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Items tagged travel in Nov

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Good travel book for recently retired man?

The new Atlas Obscura coffee table book is worth a look.

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Which online platform can you recommend for organizing group trips? I’ve review startups that tried to build that, but failed a lot. Anything you can recommend that you used or use continuously?

TripIt has worked extremely well for me for trips with up to 9 people.

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What would be the best plan to spend a 4-6 day trip to Egypt?

You’d have to go fast, but I would suggest arriving in Cairo, staying one night there, seeing the Pyramids and the Egyptian Museum, then an overnight train from Cairo to Aswan, a day there, a two day cruise down to Luxor (you can book yourself on to a boat that’s going in that direction in Aswan and save some money, especially since the down stream cruises are shorter), then two days in Luxor to see Karnak, the Valley of the Kings etc, then home. There’s a ton to see in Luxor so you could do the same route but take the train from Aswan to Luxor instead of the cruise—or skip Aswan, which would be a shame because it’s the nicest out of those three places in my opinion. If you go to Aswan, don’t miss Philae temple!

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How fast do they go? Like everything else, camels aren’t what they were. Do not be encouraged by the accounts of the great desert travellers. They were better men than us, and were probably lying anyway, and they were riding camels which were used to going for many days at full pelt over the most hellish land and then charging into artillery fire at the end. The wrecks you get in the modern camel markets of Omdurman and Cairo are degenerate great-great-great-great-grandchildren of them and their forebears would be desperately ashamed of them.

Travelling with Camels, by Charles Foster # 14th November 2009, 10:51 pm