Blogs from Egypt, Africa - page 303

Aswan. Luxor. Sa’aid. Upper Egypt. Gradually increasing “African features”, and changing landscape, colors (even of clothing and houses) as we move steadily south. Even the trip from Cairo to Luxor covered more ground on the map than places that took me more than a month to travel in the fertile northern countries. Yes, in the Syrian desert I wondered at the fact that apart from the narrow fertile strip of the Euphrates it was completely empty with no human habitation and likely no potential for it either. Here in Egypt the same is true on a much larger scale. When I struck out from Bursa on foot, my map only marked the main population centers, yet I was certain that there would be roads (maybe unpaved, but existent), and water to be had, and villages to ... read more

Egypt and Jordan - The Pharaohs, Moses and Indiana Jones We left our ship in Egypt for another four-day overland trip, this time through two countries, Egypt and Jordan. If you look on a map, you’ll see that they lie more or less side by side on either side of the Suez Canal where it empties into the Mediterranean Sea. Israel (much smaller) comes down between the two countries in a wedge that prevents them from having contiguous borders. The still smaller Palestinian territory inside Israel also borders on Jordan. Our first stop in Egypt was Luxor, where we saw temples and statues familiar to us from National Geographic pictures - the great Temple of Luxor with its towering 50-foot columns and a seated Pharaoh whose enormous feet were at eye level to tourists. It’s hard ... read more

I finally got myself out of Thailand... It was really hard to leave that place. I changed my flight. Twice. The last time, was really interesting - I got all the way to the check-in counter, and changed my mind. I am not getting on that plane. I declared to no one in particular... Anyway, because I changed my flight so many times, I only ended up with two days in Egypt. I definitely did not spend nearly enough time there. My first day there was exhausting. I took a red-eye flight from Bangkok to arrive at 5:30 AM local time. I should have known that I was a bit tired when I had a lot of difficulty sorting out the Visa situation. All I had to do was stand in line at a Bank counter, ... read more

Anafora As our semester came to a close, the whole group headed up to the Delta region to spend a weekend at a Coptic Church retreat centre called Anafora. We were the only large group there, and really had the whole place to ourselves. Aside from the staff that work at the centre and the laborers working the fields (it is a working farm) we really had the run of the place. Feeling the need for some alone time, I arranged for a private room and couldn’t help but love the place for providing such simplicity while meeting every need. Due to it being our ‘farewell’ outing for the semester, we had to have a ‘processing’ session on how this would be impacting our lives etc. I don’t mean to bash these, but I had already ... read more

Spent 2 weeks in Egypt and had an absolutely fabulous time! I highly recommend traveling to Egypt to everyone at least once in their lifetime. As an American woman traveling, I felt totally safe the entire time I was there...actually felt safer than I have in a few of our cities here in the States. Whenever I travel, I like to see the typical tourist sites but also like to have as much contact with the locals as possible so I can really understand the culture first hand. On this trip, I was able to spend a little time with the locals but would like to return and get to know the Egyptians better. One of the things that struck me the most was the genuine generosity and kindness of the Egyptian people (very few people ... read more