Arab Spring

Posted by Conrad and Louisa Friday 18 May 2012 at 10:38

View from our deck - SA

After a quick reminiscent tour of South Africa, an incredibly beautiful but still racist country, we headed to the highly anticipated Middle East – Egypt and Jordan. Like most of the Middle East, Egypt is currently in the middle of a revolution called the Arab Spring where the citizens overthrew their corrupt dictatorship and are in search of a new democratic leader. In Louisa’s 30 years, she has been a witness to two huge historical events: the Romanian Revolution of 1989 and the abolishment of Apartheid in South Africa. Both of these significant events were very influential for the World; however, they were both very violent and volatile. So it was now time for her to see a third!

Goal #28

Louisa and I have done our fair share of travelling over the years and have never taken an organized tour. We believe travelling is best experienced through your own challenges and discoveries. With Egypt in the middle of Arab Spring, we subdued our 'traveller's ego' of wanting to do everything on our own and signed up for an organized tour of Egypt and Jordan, thinking that our safety should be in the hands of local professionals instead of passers by and Google searches.

At first, the concept of someone telling us how to travel, where to travel and what to see was very difficult to grasp. We were the quiet nerds that didn’t socialize and sat at the back of the bus – like the cool kids did in high school (not us). We soon discovered how silly we were being and started to fight our traveller's ego.

Jumping into the Nile - Egypt

Up until Egypt, we had been travelling for 6 months and were solely responsible for every sketchy border crossing, bus ride, flight, accommodation, meal and pee break. The babysitting and handholding was a great interruption from our traditional travels – allowing us to relax, turn off the brains and just enjoy the Arab Spring, the sites, our tour mates and our amazing guide Said (Saiiiiiiiiid!).

The Treasury - Petra - Jordan

Despite almost being a part of the 1 million person protest in Tahrir Square on a nice little Friday afternoon, and barely avoiding the machine gunning/kidnapping/missile launch zone of Mount Sinai, our trip through Egypt and Jordan was amazing! The highlights included: eating KFC beside the pyramids, swimming in the alligator infested Nile, seeing Petra, floating in the Dead Sea and camping at a Bedouin camp in the desert.

Over the last 6 months we have realized that in life, just like in travels, our egos are the cause of most of our challenges and unhappiness. Would we have been happier organizing our own trip? Probably not. Would we have met the same great people if we did the tour solo? Not likely. For the most part, we will probably continue to organize our own trips in the future due to our need for flexibility, but with this new awareness in travels and in life, we hope to be one step closer to happiness and one step further from a revolution.

“All troubles come to an end when the ego dies “- Ramakrishna