The March 2020 tour was to prove to be one of the most difficult, in all sorts of ways. The world had just started hearing about Covid 19, the Coronavirus. In its initial stages the area of concern was China, but slowly it spread, and as it spread so it picked up speed.  As a new strain, details were scanty, and it was difficult to separate the facts from the scaremongering that is the delight of social media.  People made travel decisions based on what they knew at the time.  It is easy to judge those decisions with the hindsight that we now have, but at the time everything appeared to be OK, as long as one was sensible.  I made decisions that affected other people’s lives at a later stage and for that I am sorry, but would I make the same decisions again?  Given the details I knew at the time.  Yes, I would.

 For the record, everyone who came with us to Egypt was given the choice to opt out but chose to go.

 My recollections of the time we spent in Egypt unfortunately have some gaps in them.  I was caught by what I can only assume was the Coronavirus, as did some of my fellow travellers, and we all did our utmost to self-isolate.  The symptoms were there, the coughing, the fever that left you soaking wet, and perhaps the most debilitating, the weakness which made it almost impossible to get up in the morning, let alone do anything else throughout the day. Given the varying times between infection and showing symptoms I cannot really say when I caught it.  I can only assume that as the tour leader with the responsibility of tickets and other paperwork, I came into more physical contact with other people.  Remember, this was at an early stage and social distancing was not the thing it has become.  So, there are gaps, as some days I did not manage to get out of bed and some days I was in a delirious state, of which I have no recollection.  The story of being stranded in Egypt for forty days, in the time of Corona is available on Amazon as either a paperback or an e-book.