Egypt - Cairo - Awesome! And Absolutely Bonkers!

Cairo is definitely a love-hate relationship. It is both one of the most interesting and most difficult cities I’ve been to on this trip. It actually reminds me a bit of Havana because it has so much personality. It’s not just another big city; when you’re in Cairo, you know you’re in Cairo. And it is a BIG city. Home to 24 million people and 8 million commuters (imagine the province of Ontario commuted to work every day to Montreal...), the traffic is insane and the city never sleeps. Looking out over the skyline, you see new high rises next to European apartments in between minarets from the many mosques with the odd Coptic Christian church steeple in the mix.



We parked ourselves at a great hostel on the doorstep of the famous Egyptian Museum, which took us the better part of a day to gawk at and probably could have taken two weeks to fully explore. They have so many artefacts that they leave a bunch on the lawn outside.



Despite the massive size of the museum, there isn’t enough display room for everything. They have an exhibit specifically devoted to Royal Mummies, as well as the bonanza finds of King Tutankhamun’s tomb, where you can see Tut’s iconic death mask up close and personal. The astonishing wealth of the Pharaohs is apparent here; King Tut’s copious goodies are all gold and precious stones and he was a paltry king compared to the big fish like Ramsis II!

Tourism is the second biggest industry here after the Suez Canal, and it shows. It sometimes feels like every Egyptian we meet is a professional Egyptologist, by far the most common university degree here and probably one of the greatest job titles I’ve come across. It’s amazing how much of their very ancient civilization is still around and being found. Egypt even has its own antiquities police, who are armed with not one but two AK-47s to protect cultural heritage sites.

We were unclear on whether the police are professional or conscripted; every Egyptian man must serve in the army here. They can reduce their time of service with education. A high school diploma drops you from three years to two; a university degree gets you down to one. And apparently a Western wife is a get out of jail free card... though no one could explain why.

This last clause may explain somewhat the excess of marriage proposals Mehron and I were bombarded with our entire time in Egypt. Most men we met, from the bus drivers to the waiters to random men in the street, were relentlessly pursuing our hands in marriage. We pulled our usual trick of inventing husbands at home in Canada, however in Egypt, this is insufficient. We were told we must also have Egyptian husbands! We were unable to avoid this unwanted attention no matter how hard we tried. Being foreigners was a big part of it as well, as we saw several local women in very tight clothing (and hijabs) escaping the comments and propositions, while no matter how much we covered ourselves, the level of attention did not vary.

This constant harassment made walking around more of a hassle than a pastime in Egypt, so we didn’t wander the city as much as we would have otherwise. We met up with Mehr’s friend Camilla who studies in Cairo several times to see a bit more of the town, including the big Souk market Khan el Khalili and landmark restaurants like Seqoia and Felfela.



Our favourite food by far was koshary, the national fast food, and the best place to get some is Abou Tarek, which only makes koshary and rice pudding. Now, when I describe it, the ingredients may seem unlikely but when mixed together, I assure you they are scrumptious. Take a bowl and pack it with spaghetti noodles, rice, rice noodles and macaroni. Add lentils and chick peas. Top with fried onions and pureed tomato. Pour on hot sauce and da’a sauce (garlic oil with cumin, coriander and other spices) and stir it up. Not only is it tasty, it is also very filling. One bowl of this got us through most of the day. To give an idea of how much we liked it, we ate it 8 out of the 10 days we spent in Egypt.



Would I go again? Final verdict: Yes, if only for Abou Tarek’s koshary and rice pudding!

Egypt - Aswan to Luxor - Upper Kingdom Extravaganza

So Mehron and I have turned out to be Egypt-philes and spent the past five days whipping through all the major sights of ancient Egypt which has been fast but amazing.

We took the overnight train in first class seats to Aswan from Cairo, which wasn't half bad... vaguely reminiscent of the buses in South America without the sweet service. We arrived fourteen hours later in pretty rough shape but bounced back after a little nap and a much needed shower. We got to check out both the High Dam and the Philae Temple our first afternoon. The High Dam was built with the Russians' help, creating the massive 500km Lake Nasser south of Aswan.



The Philae Temple was moved to higher ground on what became an island to prevent it from being lost in the dam building process. The evening was spent wandering around the lively weekend marketplace and being disappointed to discover that shawarma here is served on a hot dog bun instead of inside a pita. What?!

The next morning we were up in the middle of the night at 2am to catch our bus to Abu Simbel. I hate being awake at that hour of the day, but the temples of Ramses II and Nefertari there were on my bucket list... so up I got. We drove three hours through the desert in a massive convoy of a hundred buses and minibuses and were blown away by the temples. Ramses II built them to deify himself and his favourite wife (he had dozens of them and 111 sons or something) and to scare the Nubians away from invading Egypt from the south. They were actually lost in the sands for a thousand years or so before an Italian tripped on one and dug it out.



These temples also had to be moved before Lake Nasser was created by the dam... yes, the Lake is that big. But they messed up in reorienting the temples... the holy chamber is supposed to be illuminated twice a year on the solstices on the 21sts, but once they moved them, they were bummed to discover that the illumination now happens on the 22nds. Whoops. Goes to show we still have no idea how Egyptian engineering or architecture works!

The rest of our day we lazed on a felucca boat sailing down the Nile towards Luxor and overnighted on the boat on the banks of the Nile. Did I mention we sailed down the Nile? Perfect way to spend the rest of a day that started WAY too early.



Next morning we were delivered to a minibus that was taking us the rest of the way to Luxor (Aswan to Luxor is 4 days sail by felucca), with two stops at the Kom Ombo crocodile god temple and the Horus Edfu temple, the best preserved temple in Egypt. Edfu rates top four; it was excellent and I'd never heard of it before. In Luxor, we visited West Bank, the necropolis of the Valley of the Kings and Queens' tombs of the New Kingdom, and East Bank, where the ancient temples of old Egyptian Thebes still stand in the middle of the current city. No photos allowed in the Valleys, but the colours were still intact from when they were painted thousands of years ago because they're protected underground.



We also visited Hatshepsut's Temple, the only female Pharaoh and first known female ruler of ancient times. She was quite a lady... she refused to give up the throne after her husband died to her nephew the heir, and ruled for 22 years alone greatly increasing Egypt's trade and commerce with the south. Her nephew after she died tried to erase her from history, so her image is scratched out just about everywhere she inscribed herself. Bitter much...



I skipped the Luxor temple because I was getting a little overdosed on hieroglyphics and carvings of Horus and Pharaohs, but I did manage to rally to get to Karnak, a 3500 year old temple complex dedicated to the sun god Amun Ra which was mindblowing. It was comparable in size and detail to Angkor Wat... I'm so glad I made it there!

We're now back in Cairo at our favourite hostel chilling out after another long overnight train ride and thinking we may do a seaside break from all the ruins before checking out the library in Alexandria... who knows!

Egypt - Giza, Saqqara and Dashour - The Pyramid Triathlon

Whoa! I'm in Egypt! How did that happen?!



Answer: One night in Addis, Mehr couldn't sleep, so she rolled over and poked my shoulder and asked "Hey, do you want to go to Egypt?". A sleepy me almost instantly replied "Yeah, I really do." And two days later our flight was booked to Cairo!

And now we're here! We arrived at the absurd hour of 2:30am (why do African flights only fly in the worst hours of the night?!) to Cairo after a one hour layover in Khartoum, during which no one is allowed off the plane because Sudan lets almost no nationalities into the country, including Canadians. Boring...

We had planned to take it easy our first day, knowing we wouldn't be in bed before 4am, but the allure of exploring was too tempting and by lunch time we found ourselves on the way to Giza to see the Pyramids. Our afternoon on the pyramid tour was a bit of a triathlon. The three components being camel riding, Sahara trekking and climbing in and out of the pyramid tombs. No joke. And our tour guides were strict on time. Twelve minutes for pyramids, seven minutes for Sphinx, ten minutes for mountain lookout, twenty minutes to climb into Dashour, etc. It was positively race-like.



Our first stop on our pyramid bonanza was Giza and the Great Pyramids. Some people said they are overhyped. I disagree. They are massive, they are amazing and they are wonders of the world.





We did a two hour tour of the three main Pyramids and the Sphinx taking in the sights from our camel rides. Yes, I was on a camel. It sort of unfolded before I could really think things through and by the time I realized maybe I'm not cut out for camel travel I was already awkwardly astride Michael Jackson, Egypt's most foul-tempered camel who fought with the guide and driver at every turn and gave me savage glares leaving no doubt in my mind that he was out to bite me at the first opportunity.

That being said, camel is still one of the best ways to get around Giza, since the Pyramids are quite far apart and the sand makes for hard going. The small windows spent on our feet were struggling against the sand dunes of the Sahara to get up closer to the pyramids. Note: I am not a graceful person, and I am even less graceful getting on and off of camels.



We also checked out Saqqara, the site of the first pyramid in Egypt, and Dashour (which I think is in old Memphis), where we were allowed to descend into the actual pyramid into the former tomb rooms of the Pharaohs! Awesome. I am also now aware that I get claustrophobic when I go underground, so one descent was enough for me. Mehr went into two pyramids and was none the worse for wear. The hieroglyphics and paintings were still impressively intact and so detailed.




The last stops of the day involved massive meat and shish kebab platters with oodles of tahini and baba ghanouj on the side, traditional papyrus art galleries and essential oil perfumeries. Interesting in their own way, but not exactly wonders of the ancient world!