Somewhere at the crossroads …

one finds the Wanderlust Cafe. A meeting place, a place of respite, a place to have some exotic tea or a stiff drink, eat fruits and simple food, a place to stow your pack in a safe corner, or lay out a few trade goods for sale. Listen to foreign tongues, write or sketch in your journal, argue philosophy, send postcards and file dispatches, or just sit and dream. Send some emails (though we can't guarantee the internet is working, shrug).

There's spies and smugglers and adventurers and artists and all other sorts of low-lifes. Fortunetellers. Bards. Poets. Pilgrims. Gods and goddesses in disguise. One never knows.

Where is it? Along the Silk Road, off the Barbary Coast, on a Greek island somewhere near Delphi or Shangri-La. Hard to find, hard to miss. Under the shade of a centuries-old mango tree. Adorned by long-limbed descendants of Egyptian temple cats. A place to tie up the camels and the horses and dust off your fedora. Swap some stories, or some lies. Hatch a conspiracy. Dance if you wish. Scream if you need to. Love if you dare.

Welcome!

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A Sister Ship of the African Queen

A sister ship to the African Queen, moored beneath a highway bridge over the Nile near Aswan in Egypt.  How many voyages up and down the river she must have made.  Now she lies still in her mooring, under the uncaring canopy of a modern steel and concrete bridge. 
She has had a most satisfying existence, [...]

Boundary Between Two Worlds

An early morning image along the Nile River, accidentally turned sideways, suddenly reveals the boundary between the ‘real’ world and a hidden world.    If  you look closely, you can discern the banks of the river on the right and their reflection on the left.
Such a thin boundary.  From this sideways point of view, it is [...]

Cairo Dawn

The best kind of insomnia, jet-lagged wakefulness on arrival at an exotic location.  A view from my hotel room at the Mena House Oberoi in Cairo in the early dawn hours.
The excitement of watching the pyramids slowly emerge from the shadows as the day begins.  Wondering what adventures the day will bring.  Anything seems possible.
– [...]

A Brief Memory of Color

Beside a busy street in the Giza section of Cairo, our bus passed the fruit stand so quickly that it was almost a blur.  But hidden in the original crummy photo were the faint imprints of the vivid colors I remember.
A little bit of Photoshop photo alchemy, and the transformation captures more accurately the color [...]

Unexpected Cairo

One of the men told me he thought well of Cairo.  It was interesting.  “Take it from me,” he said, “there’s a lot in seeing places, because you can remember ‘em afterward.”
– Rudyard Kipling
This was a hurried moment in downtown Cairo.  Captured while rushing past many intriguing stores and shops on a quest for some [...]