Pelotome –
around Egypt on a bicycle.
“We cannot travel far, owing to the boundless desert of sand, which stretched away on every hand without a track of any kind.
In fact, even if a good road were made, the first windy day would cover it a foot deep in sand.”
~ Round About the World on Bicycles – G.W. Burston & H.R. Stokes (1890).
My Life and Times
by Jerome K. Jerome
From £4,75
June 1886 – Published 1888.
Around the World on a Bicycle.
“From Teheran to Yokohama” was the second illustrated volume of Tom Steven’s pioneering ride around the globe and covers the second half of his journey on a fifty-inch Pope “Columbia” high-wheeler, from Persia to Japan.
After having been refused passage through Afghanistan, the Englishman took an Egyptian steamer from Istanbul to Alexandria (then under British rule), via İzmir in Turkey, and Piraeus in Greece.
After hilariously complaining about the street hawkers and beggars that follow him everywhere, he details his train journey “along the Egyptian Railway to Suez” – “a wretched hole,” – passing the 1892 battlefield at Tell El Kebir (near Kassassin), and then, on the 7th July 1896, “by steamer down the Red Sea to Aden and Karachi,” where he recommences his ride around the world towards Japan.
- By Thomas Stevens.
- Published by Sampson, Lowe, Marston, Searle and Rivington, London.
March 1889 – Published 1890.
Round About The World on Bicycles.
“The pleasure tour of G.W. Burston and H.R. Stokes, Melbourne Bicycle Club, Australia,” follows George Burston and Harry Stokes on their 56-inch high-wheel bicycle journey around the world, setting off from Melbourne, on 1st November 1888, arriving back in Australia on the 14th December 1889.
The Egyptian section of their journey was chronicled in The Australasian. on 27th July and 17th August, 1889.
Sailing from Bombay (Mumbai), India, to Ismailia, via a three hour stop in Aden, Yemen, they explore the city on their bicycles before catching the train to Cairo, and cycling to the Pyramids through the gardens of the (now abandoned) Said Halim Pasha Palace.
Taking an excursion by train to El Badrasheen, they then make a donkey ride through the desert to the “buried city of Memphis” and a mule trek to Heliopolis, “or the City of the Sun”, before travelling on by train to Alexandria, where a three hour cycle was made less than enjoyable by the pestering locals, before boarding a Russian steamer to Jaffa, Palestine (now Israel), via Port Said,
- by G.W. Burston and H.R. Stokes.
- Published by George Robertson and Company, Melbourne, Australia “for private circulation only”
ROUNDABOUT TO INDIA.
“Egypt is pre-eminently the land of backsheesh, and Alexandria, as the chief port of arrival and departure, naturally comes in for its share of this annoying attention.
From ship to hotel , and from hotel to railway – station , the traveller has to run the gauntlet of people deeply versed in the subtle arts and wiles of backsheesh diplomacy.
At any time, as you stroll down the street, some native will suddenly bob up like a sable ghost beside you, point something you don’t want to see, and brazenly demand backsheesh for showing it.
Cook’s tourists’ office is but a few hundred yards from my hotel. I have passed it before, and know exactly where it is, but one of these dusky shadows glides silently behind me, until the office is nearly reached, when he slips ahead, points it out, and with consummate assurance demands backsheesh for guiding me to it.
The worst of it is there is no such thing as getting rid of these pests ; they are the most persevering and unscrupulous blackmailers in their own small way that could be imagined.
People whom you could swear you never set eyes on before will boldly declare they have acted as guide or something, and dog your footsteps all over the city ; most of them are as “umble” as Uriah Heep himself in their annoying importunities, but some will not even hesitate to create a scene to gain their object, and, as the easiest way to get rid of them, the harassed traveller generally gives them a coin.”
~ Around The World on a Bicycle, Thomas Stevens (1888).