asked an innocent bystander to do it for me. The first time I managed to buy the card and charge it, two young Russian tourists did it for me, listening to the instructions in Russian. 

 

I wanted to go to Karaköy to get a meal in a less touristy restaurant than the ones around here.

 

Unfortunately, I got off the tram too early. I debated whether I would get back on the tram or walk, but I caught another tram because walking, and trying to cross the road, is mission impossible. I have never experienced anything like the traffic here. Very often, even red lights won’t stop the traffic, and yesterday I saw a three-way ding with a tram, a van and a car involved. The cars won’t even give way to trams! 

 

Having left the tram at Eminönü instead of my destination, Karaköy, I returned to the tram stop and jumped on the next tram. A couple of Spanish speakers got on and I told them where the tram was going and showed them on my phone. It was going in the opposite direction to where they wanted to go, I told them. They wanted to go to Sultan Ahmet, where I had come from, so they rushed out at the next stop.

My feeble sense of direction did not just cause mayhem for me, that day. That tram was going in the right direction for them. It was going in the opposite direction to my destination. The tram took me back to where I had first boarded in Sultan Ahmet. I alighted feeling guilty about the bad information I had given to my Spanish-speaking fellow passengers.  

 

I was still determined to get to Karaköy to look for genuine Turkish food at a normal price. So, I took the third tram of the day. 

 

I got some soup and chicken and rice in a restaurant I found and got talking to an English couple at the next table. They were leaving Istanbul that afternoon, so they gave me their Istanbulkart with value left on it, they said. 

When I left the restaurant, I had to walk 500 metres out of my way, and then 500 metres back again on the opposite side of the same street, just so I could access a pedestrian crossing. (The screen grab from Google maps above shows you the route I had to take to return to the tram stop.) Really, the pedestrian is a second-class citizen here: the car is king. 

This is the view from my hotel window: tiny laneways, parked cars, vans and even buses sometimes!

 When I boarded the tram to return to the hotel, I used the card the Brits had given me, but it was out of charge, so I used my own. 

Friday, I went to Balat to look at all the multi-coloured houses. It was charming; the suburb is, at least. What didn’t charm me were the hundreds of Russians who poured out of five or six tour buses at the same time. You couldn’t see the Turks for the Russians. Not what I was expecting in Istanbul, but, of course, Russians can come overland, or I guess, over the Black Sea too, if they want to. They don’t have to fly like I did. 

 

When I got back on the bus to return to hotel, I discovered that I had used up all the value I had charged to my Istanbulkart.

A young Turkish man kindly used his card to pay for me. 

 

I decided I was going to get to the bottom of this Instanbulkart mystery, and managed to charge my card again, with the help of an innocent bystander. Ok. A fully charged card now. 

 

But I wasn’t sure which of the two Instanbulkarts I had was the one I had charged and which was the spent card of the English couple. They were identical. I had seen on a Youtube video that there was a way to check the balance on the machine. So, I had a go. What could go wrong? 

 

Without enough Turkish to find the language button and hear the instructions in English, I saw the numbers which told me the amount of money left on the cards. I was able to see which one was mine, with a balance, and which one was exhausted. However, there’s a very tricky little detail when you check the balances, and if you don’t tap the right button, if you just remove the card after checking your balance, the machine eats the rest of your balance. So, this morning when I took a bus to the spice market, neither of my cards were working. I had to use my credit card. 

 

That’s the very sad tale of the Istanbulkarts, but it’s not as sad or painful as the experience I had while walking back to the hotel that day. 

 

It was Friday, the day of rest and prayer here, and there were lots of families out in the Sultan Ahmet. Sultan Ahmet is a large area, but there’s not much shade and only a handkerchief-sized area of grass. I wanted to get a photo of one of the mosques; however, there was a hectare of heads in front of me. The only vantage point I could see to get a clear photo was from the middle of that tiny patch of grass. There was a family there playing with a football, so I stood to one side of them, composing my photo. 

 

Suddenly, something very heavy, something that I didn’t see coming, collided with me and I fell hard. I had no idea what had happened. I’d had the wind knocked out of me. My right knee was hurting, and I was confused. 

 

A ten-year-old tank, who probably weighs as much as I do, had brought me down in his rush to get the ball. I had tears in my eyes. I was so shocked.  

 

Well, since then, I’ve been walking much more slowly. My right knee is swollen and hurts. I couldn’t climb the stairs to the 5^th floor this morning for breakfast. (Probably a good thing for the healing of the knee.) I did some slow walking around the spice market today, though, so I hope that the knee will recover eventually. 

 

Tomorrow, I have a mercifully short flight to Madrid. And now, you can see, how relevant the title of my blog is: all a blur until you slow down. 

 

I have slowed right down to a snail's pace. 

Istanbul: Sights, Trams and Food! Just as good the second time

The sights: yesterday I spent a couple of hours in the Basilica Cistern which "was built in the 6th century during the reign of the Byzantine emperor, Justinian" (More information here: Wikipedia entry. I was so impressed that when I'd got to the end of the path, I sneaked back through again. But the crush of tourists eventually made me leave. I could have stayed all day except for the lack of seating, and the aforementioned tourists. 

At Zayed International Airport, Abu Dhabi

A couple of hours left to wait for the flight to Istanbul and I couldn't have been dropped in a more interesting airport, if you like that kind of thing. You can see the money that's gone into it. It's massive, impressive, and, at least very early on a Wednesday morning, it's almost empty.

See what you think. . . Was going to add the photos, but. . .

The free wifi is not up to uploading photos to my blog, apparently. I don't know what the deal is with Telstra's roaming, which they have already charged me $10 for. Apparently that's not up to uploading photos either. Will have to send the photos by WhatsApp. We'll see if that works. 

Nothing to report about the first leg of the journey. Unpleasant as all aeroplane travel is in economy. My feet have swollen and I have to keep loosening my shoe laces because my left foot hurts. A small price. After I get to Istanbul and have a nap, I'm sure I'll bounce back. 

My First Adventure (and I haven't left the airport yet)

 Amazing trip so far! It took 24 minutes to get to the airport, check in and go through security. . . that is, to go through security the first time. Wow! Must be some kind of a record. 

When I bought a bottle of water, I couldn't find my bank card (savings), only my credit card. And it costs too much to take out cash from a credit card 😖! Thought maybe I'd dropped the bank card in the taxi. Tried to call Alex, but of course, he had turned off notifications. He was "unavailable" to my phone calls.

By then I'd decided that I'd left the pesky little bugger in my walking bag. Yes, it was there, Alex told me, when he finally responded to my desperate WhatsApp messages. I managed to persuade him to call an Uber and transport my card. 

I went looking for someone to tell about the arrangement, but not so easy. After walking up and downstairs for a bit, I met a security guy, Jeremy. He told me that I'd have to walk out, past security and to departures. By that time Alex had arrived in an Uber.I passed another official, Jayden, who looked at my boarding pass and took my passport. 

I found Alex at Departures and he handed over the card. It only cost me two Ubers, some Maltesers and an Ubereats pizza. 

Bit of a wait until Jayden's mate would hand over my passport, then off I shuffled through security again. 

Here I am, though, sitting in a bench with still an hour and quarter before my flight leaves. They've picked up their game at Sydney Airport, I think. 

Stultified, inert, anxious, once again but . . . the countdown is on for Istanbul

This is a test to see if you ladies (and gentlemen) are able to access the blog, at this late stage. 

It's Monday morning and I've been up all night, not able to sleep for worry. The plane leaves tomorrow (Tuesday) night. I'm sure I'll be all right once I get on the plane, but the lead up is always difficult these days. Not excitement but fear. 

I'll add a photo below, just to practice doing that again and for you to check if you can see it. You should be familiar with my subject. 

I've changed my WhatsApp number back to the Australian one, and you should get a message on your WhatsApp that tells you that. 🤞🤞