Advertisement
Published: March 28th 2009
big
abu simbelCairo was a trip, what a huge city full of life and activity, but after some great day trips, it was once again time to hit the road. our destination: Siwa Oasis.
feeling the bite of not going to Libya, a place where the most idyllic oases are said to exist, i was determined to check out an oasis somewhere at least, and in the western reaches of Egypt there were claims of "the most beautiful oasis in Egypt." so it seemed like the thing to do.
the bus ride there would be grueling, 10 - 12 hours and this sort of thing is to be avoided now that i'm an "mature traveller." when that happened i'm not sure, but it's a reality i can live with. so with our bottoms in mind we decided to stop off in marsa matruh, a beach town on the Mediterranean. a nice place but not exactly swimming weather that time of year.
so with a dignified amount of rest we were off on the second stage of our oasis quest. as it turns out the buses in Egypt are in pretty good shape so things were looking up for future hauls.
and there is the on-the-surface selling feature: "the buses are non- smoking!"... except, later to be found out, the chain-smoking bus driver of course. not much to be done there, given the way he drives when he is "mellow" taking away his smokes would be a bad call. die in twisted fiery withdrawal wreck now or from second hand smoke a few years down the road, given the immediate choices... where's the light? let's give mr. lead foot angry driver his happy medicine.
getting out of the bus, green to the gills, we find ourselves in donkey town. more donkeys and donkey carts than you can shake a stick at. well actually that's not true, it would seem that in the over-worked, over-burdened, malnourished, neglected and abused life of a donkey there are always more sticks to be shaken at them, more often than not, savagely.
we ran away and hid out in the nearby tourist office from the mob of donkey-abusing children offering rides the 100 metres into town. moving quickly before i lose it and turn their clubs on them (after months on end of outrageous and obscenely violent animal abuse, it was wearing thin),
we had a breather and got our bearings.
after finding a suitably dingy hotel room, and making a plan for the afternoon, we head out to get a look at our oasis. yes, a spring, fringed with palms and other lush green plants with golden dunes rolling in the background. just like all the images i have cultivated over the years from various stories of Arabian nights, rubbing lamps and pointed shoes, here i come, eating plump dates, chieftains, smoking, thick carpets and big, silky pillows... where are you!?...
oh, stories, right. well as it turns out they are outdated and unrealistic concepts of oases. in reality most of them seem to be pretty small ponds of surface water surrounded by souvenir and tea stalls (staring smoking men included of course) and dusty palm groves sprinkled with garbage. not much like my childhood images at all, but still beautiful in their own right.
Siwa's greatest gift was not a place to find water, shade and take rest like it would have been for desert-going caravans of old, but an oases from the traffic, honking, exhaust, smoking, crowds and general craziness of urban life in Egypt. finally a
place that we can rent a couple of bikes or walk around in a sliver of natural setting and not constantly have to worry about being run down.
the opportunity for cycling in this kind of place doesn't come around that often. relatively flat, lovely palm groves, hills in the background, ruins and a lake! we were giddy. that having been said renting bikes always seems to be a crap shoot. and sure enough this time would not disappoint.
looking in on a few shops and inspecting the bikes we settle on a place that seemed to have some bikes in pretty good shape. of course the seat is too low on all of them so i would just have to deal with some very bent legs for the ride. ah, it's basically flat, shouldn't be a problem.
so off we go sailing through the palms with wind on our faces, stopping of at some old mud ruins, watching the wild birds, passing an endless supply of bloated and half-eaten donkey carcasses that seem to get deposited on the shore and exploring small island peninsulas that dot the lakeside. how refreshing.
as we have been typically
making our way on foot we had forgotten how much distance you can cover on a bike and seeing that it was early and much of the local area had been explored during an earlier walk, we decide to try our luck at going around the salt lake. with plenty of food, water and daylight it's definitely the thing to do.
as we fly along we pass guys working on the irrigation trenches, the crops and date palms, pass another ruin and have some lunch. continuing on we start to realize that we have greatly underestimated the size and distance of the lake, of course this all starts to happen as the road that seemed very obvious begins to wither into nothing.
hhmmm. so when a seemingly innocent play day turns into disaster a story you can always look back at a certain point when you vocalize that it's getting late and we are at the crossroads of deciding whether to turn back (you know the way, but you're pretty sure it's the longest way), or keep going and hope that you have not miscalculated too badly. in life and death disaster stories it's usually the ones that
turn back that tell the tail...but this is not life and death, only life or possible cold night and inconvenience. so on ahead we go.
okay, so obviously when you make this kind of decision there is only one logical outcome: you get farther away, the trail ends, a serious barrier to forward progress reveals itself and of course the bike breaks.
so with the sun going down we take stock. searching the horizon there is a pin prick of motion: a car! it must be on the road that we had seen on a walk the day before and heading for the land bridge that crosses the lake to get us back to town! this is what we have been looking for!
i start to work on the bike and Laura goes off to see if she can find a way for us to walk across the 2-3 kilometers to get to the road. the terrain has become very rough, there are huge irrigation ditches some 10' deep and 10' across, the bikes are too heavy to carry over long distances and rough rocky ground, they will need to be pushed through sand too deep to
ride...it's just a matter of spotting a route.
getting the bike back to as close to operable as possible, i head off to catch up with Laura, dashing the hopes of the two young workmen that she has stumbled into. if only you could have seen the looks on their astonished faces as this blond, western (read: easy) woman has materialized out of the desert surely in answer to some young man's fantasy.
these are the guys digging the monstrous irrigation ditches with a big excavator. they insist that we come sit in the shade and have tea. ah yeah...well happy to meet you guys and all...but we have a bit of a problem here and we kinda need to get a move on. "oh no, no no no, sit have chai, sit" here we go again, chai.
it must be said that in our western ways we always need to keep going, always rushing, needing and wanting immediate solutions and answers to our perceived problems or objectives. you would be amazed at how much can be done, conveyed, understood and realized over a relaxing cup of chai.
gesturing and using what little Arabic we have,
we get the situation across and one guy seems to think that our plan to try and cut across to the road is not half bad, the eyebrows of his friend on the other hand suggest something else. after chai we survey the route and one guy graciously shows us the way and takes us a fair distance, through the treacherous areas, and with Laura's bike on his back. what a champ!
after some time crossing the sands we can just get a glimpse that the road is now close and we may just get back before sundown, so obviously in steps another obstacle, we hit a huge and deep irrigation trench, impassible. simmer...naturally...when things go sideways they really go.
ranging up and down this thing to find a way across we come to the least treacherous-looking spot. i jump down and sink in deep, wet and covered in mud.
Laura sort of throws/swings the bikes over to me and i scramble them up the other side. after throwing some rocks and dirt onto the spot where Laura would need to jump (so she would not suffer the same muddy fate) across she comes, climbs up and
we are on our way again.
the universe has a sense of humor. we are now on a dirt road that will take us straight to the asphalt road that goes back to town, and as we get to the end of it we realize there is a huge metal gate there, oh man we are locked in! unbelievable!
upon closer inspection, it becomes obvious that getting around it be will be a snap compared to the journey so far but for a moment we had a stupefied laugh at the whole thing. symbolically, the gate was a grand joke indeed.
we are back on the road pedaling away and oblivious to the fact that the universe is not yet finished with us. just then the armature (crank) that attaches the pedal to my bike comes right off, so close yet so far. a large bolt has lost its threads and no amount of macgyvering will hold the crank in place.
with deep breaths we put our heads together and Laura says: "it's too bad the pedals don't have cages on them, at least you could pedal back with one leg!" genius! thats it! ever since
her initial weight loss in India, Laura had been using two of my nylon straps for a belt. Laura pulls them off and straps my right foot to the remaining pedal.
we are off! we are going to make it to our beds! with the wind in our faces, covered in mud, pedaling with one leg, my knee coming up to my chin, the seat starting to come off, we make the last 20 kilometers in the twilight and are welcomed into town with stares and giggles at this freakshow rolling in. bring on the giggles, we are victorious!
with our epic day behind us and feeling like we have had the better of Siwa Oasis we make our way to Alexandria, another Egyptian city on the Mediterranean. after a few nice, mellow days in modern, un-touristy Alexandria, we catch the fancy sleeper train to Aswan, the jumping off point to Abu Simbel just 30 kilometres from the Sudan border.
there is a 2:45 am wake up call to catch the bus and join the "convoy" as the area between Aswan and the Sudan border is tightly controlled. Abu Simbel is a huge and beautiful temple originally
carved into a mountainside. it was painstakingly cut into thousands of pieces and re-located to save it from the rising waters of Lake Nasser in the 1960's.
the Lake Nasser High Dam project (on the Nile river) caused the displacement of hundreds of thousands of native Nubians and is thought of by some as one of humanity's greatest environmental catastrophes. of course the flipside is that it prevents flooding, generates megawatts of electricity and the presence of the enormous lake ensures that there will always be enough water in case of drought. always two sides to a story.
on the way back from Abu Simbel, we visited the High Dam and another displaced monument, the grand Temple of Philae.
it turns out that scenes of sand, palms, blue water and feluccas (traditional wooden sailboats) around Aswan, this pleasant little city on the Nile, are far more picturesque than any oases we've seen so far. Aswan also has a long, atmospheric, traffic-free souq or market street with everything a tourist could desire.
perhaps because Egypt has been a hotbed for tourists for centuries or just due to competition and desparation, the Egyptian vendors are very lively. we
would walk the
souq to the chorus of "hey, lucky man!" and "i'll give you 80 camels for your wife!" in attempts to get our attention and business.
yeah, you can tell these greasy, testosterone-loaded little buggers that it isn't funny, it's disrespectful, or just be quiet, but all it does is set them off, more and louder cat calls! ooooh whhhy i oughtta!
it was somewhat comforting to find out later from other Middle East people that have traveled to Egypt that the Egyptians have a bit of a rep, and that they will pester, swindle, cheat and make anyone crazy, not just westerners. oddly that moves them up a notch in my books, a small notch. (note: in reference to cheeky vendors and tourist-related people only. we met many wonderful and honest Egyptians.)
it was in Aswan that we tied into our first shisha or water pipe. shishas can be stuffed with tobacco or some kind of flavoured stuff. still not totally sure what i think of them, but i don't think they're going to become a regular habit. we got used to the sweet candy smell of apple, strawberry or honey wafting through the
air at any time of day or night in our Middle East travels.
from Aswan, we toured to Luxor stopping at the Temple of Sobek & Haroeris (the local crocodile god and the falcon-headed sky god) and the Temple of Horus (the falcon-headed son of Osiris). both beautiful sites. distinctly different from Roman styles, it was a nice change of pace to see these incredible Egyptian monuments.
Luxor, home of the Valley of the Kings and so many things. honestly, there is no end to temples and tombs and sites in Egypt. a person could spend months and a small fortune in entry fees exploring all there is to see. we were starting to burn out and got very selective about sites.
our first stop was at the Temples of Karnak. this site has been built and added on to and restored so many times that, without a guide, we just had to wander around with our mouths hanging open trying to take it all in. most impressive was the 6000 square metre Hypostyle Hall with its 134 enormous stone papyrus pillars.
on another day we ferry across the river and bussed and hiked to the
Valley of the Kings. we visited three of the over 60 tombs that have been excavated there, all with very different configurations, rooms and paintings. the tombs are amazingly preserved after thousands of years. this is the home of King Tut's tomb.
the tombs are tunnelled into solid rock and meant to resemble the underworld. a series of inclined passageways, rooms, stairs and yet more passageways lead deep underground and each tomb ends in a burial chamber. some are incomplete, others vandalized by the Romans.
the power went out while we were deep inside one particularly busy, hot and humid tomb. being deep under the ground it seemed only fitting to thank the heavens for all those handy mobile phones lighting the way out!
Luxor itself is another nice little city on the Nile. not as scenic as Aswan and with a narrower souq. the vendors in the souq have gotten some idea that tourists want "no hassle" shops. i wondered what the man thought that meant as he pulled Laura by the arm, trying to drag her into his store yelling, no, screaming, "No hassle shop! I am no hassle shop!" from that point on, we
vowed only to deal with shops that didn't have anyone yelling at us.
once we had satisfied our Pharaonic curiosity to its fullest, we felt we could move on to Dahab for a holiday from our holiday. we only had to survive one more 16 hour overnight bus ride from Luxor to the little beach town on the Sinai Peninsula. fortunately, we managed to sleep a little and arrived in Dahab in reasonably good shape.
what followed was nearly two weeks of not packing our bags, snorkling, playing games, running along the boardwalk, catching up on a blog or two and generally not being in a hurry to get anywhere for the first time in four and a half months. we also reunioned with some friends that we had met during our travels along the Nile.
Dahab itself is not much to look at. a little town drapped along a long stretch of boardwalk, planted a the edge of the desert with rocky hills rising off in the distance and a view of red Saudi Arabia just 20 or so kilometres away across the water. there aren't any sandy beaches, but it was a nice place to
relax, eat good food and live relatively unharassed for a few days.
there was great snokeling just a stone's throw from our favourite waterfront breakfast place. beautiful coral, great fish and wonderful clear water. even there on the Red Sea in February it was pleasant, but not ideal beach weather. we blessed the hot shower at our hotel, a necessary luxury after just an hour of snorkeling.
the one excursion we took while in Dahab was to Mount Sinai, home of St. Katherine's Monastery and the burning bush from which God spoke to Moses. Moses is said to have received the Ten Commandments at the summit. we climbed up to the summit with our friend Johan, enjoyed some lunch and played games until the sun set.
we spent more time than we thought we would in Egypt, maxing out our 30 day visa. and then it was time for the next stop: Jordan.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.182s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 14; qc: 65; dbt: 0.0726s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
Leia
non-member comment
Egypt
COOL. Looking at the photos and reading your blog...it's just so COOL that you have actually been there. Egyptians have a bit of a bad rep for badgering tourists too much...not to mention all the bus accidents! But the topography and ruins seem as though they exist nowhere else on the planet. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the picture "huge papyrus columns"--come on, admit it- you paid that guy to be there ;) Look forward to the next entry! xo