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.