The Mr X factor 19: Egypt - December 2008

Cairo – Pyramids – Western Desert: Black & White Deserts – Badr’s Museum – Al-Qasr – Luxor – Valley of the Kings – Temple of Karnak – Temple of Luxor – Hurghada – Snorkelling on the Red Sea – Galabeya party night - Aswan – Aswan Dams – Temple of Philae – Temple of Abu Simbel – Sailing Feluccas down the Nile – Back to Cairo – Egyptian Museum

For my Egypt tour photos visit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidhodgkinson/sets/72157614267955787/

I finally got my big holiday just before Christmas – after a long hard year of work I had eight weeks of travelling lined up, with just four days of work between my two-week tour of Egypt, and a six-week trip home to New Zealand. I flew from London to Cairo on BA on Saturday 20 December, full of anticipation.

While Egypt is not exactly ‘out the back and beyond’, this was to be my first trip ‘off the (semi-) beaten’ track. Having done some reading of my Egyptian Lonely Planet’s introduction & medical sections, I was wary of potential health mishaps, as well as potential travel scams that might be performed by people appearing to want to help you, but simply wanting your money.

I flew into Cairo around midnight local time, and found my pre-arranged taxi-contact, who escorted me through the visa process. All seemed fine until, unbelievably, a scenario started unfolding in the exact same way the Lonely Planet had described under its ‘Scams’ section. This is where the taxi driver gets a call from someone (a plant – the driver and person on the phone are working in tandem) asking to speak to you - to inform you that the hotel venue has changed (due to closure/over-booking etc...) and that the driver will need to take you to a different hotel, which has been arranged for you. Upon arrival the price for the stay has been ramped up and you have to fork out, or pay for another taxi ride to ‘who knows where you might end up’.

I was on edge – not knowing if this was legitimate or not. I grilled the person on the other end of the phone, until I got a name and address of the tour company I was with and contact name and address from their London office. This gave me some assurance that I was not being had, and I caught the taxi into Cairo, getting my first taste of Egyptian driving along the way - chaotic to say the least!

The hotel change turned out to be legit (interesting signs in the toilets however!), and the next morning the tour started. The tour was run by a travel company called Kumuka and it proved to be a pretty well run trip. This even extended to how the truck we travelled on was designed. The vehicle consisted of a flat-bed truck and chassis, onto which an adapted bus cabin had been attached. The best thing about the design was that not all the seats were facing forward. Some of them faced backwards allowing for people to face each other and interact easily.

For our first day on the tour (for tour itinerary click on: http://www.kumuka.com/Oases-and-Pharaohs.aspx) we were off to the great pyramids of Egypt – clearly a highlight and pretty amazing. We drove through south-west Cairo towards the suburb of Giza, and then suddenly they just appeared out of the haze and buildings.

The sheer size of them was pretty breathtaking, especially when I lined up alongside the bottom block of one – to find out it reached up to my armpits in height, and about the same in width. To consider the size and weight of these things, that were built centuries – millennia ago, without anything near the technology we have today, was pretty mind boggling.
We did a big walk around the two main ones – the Great Pyramid of Khufu and the Pyramid of Khafre, also observing the earlier ‘step pyramids’ built by the locals over the centuries as they fine-tuned their techniques for that classic pyramid look (For all things on pyramids head to http://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/ancient/giza-pyramids.html).

During this we found out we could actually go into the heart of the Pyramid of Khafre, so we queued up and then headed into it, crouching down as we descended about 25 metres down a narrow passage (uncomfortable too – it was only about one-metre high – all to make tomb-robbing difficult), before heading upwards about the same distance, until we reached a large room – where a Pharaoh would have been buried. It got quite warm quite quickly once inside - it must be pretty unbearable in the summer heat.

After this, we walked back to the truck (parked amidst queues of buses), before heading to the Sphinx – nearby. This was smaller than one imagines, and unfortunately its face was covered with pigeons! But it was still quite evocative, especially with the pyramids looming in the background.
Mid-afternoon we jumped back on the truck, and started heading out of Cairo – we were headed for the Western Desert, which would take 3 days to drive through. It had some of the most beautiful scenery of the trip.
We drove through the Black Desert & the White Deserts – named after the colours of the hardest rock to be left behind after the desert winds erode and blow everything else away. It seemed massive. Yet this was merely the Egyptian desert – how massive must the Sahara Desert be!!?
We stayed three nights in the desert, camping two nights and staying one night in ‘hotel’ in Al Qasr – one of several Oasis towns we drove through, along the way.

When we stopped for lunch one day at Farafra Oasis, we toured ‘Badr’s White Desert Museum’, which was a lovely display of stunning paintings, rock and wood sculptures, and anything arty – all done by Badr himself, who clearly loved sharing the work he has done over the last 20 or so years of his life.
On our third afternoon in the desert we reached the Oasis of Al-Qasr.
After lunch we had an interesting tour of an old mud-brick village. The next day we left early – at 5am! This was because the town’s speaker phones were wailing loudly at the time with the call to all Muslims to head to the Mosque for prayers.
Whilst in the desert we were allocated into duties groups for each day – about 4-5 of us would be on cooking, washing, or truck cleaning duties – for the whole day, and every 4th day or so you got the day off - always good. It was a good chance to get to know people on the tour whilst doing your duties, as well as when hanging out around the fire during the evenings, swapping stories and chatting with others, as the group began to bond.
I got on particularly well with two Australian couples – Doug & Naomi and Leanne & Neville – the two girls worked together back home in Brisbane. The rest of the group was mainly Australians, with a couple of Germans, two Koreans, a Sri Lankan American, one Brit, a Peruvian, and two Kiwis – me and the driver, Mike. Most people were on a short-term trip from their home country, rather than doing their travel from their European base.
Whilst driving on the third day, we finally neared the end of the desert - glimpsing up ahead we saw the green vegetation created by the Nile’s irrigation canals. We were nearing Luxor, and the Nile river valley, so Doug, Naomi, Leanne, Nev and me celebrated, by cracking open a can of Luxor beer. We all thought the can design was pretty cool, and it tasted nice too!
Luxor is an ancient city, alongside the Nile and about 400km south of Cairo. It is famous for lots of temples and tombs (check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxor), so we spent a couple of days visiting these and learning about Egyptian history – a crash course on Pharaohs, Early-Middle-Late Kingdoms, Hieroglyphics, the culture’s religious beliefs and practices. Ancient Egypt was one of the topics I used to teach my Year 9 (13 year olds) students, when I worked at Tawa College in NZ, so it was pretty cool to finally visit this part of the world – on their behalf!!

On Christmas Day – easily the most ‘un-Christmassy’ day I’ve ever experienced! – we visited Luxor’s main attraction, the Valley of the Kings.

This was on the West Bank of the Nile, where many Pharaohs built their tombs in an effort to assure immortality - the setting sun was heavily associated with the afterlife in Egyptian society. The Pharaohs' tombs were dug into the hillside, with the location kept as secret as possible, to prevent tomb robbers finding them and making off with all the treasures the Pharaohs were buried with.

Our tickets got us access into three tombs, all interesting in their own ways, and modelled on an ante-chamber, holy place and most holy place division, as well as storage rooms for treasure. I went into the tombs of Tuthmosis I, Ramses I and – mmm... I can’t recall which one the third one was!! They must have been amazing when the painted colours hadn’t faded and the tombs were decorated in gold, back in the day.
We also toured the Tombs of the Nobles and the Colossi of Memnon, got close enough for some photos of the massive Temple of Hatshepsut – scene of the terrorist massacre of 2 busloads of German tourists in 1997. For our second day we visited the two main temples in Luxor itself – the massive Temple of Karnak and the not so big (but still pretty large!) Temple of Luxor. For all our tours we had guides, explaining the history and beliefs behind each place we visited.
Both the temples in Luxor were all filled with wonderfully designed and built architecture, with many varieties of hieroglyphs carved onto them.

It was interesting to see and learn that the faces of many of the Pharaoh-gods had been scratched out by Christians in Roman times. This was a powerful example of the clash between polytheism and the breaking in of a monotheistic religion, after Christ’s resurrection. The Christians in Egypt would not bow down to the gods in their culture – and were subsequently forced to hide inside the temples in order to evade the persecutions of Emperor Nero.
All the temples were massive, and quite evocative. I quickly realised I was not an Egyptologist and I was beginning to feel a bit ‘templed out’! Thankfully the next two days were a welcome change as we jumped back on the truck and headed over the Red Sea Mountains to the diving and snorkelling tourist town of Hurghada.

Emerging out of the sand and desert, Hurghada has unashamedly developed to capture the dollar of any western tourist keen to go diving in the Red Sea, and is now also very popular with increasingly wealthy Russians. We stayed in a 3-4 Star Belgian hotel whilst there, which served an interesting concoction of Egypto-Belgian breakfasts each morning!!

For those who were up for it (about 10 from the tour group) our day on the Red Sea consisted of assembling at the dive company’s office, grabbing our gear (most of us would go snorkelling in the end), and then jumping on the launch and heading out south-east from Hurghada, to the numerous coral reefs out on the Sea. We had a couple of snorkels either side of lunch, and during the first one I felt like I was in the ‘Finding Nemo’ movie – the fish were pretty plentiful and there were all sorts of colourful species swimming nearby us.

Alas, as we swam around the reef, the colour and variety of fish seemed to diminish and I was left with looking at the interesting coral vegetation, as well as the task of navigating back to the correct boat – there were several moored alongside the reef. After our second snorkel we chilled out on the top deck of the launch for the afternoon, which was lovely, and a bit more spacious than sitting in our seats on the truck. Overall I enjoyed snorkelling on the Red Sea – but I don’t think snorkelling or diving is for me really – it seemed a bit static after a while, and there’s no ball involved!!

We had a tour group party whilst in Hurghada. This was in the form of a ‘Galabeya night’. A Galabeya is a traditional Egyptian-Bedouin dress – from head to toe - and we had all bought one in Luxor - developing our bartering skills in the local markets.
We walked proudly out of hotel in our garb one evening (turning lots of heads!), and headed down to one of the local bars, to have dinner and some fun together – including a ‘Galabeyan-dress-dance-off’, to find the best ethnic dancer. Well done Neville!!
After two nights in Hurghada we drove to Aswan, 150km south of Luxor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aswan). Aswan was lovely - more relaxed and slower-paced than Luxor. Our hotel, whilst simple, had stunning rooftop views over the Nile and its West Bank. Whilst there we visited the both the original Aswan Dam (built by the British 1898-1902), and the Aswan High Dam, built by the Egyptians (with a bit of Russian help) between 1960-71. When completed, it created the largest manmade body of water in the world - Lake Nasser.

The lake was totally huge – and we could only see the first part of it disappearing towards the horizon.

From Aswan, we visited two temples, both relocated 65m higher by UNESCO in the 1960s, to save them from being submerged by the flooding of the newly created Lake Nasser.

The first temple we went to was the Temple of Philae, near the Aswan High Dam itself. We reached this via water-taxi and had a look around one afternoon.

The next day was one of the highlights of the trip - the Temple of Abu Simbel, near the Sudan border. We rose at 4.30am to catch a 5am bus for a drive 280km south to the Temple of Abu Simbel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Simbel)
''Carved into the mountain on the West Bank of the Nile, between 1274-1244BC, this was Rameses II’s imposing temple was a much dedicated to the deified Pharaoh himself as to Ra-Horakhty, Amun and Ptah. The four pharaoh’s colossal statues fronting the temple are like gigantic sentinels watching over the incoming traffic from the south, undoubtedly designed as a warning of the strength of the pharaoh'' (Lonely Planet Guide).
As well as the rich cultural legacy, the project to relocate the temples higher (there are two at the site – Abu Simbel and Nefertari’s Temple) due to the flooding of Lake Nasser, was pretty fascinating to learn about.
We spent about 90 minutes on the site, looking at it and taking photos from all angles. It was definitely an impressive sight. We were also able to go inside the temples, right into the Sacred Sanctuary, which the rising sun’s first rays reach on two days of the year (22 Feb & 22 Oct), illuminating the reliefs of the four gods. Ironically, despite all the benefits of technology available in the 20th century, the relocation project got the calculations wrong by one day!!
We jumped back on the bus and slept our way back to Aswan. I spent the afternoon sun-bathing on the hotel roof: it was warm and relaxing, with lovely views - nice to have some down time.
We were starting to near the end of our trip, but we still had to get back up to Cairo. On New Year’s Eve we boarded two traditional Egyptian sailing boats – Feluccas. We had lunch, then kept sailing in the afternoon sun- very pleasant and quite enjoyable. However we didn’t get very far as we were tacking into the wind.
Towards dusk we moored up for the night on the West Bank. Our crew cooked us dinner and later on a bunch of us saw in New Year’s warmed by a fire on the bank of the Nile – I wonder if I’ll ever to experience another New Year’s Eve in Africa.
We were going to spend two days sailing northwards down the Nile, however the weather put paid to the second day. Whilst dawned calm and sunny, it soon became too windy and it was pretty chilly out on the water – the Aussies in our group were really suffering with the cold, and so was I – something from the previous night’s dinner hadn’t agreed with me.

Drifting in limbo most of the morning got pretty frustrating. Eventually we met the other boat and decided one Felucca would head to shore and back to the Felucca-owner’s house, where we could sleep the night. We drifted with the wind back up the Nile, actually quite nice, as we were not battling the wind. The other Felucca stayed out, but they eventually gave up and joined us – so there was a fair bit of abandon ship happening!

I must confess that with the Felucca problems, and some people in the group getting tired, sick, injured (or a combination of these!), I think most of us were looking forward to getting back to Cairo, and the end of the tour. The next day we drove north in the truck, visited Kom Ombo and Edfu Temples, before reaching Luxor and jumping on a night train to Cairo.

When we got to Cairo we checked into our hotel and then went on an escorted tour of the Egyptian Museum, seeing the highlights, including the treasures found in Tutankhamun’s tomb, and the boy Pharaoh’s death mask (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun).

The museum itself was a relic – a classic, pink coloured, imposing building - with a grandiose Empire-like look to it’s frontage. Inside it was filled with hundreds of thousands of Egyptian artifacts. It seemed pretty chaotic too – it was a rabbit-warren, crowded with noisy tour groups, all trying to see the same displays. There was dust hanging in the air too, and it was just completely ‘old-school’ – like an archaeology museum out of an Indiana Jones movie - I loved it! I think there are plans to re-build and relocate the museum, which will be a massive job – but it’s clearly needed.

For my final afternoon in Egypt, I consulted my travel guide and went for a walk into central Cairo, taking some photos of the cityscape, and just people watching. It was relaxing and really enjoyable. I also had a final mission to complete – find some tourist patches, which I sew onto my Scout Blanket – I began this in 1985 and it has slowly become a ‘tapestry of my life’ - over 250 patches on it now, and still most of the second side to go!
Despite lots of searching for patches, it had been a struggle to find them in Egypt – I found two in Luxor, after a lot of hunting. I was keen to find one for Cairo or the pyramids, and anywhere else I had been. Down one of Cairo’s main streets I showed a few tourist shop owners one of the patches I had. I was having no luck, until I found a tourist kiosk on a street corner. The man said he knew where to get one and led on a ten minute walk through streets, malls and back alleys, and finally to a small kiosk I never would have found. There I found two patches – one with pyramids on them and the other with a picture of Pharaoh Rameses – my Abu Simbel patch. I was totally stoked, bought the patches and tipped my source. We all had a final dinner together on our last night, which was nice. The next morning I got a 5am taxi to the airport and headed home to London.

And that was my trip to Egypt!!

Dave :)