Sat, 19 Feb 2000 18:36:55 GMT
From: simon @ millennium-ride.com
To: sponsors @ millennium-ride.com

2k/01/28
Istanbul

2k/01/21
Lap of the Med. instead

2k/01/10
Libya visa problem

99/12/26
I'm outa here

99/12/26
Tracker info

99/12/23
Yes I'm still alive ...

99/10/
Hello Sponsors

99/09/23
Millennium Motorcycle emerges as a Sponsor Monster

99/09/06
Medical

99/07/28
Engine swopping

99/07/17
Tea-table survival & Gambia

99/07/11
Note to Sponsors with pin badge

99/06/12
Bike moves & Budget

99/05/04
things fall into place

99/04/10
TV and the first jabs

[41kB 600x481] [314kB 1772x1164] Simon Milward, Issa and Omerahmed at Honda workshop, Jeddah

Since my last email from Dahab Sinai quite alot has happened. And here in Jeddah, the commercial centre of the Arab world on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia, I have at last located an internet cafe after only a couple of hours of riding round and trying to get directions from locals!

Anyway I passed the diving final exam with 94%. The underwater world in the Red Sea is absolutely fantastic and my ears were popping for days afterwards.

[18kB 304x460] [347kB 1171x1772] Jeddah, one monument

After Dahab, and a 150km wrong turn on the advice of a policeman who 'was only joking' (the prick), I went to Mount Sinai. With a Czech girl (Alena) we rode the bike as far up the camel track as possible before abandoning it and climbing the rest of the way. I wish I had been more attentive to getting fit before this journey started! Amazing views from the top, along with the Bedouins in their tea tents we met some Greek Orthodox Monks from St Catherine's Monastery down below. This was in the morning, and by the evening I was riding round Cairo looking for a campsite near the Sphinx in Giza. That's when a Goldwing rider stopped me and invited me to stay with him.

[22kB 605x400] [353kB 1772x1172] Visit Pyramids, Sahar

His name is Tarek Al-Attar and he runs Motoshop 2000, specialising in Grey imports (from the UK) because the official distributors only import mopeds and suchlike. The next day, as I was looking around Cairo Museum I met Sahar, a 27 year old Egyptian teacher. Something happened (yeah it was electric!) and off we went to Giza to the Pyramids (had to get out of the stuffy museum where big brother had his eyes on everyone). She was an expert at keeping off the hustlers who were out to get our pounds, and also explained that the boys who were asking me if I liked to take photographs were in fact inviting me to take some of them in a way that made me feel sick. Yuk! Anyway by the end of the day she had proposed marriage - wow it was Valentines Day too! She was a good Muslim girl.

[25kB 600x411] [345kB 1772x1213] Sphinx, Sahar

Cairo drivers are the most crazy I have come across though - I was trying to give as good as I got which is the only way to get anywhere.
I didn't make it to Luxor and the Valley of the Kings, not enough time and I was getting very close to the expiry of my Saudi visa. Besides, I should leave some things to see later in life or on the homeward leg through Africa. I don't mind visiting Egypt twice as I only had a mere taster. But I did ride a fair way down the Nile Valley before heading to the coast - it was amazing, every inch cultivated where there were no palm trees, hoards of people leading cows and donkeys down the road in the evening as it was getting dark (one such donkey got a bruised arse from one of my panniers) - the place was absolutely teeming with life!

I eventually put the bike on the boat to Saudi in Safaga, only to be told to take it off again as the Captain didn't want to take me. There is a new rule about visitors coming this way (something about Saudi's problem with Libya - don't we all have one of those?!) and Egyptians working in Saudi with no permit. I had visions of riding against the wind all the way back to Jordan (most distasteful) and into Iraq (quite OK but I hate backtracking). I decided to get irate and made quite a good show of it because the boat was delayed an hour and a half before they let me stay on board. I had a 2am meeting with the Captain and an immigration officer as we set sail. I was treated extremely well on the boat - free sandwiches and Pepsi and allowed to sleep in the cafeteria - my ticket was deck (third) class.

Once at Duba in Saudi (NW coast) there was no question of any problem, it was the quickest and simplest entry so far. In Duba town later, as I was eating some fruit, an Afgan refugee turned up, he offered me a free room in his hotel for that night. Later that day after a police search and yound chap pulled over, and eventually he gave nme some money and a shopowner told me to take what I needed from his shelves! The kindness of the Saudis has so far only been matched by the genuineness of the Syrians. In fact most people in Saudi are foreign it seems, I met another Syrian today who of course pointed out, quite kindly, that the British had once taken their country.

Here I am causing quite a stir - tourism is actively discouraged here in Saudi, where alcohol is banned, women aren't alowed to drive, shops close at prayer time (yes even this email message had to be written in two takes) and if the normal police don't get you (they tried to confiscate my new 10 dollar camera when I took a photo of a harbour which was completely unspoilt by tourism) at the road checkpoints, then the religious police will! Anyway I feel very fortunate at having entered Saudi (thanks Harley for the invite) where so many travellers have before failed.

The bike is running very hot - it is over 30 degrees C in the day, and not much less at night, and on the approach to Jeddah this morning I got a bit over-enthusiastic at getting more air to flow through the cut-out front mudguard and onto the Goodridge oil cooler - by opening the throttle too much. I didn't fight the tank slapper like I did last time, more like I tried to nurse it to settle it down, but it was no good, down I went right beside a great truck. I've only a few cuts and bruises but the headlight mounts are broken again and there is a great split in the left pannier - now I've got to find an ally welder. The Acerbis handguards did an absolutely fantastic job of saving the switchgear and stuff and one of the DMS batteries was found a twenty metres further on. I'm sure it's OK. However the Hein Gericke clothing is now pretty much in tatters! Still, no snow for a few weeks until I get to Iran, hopefully not even then.

I spent the afternoon at a Honda dealer straightening the bike, doing the brakes, CLEANING it even - well, working on a dirty bike is horrible.

The day after my last email I heard that the Israelis had bombed Lebanese power stations. I don't support terrorism whether it is carried out by armed minority groups or by a nation's military. But there seems to be a definite conspiracy in the Western media to only report the Israeli point of view and the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon always must be blamed. I consider myself a politically aware European but perhaps I'm missing something. Or perhaps governments simply bow to the biggest gun and the fattest bank account, but this is not my idea of a fair and just global society. This is totally unrelated to what hapened to the Jews in WWII. Sorry about that but I had to get it off my chest. I'm not saying it to guarantee entry to Saudi either, I'm already here. I would have been in Lebanon a few weeks earlier if I had been issued with a multiple entry visa for Syria in Istanbul.

Tomorrow I'll spend some more hours at Honda, take a look at the old city buildings (apparantly built from coral mined from the Red Sea)and see what else Jeddah has to offer before I head off to Riyadh and Dammam, where my Harley Davidson host expects me. That's another thousand km to cross (one tankful), which reminds me of another job to do on the bike - fit the wind-catchers - aluminium wings which attach under the tank in front of the batteries, designed to shove more air in over the engine to help keep it cool.

At least now I can take it a little easier. I'm at last leaving the relative safety of the Mediteranean area - Saudi is a notable distance from Europe on the globe. In Riyadh I need to stop to get the Iranian visa and also find Olympus to get my camera mended - the Damascus repair only lasted a film or two.

Take care now and see you later.

Simon Milward
19.2.00