So, What's Egypt Like?

---

Leaving Egypt tomorrow. I’m kicking it Bedouin style again—sitting on a cushion, holding a shisha pipe, listening to Moslem prayers over mosques’ loudspeakers. This hasn’t been a kind trip to my lungs; shisha is hard to resist. On the other hand, after two months catching up with friends in the U.S. and, just as impactfully, two days in England, Egypt has been a good break for my liver. Alcohol is rare here.

Most of my time in Indonesia was in Hindu Bali so this is essentially my first time in an Islamic country. Turns out Moslems take religion seriously. Who knew? Booze is rare in the big cities and unheard of in the small ones. One positive side of genuine religiosity is a lack of petty crime. I haven’t heard a single story theft story and, most everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve been told that is fine to walk around at night with a laptop. During the five-times daily prayers, shop owners leave their wares out on the sidewalks unguarded. Oddly, Egypt reminds me a lot of Cuba. The landscape is different, obviously, as are the dress codes, which could black and white a run for their money in an opposites contest. Cuba and Egypt are both hot, and crumbling. Both have virtually no crime and inordinately welcoming people, but both are full of street vendors hassling you to the edge of madness. Cuba and Egypt are also the only two places I’ve been where the government considers where you are at the moment to very much be their business. I’m told that they’ve been in an official state of emergency since Sadat was assassinated in ’81. The result is that you can’t just go around. There are one or more military checkpoints on the roads between all towns. You need documentation at every one and a bribe at three out of four. Not a big bribe. I took a taxi between the beach towns of Sharm El Sheikh and Dahab, and two different checkpoint officers told the driver he had to bring them a tea and sugar on his way back. If they had been hungry, they might have asked for a falafel. It’s quite a system! It is a hassle for a tourist, but it’s much worse for the Egyptians. They have to get permission to leave the province that they live in and, unless they know the right people or have money for real bribes, they are unlikely to get it. I met a German woman here in Dahab who is married to an Egyptian. He can’t visit her here. She has to go to Cairo, but she can’t get work in Cairo so they live in separate places. And needless to say they can’t leave the country. I have yet to meet an Egyptian who has been to Jordan, or anywhere else.

The virtual impossibility of getting around by yourself is the main reason I decided, for the first time, to experience a country as part of the organized tour. Another reason was best expressed by my friend Susanne, whom I talked to a few months ago, soon after she was here: “Sometimes I felt like I was in the Egypt section of Epcot.” Between travel restrictions and the touristy nature, why deny that you are a tourist? It turned out to be a great call. There were 15 people in our group, mostly in their 30s and, with the exception of a whiny, older German couple who apparently didn’t read the brochure (sample passage: “Hot water may be sporadically available in some hotels”), my companions were wonderful.

Cairo is at best an OK place to visit, and I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live there. The smog is pervasive. As you fly in, it casts a thick tan haze over the city, as it is mixed in with dust. The New York Times recently did a story on the alarmingly high noise levels in Cairo. Throughout the whole city of 17 million people, the average noise level for most of the day is 85 decibels, which is louder than the noise you hear standing 15 feet away from a passing freight train. As someone who has been there, I can say that this has got to be a lie. It’s not that loud, but the point is valid. It is loud and it is chaotic. I had a pretty wicked case of jetlag when I arrived. I didn’t do the math when I booked my flight. A (landing in Munich, which is six hours ahead, at 7AM) + B (being adjusted to falling asleep around 1AM EST) = C (no sleep that night). You want to wake up? Cross a Cairo road on foot. There is no energy drink quite as stirring. I love that sort of crap, though. Coming from a country largely run by personal injury attorneys, it is a treat to feel competent.

On my first full day in the city, I went to the locals’ market with a Canadian I had met at the airport. Anything you want (that is worth less than $20), they’ve got it. In fact, they’ve got it in 100 different stalls. Lots of stuffed animals, electronics, robes, kitchen supplies, and lots and lots of stripper clothes. Seriously, they have some ridiculously revealing dresses, lingerie, and tiny bathing suits. This is in a city where 90%!o(MISSING)f the women cover their hair and about half of them wear a full-on burka. Man, I was tempted to lift one of those things and see what the women had on under it! Another thing the market had in spades was chaos. It wasn’t just us being unfamiliar. More than once when things started getting crazy, I could see fear in the eyes of the locals. The whole place is jam-packed and there are people yelling for you to buy their stuff and if someone does want to buy their stuff, they start yelling at each other about the price. Then there are guys coming through with huge pushcarts full of MORE stuff. Like they really need MORE STUFF! These guys just kind of plow through no matter how tight the crowd is. The people seem to have enough experience in the market to avoid getting injured, they don’t seem to have enough experience with it to stop from getting REALLY PISSED OFF at the guys pushing through. They are quick to anger, especially the shop-keepers. It’s like everyone there is the stereotype Brooklyn ethnic dude. We went down a side alley thinking it might be a little more relaxed but that was where we saw real fury. An albino guy had to be held back from whooping on this 15 year old kid who was maybe 5%!l(MISSING)ess competent at pushing his cart through the crowd than all the other guys. That was when we decided it was time to get out of there. We went back to the main (read: 10 foot wide) path where, beyond reason to the point of genuine miscomprehension, we witnessed a full-size pick up truck driving through the crowd. They had stuff to deliver!

What else to say about Cairo? The Pyramids are in Giza, just outside the city. They’re really cool, but pretty much what you’d expect. The interiors are almost unbearably hot and humid resulting from the constant flow of people through their tight corridors. There isn’t much to see in there anyway. From the outside…well, they’re the Pyramids. The main point I want to make is that if you go to Cairo, you have to visit the Egyptian Museum. Specifically, you have to see the King Tut collection. Tut is labeled “the greatest archaeology find of all time” and it is not an idle boast. It was the only time in the past 300+ years that archaeologists found an untouched Pharoah’s tomb. The sheer amount of gold and the beauty of the intricate carvings are nothing less than astounding. No one is sure how other Pharoah’s tombs compared before they had been looted. There are indications that Egypt was at the peak of its wealth in Tut’s era. His reign as Pharaoh (a Greek word, by the way) was not particularly notable. He died at 19, possibly because he was dropped from his carried chair (I bet someone got a good talking to for that!). Maybe they overcompensated with his tomb because of the tragedy of it, but I kind of doubt it. These guys had the ultimate God-complex: they thought they were gods! I have to imagine that the longer they lived, the more time they had the masses building their tombs and all the stuff that goes in them. Whatever the case, I think it was the most impressed I have ever been at a museum, and I love museums (oops, I just oversold it). If you ever do visit, the mummy room is worth the extra hundred pounds ($18), and the mummified animals room is not to be missed. Ever seen a 3,000 year old cow skeleton? They have mummified birds, cats (lots of those), monkeys, crocodiles (seriously) and more. Most of them were pets, but some were supposed to be incarnations of gods, so they were treated like royalty. Isn’t there a reality show about weird jobs? Have they ever topped dressing up and catering to the every whim of a crocodile?

Aswan and the Valley of Kings was our next big stop. This is where Tutankhamen was found and it is where most of the cool tombs are. They stopped building pyramids because they were essentially 300 foot high “Gold in here!” signs. They still believe in the symbolism of a pyramid and, in fact, chose the location of the Valley of the Kings because the tallest peak is pyramid-shaped. As with the Museum, cameras were not allowed in the tombs, which is a real shame. It is pretty shocking to see how well the paint has held up in several of the tombs, and the imagery is wild. The most commonly depicted gods are Osiris, Thoth, a man with an ibis head, and Horus (aka Ra), a man with a falcon’s head. There are lots of other person/animal combinations scattered about. Scarab beetles with spectacular wings and snakes with wings and/or legs were favorites.

Ramses II ruled for 67 years. His Great Temple is something to see. There are four 20 meter tall statues of the man, and the interior is 60 meters deep and full of statues, paintings and carvings. As we arrived, our guide Michael told us “We are just 30 kilometers from Sudan.” “Let’s go!,” I shouted. It’s always good to get another country under your belt, right? Little sissy wouldn’t do it. Actually, there is no way we could have. The restrictions on movement get that much worse as you approach areas where tourists have been kidnapped by gunmen. In fact, to visit Ramses’ Temple, you have to be part of a massive caravan of buses and minivans that leaves at 4AM. This as I was just recovering from my jetlag! I’ll tell you, though, getting there early had its benefits. It is very exposed and you don’t want to be out in the Egyptian Sun in the middle of the day. Egypt’s latitude very closely matches Florida’s, but the Sun is SO much more intense. I have never been to a place where the temperature difference in the shade is so big.

Ramses’ Great Temple was originally located 60 meters downhill from the current location. A new dam on the Nile created Nasser Lake and, through a massive international effort, they moved the whole thing up piece by piece and installed it in a new mountain. I mean that literally—a “new” mountain. It was a big project that they are quite proud of. Not so big compared to the original project 3,200 years ago, though, not to mention the Pyramids, over 1,000 years before that. In all these places, my mind kept going back to—there’s no better way to put this—social justice. For so many people to spend the bulk of their lives in hard, hard labor in blazing, blazing heat for the glory of one dude who was born into his job. In most cases, they weren’t even laboring for his life; they were laboring for his afterlife. We have got it good.

Wow, two full pages and I haven’t even gotten out of the Nile Valley. I’m really committed when writing the first post of each leg of my travels. Hopefully I keep it up a little better this time.

One last note: I have made personal first contact with three continents this year. That doubled my previous coverage! Now there is only Antarctica….maybe next year.

As always, much love,
Greg

More pictures available at http://picasaweb.google.com/Gstewart.pro/MainlandEgypt1AlongTheNile#.

---