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On a Monday afternoon, we arrived to Cairo.
That is, after a small stress in the airports, in the middle between Kathmandu and Cairo:
When we got to New Delhi’s airport, and after spending a very uncomfortable night on the airport’s waiting room, we were told that our flight booking was cancelled. We didn’t have a place in the plane! The people of Royal Jordanian (the company we were flying) were very helpful in getting ride of “their” problem in New Delhi. They found a place in the plane to send us to Amman, capital of Jordan, for the people there to solve the rest of the trip. They did tell us that everything was going to be all right though.
As we arrived to Amman, they told us very simply: “Oh, but you don’t have reservation…” They clearly realized that something was wrong because we did have three pages of booked flights around the world, so they definitely should have our flight booked.
In the end, and after almost an hour of waiting for them to come out with a solution (with the scary idea of us having to spend the night in Amman if they couldn’t find a place
Map of Egypt
As presented in the New Palace Hotel (The place where we stayed in Cairo)for us in their already fully booked flight to Cairo) they came up with two available seats for us.
So after another four more relaxed hours on a Monday afternoon we arrived to Cairo.
We shared a taxi on our way to the hotel with a couple of Jordanian guys, and we heard from one of them: “The traffic here is a mess, so you better watch out!” We had to laugh… Coming from India and Nepal, the traffic in Cairo (and Egypt for that matter) was as smooth as a Tuesday afternoon on the way to the beach! They even respected lanes most of the time! I don’t know how the traffic is in Jordan, but that guy certainly never travelled to India!
The hotel was on a sixth floor in the heart of Cairo, so we could walk around downtown with no problems. Cairo is a beautiful city. Ah… Seeing the Nile for the first time… The river that saw civilization being born… What an experience!
Not to be forgotten was the yummy Kosherie! (A traditional dish made of rice, pasta, lentils, fried onions with a nice sweet tomato sauce) or the always-popular street kebab sandwich
that they sell everywhere. We couldn’t resist joining in the crowd of people around the spinning rolls of meat!
We walked to the amazing Egypt Museum, where we saw the incredible contents of the tomb of Tutankhamen! The golden mask! We couldn’t take photos inside, so the memories will have to stay in our minds forever!
We prepared a six-day tour with the guy in our hotel to visit the most important places of ancient Egypt in a more comfortable way. Aswan, with Phila and Abu Simbel temples, two nights on a felucca down the Nile, and finally Luxor, where we were going to visit the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens among other temples. All packed up in six days. We decided that after all the running around in India and Kathmandu it was necessary to have some peace of mind and let ourselves be carried away and organised by expert guides to the most amazing places in the world…
In the end it was all quite rushed. Being picked up from here, running this and that way, fitting in temples at every free minute. It was a mess: changing buses, having different
guides, sometimes no guide, being with different groups of people. The only relaxing time was on the felucca, which served as a time off in the middle of the rushing around.
One thing to say about Egyptian tourist organization is that they seem to have none. It’s pretty surprising though, that it actually works perfectly! We were always not knowing what was going to happened next (or if it was going to happened at all!) but they some how always delivered!
It’s truth that Egypt has probably been the first tourist destination of human kind (having been host of tourist for more than 3000 years!), so came to no surprise that in Egypt you are little more than a walking wallet ready to be open!
The first of the attractions on our tour was going to be the most anticipated in my life: the Pyramids of Giza! I have to admit that I waited all my life for that, and was worth every minute and twice as much if I would have had to! We saw the pyramid of Keops!
The little incident where we were taken to a little room in the middle of nowhere, instead
of the entrance of the pyramids, where a gentle person offered us tea (be always aware of the gentle men with the tea!) and then we were forced to choose between two extremely overpriced camel trips around the pyramids was just that. A little incident that we learned later is a very common thing in Egypt. Even after you paid for the tour, they will come up with some fee, or guide fee, or “tips” for this or that.
They see you as a source of income and nothing more.
Nevertheless, I think that riding a camel around the three most wonderful pyramids, and walking nearby the Sphinx was worth at least twice as much! (And we were relieved to hear later that some people got scammed into actually paying more than that!)
The same day we visited one of the oldest pyramid of Egypt, Sakkara, and we got taken to a Papyrus Museum (selling shop more likely), and a school for children to learn to make carpets (another shop)
That night we took an overnight train to Aswan, the southern most city of Egypt, and base from where we visited the Phyla temple (a temple that was moved
Details in the entrance in NPH
The hotel is on a 6th floor and you are welcomed by two egyptian statues as you get out of the elevator! from one island to another when a dam was built!), the Abu Simbel temple (another one that was moved!) and the start of our felucca trip.
Both temples were amazing. The only thing was I got the feeling I was walking on an open mall for Europeans… Everything is there for sale. It takes the flavour of the exotic if they are always asking for “baksheesh” (bribe) after every photo you take, or every ride, or anything they are involved in to. You pay for everything in Egypt.
Nevertheless, it was very impressive. Even the job they did on moving them was impressive. Everything was as it was thousands of years ago!
In Aswan we also got an afternoon free to roam around, visiting the local market and buying some little souvenirs (with more funny bartering around, offcourse) and we tasted one of the best falafel sandwich in one of the local restaurants.
In the felucca ride on the Nile, we met Jalil. He is an Argentinean who lives in Spain and loves Egypt (he is also a converted Muslim and a recreational archaeologist). He shared with us many interesting facts about Egypt, including some gossip
and under the table translations… hehehe. On the felucca, there were also Mark and Etienne, a couple of Canadians friends. Also, captain Mustafa and his first mate Abdul!
The felucca ride was relaxing time at its best. The ride was not that long, but the simple fact that we didn’t have to plane anything, or think where we were going, and just layback on the comfortable mattress of the boat was all we needed at that time after the rushing time we had on the first two days of temple sighting. And so we lay with no care in the world while the felucca zigzagged its way down the Nile at the speed of the wind.
On the second day of the trip, we did a stop to go to the local camel market. It was one of the best experiences we had in Egypt. It was the first time there were no tourists around us! It was just us 5 and the locals, and the camels. Jalil also took the opportunity to buy some camel meat that we tried that same night (the butcheries here sell camel meat as beef or sheep). After the market, we did a
Camel close up
Getting close to the entrance to see the Giza Pyramids little walk around the village and a strategic stop in one of the shisha coffee shops, where we had a taste of a very sweet delicious hibiscus tea.
On the third day we did our final crossing of the Nile (very slowly because there was no wind that morning) and we finally said good by to Jalil, who was staying on the felucca another night to go back to Aswan up the Nile. As we came to Luxor, our next destination, we also said good by to Mark and Etienne, as they were going to be in another touring group. However, that “good by” was temporary, we were meant to have more adventures together later on.
That afternoon we visited a couple temples more, this time one of them was the biggest complex of temples: Karnak. By then it started to matter very little how old or big or well kept it was, they all started to look the same… So we decided to skip the next temple (Luxor temple) and head back to the hotel to have a lovely diner with pizza and babaganoush, while outside a sandstorm was fully on the way!
In Luxor we
There they are!
Behind the dunes! also visited the Valley of the King and the Queens (and Freddy Mercury was not there… what a shame…) We went down some very impressive tombs, many of them very well preserved. It was very impressive to see the walls painted in the original colour: blue, yellow, golden, pinks, reds, whites, all very bright and vivid. It gives and idea of the majestic ambience they would have created on the temples and other buildings in which the colours are now long gone. But then again, an army of Europeans surrounded us all the way. We run into Mark and Etienne several times, as they were in another group doing the same things that we were doing, and that was not going to be the last time!
After the valleys, we took a long overnight bus to Dahab, a city on the Sinai, and the coast of the Red Sea.
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