Egypt - the Experience

The tour group

Intrepid tours are small groups of 12. Our group included a wealthy Kiwi couple, an Aussie girl from Adelaide, an American freelance journalist, an English guy, 2 brothers who live in the UK but have lived in Belgium, Japan, Canada & Singapore during their lives, an American couple studying in Jerusalem and his mother. The group would have to be one of the wimpiest on record. As a group, it barely drank, it didn't swim in the Nile, it barely partied, it wilted in the heat, it all got sick and it loved its showers. Our guide was an Egyptian from Cairo, who kept telling people to shut up when he was explaining the sites and the history. When asked whether his mum knew he was so rude, he said, 'Of course..., Not!' : )

The dirt & heat

May is the beginning of summer in Egypt but even so, it was already incredibly hot. In Aswan, it got up to 45oC. This combined with the dust & sand blown in from the desert made it hot, dirty and tiring. We showered constantly. The tour allowed for shower time in the mornings after the train journeys and felucca trip (the whole group was hankering for a shower after the train down to Aswan only to find that the water died in the whole hotel).

The Nile

The Nile is the lifeline of Egypt. It contains the last 1/4 of the river. The Aswan High Dam was built almost 40 years ago to control the floods and to generate electricity. The result is no silt to fertilise the country and more dust. The Egyptians treat the river like their toilet and rubbish bin. Everything goes into it, including the rubbish generated by tourist groups, who, to their shame, leave garbage everywhere.

The people

The business people were aggressive. Our group named the areas around the temples and monuments 'running the gauntlet'. The stall owners crowd in at you to try to get you to buy something. We were warned not to touch anything nor to take anything that was handed to us as it would be considered to be sold and you would be pressured to buy. You can't even look at things in peace. The result is that nobody buys anything, quite the opposite result to what they want.

The other peculiarity of the culture is that the people do not like giving change. They either ask you for smaller bills (how to you get these smaller bills when banks and exchange offices only give larger ones and vendors don't give change?), 'forget' to give you change or give you less change than you should get.

The people we met (who were not out to do business with us) were very friendly. We went to lunch at a local family's house in Luxor, where we were able to talk to the ladies of the household. The eldest daughter has just finished university with a degree in tourism. She hopes to be a tour guide, taking tours all over Egypt. However, her parents want her to only do day-tours around Luxor as good Muslim girls should not spend nights outside of their family homes. Classic case of tradition vs personal ambition, duty to the family vs personal happiness.

The houses

As we flew into Cairo, we had a view of desert and brown matchbox-like unfinished houses. As we travelled through the streets and towns, we saw that almost all of the houses were unfinished. They all had reinforced concrete pillars sticking out the top and often had concrete staircases leading to nowhere on their roofs. Apparently, there is a loophole in Egyptian law that allows landowners to pay less tax on unfinished houses than on complete ones. So, everyone lives in houses that appear to be unfinished on the outside but are actually fully furnished on the inside. This insanity has created a country of incredibly ugly towns and cities that people cannot feel pride about.

The convoys

We had police escorted convoys of buses to and from Abu Simbel and also back up to Luxor. The reason given was for our safety as there was not a lot of access to help if a bus broke down in the desert. However, the first police car took off and we never saw it again. From there, it was a race at breakneck speeds between the buses as to who would get there first. At times, we could not even see the bus in front of us, they were that far apart.

The trains

We took a sleeping train down from Cairo to Aswan - scheduled for 12 hours (900km) and took 15 hours. This was the first time I have been on a train with sleeping compartments. The compartments are built for 2 with beds that fold down over the 2 seats when it is time for bed and also with a wash basin so that you don't have to go down to the toilet at the end of the carriage all the time. It was rather like the trains that James Bond fought in against Grant and Jaws.

We took a sitting train from Luxor back to Cairo. The chaos and crush to get on was very daunting even though everyone had set seating. We had been warned about the quality of the toilet. One of the girls got to the end of the carriage and had to turn back before forcing herself to go later when things got desperate. Of the people who went, all said that it was the worst they had ever seen except for one couple who said the Trans-Siberian train toilet was their worst.

Photos in the usual place.

Sickness count: 2nd set of stomach problems, 13th cold in 12 months.

Egypt - the Sites

Cairo
We flew into Cairo and were not met as expected before immigration. The guy was waiting after customs. We were driven at dizzying speeds to the hotel, where our bags were physically wrenched from our arms and the porter hovered in our room waiting for a tip, which was never going to come (we had nothing on us less than A$10 and there was no way he was getting that). The reception was then unable to provide a map nor clear directions to restaurants and shops. The restaurant we went to then tried to rip up off by giving us incorrect change. Not a very good first impression of Egypt at all.
Our tour started the next day at lunchtime. We visited Islamic Cairo, including the El Azhar Mosque, one of the local bazaars and the tourist-oriented Khan-Khalili Bazaar. While we were sitting at one of the cafes, a woman grabbed my hand and painted a henna picture on my finger. Bizarrely, I was not required to pay anything for this. Our guide was later shocked when he found out that my tattoo was free ('Nothing is free in Egypt'). [Side note: I also acquired a scarab beetle amulet and a necklace for free during the trip.]

The Pyramids of Giza

The Great Pyramid of Giza (aka the Pyramid of Khufu or the Pyramid of Cheops) is the largest of the pyramids at Giza (there are 9 - 3 large and 6 small) and the last remaining member of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The strange thing is that it actually looks smaller than the Second Pyramid (Khafre's Pyramid, Khufu's son). This is because the casing stones have gone from the Great Pyramid and the Second Pyramid is built on higher ground.

The whole tour group bought tickets to go into the Second Pyramid but only 4 made it to the middle chamber. The tunnel is very small so you have to double up to get through it. As there is very little ventilation, it is hot and stuffy.

The Sphinx was built by Khafre to guard his pyramid. It is surprisingly small, even though it is 50m x 20m, dwarfed by the pyramids behind it.

In the afternoon, we visited the Egyptian Museum, the home Tutankhamun's treasures, including his phenomenal gold mask and gem-studded sarcophagi. They would have to have been the highlight of our visit there. Oh, the mummified crocodile, snake and assorted cats and dogs were fascinating too.

Aswan

Philae Temple
Philae Temple, along with Abu Simbel, was moved when the Aswan High Dam was built, resulting in the creation of a lake, which flooded the areas where the monuments were located. The island that the temple is situated on now is not quite long enough for the temple, so the temple has been offset. The result is that you cannot stand at the inner chamber and look all the way out to the front of the complex. Despite this, it is an awesome temple being on of the most complete still remaining. It is actually quite 'new', built in around 300 BC.

Abu Simbel

We woke up at 3am to join the convoy to Abu Simbel. It was a 3 hour race there, a 2 hour visit before it got too hot and then a 3 hour race back. The 2 temples at Abu Simbel were built by Ramses II for himself and his favourite wife, Nefertari. Her temple in unusual in that her statues are the same size as his. Normally, the concubine statues only go up to the pharaoh's knees. Our guide told us to go straight into the temples while other groups stood outside listening to their guides. Ma and I got there first so we were the ONLY 2 people in Ramses II's temple for a full 5 minutes. We were then the only 2 people in Nefertari's temple for another 5 minutes. Awesome! Later, we went back to have a look in Ramses' temple and it was absolutely packed with people.

Felucca

We spent a day and night on the Nile on a felucca, a sailboat that basically has a big mattress on its deck with pillows at the sides. It was sailed by Nubians who also prepared our meals. It was a very relaxing day, which was followed by a rather painful day when most of the group got sick. The theory is that the dishes were washed with Nile water, which is less than hygienic.

Luxor

After the day on the felucca, we caught the convoy back up to Luxor. First stop was Karnak Temple, the largest temple complex in the world. It was added to by various pharaohs during their reigns. It includes a spectacular hall by Seti I and his son Ramses II and the tallest surviving obelisk in the world by Hatshepsut, the great Queen (~1450 BC) who is never mentioned in western literature. She usurped power from her nephew for whom she was acting as regent and ruled as Egypt's pharaoh for 22 years, leading troops into battle early in her reign and then guiding Egypt through a peaceful and prosperous time. Her mortuary temple, Djeser-Djeseru, is believed to be the reason the Valley of the Kings is where is it - later pharaohs wanted to put their tombs near her great architectural gem. Cool! We saw it on our hot air balloon ride over the Valley of the Kings.

We visited 3 of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings: Ramses I, III & IV in sweltering heat. These are remarkable for the quality of the decorations still present and the colour. Like the Terracotta Warriors of China, the tombs and temples of Egypt were originally painted in vibrant colours. Only some of this remains.

Habu Temple (of Ramses III) is a fine example of the colour. A lot of it is still visible in the sheltered parts of the temple. It also has examples of the practice of etching hieroglyphics deeply into the walls so that future leaders could not remove them without affecting the structural integrity of the walls. Some of the 'Ra' signs, a sun, are big and deep enough to stick your head in them.

It is worth a trip to Egypt to see what a great civilisation they were 5000-2000 years ago. It is a pity that they are no longer anything like that anymore and rapidly heading in the opposite direction.