You are not permitted. At least not on my watch.
Dominic Gill
Dear friends and family.
So soon I know. I am trying to make up for lost time.......I have travelled 420km. read on....
Imagine someone gave you a key, and a map, and said this to you; that if you were able to decipher the crudely drawn map it would lead you to a well. The well has an iron cover on it, but the key given to you will open it.
Imagine that this person then went on to say that if you unlocked the well, and dived into the dark water and swam to the bottom, wherever that bottom may be, you would be allowed to roam the earth knowing no boundary, no impediment ever getting in your way again.
You would do it wouldn’t you? Of course. The well probably isn’t very deep. So, you uncrumple and decipher the crudely drawn map, and follow the line that leads you through a rough neighborhood where you get laughed at, then across a busy 15 lane highway, through a rubbish dump, but eventually to the well, the lid of which could be unlocked with your key. You unlock it, take a deep breath, and dive into the murky and slightly sulphurous water, swimming down into the blackness, looking forward to the simple but significant reward of unencumbered travel. Perhaps 20 metres down you hit the bottom and feel the cold muddy rock for clues. You find a ring attached to a chain. You pull it and find a small hatch opening, and a dim bluish light coming from the hatch. Swimming down into it, you find yourself in the middle depths of the ocean.
You’re starved for breath now, but you think you can see the bottom beneath you, maybe only 50 metres away. Its worth a shot. You strike downwards lungs burning slightly, but you do indeed reach the bottom, disturbing small billows of sand as you scratch around more frantically now for signs. You find one, another ring pull and another hatch, darker this time on the other side. You swim in, chest heaving desperately for air. Its dark, but you swim downwards when suddenly you find yourself at the surface again, at the top of the well.
What? How can that be? You were swimming downwards weren’t you? Yes you were, but little did you know that once you entered the well, the normal laws of physics changed, no one got the memo about Newton’s apple incident, and the maid responsible for marine and subterranean upkeep forgot to let the person who gave you the key know not to use it, the well is undergoing a remodel and won’t be available for use until next Thursday.
Everyone knows that the pot of gold at the need of the rainbow doesn’t exist. Right? But did everybody also know that the paper trail in Egypt necessary to travel with (and sometimes without) a video camera is almost equally as mythical?
Nor did we. Until now.
Nadia (who took a bus to Cairo to be pushed around by the xenophobic authorities it seems), myself and more recently Bashir and Tamer our Egyptian colleagues have been shoved from one department to the next to try and get the bits of paper we need to make an inspiring and beautiful documentary about Egypt.
I am now in Baharia, the second Oasis on the journey and 420km from the first. I had to strap my bike to the roof of our camera vehicle for that distance to travel through the desert. Why? I don’t really know, but after 2 days of talking to people and standing humbly in crappy excuses for offices, someone eventually told us you can’t stay over night on the road. It is considered a border road. It’s a long way from the Libyan border…..
Anyway, this email is much therapy for me as anything, and provides little new other than the fact that I have just had to miss a leg of this journey by bicycle because my journey could not be fitted into any existing pigeon hole. The desert was beautiful from the car, and would have been breathtaking from the bike.
The upside? There is a lot more to come, and if my bicycle is allowed once more to touch the blacktop, many interested stories await.
Thank you being my therapist. The couch is very comfortable.
Love
Dom
Dominic Gill