This is Eeeeeegypt!

[Updated by Adrian 26 June]

Cairo... madness, absolute madness.

We should have predicted the impending chaos when collecting our Egyptian visa at the airport: it was simply a case of peeling back a visa sticker and placing it in your passport (the stickers conveniently located at a money exchange booth) before walking through a checkpoint and having the sticker date stamped. We knew our peril quite quickly thereafter though; the cat and mouse game on the highway to the hotel involved plenty of tooting horns and fear in equal measure.

Our hotel was located in one of the allegedly nicer places of town. My mind drifted towards thoughts of down town Baghdad...

Enough of that though. I should introduce you to our travelling companions Digby (kangaroo) and Myla (koala). Digby is the good looking one. They thoroughly enjoyed posing in the baking sun for this picture.

The monoliths in the background are the pyramids of Giza. Really amazing. These gargantuans of the ancient world along with the local markets consisted of our activities for days 1 and 2.

Which is the sphinx?

We stayed at the Indiana Hotel. Classy. So very, very classy. We had a bathroom suite complete from the 70's - avocado green no less. The bathroom wasl also well layed out; the regular bathtub shaped curtain rod (rectangular) and curtain sheet cut throught the center of the large corner bathtub basin (triangle shaped). The shower head was also conveniently located right above the curtain rail. No problems here! What helped even more was the complete absence of a drain to take away the torrent of water that never made to you or the bathtub.

The bedroom also looked good. The pictures on the wall came complete with plastic wrapping and price tags...

The night of day 2 saw us taking a sleeper train to Aswan. Quite enjoyable all in all but waking up to the smell of heavy tobacco is not my cup of tea. The train brought us to Aswan and day 3. Things definitely picked up here. We spent the afternoon motor boating around the small islands of the Nile before enjoying a home stay with the local Nubian tribesman (Nubians live on the east bank, other Egyptians on the west bank). We also did a bit of camel riding on the way. It's pretty hot over here at the moment, and so I am unsure who smelled worse; us or the camels?

Day 4

I'm sitting on the right.

This is the temple of Abu Simbel. It's quite outstanding. What's even more interesting is that the entire temple and the slightly smaller neighbouring temple were previously located some distance away. The entire structures were carved up into blocks during the 60's and reassembled in order to protect them from the impending flood of the Aswan dam.

You travel there from Aswan by convoy on Egyptian time. This means you get up at the ungodly hour of 3.30 am to meet the days collection of tourist buses who must travel there together and depart at 4am. Egyptian time means that you don't leave until about 5am. A convoy we were told was for safety reasons such as a breakdown. I suspect it's to stop highway pirates (seriously).

Day 5 was a sail down the Nile on a felucca (traditional Egyptian sailing boat).

The picture above is of our felluca, the Nile Bride. A truly beautiful experience, no motor, just sails. The water in the Nile is pretty cold (about pea size), but we had to take a couple of swims (if not only to cool off), but for the experience of it all. There is a surprisingly strong current that pulls you along that makes you really work to get back to shore. Toilet breaks are along the shore also and you get to run into some interesting locals and wildlife in the process.... joy upon joy.

The picture below is a buffalo shading the Nile sunset.

A small rant if I may now. There are three groups of people I find both extremely annoying and oddly intriguing here in Egypt. First there are the street merchants who think the only way a sale can be achieved is by harangueing you into submission. Then there are the baksheesh - tip merchants. They expect a healthy tip for doing marginally more than nothing. Both of these groups do their best to infringe on the pleasurable time you are trying to have; a bit like a mosquito you can only hear but not see. Finally there are the tourism and antiquities police. There's lots of them and they have big guns. The fancier ones have bayonets as well. I'm not quite sure what they really do. I could really go on here but I'll opt for brevity.

Day 6 was a visit to Luxor and the Karnak temples.


Karnak Temple was bigger than we expected and would have been colossal in it's day.

Day 7 and we visited the the Valley of the Kings. No ordinary entry to such a feted place either; we came on donkeys. That's right, donkeys.

The Valley itself is an amazing place. Quite surprisingly the best tombs are those which have been open since antiquity.

Day 8 and we are back in Cairo after a less than enjoyable overnight train journey. Not much happens.

All in all, Egypt is a place with an amazing ancient history. However, nothing seems to have happened since then. They seem to have taken almost every single advance made by the human race since 300AD or so and decided to shun them all (mobile phones and car horns excepted).

This is a country we have loved for its historical points of interest. I am pretty confident, however, that we will not return.

See day 9 and after for our Egyptian departure and a Jordan update...