Solo Adventures in Egypt

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Solo Adventure in Egypt - Tom Grundy

EMAIL ONE of TWO:
Fri, 17 Dec 2004 19:21pm, Cairo.

Hey dudes

I'm in bloody Egypt aint I?! am minus any underwear and cash cards, but have been gallivanting around the pyramids, the nile and all manner of museums. Read on…..

It was pleasant charter flight, full of package tourists - was at Brum airport from 4am. full of screeching children checking in for Lapland, Santas everywhere, everyone in festive santa hats! was dying to tell one of the squirts grabbing my leg that they were being lied to and that santa is a capitalist fat mince pie thief. However, I let him off, what with being six and all.

Naturally I was put next to the nutter on the plane - Jacqueline, a hopelessly middle-aged divorcee, off for an unplanned, surprise visit to her Egyptian ex-husband. Incidentally, she was Scottish. Her plan was to turn up in Cairo randomly and send all her belongings home, she went to great lengths to emphasise - in painful gory detail - what a complete selfish bastard he was and how he drover her to the brink of suicide. With crazy long black hair, she was a classic manic, man-eating battleaxe and her hatred for her ex had translated to all Arabic people. The flight was otherwise peaceful, and the crew insisted I had a meal although I'd saved money by not booking one. The views over the desert were absolutely superb, despite the captain interrupting with a dramatic "please listen carefully, I have a very important announcement" - sending me into a mild panic. Luckily it was just someone smoking in the toilet. If you'd booked last week, charter flights were £70 (I paid double last month) or 50 to Taba - as recently had a bit of a hotel bombing.

Luxor airport was more of a 'shed' affair, and Jacqueline's semi-racism reared its head with our super friendly taxi driver. arriving minus a hotel booking, train ticket, health insurance, friends and only a visa card in your body belt is pretty daunting - at least it makes me sound cool and hardcore. Once my new friend had gone off to boil some bunnies, I booked a ticket on the overnight train to Cairo…

Spent the rest of the evening looking around luxor, was quite warm and full of smokey, dusty, narrow bazaars and alleyways. Checked out all the tourist tat - very similar to Moroccan stuff - including a 7-foot bong! The Nile and the Luxor temple were serene at nighttime, although tarnished by a phat Maccy D's every few miles. I munched on some snacks I'd prepared for the plane, and watched the natives have big animated, theatrical arguments and debates - great stuff.

For an hour or two I joined some locals in a dusty coffee house for the 'big game' - Egypt were playing Arsenal. I tried to understand what was going on and made the rights noises in the right places. Afterwards, I tried to communicate with a bunch of fans, who only knew Arabic, and established things like name, place, family, blair is a dickhead, camera is from china.

Constant quizzing occurs wherever you go - although only the 5% who want to sell you something bother you, a fact a lot of tourists forget. "whereyoufrom? what'syourname? howlongyouhere? Cometomyairconditionedmoderatelypricednohassleshop! are all pretty standard. Witty retorts to "whereyoufrom?" include "the moon" or "my mother". All part of the fun! A smiley 'no thanks', 'la shukran' is fine for fending off touts.

Didn't sleep much on the night train, it was an upright seat and, optimistically, I'd not bought any warm clothing. shared a cabin with two Canadians and a Finish couple - learnt a few Finish facts having admitted I didn't know where Finland was or what it did.

staying in a dorm now in downtown Cairo - which is fine when you've got earplugs. Hostel cost £15 - Egyptian pounds that is, roughly £1.50!!! ...Indeed, you can backpack on under ten British pounds a day here. Petrol - 10 English pence a litre, bottle of mineral water - 15p, meals - 15p, pyramids - £9, cup of coffee - a mere 5p. Caught the underground train and saw the pyramids today - will be going back next week for a proper video and photo session, and a look around inside. The sphinx was the best sphinx I'd ever seen - although I couldn't find it for a good hour, until its arse appeared behind the big one. Somehow, looking at photos and all, I expected the pyramids to be surrounded by a good 10-20 miles of nothingness, but the city of Giza stops literally within swiping distance of the sphinx's paws and it's impossible to get a photograph without roads, buildings or shedloads of tourists in the way. It's still possible to climb up the pyramids, some of the lower bricks have been graffitied and like everywhere here, you can taste the pollution. Hard to appreciate just how old they are - it's something I just can't get my head round - it's like imagining infinity.

Visited the obligatory Egyptian museum yesterday afternoon - quite bizarre, it's actually like a big dusty warehouse - little to no labeling on any of the 120,000 artifacts so you have to go by your lonely planet unless you fork out for a digital audio thingy-doofer. since the guidebook came out in January, all prices for everything have doubled, although the ISIC student card gets you in half price. Strangely, all cameras and video cameras are now banned and the 2 x-ray machines and 'manual' searches ensure you don't sneak any in. Tutankhamen's mask was awesome - particularly having seen it so much in books, TV et al. legend has it that there's so much stuff still stashed in the basement, that archeologists would have to excavate all the items to prevent any damage, they're extending the existing museum and building a new one in Giza.

Have forgotten to bring any underwear from Leeds, so it's a case of forward, backwards, inside-out forwards, inside-out backwards. Also, lost my visa debit card sometime in the last few days - lost, not stolen, as it's been against my crotch since Birmingham, in my body belt. No idea where it's gone, but had a two-hour fanny-on trying to phone home this afternoon! Will probably turn up tonight - luckily, I have a spare credit card stashed in my shoe. If only I knew the pin number. Pants indeed!

Am appreciating being alone and have met folks from all over - but will be joining 2 Brits and 2 Americans tomorrow for a 3 day trip around the deserts and to an oasis or two. It's been a lot like morocco so far (but cheaper), and as friendly a place as any, if you smile at people and see past the hustlers… =o) check out the attached 'brucey bonus' picture - more from around the world right here. Might email again before home, but if not - have a very very merry Christmas!

much love...
Tom



EMAIL TWO of TWO:
Mon, 20 Dec 2004 21:39, Cairo.

hi ho all,

a final note from Egypt - this weekend I visited the white desert, black desert, hot springs, an oasis, camped out on the moon, very nearly froze to death and finally got some inevitable bowel issues!...

Spent friday in old Islamic Cairo amongst hundreds of riot police who didn't take keenly to my photography - still unsure as to why the show of force. Perhaps the president was visiting Al-Hussein, one of Egypt's holiest mosques. surrounding it were dozens of tiny passage ways with shops selling everything from all across the country.

next morning i'd joined a Dutch guy, a super cool Haitian and an American couple for our desert tour. The Americans were literally the most legendary people I've ever met - Vermin, the guy, had been walking around Cairo in cat ears, with a comedy nose and a plastic rat on a leash. My hero. Previously, he'd scrubbed the Kremlin in Moscow with giant inflatable toothbrushes as part of a 10-month driving tour across Europe. He'd appeared on the Jerry Springer show in a fictional cult whose principles were based on cannibalism, sodomy, suicide and abortion - fashioning a sign saying "eat a queer fetus for Jesus", it was a piss-take of the Christian extremists that make up the US bible-belt, but Jerry didn't see the satire and most of it was censored. Back home, they live in the woods without running water and spend their time doing comedy anarchist protesting. They were full of stories and I'd never laughed so much...

Our first night was spent in round shacks in a get-up not dissimilar to the huts you see on Survivor or I'm a Celebrity. This led to much camcorder comedy, challenging each other in sports such as 'extreme relaxing' and 'extreme sitting for a moderate period of time' - Holland usually won. Next day we checked out a beautifully hot spring and made our way to the black desert.

The white desert, however, was a little bit special. I'd never seen anything like it - by day it was like a lunar landscape - littered with inverted craters and unnatural looking formations made of white chalky rock which broke up in your hand. By night, they looked like icebergs, and it felt like the Arctic too! We drove to a completely random spot and set up a wind shield next the 4x4. We cooked vegetables on a wood fire, listened to the deafening silence and admired the hundreds of twinkling stars, all crystal clear and lighting up the sky.

The landscape was bizarre and it made me wish I'd paid attention in geography lessons so I'd know why it is how it is. At one point it would have been ocean, as I found a shell, but it's just desert foxes and a few mice that make up the few signs of life today. Despite wearing two pairs of trousers and five shirts - everything I had with me - it was still freezing, the coldest night our host Mohammed had known. It was truly painful and none of could feel our hands or feet. I counted down the hours till morning and saw a fantastic sunrise at about 7am.

Our 5-hour bus ride back to Cairo today went much faster speaking to a guy called Mohammed (pretty much everyone is called Ahmed or Mohammed, so shouting either name randomly in a busy street can have hilarious consequences). We covered all topics and each of us posed questions we'd been dying to ask about the West, Islam and Egypt. I'll not bore you with the details, but Islam is truly amazing and some of the stuff in the Koran is absolutely gob smacking.

i was expecting to be hassled, tricked and conned at every opportunity, and maybe I'm just lucky - but Egypt has been one of the safest and most honest places I've visited. Only last week a shopkeeper tried to haggle with me downwards and today a taxi driver yelled at me to return as I'd given him too much money - you wouldn't get that from a London cabby! my short time here has certainly reaffirmed the fact that I want to spend the rest of my life travelling....

it's a combination of solid, liquid and gas on the bowel front and it was constipation that set in this afternoon following a diet of plain rice, tomatoes and cucumber (sharing this helps me cope). I've made no effort to sample any fine cuisine, but most fellow backpackers agree that the food is nothing special - it is however uber-cheap - you can eat for 1p. Hence no-one really goes hungry here, although the country is still way behind in development terms.

just had another stroll around Cairo - it seems to be 70% clothes shops, selling mediocre Western atire, punctuated with McDonalds, KFCs and Pizza Huts - all considered to be prestigious, expensive and not especially unhealthy - rather than crap, cheap and bad for you. Shopping for tourist tat, re-visiting the Pyramids and seeing the Step pyramid tomorrow before catching the train back to Luxor for some seriously intensive dashing about the tourist attractions.

the merriest of christmases to you all =o)
Tom x


More travel journals, videos and photos on my travelogue website at www.tomgrundy.cjb.net

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