An Arabian Tale

On a typically Israeli morning after not much sleep I left at 6 to start hitchhiking from my home - the first place that I've been able to lay my bag with out the vagrant wanderings of my mind leading me on to paths of pondering whether my possessions were constantly in the way or just some (un)welcome clutter, and the first place I've been able to truly call home in nearly 2 years! - down to Jerusalem. I was meeting a good friend, Jacky, and from there we would combine our hitchhiking forces to head down to Eilat and cross over to Jordan.

As we did the obligatory walk of no mans land between the two borders, our world was transforming around us. The sour and strict face of the Israeli border control was replaced with those of happy, relaxed Jordanians. We traded in our Shaloms for Salams, and we entered my first truly middle eastern country. A country of cheap falafel, intermittent western money worship, beautiful people and stupefying desert. We had entered a different world, a world of stricter customs and old traditions. On the third day we were there, after wandering the cul-de-sacs of culture, winding roads of inquisitive kids and intense bedouin experiences we came to a tourist village called Wadi Rum. The gateway to the graceful and stoic sand dunes and time depleting desert plains that lay home to countless generations of Bedouins - desert travelers. On arrival to this village the tourist welcomers on the gates tried to extract 5 dinar (about 5 euros) from us each to enter the magical desert. After a few minutes of standing in almost principled defiance of refusing to part with 5 euros to enter such a place of natural beauty they caved and one of the people took us to his house to stay for free.

We were then picked up by a bedouin as we were walking in the desert  who was returning from the village to his camp far into the desert. We clambered into his car, I tried my best to imagine that we were living 100 years previous and that actually the transportation device we were now in was a high speed camel, and sped off to his desert home.  That night with the bedouins was a mystical and intense experience. So many unspoken traditions and rules in the middle of this vast sandy freedom. The women and men were divided in to two separate compartments of the same tent, every two or three months it was all packed up and moved on to another location of their choosing and all that would be left at their previous home setting was a dim brief imprint in the sand of the curious culture that had thrived here.  They traveled with neighbours until I suppose they got bored of each other. But apart from that there was no one else around in the desert for miles. Just the dogs, goats, chickens and camels who also accompanied the bedouins on their travels and who I suspected had a little less freedom to choose when their bedouin masters bored them. 

We played Oud around a campfire for many hours before I went to sleep that night, the stars were amazing, although still not a patch on the beautiful night jewels I remembered of Suffolk nights. The next day me and Jacky wandered off to stay by ourselves somewhere in the desert, we had a tent, but still the sandy accommodating bed of the desert would get bitterly cold so we took a shade netting/carpet from a nearby camp.  In the morning we were greeted by a hardcore bedouin detective looking for his carpet, he had followed the footprints from the camp and asked kindly - in bedouin terms - for it back.  

That morning I was exploring the desert sandstone hills. It was here that I fell in love with climbing.  I loved the physical observation of intricate curvatures that nature had taken hundreds of years to make, in the side of any mountain it pleased. All so one day someone would have a foothold to further their pursuit for the top of the mountain. I was mind boggled by the fact that this place, that we - along with thousands of bedouins - were calling out temporary home had been an ocean at one point. I was constantly seeing whales and sharks gliding lazily by on the cold currents above our heads, drifting in and out of the underwater caves.

The whole place was magical and impressed upon us such a deep and personal meditation. It filled me with inspiration, and a yearning to create, endlessly create. Anywhere but in the desert, the desert was perfect as it was, with all its grandiosity and carefree apocalyptic scenes.  I wished to impart on all my future creations some of the enormous humble pureness of the desert.

Jacky then left the next day, and since I was in Jordan the least I could do was to visit Petra. Its been a long time ambition of mine to see the caves. So I hitchhiked up from Aqaba, the city 300 km to the south, so I could plead with the tourist office there to waive the 50 euro entry fee to let me in. I got there after an eventful 6 hours of hitchhiking, hitching is really easy there and I never had to wait for more than 20 minutes.  I begged with the tourist office for 2 hours but to no avail. I left a little disappointed and immediately a Jordanian came running up to me. He had eyeliner built in to his genes - like some ancient Egyptian king -which exaggerated the insanity flashing periodically across his eyes.  We talked for a while and he led me on walk in to the desert. After about 40 minutes or so we got to a cave. He told me I could sleep there for the night and he showed me a hill that in the morning I could walk over to see the caves of Petra for free. 

He left me to sleep as the sun went down, and said he might be back at some point. At about 10 o'clock I was kicked into bleary consciousness by him shinning the torch in my face and shoving a big bowl of his mothers home-cooked food at me.  It was delicious and for dessert he led me on a whirlwind partial-insanity driven, Las Vegas inspired night tour of Petra. He took me in taxis and suddenly we were going into restaurants and cafes and shops, living the high life of Petra, all gratis.  He dropped me off about 2 hours later on the road nearest my cave. I assured him I could find my own way to the caves because I didn't really want his company anymore. An hour later I was cursing myself that I hadn't got him to show me the way, the desert looks so different at night and I found myself wandering around the big desert boulders, unsure I was going to get back. Half an hour later I was reassured as I turned a corner to find my cave. I slept in an uneasy sleep for the rest of the night, and in the morning took his advice to walk into the caves of Petra. I was seen immediately by the guards and told to leave.  So still no caves of Petra for me.

The temperature sharply dropped and instantly it was cold and raining, the sky emptied its contents on to us. Suddenly I was spectator to the grand Petra water race, all this water sloshing down the street, and falling over roofs like it was pretending it was in The Shining desperate to get to the bottom of the mountain. I made my way to the bus station and got a bus back to Aqaba. Where I crossed the border with two dutch guys I met on the bus.  With some (expected) difficulty at the border, Im now back in Israel. And am grateful to be back in the land of warm beds and showers. The intensity of all the experiences of Jordan mentally extended my stay from the 1 week I was physically there to about 1 month.

A calling of focus and happiness

A love of science, exploration and questioning of everything comes first to mind. Brought forth by the existential realisation that I am god, you are god, we are all gods. We are all beautiful, but just some have funny subjective ways of realising it, or indeed not. Semantics come out to play here, for they love to play around as cheeky gnomes in the dark corners of human communication everywhere. Humans should be at peak physical condition, masters of our body and mind. For too long I haven't felt the rush of mastering my mind. No longer shall I dwell in the limitations of a drug and hedonistic fulfilled pleasure.  My reality is mine to control, I can do what I want, which first is light upon the realisation that what ever happens, happens. I first come out in favour of a clear and uttermost defined goal in my mind, which is lost in the cloudiness of the means.  A collective mind, all humans simply the fruit of a cosmic mycelium of conciousness. Then ungodly thoughts pass to challenge the image of me. Finally I relax in the unpredictabiliality of life and what shall be shall be.

I have returned home, now again I shall master my mind. Shakzuka style!

The Hayan Culture

The first week that I was in Israel, as time was chaotically swimming by I found myself down in the desert sitting on one particular solitary haystack looking out over the sprawling trance party going on around me, observing the disciples of trance dancing their hearts out to try and raise the trance gods which everyone knew, must surely come soon. I was surrounded by camels, donkeys and Aladdin and Blackberry - two incredible souls, it was here that we were first introduced to The Hayan Culture. We were deep within the rabbit hole contemplating time, existence and the utter meaningless paralleled by the wholly overwhelming significance of everything when we suddenly realised everything around us, that we talked about in day to day lives, objects that we used/objects that we didn't, everything, was just a load of hay. Pure and simple, with only as much significance given to anything as you want to attach to it. There is no concept of time, or of numbers in the Hayan culture, there are just infinite moments of truth, although even this it has to be said is hay.

5 months after that perspective slanting finding I am happily residing in the Shakzuka Project commune (Shakzuka Project), its a house near Tel Aviv with a reasonably big garden, about 500 meters from a beach taken almost from paradise, quite a few of my nights involve swimming in this zen Mediterranean sea watching all of time stretch out before me into nothingness. At the moment there's about 4 people living at the commune, but this number can change from anything up to 10 - 15 people. The whole of the first month of Israel I went to trance my head off pretty much every single night. Or at maximum every other night. The Shakzuka Project were starting up a line of parties in a local club. The line is called Eyeawaska and at first we threw them every week. I joined Aladdin to help decorate the club during the day before the party started. Typically we would be there for about 8 hours before the party, but each week the decorations got crazier and so the decoration time got more intensive and slightly longer.

The night before the Galactic Rave - one of the best festivals I have ever been to - was one of these Eyeawaska induced nights. We were decorating in the club for 8 hours or so, then partying for 6 hours and didn't get back to the commune till 5 in the morning. At which point Aladdin made a sign for me to hitchhike down into the desert for the Galactic Rave. I was stupidly tired but only 13 hours and 8 cars later when I entered this amazing wonderland full of exotic tales of beautiful souls could I actually get some sleep.

After the unbelievable mind rushing joy that I experienced at that Galactic rave the next one a few months later jumped upon us like lightning. This one was going to be bigger for the Jewish holiday Purim (a holiday where everyone dresses up as madly as possible and is ordered by the bible to get so drunk they "cant remember" ) and we received some amazing news. Me, Aladdin, De Leche and some other friends were going to do decoration for the whole of this 2000/3000 people festival. The festival was at an Osho Ashram, a small beautiful oasis in the middle of rich, seemingly hand chiseled desert mountains. We were there for about 1 week before the festival began and we actually managed to forget that there was a festival at the end of this amazingly intensive week of creation. The festival came and went in the same vein as the last one.

We were on our way back to the commune from the ashram. Our car, Mr D, jam packed to bursting point with all our decoration equipment, at about 12am when we were changing lanes on a stretch of road, suddenly a car comes out of no where and sends us swerving off the road. Time seemed to slow down as everything started moving about the car from the abrupt confusion of physics. It seems like we were spinning for ages before hitting into the road barriers and a few other parked cars. All our decoration went flying out over the road in a grand display of psychedelic casualty. No one was really hurt luckily, but I did bruise my ribs a little and the car was a complete write off. Some of the Shakzuka guys turned up shortly after to take our equipment and to take us to the hospital.

A few days after that we were making a nature party up in the north at a beautiful old fort. I was serving the chai at Rabbits Chill & Chai stand within one of the old buildings of the fort when all of a sudden Ortal another amazing soul starts leading me to a small cage. Inside that cage was my new daughter, Acid, the black bunny. We bonded instantly and she is one of the most jammed, peaceful rabbits I have ever met. At the moment I am in the process of training her to come when she's called. Which surprisingly is working quite well. Hopefully she will find the mental stability within herself to travel with me around Europe back to England.

Craziness of Israel continued to sweep me up in its eternal path of chaotic delight and sometime in April I found myself travelling for a week into the desert. This was no exception to the chaotic delights that this country had in store for me. I passed through Jerusalem on my way to the dead sea after being taken on a tour of the old city by a semi-religious guy who made us read the torah at the western wall. I got down to the dead sea late and one of the people I was hitchhiking with had a zoola on the beach (a big camp with shade netting swarming overhead to block the harshness of the sun) and invited me to stay there. It was beautiful, I was right on the dead sea and next to some natural springs. I woke that first morning to see a woman in billowing white robes sitting on a cliff looking out over the dead sea playing a melancholy Persian violin.

After a few days there I went walking into the desert, I walked on a tourist trail having hitchhiked with a guide of Israel the day before who said if I tried to go anywhere other than this particular trail, due to my lack of un-preparation for the desert, I would probably die. After I got pretty far into the desert I climbed a mountain. At the top there was a cliff over looking other mountains twisting and swaying, reflecting darting rainbows back at me. I sat on the cliff for sometime with the golden eagles enjoying the thermals around me. It was here that I felt, for the strongest time in my life, the presence of eternal beauty that has shaped the history of man kind in such a strange way. It goes by many names, the universe, nature, god, the soul, whatever you want to call it. Ever since this experience I have felt much calmer in my life and more centered.

My time in Israel has been spent mainly doing decorations with the mind blowingly talented OCD Designs team OCD Designs
having more fun that I thought it is possible to contain in one human form and has changed my life so dramatically that I don't think I could imagine my life now without all the astounding family I've made here. Having said that, I do feel the pull of England and further travels, so hopefully the road can expect to shelter me once again very soon.

Once Shakzuka always Shakzuka... with glorious Belgium inbetween

I said my farewells to the Shakzuka Project and left Freddy's on a warmish late September day, I anticipated the liberating rush of diving into another intense journey that would bond me and my bike in a way it had done so many times before. It never hit me, I'm not sure why, maybe because I was heading north to meet the European winter or maybe because I actually had a destination. This disillusionment melded with the reality of now having to cycle blind - without a map - and travelling across Portugal in the middle of a week long train strike, which meant that all the trains were effectively free. I got about 40 kilometers before I decided to ride the trains all the way to Braga, a very nice city in the north of Portugal from where I cycled in progressively  heavier rains all the way to Geres. A big mountainous national park that blurs the boundaries of Portugal and Spain. Geres is hands down the most beautiful place I have ever been in my life so far.

Entering Geres I descended steep beautifully carved valleys full of wild vivid colours down to a rolling river. I was seeing traditional autumnal browns and reds, shooting yellows, resistant greens, shocking blues and gentle purples all covered in a haze of heavenly white as the mist lazily rolled in the valley below me. On the arrival of this overload of ecstasy to my brain all the disaffection I had been feeling with cycling since I left Freddy's did a physical u-turn in the air before me magnified itself by 100 and hit me like a brick. I flew the 3 or 4 kilometers downhill into Geres to the sound track of beautiful calm bird song, eyes watering at the beauty and laughing slightly manically as I rediscovered my love of cycling.

I stayed in the mountains for a few days meditating and seeing some of the perfectly light blue waterfalls and sweet water lakes. The rains came, hard and followed me all the way up to Belgium. After 3 weeks of uneventful riding (train and bike) and disillusioning experiences of France I arrived in Leuven, Belgium the city that Lieve lives in. It is a very beautiful city and as soon as I arrived people instantly started being friendly. As if to make up for all the bad experiences of France and Belgium so far. Meeting Lieve again was magical, as soon as I saw her my stomach jumped into my mouth and dropped viciously back into its original place. The tiredness and coldness seeping into my bones completely forgotten. We headed back to her Kot where I collapsed into a starved sleep, my mainly unjoyful travels over. We spent the next days catching up and realising how good we were together. Lieve's birthday was a few days after I arrived and I met all her close friends at a party at her student accommodation. The weeks after that were largely uneventful, we just stayed at her Kot enjoying ourselves and making me familiar with the surroundings that I was unconsciously falling in love in.

At some point after I arrived we traveled down to the Ardennen, the best piece of countryside that Belgium has to offer. Not overly impressive but still nice and relaxing. Me and Lieve went with Gitte (the other girl I met in Granada) and Lieves other lovely friends, Alejandro, Sarah, Daan and Melanie. It was a nice couple of days and at the end of it Jack (who I traveled with to the Boom) came down from Sweden to stay with us in Belgium. Me, Jack, Lieve and Gitte all went to stay at Lieves for a few days after that. We traveled from Granada and back for those few days. The four of us reunited finding warmth from the love of Spain amongst the progressivly chilly Belgium winter. Me and Jack found a pretty cool squat a little while after that and Jack moved in as a preliminary home in Belgium before he moved to De Bereklauw, a crazy eco permaculture commune that was run by probably one of the best freegans in Europe. He had built the commune literally with his own hands out of free materials and all the food he had on the farm was either from dumpster diving or commune grown.

My birthday came and went, the evening before it we threw a party at Gittes place, it was a really good evening. The next day we wandered into cenral Antwerp where I tinkered on a nice piano (something I hadn't done in a long time) that a locally famous guy wheels from his house to the center of Antwerp to busk. Me, Alejandro, Jack and another friend Greetjeminke discovered the city of Gent that night and went to an amazing trance party that Astral Projections, some Israeli djs were playing at - who knows maybe this subconciously set the premise for travelling to Israel. I had been set a birthday mission that I needed to give 20 hugs to strangers that night. So when 11:56pm snuck up on me and I realised I had only given out 4 hugs I dived into a nearby Morrocan cafe and gave out the other hugs to 16 bewildered Morocan hardcore looking types - all sitting around tables playing poker - with one minute to spare.

Slowly the idea of leaving Belgium to continue my travels crept up on me and by late November I was thinking of my next destination. It was a toss up between England or Germany. But by pure coincidence Captain started talking to me on facebook one day around this time. Saying that there was going to be a party that the Shakzuka Project were throwing and I should come. So I quickly changed my decision and three days later I was in Israel. It seemed like life was sending my a lot of signs not to come here; my credit card for some reason wouldn't work when booking the flight ticket; when I was being driven to the airport by Gitte and Lieve we only just got to the gate about 30 seconds before it closed, and then when I arrived in Israel I was taken in by the immigration authorities and detained for two hours. But after being let reluctantly into the country with only a two week visa to enjoy this magical place I was greeted by two massive carebears holding a sign saying welcome to the rabbit hole (my persona here) and playing guitars. I knew at that point I had made a right decision and that I was well and truly home. I was beautifully Shakzuka ensnared once again.