Destination: Egypt

Never mind that members of the Los Angeles-based Latin-funk-rock band Ozomatli oppose just about everything the Bush administration stands for. At the behest of the U.S. State Department, they’re touring the Middle East and beyond, from Jordan and Egypt to India and Nepal, as cultural ambassadors. “Our world standing has deteriorated,” saxophonist Ulises Bella told the Los Angeles Times. “I’m totally willing and wanting to give a different image of America than America has given over the last five years.”

Heading…

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The Pleasure of an All-American Hamburger—In Egypt

by Julia Ross | 07.09.07 | 8:55 AM ET

I just spent my first Fourth of July outside the U.S., and I found myself craving something hot off the backyard grill, slathered with all the fixins. Oh, to have access to a place like Lucille’s, which, according to Time’s Cairo Bureau Chief, serves the best all-American burger this side of, well, anywhere. In a Postcard from Cairo, Scott MacLeod pays homage to his favorite greasy spoon, located in the city’s Maadi district and run by an up-by-her-bootstraps American woman—Lucille—who he likens to Erin Brockovich. Lucille’s draws its share of U.S. expats hungry for a taste of home (she even serves a little Tex-Mex), but its no-alcohol and halal meat-only policies have been a big hit with locals; 70 percent of the diner’s customers are Egyptian.

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Suffering and Smiling: Vanity Fair Does Africa

by Frank Bures | 06.27.07 | 11:31 AM ET

Africa is hot. Why? So we can save it? Frank Bures deconstructs the magazine's latest issue and what it says about Western views of the continent.

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‘Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik’: Going Solo Through Africa

by Frank Bures | 02.01.07 | 7:03 AM ET

From south to north, Marie Javins journeyed alone across the continent. Frank Bures reviews her chronicle of the trip and finds the author a likable travel companion.

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Egypt: We Don’t Need Your Vote to be Among the New Seven Wonders

by Michael Yessis | 01.31.07 | 8:38 AM ET

While Petra and other candidates for the New Seven Wonders of the World status are working hard to solicit votes, officials in Egypt are fuming about the Pyramids of Giza even being nominated. Why should the pyramids have to compete in a contest to become a new wonder when they’re the last remaining wonder from the original seven?

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World Hum World Headlines

by Jim Benning | 12.05.06 | 8:30 PM ET

News shorts for curious travelers.
Egypt
Pharaohs’ Tombs Trump Village Homes
Reports the New York Times: “Bulldozers moved Saturday into an Egyptian village near the Valley of the Kings in pursuit of a long-delayed effort to allow archaeologists to begin studying a wealth of tombs in the area.” More than 100 houses have been cleared in the last week. Interesting. In Los Angeles, they’d more likely destroy historic tombs to build new houses.

USA
What’s your travel terror score?
Did you know you had one? “Almost every person entering and leaving the United States by air, sea or land is assessed based on [Automated Targeting System’s] analysis of their travel records and other data, including items such as where they are from, how they paid for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating preference and what kind of meal they ordered,” the Associated Press reports. Creepy.

Spain
Bona tarda or buenas tardes?
The Los Angeles Times explores the pitched battle over languages in Catalonia. “Some ATMs in Spain offer a choice of six languages, four of which are the Spaniards’ own.”

Japan
Ping, Ka-Ching, Ka-Boom!
Money raised from Japan’s pachinko habit just might be supporting North Korea’s nuclear program, the Los Angeles Times reports. “The machines rake in more than $200 billion a year, some of which finds its way to North Korea.” As a result, some players are souring on the game.

USA
Bright lights, big city, mucho vino
Novelist Jay McInerney has a great side gig: traveling the world to write about wine for Home & Garden. Now, a number of those columns have been collected in a new book, A Hedonist in the Cellar: Adventures in Wine. His interest in wine “started with literature, really—as with so many other things,” he says in San Diego Reader. Among the inspirational books: Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” and Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited.”

No. 26: “Baghdad Without a Map” by Tony Horwitz

by Rolf Potts | 05.06.06 | 1:30 PM ET

To mark our five-year anniversary, we’re counting down the top 30 travel books of all time, adding a new title each day this month.
Published: 1991
Territory covered: The Middle East
The Middle East is a region that is constantly in the news, though amidst all the headlines and analysis coming from the area, it is rare that we ever learn about the lives of the people who dwell there. Published shortly after the beginning (and rapid end) of the first Gulf War, Baghdad Without a Map collects Horwitz’s dispatches from places like Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Iran and Sudan to paint a multi-faceted human face on a region that is too often obscured by crisis-driven news stories. Indeed, the reader can’t help but consider the contradictions of the Middle East when Horwitz chats with an Iranian protester who—in-between chants of “Death to America!”—claims that his dream has always been to visit Disneyland and “take my children on the tea-cup ride.”  Serious, funny and empathetic at the same time, Horwitz uses simple tales (shopping for a popular stimulant in Yemen, for instance, or attending a belly-dancing gig in Egypt) to introduce us to hospitable people whose lives are being shaped by old social forces (religion, politics, poverty) as well as new ones (modernity, media, globalization).

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Derelicts in the Sinai

by Porter Shreve | 07.25.05 | 1:14 PM ET

Israeli fighter planes flew over his kibbutz and suicide bombers blew up buses on the lines he traveled, but Porter Shreve still felt untouchable. Then he found himself aboard an ill-fated tour bus rolling through the Egyptian desert.

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