Advertisement
When you come to Egypt, there is a very standard tourist trail that you take. This goes from Cairo (the pyramids) to Luxor (Valley of the Kings, and Karnak temples), followed by Aswan (feluccas (little boats) on the nile), followed by Abu Simbel (very impressive large temples). Then there is also the Red Sea, where you can go scuba diving. And Mt Sinai. Apparently fantastic, but not as popular.
One of the problems with a 4 month round the world trip is that you don't get time to do everything. So we had decided not to go to the Red Sea. Plus we figure we get great diving in Australia already. Plus we don't dive 😊
So we had decided to do the standard tourist track. Our Lonely Planet had warned us not to allow our hostel operator in Cairo to organise the tour. Basically you end up paying WAY too much for it, and it's cheaper to do it all yourself.
Now you would think that we would heed the advice. LP is always right in these matters. Generally we are quite good at avoiding scams. However, when our hostel operator offered us a package, it seemed
Temple at Philae
Somehow the pic doesn't capture it as well...amazingly tempting!! To be honest, after 2 months on the road, organising everything yourself, it seemed nice just to be able to sit back and have somebody else do everything for you!! We figured we were probably being scammed about $100 each, but for some reason which now eludes us, this seemed ok at the time.
So - ignoring all wise guidance we went on an organised tour. First a train to Aswan. Then a day trip to Abu Simbel. Then a train to Luxor, 2 nights there, and then back to Cairo. Plus a free taxi for the day to explore what we wanted to in Cairo. Everything organised, nothing to think about yay!!
Train to Aswan. We were given these tiny cardboard stubs, with nothing on them except for some Arabic handwriting which of course we couldn't read! We stood at the train station, half expecting to be told to get lost when we got onto the train. But thankfully the tour operators were honest, and if they were going to scam us, weren't going to do it at that point!
A sideline here. Egypt has got two major sources of income. The Suez Canal,
and tourism. And like any country which depends on tourism, it is filled with loads of people who would like to 'help' you spend your money. Or liberate you of it, rather 😊. You have to be constantly aware of people trying to scam you. The friendly guy who says hi to you is probably trying to sell you something, or tell you to go to his shop. And you never really know what you've bought until you've seen it, so try before you buy is VERY important!! All this is a bit of a shame, because it tends to put you on your guard, and expect the worst of everybody, when in fact, 99.9% of Egyptians are really friendly and helpful and very very nice!!
So - we get onto the train and head off to Aswan. It's weird being on a tour, because you're completely not in control! We're meant to be picked up at the other end, but all the time, we're thinking, 'what if there is nobody there at the other end and we've been scammed??' Not fun.
Luckily we did get picked up. And taken to our hotel. Yay!!
Aswan is a
Abu Simbel
Ramses II (of 'let my people go' fame) built this complex to himself (and the gods of course) cute little town on the Nile. It's biggest claim to fame is being the place to see the Nile at its most picturesque. Certainly we were impressed with the views. It's a very quiet town, and watching the feluccas sailing down the Nile is a beautiful and calming experience. Once you ignore the 100 felucca captains who are trying to get you to board their felucca of course!!
And the 46 degree heat. We discovered that as you head South, it gets way hotter, about 10 degrees hotter than Cairo!
Another weird thing. Southern Egypt is called Upper Egypt, and Northern Egypt is called Lower Egypt. Obviously this is because Upper Egypt is closer to the source of the Nile. Nonetheless, played hell with my sense of direction for a few days.
OK - back to the felucca captains. Generally you have two ways to deal with touts. You can either get angry with them for ruining your day, or you can just grin and accept it as part of the experience and derive enjoyment from it. But they do wear you down!!
"Hallo... " they cry out as you walk past.
I put up my
hand and indicate that we're not interested, but smile at the same time to show that I still value them as people.
"You want a felucca?"
"No thank you". We keep walking. Increase our pace slightly.
Since I spoke to him, he takes that as endorsement to harass us. He walks beside us and keeps talking.
"Cheap price"
"No thanks"
"only 10 pounds"
"No, but thanks anyway"
"why not?"
"We don't want one, thanks"
"where you from?"
this is where it gets annoying. I know if I answer "Australia" he'll proceed to either:
- tell me he's got a cousin there, and how everyone says Australians are really nice
- say something annoying like 'Kangaroo', 'Koala', or even worse, "Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie". In really extreme cases, they even expect us to answer with "oi oi oi". Fat chance. So we generally ignore them at this point and keep walking until the poor guy gives up.
Repeat this interaction every 10 metres and you've got our experience in Aswan. 😊
I actually wanted to do something rather revolutionary and try and sell the tout something. How much fun would it be to walk up to the guy, with
some lollies or beads or something, and use their techniques to try and sell him something instead?? Unfortunately Catherine was too principled to allow me to try. Spoilsport.
OK, back to Aswan. Beautiful beautiful place. We had our first taste of
fateer which is an Egyptian pizza. the sweet variety basically consists of layers of flaky pastry, sultanas, dessicated coconut, cream, pineapple, peachers, honey and lots of other goodness!! I can feel my waistline expanding even as I type this!! We ate far too much of that.
Egyptian food had been described as 'peasant fare and uninspired' to us by several people, as well as the Lonely Planet. Well - fooey to them all!! I loved it. Apart from being cheap, there were so many new tastes to try out!! Loved the schwermas, bored to death with kebabs, tried the
hammam, which is basically stuffed pigeon. Nice soups as well. And of course the staple -
foul, which is pita bread filled with a paste made from fava beans, and
ta'amiya, which is basically a felafel. Yum!! Still not as good as Tunisian food though which was my all time favourite on our trip so far!! Except maybe
Temple of Hatchepsut
At the West bank in Luxor the tacos in Mexico.
OK must stop talking about food. You guys keep commenting on the fact that I talk too much about it!! 😊
So - back to Aswan again. We went out to see the Aswan Dam, which is basically, well, a dam. Think big wall blocking the river and you've got it. But it was there, so we saw it.
More impressive though were the temples at Philae! We had this fabulous guide, who took us around this very impressive complex. You'll see from the pics that it is really lovely!!
Having a guide can make such a difference on a trip. We really learnt lots about Egyptian mythology and history. Not sure if this will ever be useful to us, but hey, knowledge is a good thing right?
Next up - Abu Simbel. A huge thanks to Jonathan Wilson (happy 50th btw) for encouraging us to go there. This site has 2 HUGE temples cut into the mountain! The scale is amazing, and you are completely awe struck when you get there!! By far the best we've seen in egypt, closely followed by the Philae temples. It was a lot of
Colossus of Memnon
Too bad they lost so much face. effort to get here - you have to wake up at 4am, go in a convoy with other buses, escorted by police (for security). You arrive at 7:30am, spend 2 hours (which is probably too much time) and then get back to Aswan by 12! Still - very very recommended. Wow.
We had made friends with others on the tour, so when our tour bus got us home to Aswan, we got out at their hotel to have lunch with them. This was to have bad repercussions. That night, we were meant to catch our first class train back to Luxor. Unfortunately we were given second class tickets. The tour guide explained that there were no more first class tickets. So I got annoyed, and started to demand money back from him, since we were meant to get first class tickets, and eventually he went back to the office and amazingly managed to get first class tickets for us. Apparently some had just become available 😊. Butthead. Further conversation resulted in the discovery that he thought we had got off with our friends to go on a Felucca ride. Now he had offered us this for 35 pounds, and
Temple of Luxor
Note the Macdonalds sign in the background! of course we said no (you can do it for 5 pounds) - and now he was annoyed that we had gone on a felucca without using his company. Bah. So he was trying to punish us for daring to venture out on our own.
Still that was ok, we rolled with the blow, got our first class tickets, discovered with joy that we didn't get to sit together, sat together anyway, and enjoyed the train trip to Luxor!!
Luxor!! This amazingly famous city has been in several movies, apparently. The only ones I recognised is 'Death on the Nile' and 'The Spy who loved me'. This city is more famous for its large tomb complex on the west bank - the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens, and a few more temples. The east bank also has the Luxor temple, and the Karnak temples. Yummy!!
Stayed at our 3 star hotel (oh we were living it up now!) and enjoyed being taken around. West bank was... well ... interesting. It was blisteringly hot - 45 degrees again, and even though we were driven around everywhere (go the tour bus!!) the few minutes of
Big statue
Forgot who it was (the shame!!) Note the woman at his feet - this was the way wives were depicted back then. Or they were very short. We're not sure which walking around really took it out of us! Basically take a photo, drink some water, walk 10 metres. Repeat. But we did get to go into several tombs. Thing is, after a while, you get a bit numb to the whole thing. And really, after Aswan and Abu Simbel, they aren't anywhere near as amazing, although I guess they are wonderful in their own right!!
Most of these tombs involve walking down a steep staircase into the ground. The walls tend to have all kind of heiroglyphics on them, and when you get to the bottom, you are in a small complex of rooms with more heiroglyphics (do you know how hard it is to type that word??) and maybe a sarcophagus as well. Not being incredible Egyptologists, a lot of them looked the same to me. I'm sure at least some of you out there are wincing 😊
We also saw the temples of Karnak, and Luxor. Very very amazing. Massive structures, oodles of heiroglyphs, pictures on the wall... but after a while, you start getting numb to that as well! We definitely were glad we saw them, but overall I think Aswan and Abu Simbel spoilt
Obelisk at Karnak
There used to be a lot more - but they now are in London, New York, Paris, etc. If everyone gave them back, this would look even more impressive!! it for us a bit!!
A recommendation for future Egyptian travellers - do everything in the opposite direction to what we did!
And then it was time to go back to Cairo!! End of tour. We were very imrpessed that we hadn't been scammed or lied to by the tour operator (apart from the unfortunate incident in Aswan), and when we got back to Cairo, we were pretty jubilant!! Of course, we had defintely paid too much, but we somehow didn't care.
We had a few more days in Cairo. So we spent them walking around, looking at more mosques, bazaars, and of course the Egyptian museum, which is an amazing trove of stuff, but to be honest, I found very tiring. Don't like museums, much prefer to see the stuff in the setting they were found. Still - if you're into them, this one has got loads to see!! Best of all are the mummies - it's somewhat macabre to see these mummified remains, but still a must-do!! I'm sure that this was NOT the intent of the guys who mummified them in the first place though. Hopefully their souls aren't aware that their remains are
Hippostyle hall at Karnak
There is absolutely no way to convey the scale of this place so you'll have to just believe us. These pillars are replicated in all directions, resulting a large square area of similar pillars. Camera just won't capture it :( now museum pieces. Also - Tutankhamen's death mask is worth seeing. We weren't allowed any pictures in the museum, so unfortunately we can't show you them.
Overall, Egypt was fabulous!! Absolutely loved it, and by far my favourite place that we've travelled to yet!! (Peru and Tunisia are my seconds). We really did enjoy all the sights, the food, the people (yes, even the touts can prove to be a source of amusement!). The weather was a bit of a bummer, but hey, not going to complain since I already have above 😊 And most importantly - we didn't get scammed!!! Or blown up!! (in the last month there were two suicide bombs targeting tourists)
So - hurray for Egypt! Uganda is up next. This is obviously going to be very different to what we've seen so far, so we're quite looking forward to it!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.192s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 16; qc: 75; dbt: 0.0944s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
Patrick Holman
non-member comment
You guys are too cool.
You totally should have tried to sell him something. Albeit I'm sure some other tourist has done that before. Shoot... I'm from New Jersey, and while I'm not rude, I would have ignored most of that. Sounds like you guys had a lot of fun though. I'm very impressed.