My Travel Year: A Look Back and a Look Forward

The Duke Humphreys Reading Room, Bodleian Library, Oxford

 

It's been a good year for me as far as travel went, but it was also sort of predictable. I did my usual winter research trip to Egypt, spending time in Cairo before heading upriver to Aswan to research The Case of the Disappearing Dervish. A trip to Bologna followed when I tagged along as my wife attended a conference. Springtime saw me visiting my son in British Columbia, followed by our usual two-month research stay in Oxford. I rounded the year out with a couple of trips to Tangier. I'm reviving the Moroccan Mysteries series, so those were research trips too. I hardly ever travel just for fun, although I have a lot of fun anyway!

No new countries in 2025. Will that change in 2026?

Maybe. 

Italy has the most beautiful churches, prove me wrong

 

This year I have trips planned to: Cairo and the Fayoum, British Columbia, Morocco, Paris, Italy, and of course Oxford.

We may go to Oman late this year thanks to a recommendation from some of my Cairene friends who sing its praises. We shall see. It would be my first new country in a while.

If you want to read more about my travels, I often write about them in my monthly newsletter. You also get two free ebooks in the deal.

What trips do you have planned this year? Tell me in the comments section!

Temple of Sobek, Kom Ombo, near Aswan

 

Writing Update!

Hello everyone!

I just got back from southern Egypt, where I was researching Book Six in my Masked Man of Cairo series, called The Case of the Disappearing Dervish. Moustafa has to go back home to the Sudan in order to solve a mystery, and of course Sir Augustus and Faisal come along. It will be out later this year.

I'm also launching a parallel series starring Cordelia, who doesn't get as much page time as she deserves in the main series. Tentatively called Cordelia's Cairo Casebook, it starts with Cordelia Cracks the Case. That's in production and will be out in a couple of months.

I'll soon be diving back into the The Berlin Murders with book three, A Summertime Murder in Berlin. Katherine and friends get tangled up in some pretty nasty business! I'm also (slowly) working on the Tech Scavengers science fiction series.

You can watch the progress of all these projects on the sidebar to the right. You can also follow along by subscribing to my monthly newsletter.

If you want to see more photos of my travels, check out my Instagram!

My Travel Year: A Look Back and a Look Forward

Cat and cat, Cairo

 

This past year wasn't the best for travel, as you all know. Despite all the restrictions, I did manage to make it to Egypt twice. I have a private flat where I can safely stay in the center of Cairo, and the travel restrictions are light to get into the country. You just need to show a negative PCR test and proof of vaccination.

The main destinations for these trips have been the northern parts of the country, taking in the early medieval monasteries at Wadi Natrun, the famous port of Alexandria, and the battlefield at El Alamein. I also briefly went south to Asyut to arrange a donation for someone to the Lilian Trasher orphanage, which briefly appeared in The Case of the Karnak Killer.

I also went to Oxford for my usual summer working vacation. English beer, country walks, and work in a medieval library. Not a bad life!

The South African variant put the spanner in the works of a couple of planned trips. I wanted to go to Berlin to research my Weimar mystery series, but they were going into partial shutdown so I cancelled those plans. I also had to cancel a trip to Essaouira in Morocco. The country decided to close its borders again to avoid the latest wave. I haven't been back to Morocco since this whole thing began and I'm missing it!

Tomb of a Mamluk ruler, Cairo

 

As I write this I'm recovering from a mild case of covid. Did I get it on one of my trips? Nope, I got it while supposedly staying safe at home in Madrid. Oh well!

Here's hoping 2022 will be better than 2021. If the latest variant subsides, and isn't replaced with another one, then I will go to Berlin and Essaouira this year. I also will be returning to Egypt sometime in the first half of the year. No set plans yet. I'm adopting a wait and see attitude.

If you want to hear more about my travels, you might enjoy my newsletter.

Commonwealth cemetery, El Alamein

Fancy turn-of-the-century buildings like this are a common sight in Alexandria

Now Available: The Case of the Asphyxiated Alexandrian!

 

Book Five of my Masked Man of Cairo historical mystery series is now available. The Case of the Asphyxiated Alexandrian takes our heroes to Egypt's fabled port.

So what's Book Six going to be? We'll see. I'm thinking of heading either to the isolated Coptic monasteries of Wadi Natrun or heading south all the way to the Sudan. I'll keep you posted.

A mysterious murder. A lost pharaoh.
Sir Augustus Wall came to Egypt to escape his old life, but when a comrade from the trenches is found murdered in a Cairo hotel, Augustus realizes his past has finally caught up.
Now he must discover the reason for the baffling murder, leading him and his friends Moustafa and Faisal on a dangerous hunt for the most sought-after treasure in Egypt.
The long-awaited fifth book in the Masked Man of Cairo series sees the trio on their greatest adventure yet!

Writing During Lockdown

Hello from lockdown!

No, I'm not locked down in the hypostele hallway of Karnak temple like the photo suggests, I'm locked down in my apartment in Madrid, the hardest-hit city of one of the hardest-hit countries in the world. I'm only going out for essential shopping trips these days. My Easter trip to England has been canceled, as has a planned spring trip to Tunisia.

At least that gives me plenty of time to write. In addition to work for my usual clients, I'm hard at work on the fourth book of my Masked Man of Cairo series, The Case of the Karnak Killer. I should be done with it in a couple of weeks and then it will go into edits. After that I'll finish up the third in the Interzone Mystery series, Flight to Fez. After that I'll be working on a couple of new projects that I'll announce later in April.

My word count has definitely gone up in the last two weeks of total lockdown. Writing is keeping me sane, so I'll just keep doing more and more of it. What are you doing to keep sane?

Stay safe!

My Adventure Travel Year: A Look Back And A Look Forward

The Red Pyramid of Dashur.

Is it too late to write a retrospective on on 2019? Yeah, probably, but I've been busy.

It was a pretty solid year for me travel-wise, starting and ending with trips to Egypt to write my Masked Man of Cairo mystery series. I explored the old medieval district of Cairo, hung out with Egyptian and Sudanese friends, and headed to Bahariya Oasis deep in the Western Desert. The second trip, from which I recently returned, took me up the Nile to Luxor, somewhere I hadn't been since 1991. The modern city had grown and so have the ruins! No, there aren't suddenly more ancient temples, but more had been excavated and restored. Funny how even an archaeological site with change with time.

Bas-relief in tomb Luxor

Sandwiched between those two trips was a trip to Fez in Morocco. Readers of this blog will know that I regularly go to Morocco and have a few books set there, but oddly enough until this past year I hadn't been to one of its most famous cities. I stayed in the old medina and spent my days wandering around the labyrinthe of alleys.

Of course I also had my usual stays in Oxford and London for research and catching up with old friends.

The tannery in Fez ha been operating (and stinking) for centuries

So what's on the agenda for 2020? At least one trip to Egypt, perhaps with the goal of seeing the Faiyum region, which I've never visited. I also want to get some new countries under my belt. I've been to 35 countries but not a new one for several years. I'm fixing that by giving a talk at the International Dublin Writers' Festival in June. That's right, a guy named Sean McLachlan has never been to Ireland! Shameful. I'm also considering a trip to Tunisia and maybe even the Sudan. More details when I get them!

Holy man's tomb, Fez

Nobelman's tomb, Luxor

The hypostele hall in Karnak.

Travel Tuesday: Khan el-Khalili Souk in Cairo

Whenever I'm in Cairo, I like to visit Khan el-Khalili, the marketplace in the old medieval part of town. It was founded in the late 14th century and got a major remodel under the Mamluk Sultan al-Ghuri (reigned 1501-1516). While at street level a lot of the shops are stuffed with tourist trinkets and day to day wares, if you look up you'll be rewarded with some fine examples of Islamic architecture.

Bab al-Badistan, built 1511.

Meshribiyya, screened windows that allow women to look out without being seen by the people outside.

There are so many mosques in the area I 'm not sure which one this is.

Travel Tuesday: Treasures of the Egyptian Museum

Shabtis were put in tombs to act as servants in the afterlife.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I got back from Egypt last week, which means I have plenty of pictures for Travel Tuesday posts!

When I'm in Cairo I always reserve a couple of afternoons to wander around the National Museum. It's absolutely huge and no matter how many times I go there, I always see something new. A new National Museum is being constructed on the Giza Plateau near the pyramids. I passed the building the last time I went up there. It's a sleek, modern building that's even bigger than the existing museum. As with many government projects, it's behind schedule, but when it finally opens it promises to be stunning. In the meantime, we have the old museum to enjoy.

Stela of the Buchis Bull, showing one of the Ptolemaic pharaohs giving offerings to the sacred bull in their burial place in Armant. The Buchis bulls were manifestations of the god Ptah.

Two male figurines made of gold during the Late Predynastic period. Yep, these two guys are older than the oldest pharaoh!

Column of painted limestone carved to look like a lotus flower.

Back from Egypt

Medieval mosque in Old Cairo

I just got back to Madrid after nearly a month in Egypt. I was there working on the third of my Masked Man of Cairo neo-pulp mystery series, The Case of the Golden Greeks. It's about halfway done.

Egypt was as wonderful as usual. I spent a lot of my time in Cairo hanging out with Egyptian friends and exploring the old medieval neighborhood where Sir Augustus Wall has his antiquities shop and gets into many of his adventures. Then I went to the Western Desert for a week, ending up in Bahariya Oasis, the site of much of the plot for Book 3. A long drive from Cairo (or ten days by camel), Bahariya Oasis has become famous for the discovery of the Golden Mummies, a collection of beautifully preserved gilded mummies from the Greco-Roman period.

One of the Golden Mummies of Bahariya Oasis, courtesy Wikimedia Commons because I wasn't allowed to take photos. One wonders who they got a shot.

I'll be working on the novel for the next couple of months, and getting into some ghostwriting projects as well. Enjoy these pictures from my trip, and check out my Facebook and Instagram pages for more. More posts about Egypt coming soon!

Rear and side wall of the tomb Nr. 54, Valley of the Golden Mummies, el-Bahriya, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Bahariya Oasis.

Late Period tomb in Bahariya Oasis

Roman fort on the old caravan route to Bahariya Oasis.

Back to civilization! A pleasure boat on the Nile.

All photos copyright Sean McLachlan unless otherwise noted.

My Travel Year: A Look Back and a Look Forward

This past year has been pretty good for travel with me. I went to Egypt twice, spending a total of six weeks there to start my Masked Man of Cairo neo-pulp detective series. I made some great friends, explored Cairo more thoroughly than I did when I was first there way back in 1991, and got to see the pyramids again. Always a plus! I also had an all-too-brief trip to Tangier. I've been to that city a dozen times now and it still relaxes me. It's a quick and cheap getaway from Madrid, being only an hour's flight away, and I always seem to get a lot of writing done. You see, I hardly ever go on a real vacation. All my trips are work trips but enjoyable anyway. As usual, my family and I spent Easter and the summer in Oxford as we do every year. I get lots of research done at the university library.

So what's in store for 2018? More Egypt, certainly, and perhaps a trip to Fez, a fascinating Moroccan city I still haven't explored. For Egypt I intend to go to the western oases, which I have never seen, and perhaps up the river again to revisit the sites around Luxor and Aswan. There will be the usual trips to England and around Spain, and perhaps a few other short trips. One trip I and my family would like to do is a visit to Paris. A good friend lives there and my son is taking French in school, so he can be our translator. And who knows what else 2018 will throw at me? We shall see.

Off to Egypt!

Two of the five Abusir pyramids

Today I'm off to Egypt for another three-week writing retreat. During the last one I worked on The Case of the Purloined Pyramid, the first in a series of neo-pulp detective novels in the Masked Man of Cairo series. This time around I'm going to continue the adventures of Augustus, Moustafa, and Faisal in The Case of the Shifting Sarcophagus.

I'll be visiting friends and old haunts in and around Cairo, and seeing some new sites as well. The main one will be Abusir, a V Dynasty pyramid field that was built by the pharaohs after the Giza plateau filled up in the IV Dynasty.

I probably won't be blogging much, but I will be posting regular pictures and updates on my Facebook author page and my Instagram account.

Stela from the tomb of Ptahshepses (vizier under the pharoah Nyuserre)

Images courtesy Wikimedia Commons. My own pics coming soon!

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The third issue of my newsletter, Sean's Travels and Tales, will come out later this week. This issue includes an article on an odd artifact I spotted in the National Museum in Cairo, a short story from my Toxic World series, and a coupon for a free ebook.

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Military History Photo Friday: African Shields

A variety of shields. The small round ones in the center are Ethiopian. One on the left has decorated brass fittings. The one next to it is made of hippopotamus hide. I believe the other shields are from the Sudan and Kenya, but I'm not sure. That skinny one on the lower left is a Dinka shield. The Dinka are from south Sudan and their shields only covered the hand, with the rod being used to parry blows. The shield on the right just above the elephant tusk is made of a turtle shell.

One of the more unusual museums I visited on my recent trip to Cairo was the Ethnological Museum. This is a very old-school museum with displays that don't look like they've been changed much in the past fifty years. It contains a good collection of costume, day-to-day objects, and weapons and armor. This includes an impressive array of East African shields that I'm showing here. In the upper floor is the Ethnographic Society with a lovely Victorian lecture hall and a sizeable library.

Located just off Tahrir Square, the heart of the famous 2011 revolution, it's one of the best guarded museums I have ever seen. Part of the grounds have been converted into a police headquarters. To get onto the property I had to go through a metal detector and show my passport. Then a cop with a machine gun escorted me to the museum. From there a museum official followed me from room to room until I left. No one is stealing these shields!

I'm far from an expert on African shields, although I am familiar with the Ethiopian forms. Unfortunately there was no signage in this room to help me. My identifications should thus be taken with a grain of salt. Any help identifying these fascinating pieces of African militaria would be highly appreciated!

The top shield is made of the plastron (belly part of the shell) of a giant turtle.

Two more shields. Like the vast majority of the shields in this collection, they are made of animal hide, which was strong enough to counter blows from clubs, arrows, and spears, but useless against bullets.

Two Ethiopian style shields. They may actually be from Sudan as this shield type was used there as well. They may, in fact, have been captured during the Anglo-Sudan War, when the British fought the Mahdi from 1896-99. Several weapons in the collection certainly come from the Mahdist army. I'll be showing those in a later post.

Travel Tuesday: Old Kingdom Death Mask from the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo

My recent trip to Egypt was actually the second time I visited that fascinating country. The first was way back in 1991. As I wandered around the sights, I was occasionally hit by deja vu. Other sights I remember clearly from my first visit. One of the latter is this arresting Old Kingdom death mask in the national museum in Cairo.

It stuck in my mind from my first visit because the face looks just like people you see in Egypt today. Indeed, despite Egypt being popularly perceived (and officially titled) an Arab nation, only 17% of the genetic makeup of the modern population is Arabic. A recent study by National Geographic found that the Egyptian population is genetically 68% North African, 17% Arab, 4% Jewish Diaspora, 3% East African, 3% from Asia Minor, and 3% southern European. Thus the modern Egyptian population is much the same as the ancient Egyptian population, and this 4,000 year old mask shows a face that can still be seen on the streets of Cairo today.