Salaam aleikum!

"Peace be upon you!"
I am in Cairo, Egypt now! I just arrived this afternoon. The past couple days have been a little frustrating. Prince gave me the impression that it was quite easy to get a transit visa for Iran from the Peshawar consulate, especially since he had a friend there, but when I showed up on Monday, I was told it would take 25 days to get a response from Tehran and my visa fee was non-refundable. I had already tried to get a visa from the embassy in Islamabad (7-10 days). After talking to many other travellers (one Australian was waiting for three weeks), I decided that the current "crisis" over nuclear energy development was going to impede my ability to get through Iran, and that it was too cold to cross the 'Stans of Central Asia to get to Turkey, so I opted for a flight to Cairo. Interestingly, the prices for flights out here from Pakistan are the same whether you purchase the tickets months in advance or the day before. I tried to buy a one-way ticket, but when it came time to furnish the ticket, I was suddenly informed that the airlines could not sell a one-way ticket to Egypt from Pakistan. I don't know if it was a scam, or just ignorance, or immigration laws, but I was told that because I was getting a visa on arrival, I needed a ticket leaving Egypt, but then later I was told that it was something that the Egyptian government required of tickets issued from Pakistan. Maybe it's another funny rule to keep "terrorists" out. Anyways, I bought a roundtrip ticket from Peshawar (the same price from any of the airports in Pakistan -- relatively cheap), stopped in Abu Dhabi (wow, the UAE looks great!), and landed here. I took a city bus from the airport and learned how to read Arabic numbers in the process (the buses are labelled in Arabic).
So far Egypt is great. Cairo is remarkably European. The buildings and the streets resemble Madrid or Paris. I have to take care of some more visa business here so I will be here for a few days, other than just sightseeing.
I didn't spend much time in Pakistan, but I've gotta say that the people were some of the friendliest and most helpful I have encountered on this trip. Maybe it is because there are so few tourists, but Pakistanis are extremely hospitable. It is such a difference from the typical Western opinion that it is a threatening place full of terrorists. The news media is such crap and there really is an agenda in the way they portray the news. Pakistan was great for meeting travellers -- so very different from SE Asia and all the other places I had been to on this trip. Everyone I met was very much into the "overland" thing. It didn't even have to be explained. These folks reminded me of the intrepid travellers I met in Mongolia. Half the folks seemed to have come from Europe via Iran and the other half was going in the other direction. The folks that had just come from Iran had nothing but great stuff to say about that place: modern, clean, and friendly. I was told by one guy, "Not many people speak English, but if you meet someone who does, that person will be your best friend and show you around." One 19-year old Swiss kid had just spent eight months travelling overland through the former Yugoslav states, spending two months in Iran and a month in the western half of Pakistan (where it's supposedly dangerous, if you believe the Pakistani media). He was headed up through the Central Asian nations and then to China and by boat to Japan. Another Swiss I met was overlanding between Switzerland and India (where he spent five months taking lessons to play the tabla). This is the second time he has made this trip (the first land crossing took three months, but this time he was planning on doing it in two-three weeks). Anyways, I think there are going to be a lot of travellers in limbo waiting for their Iranian visas.