Advertisement
Published: November 22nd 2009
The big day and we're nervous and excited all at the same time. Sister Suni took us to the airport, Heathrow Terminal 5. What a revelation - so calm and quiet and easy to get to and checking in was a dream! The flight was delayed an hour but apart from that all went smoothly and we arrived in Cairo about .half past midnight and at our hotel about 2am. Hotel was pretty basic but OK for a couple of nights. Even in the middle of the night the streets of Cairo are crazy with traffic everywhere. On Friday night everyone was very excited because there was a big football match the following night, Egypt v Algeria, to qualify for the world cup. Already there were cars full of supporters waving flags, tooting horns, hanging out the windows or up on the roof.
We checked into our hotel and attempted to sleep - not easy.
Saturday 14th We decided to have a go at exploring Cairo on our own before the tour started on Sunday. We got a taxi (quite and experience in itself as most are very old and held together with string) and went to the centre. It
was difficult to work out where things were as there is very little signage (oh for Point and Press, Simon if you're reading this) but we had a good wander round and soaked up the general atmosphere. Crossing the road was a nightmare as no one takes any notice of traffic lights, road signs etc. and people and cars, lorries, buses just have a free for all. The excitement for the match was building with convoys of cars with flags, horns, shouting people touring the city. We went up the Cairo Tower and had a great view of the whole of the city with a faint outline of the pyramids in the distance. The down side of Egypt is the number of people who hassle you all the time to take you places, take your photo or find any way they can to get money out of you. It goes against the grain to be rude to them but that seems to be the only way to get rid of them.
Saturday evening we had a briefing for the tour and met some of our fellow travellers, others were arriving later. We watched the football match and to everyone's delight
Egypt won. They now have to win again on Wednesday to qualify - only the third time in 75 years so all Egypt is buzzing at the prospect.
Sunday 15th was an early start. Our group of 9 is made up of English, Scottish and Australian travellers with our Egyptian guide Waleed. James and Belinda (Australia), Alan and Nicola (Scotland), Dorothee and Colin (Australia) and Laura (England).
We also has a local guide Leila just for the day. First stop was the Egyptian Museum of Cairo. Here are many of the most famous treasures of the pyramids. The objects found in the tomb of Tutankhamun are the star attraction and are quite beautiful. You can get really close to them and see the fantastic detail in the jewellery - the famous mask is magnificent . You could also tell by the size of beds, chairs etc. how small the ancient Egyptians were compared to today, probably no more than 5ft tall. After the museum it was off to Giza and the pyramids. It is hard to believe that they were actually built by hand, they are so huge. I went inside the smaller one. You have to bend over
double and enter through a tunnel about a metre high which goes down, down, down and then up into the burial chamber in the middle of the pyramid. Each building block is huge and there are thousands and thousands of them. It is almost impossible to conceive how it was constructed nearly 4000 years ago without the benefit of the technical knowledge and equipment we have today - those Egyptians must have known a thing or two all those years ago! After the pyramids we went to the Sphinx which really is as magnificent as pictures portray. After this we were back on the bus and off to Fayoum, an oasis town in the Western Desert. It is amazing how crazy, crowded Cairo just stops and the desert begins. I was expecting some scrub land to begin with but no, it is just sand and rock as far as the eye can see. The area around Fayoum is quite different from Cairo - much more rural with donkey carts everywhere and a way of life that looked is if it had not changed for decades. We were taken to a local house for dinner. The wife showed us how to
cook Egyptian flatbread in a clay oven outside the house, rather like a very primitive pizza oven. We ate in the garden under a kind of shelter - salad, rice and chicken with the bread we had seen being cooked. Later we travelled to our hotel by the lake in Fayoum. 'Hotel' is actually a very imaginative word for it was is was pretty dreadful. When it had been built, only about 13 years ago, it must have been quite grand but showed no sign that it had ever been cleaned or maintained since. Everything was falling apart and filthy dirty - a bit of a disaster as Waleed had promised us that this would be the highlight of our tour. It was awful but quite funny as well. But hey! We were here to see the world.
Monday, 15th. In the morning we went by 4X4 jeeps further into the desert to 'The Valley of the Whales'. This is a world heritage site where many fossilized remains of whales have been found. This shows that all of Egypt was once under the sea and also, as the whales had four limbs, that they were descended from land animals.
The fossils were interesting but, more amazing, were the rock formations surrounding the area. We had some pretty hairy driving in the jeeps, especially when they decided to have a race and the police escort truck that was with us got stuck in a sand dune.
Tuesday, 16th This morning we went to Fayoum city which we toured by horse drawn carriage. I practised my queen wave as we went. It is much quieter than Cairo but the streets were still a mad mixture of donkeys, trucks, bicycles and people everywhere. After visiting a the remains of an ancient Roman city we headed back to Cairo to get the overnight train to Luxor. It took hours as the traffic was absolutely solid (four vehicles abreast on a two lane highway) but we eventually arrived at the station to catch the train. The train was quite an experience in itself. We had a sleeper compartment for two with seats that converted into bunks. I had the bottom one and poor old Terry had to climb a very steep ladder to the top. Not much sleep
for either of us as the train was incredibly noisy, rocking and rolling through the
night but we eventually arrived in Luxor about 8am.
Wednesday 18th. Our Nile boat, the MS Melodie, is great. It is quite small, sleeping 40, but there are only about 20 of us (our group and another similar group on a slightly different tour) plus crew. The boat is not luxurious but is very clean and we have everything we need. Everyone is extremely friendly too. As not much sleep was had by anyone last night we spent a relaxing day on the sundeck and we set sail from Luxor to Edfu. After dinner we watched the football the final game between Egypt and Algeria. Unfortunately Egypt lost so Algeria go to the World Cup. All the crew were very upset and so were we as they had promised us free drinks if they got through!
Thursday 19th. This morning we got up very early and went to the temple at Edfu, the second largest temple in Egypt, dedicated to the god Horus. The temple was magnificent with very intricate carvings and several huge statues. The detail on some of the figures was fantastic and some of the original colour still remained. It is very well preserved because for
thousands of years it was buried by sand and has only been revealed during the last century. Later in the day we sailed on to Kom Ombo to see the temple dedicated to Sebek, the crocodile god. This too was magnificent but not as well preserved as Edfu so didn't impress us quite as much. We went to a Nubian coffee shop and had drinks and then saw a typical Nubian home with goats, a donkey, camel, water buffalo and horse in the courtyard. The Nubians are a very peaceful people who lost their homes when the Aswan High Dam was built and Lake Nasser was created flooding all their lands. They now live in various settlements around the Nile given them by the Egyptian government. Amazingly, as part of the group, we have a Brazilian girl on board who is an expert on Egyptian dance so after dinner we all had a belly dancing lesson. It was very hard work and I don't think I got my wiggling quite right so no pharaoh is going to steal me away from Terry yet. I'll keep trying!
Friday 20th. We arrived in Aswan early this morning. We drove the the
other side of the Aswan Dam and took a ferry across Lake Nasser to yet another temple. This was one of the temples which would have been sunk beneath Lake Nasser so was removed, stone by stone to higher ground and then rebuilt. Interesting to visit but I think we may be in danger of being 'templed out' soon. We had lunch on a boat, fish from the lake plus the usual Egyptian bread, rice and salad, eaten 'Egyptian style' eg with our hands!. On the way back we visited a perfume maker, sniffed lots of different scents and had a back massage - very good. We also spent some time exploring Aswan. It is a much nicer city then Cairo, much cleaner and quieter and the streets are wider with far less traffic. We failed to find any wifi but did find an internet cafe so managed to send a few emails but not to add to the blog. Hopefully better luck tomorrow.
Saturday 21st Up at 3:30 this to make the long drive to Abu Simbel, the temples of Rameses II and his wife Nefertari. These too were temples that would have been lost with the creation of
Lake Nasser if they hadn't been moved to higher ground. Moving them was a huge feat of engineering as they were not built as other temples were but hewn out of the cliffs. They had to move the cliffs as well as the temples. The temples lie south of Aswan near the border with Sudan and a road has been opened recently that crosses the desert for about 150 miles to reach the site. You have to go in convoy with a police escort. This happens quite a lot in Egypt since some attacks on tourist sites some years ago and the police or army are often with us. They don't seem to do a lot and it feels very much 'jobs for the boys'.
The facade of the Temple of Rameses II is one of the most famous sights in Egypt and the one you will see on most portrayals of the country. It is magnificent, four towering statues of Rameses guarding the entrance and facing the rising sun. The temple is constructed in such a way that the sun shines right inside it each day to infuse it with energy and twice a year illuminates the statues of
the gods in the holy of holies which were once covered with gold and jewels. All the reliefs inside are beautiful, still retaining much of the colour they were originally painted with, and telling the stories of Rameses' many triumphs. He was quite a guy, strong, powerful and clever and ruled for 67 years. Like all great men he had a great woman behind him, Nefertari, who was the 'babe' of the day, beautiful, clever and wise, so he built her a temple too. (I'm hoping Terry will start on mine soon!) We spent a couple of hours looking at these two amazing temples and then it was the long trek back to Aswan, Later in the day we took a felucca ride down the Nile as the sun set. Feluccas are very simple, single sailed boats that go back to ancient times. Ours was covered in a thick mattress under a canopy and we could lie back and watch the world go by - lovely. As soon as you get outside the city the scenes beside the Nile are almost biblical with people in small boats fishing, boys taking water buffalo down to the water to drink and children
playing on the banks. The houses, too, are like the ones we used to make out of shoe boxes at Sunday School with stairs on the outside and space on the roof to sleep. When we left the felucca we went to visit a Nubian village. We went first to visit the primary school. There were several classrooms, all the same and very bare with a few desks and a couple of charts on the wall. I always feel sad when I visit schools in other countries that they have so little in terms of resources, so little colour, stimulation or opportunities for creativity even for little ones. In comparison our children have so much and don't even realise it. Waleed tells us that public education in Egypt is pretty dreadful. There are 50 or 60 to a class and the teacher makes little attempt to teach, spending the time on the phone or reading the paper. Anyone who wants to learn and whose parents can afford it, takes private or small group lessons from the teacher after school. After the school we went to visit a local house - a few simple rooms, a yard for the animals and
the cooking and, most unexpectedly, a large coca cola chiller fridge. It wasn't easy finding our way round the village in the dark (thank goodness for Danny O'Hara's torch), but we eventually made it back to the river and then back to the boat.
Sunday, 22nd Up with the lark for an early morning camel ride. We got a ferry over to the west bank to get our camels for a ride through the desert to a monastery. My camel was called Cocoa, Terry's was Mamud. Camels are not easy to ride as there is little to grip on to but the worst part is getting on and off as they lurch forwards and then backwards alarmingly. Still we managed it and are now fully trained and ready for our camel safari in India (not!). Later in the morning, after much searching for a better one, we went back to the same internet cafe as previously. We finally manged to upload a bit of text but mostly failed with pictures - perhaps we'll have better luck in Luxor. The boat set sail about midday back to Edfu for the night.
Monday 23rd We set sail early this morning
to arrive back in Luxor by midday. This afternoon we took a horse and carriage ride along the bank of the Nile to Karnak Temple which lies just outside the city. Arriving at the entrance there is an avenue of Sphinxes leading up to the magnificent gates which lead to a huge temple covering about 67 acres. It was built by many pharaohs over a period of about 2000 years with each pharaoh trying to outdo the previous one and it is truly splendid. In its day over 86,000 priests, scribes and learned men worked here. Many of the carvings are still intact with massive columns and statues everywhere. After exploring the temple the carriages took us on a tour of Luxor. I had more chances to practise my queenly wave as we rode through the local streets and markets.
Tuesday 24th Up at dawn this morning to get the ferry across to the west bank of the Nile where our donkeys were waiting for us. Lots of donkey related jokes on the way but we finally climbed on and set off for the 10km trek to the Valley of the Kings. We were a group of about 20
and just about all donkey riding novices. What we weren't prepared for was that we would be riding down a main road with trucks, buses, motorbikes, donkey carts and people all heading in different directions and weaving in and out with much honking of horns and shouting. We survived that and then turned down a track and rode beside fields of sugar cane where it was much quieter and we only had to negotiate tractors, carts and people riding their own donkeys to the fields to work. We can now confirm, from our vast experience, that donkeys are much easier to ride than camels. You aren't so high up so you don't feel there is so far to fall and they trot along quite nicely rather than the swaying motion of the camel. The donkeys were generally well behaved and as long as you accepted that they were in charge (ignoring our cries of “yella”- faster, “hosh” - slower and any attempt at steering with the reins ) all was well. Arriving at the Valley of the Kings, there isn't much to see above ground, but carved deep into the rock are corridors that lead to burial chambers far underground.
About 60 tombs have been found but only a few are open at anyone time in order to best preserve them. Our ticket allowed us into three tombs and in each case we followed a very steep shaft, the walls beautifully decorated with reliefs depicting illustrations from their sacred books, kings paying their respects to the gods and scenes of battles, until we reached the burial chamber. No treasures are to be seen within the tombs, they were all stolen by grave robbers long ago, but the decorations on the walls are stunning because, unlike some of the temples, the colours still remain. This is where Howard Carter found the tomb of Tutankhamun in the 1920s, the only tomb not to have been robbed and who's treasures we saw in the museum in Cairo.
We got back to the boat, had a bit of a lounge and then shock, horror, our boat was invaded by new passengers who would be setting sail for Aswan the following day. It was like being taken over by aliens and we didn't like it one bit. Our lovely quiet boat had been invaded. We visited the Luxor museum in the afternoon. A cracking museum
this, everything beautifully displayed with very helpful labels. There were some exquisite statues and artifacts. As this was our last night on the boat we had a bit of a party. The chef had made special cakes and Nell, the Brazilian girl, gave a performance of Egyptian belly dancing - a good night all round (apart from the aliens!).
Wednesday 25th We left the boat this morning and transferred to the Tuthotel for our last night in Luxor. We had a very long bus journey to 2 more temples at Abydos and Dendera. Abydos was 3 hours drive, Dendere 2 more and then another 2 hours back. Although the temples were interesting, to be honest, we've seen so many splendid ones that we feel we've 'done' temples and could have done without such a long drive. Dendera was interesting because someone has invented a way of cleaning the reliefs so that the colours of the paintings are revealed after many centuries of dust and sand. The process is still in its early stages but could eventually transform not only this temple but many others in Egypt. Dinner at a local restaurant tonight but I think we were really all
too tired to enjoy it much.
Thursday 26th We left Luxor early this morning and made the long drive to Hurghada on the Red Sea. I have to say that travelling by minibus can be quite stressful as the driving is bizarre. Although they officially drive on the right, they sometimes drive on the left and sometimes straight down the middle of the road. The roads are generally long and straight but there are checkpoints every few miles manned by the tourist police. Also you're competing for road space with donkey carts, old clapped out trucks loaded precariously with sugar cane, cabbages or tomatoes (and on one occasion with 4 water buffalo on the top) and people who just walk out into the road at any time. Still we arrived in one piece after about 5 hours travelling and settled into the hotel where we will be staying for 2 nights.
Friday 27th Today was Red Sea snorkelling day. Up early again and off to the boat which would take us out to the reef. The boat was packed with Russians, huge man mountains and women with very bad hair colour jobs. We travelled for about an hour and then dropped anchor, along with about 20 other boats, to go snorkelling. Getting on the gear was no mean feat but, once ready, we jumped off the back of the boat into the sea. It wasn't too cold but the current was pretty strong so it was quite hard work swimming. Also there were an awful lot people in the water so you had to dodge all the flailing arms, legs and fins and still keep up with your group. We had about 50 minutes exploring the coral and watching the brightly coloured fish before we clambered back on board. Lunch was on the boat (just about edible!) and then we sailed to an island where we went ashore. We had a swim and a little snorkel and then it was back to Hurghada. This evening, as it was to be our last night all together (one couple was leaving tonight and not returning to Cairo), we went to a quite smart Argentinian restaurant to eat. I had my first gin and tonic for two weeks (yes dear readers this is hard to believe but true). It was bliss.
Saturday 28th This was the final day of our tour and we had the long, boring bus journey back to Cairo - six hours of desert. I spent quite a lot of time thinking about my father who had spent a large part of the war in the Egyptian desert. He had always made it sound quite an adventure but it must have been truly awful. Just sand and rubble, burning sun and Germans shooting at you. And here am I, complaining about a few hours on a soft seat in an air conditioned bus! We arrived back at the Salma Hotel, which previously we had thought was quite rough but now seemed pretty good. We've had a great time in Egypt and seen some fantastic sights but can't claim to have fallen in love with the country really. Tomorrow we leave for Delhi on the next stage of our adventure.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.278s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0295s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
mike
non-member comment
good work on the blog. Sounds like your having fun. Cracking photo's too. Keep up the good work and opt importantly - enjoy.