And the beginning of the last month of our travels. At least it had bloody well better be. For a long time our aim was to be home in time for Val’s birthday. That is now quite clearly impossible, + our revised notions too, of between the 10th + the 12th, almost equally so. Just in time for Christmas, we reckon now, the 20th maybe.
We walked over to the Lourdes Hotel in the morning, to see what the news was. We weren’t optimistic, I must say, but in fact it was pretty good. C + A had received their letter, + applied for their visa, which should be ready tomorrow. On Monday, they have to sort out some financial matters, + on Tues we leave. About as good as we could have hoped for really, tho’ still with a couple of things left to go wrong. I’ll believe it all when we’re on the road + moving on Tuesday.
We walked away + had got half-way home before we discovered we had left our wallet behind. We rushed back, + found that the sweeper had found it + handed it in – a pleasant surprise, I must say. There was another guy staying out there who might be an additional passenger thro’ Iran, an Austrian guy but he has neither a visa nor a letter from his embassy. He has rustled up a sheet of headed notepaper from the German-Nepal Assn however, + I composed an official-sounding letter to be typed out on it. It might do the trick, but I’m doubtful.
We returned to the hotel in a reasonably good mood, + spent the rest of the day there, apart from a brief outing to the Post Office. I wrote a good bit, Val read + knitted. She is knitting me a scarf, using, in the absence of knitting needles, the broken-off half of the radio aerial, + the inside of a ball-point pen. She is remarkably resourceful.
The radio reception was patchy, sometimes excellent, sometime abominable, but it had just about faded away completely by the time the football results were coming in, because the batteries were just about dead. But since I was too, the result of too little sleep last night, I had no energy to sort out some new ones, + fell asleep. West Ham were losing at the time, an additional disincentive.
And yet another careless misplacement, this time our wallet, this time for real, which could have proved disastrous, but wasn’t, because of the honesty of a local man. Though when I think of it, our wallet back then would have contained a little spare cash, no more – the vital stuff (passports, travellers’ chegues) was kept in a money belt almost permanently around our waists (and wrapped in a plastic bag to stop it all virtually disintegrating because of our sweat.) Nowadays, our wallet would also contain a variety of vital cards… though I suppose they too would be packed away in our belts… had they existed.
More ongoing news of West Ham, which seemed of inordinate importance at the time; why I think posterity might be interested in such stuff, I have no idea. Except that following them is still part of who I am. They won 2-0 the other evening, in case you’re interested.
Maybe the sweeper gave your wallet to management because s/he’s a Muslim. In all the Muslim countries I was in I didn’t find thievery to be a problem (though I lost two items to theft–a stiletto and a tape recorder). Once, on Cairo’s busiest street, my wallet (with passport, travelers checks, Egyptian cash) fell out of my backpack. I heard a sound I never liked–psssss–men often made that sound to me. I turned around, ready to shout at the guy, and he was holding out my wallet!