Dear Gordon,
I
keyed in ‘Jebel Sahro’ on the Google search engine and came across your website
which is very good indeed.
I
went on my first trip with Explore to the Jebel Sahro in 1998 and enjoyed it. I
went in the last two weeks of February and did not have any rain at all. The
previous group starting out two weeks before me had torrential rain and the
group before that had snow blizzards. The baby goats were mostly three weeks
old about midway through my trip. It was very cold at night and on one night
that I slept outside I woke up to find my sleeping bag covered in frost.
The
following year (99) I went to the Atlas Mountains with Explore and you do not
get the same wilderness experience. However you do see more of village life.
One memory I will have of this trip is finding a cockroach in my meal – only
just visible in the dim light of a village house.
In
2000 I went with Explore on the Taurus Mountains trip and this was first class.
I would rate it ahead of the Jebel Sahro trip and I thought the Jebel Sahro
trip was better than the Atlas trip. You arrive in Istanbul and after a day or
so of sight seeing get an overnight sleeper train to Cappadocia to see among
other things the houses carved out of the volcanic ash. I treated myself to a
hot air balloon flight which involved being issued with an alarm clock to
ensure I was up and about for the early morning start. From there you travel by
vehicle to the start of the 8 days of Taurus mountain walking. One day involved
a climb of 1450 metres up to a pass and then a couple of hundred metres descent
to the overnight camp site. There are very few other tourists to be seen. At
one stage of the trip I saw large numbers of ground squirrels. On my holidays I
have always picked dates that are the cheapest in the Explore brochure. It
would appear that this is often when the weather is at its hottest and in
Turkey people were dying in the heat in the coastal resorts.
I
work for Canon as a photocopier engineer and can buy Canon products with my
staff discount. I bought a Canon EOS5 just prior to the Atlas trip because my
Olympus OM20 was playing up. I have concluded that the combination of
relatively high altitude and fatigue from extreme heat affects your ability to
decide on whether to take a photograph or not. I have got home sometimes and
regretted not taking a shot of something that I had seen. I have previously
used 100 ASA film but have more recently given 200 ASA film a bash because
gives a little bit of flexibility in lower light conditions – eg group photos
round camp fires.
Last
year I did not go away on holiday at all. I was planning to go to Kashmir this
year which would have meant spending last years holiday budget and this years
budget to fund one trip. Sept 11th has put paid to that idea and considering
that I have put a lot of weight on this year (eating home made curries) I
wimped out and went to Tuscany with Explore. The walking was not in the same
league as the other trips and the attempt to marry a bit of walking with taking
in the art/culture in Florence etc did not seem to work. (Possibly because I am
more into roughing it – I took the National Express coach down to Heathrow
arriving at 3 in the morning and slept on the floor because my check in time
was 10.45AM. £38 return from Leeds, no hotel bill – I am from Yorkshire after
all).
My
criteria for a holiday is somewhere off the beaten track, not too expensive (
under £1000 ), lasting 14 days. If you have got any recommendations please let
me know what they are !
All
the best, Roger Hardcastle
PS Wish me luck on Tuesday
because I am flying out by helicopter to fix a copier on a rig 27 miles out
from Spurn Point – the one that was hit by a factory trawler about three months
ago.
roger_hardcastle@lineone.net