Not getting enough sleep makes your brain so slow. I didn´t sleep last night. It wasn´t Eva´s fault, She sleeps as good as me and her mum. Very seldom wakes up in the night. Nope, I had a visitor, which made my thoughts wander. Arita Baaijens came to visit over the day. She is probably the foremost female camel explorer on earth today. She just came back from the Altai region in Siberia. She was looking for Paradise. Travelling by horse this time. A great meeting and I liked her very much! She is really like a sister to me. Like Marianne Ahrne. Also a camel traveler and sister. We are kind of all of us in the same boat. A ship that is moving away from us, slowly.  We are getting too old to a certain degree. In the eyes of the media. They want younger people with less brain power, fresher looks and more wasteful energy. Not much one can do about that. Such is life. We live in a Big Brother world right now. Todays survivor in the Expedition scene, has to know how to handle Twitter, Facebook and other social media. You need to update every three days. Both at home and on Expedition, to survive. Because, the competition today is enormous. And, life today is such as, anyone can get famous for doing nothing. However, I realized after meeting Arita, what a waste of profound knowledge! I mean, missing this great knowledge amassed during all these Expeditions. Because we, the old type of explorer who dislikes satellite phones and GPS:es and think that if you carry any of these, how can this be exploring? When bringing a satellite phone to communicate every day with folks back home, how can this be unsupported and called exploration?

And that is what we talked about during her visit. Life and the quest of being an explorer. As Arita said:

“One has to start all over again, every time it is time to leave. I am getting fed up with that!”

I agree. Money is always an issue with people like us. It is kind of like we don´t really fit in to a normal 9-5 life, which is dominated by paying your dues to society. Like taxes. Which I seem to spend all my life doing, catching up on unpaid taxes. Which means I can never really fully concentrate in finding new, visionary ideas. My age makes me know the dark sides of life, which you tend not to know -Thank God- when you are young. So one wastes energy.

Meeting Arita was meeting a soul of the same thought. She was very kind, humble, intelligent, passionate and interested. And very down to earth. I feel so much hope after meeting her. But, we did dwell on the subject:

I told Arita about my beloved dog Sigge, a wild dog I brought back from Patagonia 1997. He was like a child to me. I lost the right to see him anymore 4 years ago. Such is life of an explorer. life goes up and down. But it is meetings with Arita which makes me feel very privileged having chosen this odd lifestyle!

What happened to all these explorers after they had done their trips?

I do know a few of them. I have heard about many others. Some dead. Many got forgotten, which they didn´t like much. This wouldn´t bother me, or Arita, a thing. Quite a few ended up just making the day economically. I guess I am heading there….but, the question is, would it have helped if they, or me, would have chosen another job? A 9-5 with a steady income?

I doubt it very much. I tried it once. At a travel agency. A nightmare after awhile. For me and the employer. I think we will write a book about these people. Me and Arita. As she said:

“The older you get, the more you enjoy biographies about other people.”

So right, so right. I am reading Tony Blair’s new book right now. I like it. I didn´t know it helped drinking a lot. Hmm, maybe try that then….

About the money issue, read this! I agree….

I will miss cruising the Old City passing places like this....a workshop....

“Will I ever see her again?”

Well, if the longing and ache is big enough, you will see her again, so YES! I will see Sanaa soon again. In shallah!

The war planes are still leaving Sana`a, it seems like there is no end to the war, it just continuous and people have almost stopped talking about it. It has become part of the daily chores. Global media still writes about it, though, but still seems to lack profound insight and it seems just to be second hand reports. (Read this and a local point of view, this.) Ramadan is moving into its last week and soon the Eid festivities will begin, the same day I return to Sweden. I guess it is the right time to return, before the festivities. Why indeed enjoy life to its fullest….

Well, I have had many questions about my studies….how have they fared?

This is the house where I had my apartment in the Old City, see the lights...that is the mafrag....

Hmmm, I set out to become a scholar and ended up loving Yemen, but I guess, I have a good base when it will be time to set off on the Big Expedition! Problem is that most of the local Yemenis I have hanged out with have spoken English and that the plans for the big Expedition has taken most of my energy and time, trying to get the right contacts here in this lovely country. Which I believe I have. So, as it is right now, I do know a lot more Arabic than when I came here and the school where I have done my studies have been excellent in every way. Good program, excellent teachers and great staff! One thing is for sure, however, my choice to come to Yemen ahead of Egypt or Syria, was the best of choices!

The reason for this is many. First of all, if one wants to experience the real Arabia, Yemen is the place. If you come here to learn Arabic, the same applies, and this is due to that you learn so much more than just Arabic. Very few Yemenis do speak English. You really dwell into the Moslem world in every way! And you get this really important perspective on Islam and Moslems, which for me has been as important, since my upcoming Expedition has all to do with education and understanding.

How to read the Quran....not at all easy...is kat forbidden, haram, or not?

So, I will try to give you readers some of this new perspective I have acquired. Let me first just state though exactly the same as my good friend, the worlds foremost female camel traveller, Aritha Baiijens, who´s spent many years travelling the Arab World, told me when I asked her:

“Are you a Moslem?”

“Are you joking? I am a free spirit!”

The same applies to me. I believe, but do not belong. So, let me continue, when you dive into the Quran you realise after awhile, that this religion in reality is a very just, fair, down to earth and that many of those holy words written in the Suras, Hadiths, well, they can after all be easily misinterpreted to suit people with conservative, non-educated and down right evil minds. Take for example the word Jihad, which in the West is interpreted Holy War and for most Westerners means armed fanatics either blowing themselves up in crowds of innocent people or cutting heads of Western hostages, well, in reality it means effort. Which means that it in the beginning of Islam stood for a spiritual meaning, that the believer withstood all evil which surrounded him and instead fought the nasty thoughts of oneself. A war against oneself.

Terreced fields outside Thilla....

Another discovery when reading the Quran is that is far from as anti-woman is we in the west believe, it is just again, once more, conservative men who has translated the words of the Quran to suit their own means to keep power…but, yes, there are many anti-woman quotations, as in the Bible and I think one has to try to see the Quran, and the Bible, also in its historical perspective and understand that one has to change with time and apply life to what the world looks like right now. To quote the Quran itself, in Sura 13:11 it states that Allah will not change the possibilities of humans, until they change themselves!

Yemeni women rushing through the souk during Ramadan....

So true! Have a changed myself during these ten weeks in San`a?

Indeed, I have regained hope, joy of life, freed myself of a lot of worries and I am set for the Big Expedition!

However, as always, life is just not filled with joy, I am off back to Sweden to sort things out…..in shallah, it will work out will.

From now on, all my blog work will be at www.mikaelstrandberg.com

But, please, do see this little slideshow from my Yemeni visit!

The Empty Quarter, or Rub Al-Khali, was often referred to in the first part of the 20th Century as one of the few remaining genuinely unexplored regions of the world, on the same scale as the South and North Pole. Therefore many explorers wanted to do the first crossing of this vast sandy desert, 650 000 square kilometres in size, like putting Belgium, Holland and France together, but first of all gold digging explorers to catch this price -forgetting the local Bedu who lived here- turned out to be a simple civil servant from Bristol in the UK, Bertram Thomas. He crossed the Empty Quarter together with local Bedu 1930-31 and wrote an excellent book called Arabia Fenix. Amazingly enough his book can be read on the Internet!

At this stage when I have decided on where to go, understanding the objective of the expedition, all effort has to be put into finding the right contacts and background material. Both tasks filled with joy. Communicating with experts on the area is half the fun. And so far almost everyone I have contacted have been very helpful, showing a camaraderie unknown between people in the same business as me here in grey Sweden. One of them is the Grand Old Dame of desert and Camel travel, Arita Baijeens. And as always, you come across people associated with other things and other dreams you have had. Today, by pure coincidence during my research, I came across an old acquaintance of mine, Dan Mazur, and remembered that I had told him a few years ago, that I of pure interest after reading Hillary´s account of his conquest of Everest, wanted to make an attempt on Hillary´s and Tenzing´s original route. Dan Mazur, like me using Facebook, so I contact him and said, I am still interested. He advised me to go for it, if prepared, april 2010. Why not then….life is short.

Second task is to put an enormous effort into getting a picture as big and broad as possible regarding the area. What I have to learn and try to understand in a very short time, 10 months or so, is a gigantic task. Even though I have already had quite a lot of insight into Islam, Arabs, the Middle East and desert travel from earlier travels, I know almost nothing about the Gulf, camels or, most important, their original inhabitants, the Bedu. And I need to learn Arabic, in shallah.

At the same time I have to try to support myself, find sponsors, set up the media kit, keep extremely fit, eat the right food, be relatively happy, have a social life, but still spend most of the time studying, no easy thing. Gee, there is some sacrifice indeed! It is at the same time, one of the best moments of an explorers life, but also the worst in some ways, because you love it more than other parts of your life. But it is the same thing before every Expedition. Most people who are close to you, genuinely fear and hate it! This is what a true explorer want to do more than anything else in life! travel, be it through books or in reality. I do look forward to this Expedition more than ever before!