Cairo and the beginning....!

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Well, thought I'd do a little blog entry to mark the start of my 5 month adventure and before we head out to the desert tomorrow for the first of our many days spent travelling on the truck and nights camping out under the stars!

The week in Cairo's been pretty amazing, lots of chances for sightseeing, relaxing and getting to know my fellow travellers. The first couple of days were spent walking around the streets and soaking up some of the bustling atmosphere in the souks, getting used to the haggling culture and madness of the streets (fearing for your life every time you cross the road, although I think I'm getting pretty good at it now - the trick is to just walk with an air of importance and they soon stop for you!). I've actually been quite impressed with the whole place after lots of stories of the poor areas, noisy roads and people trying to rip you off. It's a much more bustling and vibrant place than I'd imagined and the people are really friendly as long as you stick with the thought that everyone wants to sell you something but once you say no they soon give in!

We've also visited the Citadel and the beautiful Muhammed Ali Mosque that is inside as well as the Egyptian Museum which has the most amazingly huge collection of artefacts including statues of kings (the bigger the statue the more power each king held), coffins, jewellery, papyrus and by far the best collection - the treasures from Tutankhamun's tomb. Two coffins that surrounded the kings mummy were on display (the final 3rd one is still in situe at the Valley of the Kings along with his mummy which we should get to see when we hit Luxor) as well as his funeral mask - which has been on tour around the world and is now back in Cairo - and many many treasures that were buried in the tomb.

Then today we've been on a trip to see the first built pyramid in Egypt (possibly in the world) at Saqqara and Dashur and tomorrow our trip starts with the larger pyramids at Giza before we set off on the truck out into the Western Desert.

I've almost met everyone who I'll be travelling the four months on the truck with (we've had various meetings and nights in the bar...!) all are great fun, there's 24 people on our truck (22 on the other but we'll get to meet up with the other truck at different points along the way) including four Australians, a couple of Dutch people and the rest English/Scottish/Irish.

So now the fun really begins when we start camping out, cooking on the road and life on the truck.......!

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Photos

Me and Jo outside the Red Pyramid
Congratulating ourselves after going inside to the tomb in a very tight corridor!