Off the Couch and On the Road

It seemed I had only just shut my eyes when the 3.30am wake up call stirred me to stumble out of bed, grab my daypack and meet the rest of the group down in reception for the 4-hour bus journey to Abu Simbel. We curled up and slept most of the way, occassionally peeking out the curtains for glimpses of the seemingly neverending desert, and mirages of water in the distance.

Abi Simbel was another of the temples that would have been destroyed by the rising waters of the Nile, instead taken apart and moved 200m inland and about 70m higher to protect the site. The stone statues loomed above like giants as we entered the two temples, and the reliefs and colourings still preserved was truly amazing. You could stand in one of the stifling hot rooms, staring at the stone carvings for hours.

Once we had just woken up, about 9.30am, we got back in the bus for the journey to Aswan and ate lunch poolside at a nearby hotel before a quick boat ride across the Nile for an afternoon camel ride.

The camels were slightly rogue, some more lazy than others, and we constantly had to click our tongues with an occassional ‘Yalla!’ to get them going in the right direction. It was great though, the Nile to our left and the desert to our right, and an hour or two later we arrived further downstream where our boat was waiting for us.

Parts of Aswan were once inhabited by the Nubian people – darker and more tribal African in nature – before the Egyptians forced them to other parts of Egypt and Sudan. We sailed down the river, lying on the roof staring at the night sky, and arrived at one of these Nubian villages located on the island of Sohail where we visited a friend of our tour leaders, Omar, and his family.

We walked through the village in the moonlight to get to his stone house set in the hills overlooking the rest of the village and the river, and sat on cushions with nothing but the stars above us, eating traditional Nubian food of pita bread, soup, chicken, potato stew and rice.

The houses had no roofs at all, in fact it only rains in Egypt about once every 10 years, so it was peaceful and cool sitting there while the family served us food (they do not eat with their guests, instead serving them the best food and joining them after dinner) with the sweet smells of the Apple shisha pipe wafting in the air.

Once we were full and sleepy, we head back to the hotel for a quick change before walking down the main street to see the markets. It was Ramadan in Egypt, the Holy month, where after fasting all day the Egyptians come alive at night, eating and smoking, celebrating with friends and family – like Christmas for a month. The streets were festively decorated with flags and lights, and we were kept entertained by the the shopowners haggling for our business:

‘Hey! Everything here is for 1 pound, everything!’
‘Everything is free madam, you do not want something for free?’
‘No hassle lady, hassle free shop ok? You come and have a look, no hassle!’
‘Where have you been? You are 5 minutes late, I have been waiting for you!’
‘You English? Australian? Ah, Australian! I love Australian, very cool!’

And so on. We bought a few things, and collapsed into our beds hours later – Abu Simbel a distant memory already.

-Sarah

After a shower to recover from the neverending train journey, we head out to the Old Cataract Hotel where many of the rich and famous have stayed, including Agatha Christie, who allegedly wrote ‘Death on the Nile’ during her stay. We had high tea and beer (contradiction of terms?) and watched the sun set over the Nile which was beautiful – the rich green of the palms and blankside flora in such dramatic contrast to the desert sand directly behind and the clear flowing Nile in front.

Everyone had decided to dress up in the traditional men’s Jalabea’s (ph. sp.) for the evening which looked great, to the general amusement of the locals – and by the time the sun had set we were in the right frame of mind to catch a boat over to see the sound and light show at the temple of Philae.

The temple (332-30BC) was dedicated to the goddess Isis but would have been flooded following the construction of the Aswan high dam, so UNESCO took the entire temple apart piece by piece and relocated it (including the temples of Isis and Hathor and the kiosk dedicated tothe Roman Emporer Trajan) to the neighbouring Aqilika Island, which was a pretty amaing feat in itself.

The sound and light show was completely cheesy, the ‘voice’ of the Nile speaking to Isis to outline the history of the temple, with coloured lights illuminating various parts of the temple as you walked through – but it was fun enough and good to see what might have been ‘just another temple’ in such a different way.

It was an early start the next morning, so after the boat ride back it was an early night in our hotel.

-Sarah

I met my group on Saturday night before we head off on a day tour of Cairo the following day. The group was tiny – 5 plus myself (all Australian bar one Swiss) and our British tour leader Cheryl, which was an ideal number – and we set off the next morning to Giza and the Pyramids.

They were amazing, smaller than I would have expected, but still in such good condition after 4600 years. The Great Pyramid of Khufu is the largest of the Pyramids of anicent Egypt, and with 2.5 million stones, set only 3mins off true north and only 0.06 per cent of a perfect square is to date the biggest, most perfectly constructed and greatest building ever built by mankind.

We couldn’t actually go into the Great Pyramid, they only let a few visitors in each day, but we also saw the other two pyramids at the site, Khafre and the smallest, Menkaure, and while most of the group went into the pyramid of Khafre I walked around, marvelled at the anicent wonders and tried not to get sold into anything dubious by 10-year-old boys (‘you just look, I give you this gift for free, you give me gift in return no problem, where you from?’)

From there we drove down the road, the city skyline in the background, to see the Sphinx – again smaller than I would have expected (‘they take the postcard shots up close,’ our guide joked) but no less tunning at 240 feet long and 66 feet high.

A quick visit to a store to see how they made papyrus paper, then a quick felafel for lunch, and we arrived at the Egyptian museum. I know I had already been once, but it made much more sense with guided explanations, and it happened to be less crowded too so I ended up seeing more anyway. Apparently the dissarray of the artifacts is partly due to the new museum being built out near the pyramids at Giza, which should be finished in another few years (if ever, we are talking Egyptian time here).

Once we were thoroughly exhausted from our day tour of Cairo, we took some time to stock up on snacks at the supermarket, before dinner at an Egyptian restaurant and a quick bus ride to the train station where we caught an overnight train to Aswan.

The seats were comfortable enough – similar to first class aeroplane seats – but I am not one for sleeping in moving vehicles, so it was a long night. Also, being Egypt, the ’12-hour’ journey took 17 hours, so we didn’t end up arriving in Aswan until 3pm the following afternoon. I was so tired I don’t even actually remember getting off the train or checking into the hotel. It was a long night, but at least we arrived. Eventually.

-Sarah

I did nothing but read and sit in the hotel the rest of the week.

It was a long week.

-Sarah

My saviour came in the form of a man called Ahmed. I walked up to the Sheraton Hotel for a real coffee that morning, deciding to get a taxi from that hotel where they understood english words like ‘museum’ and ‘palace’. And there I found Ahmed. Not only did he have brilliant english (which is a very poor base by which to judge anyone, but man it helps), he did not try to seduce, marry or over-compliment me, and therefore became my guide for a day. Ah, why not.

Ahmed and I first travelled south of Cairo to the Coptic district or ‘Old Cairo’ (Misr Al-Qadimah) where he waited while I wandered around what was Babylon, constructed by Trajan at the beginning of the 2nd Century BC and conquered by Arabs upon their arrival in 640 AD. Within the Roman fortress I visited the Hanging Church (Al-Muallaqa) constructed in the 7th Century as well as the Greek Orthodox Church of Mari Girgis (Saint George) and the church of St Sergius (Abu Serga) which was built in the 3rd or 4th Century at the site where they Holy family rested on their travels through Egypt.

The coptic museum was also within the walls of old Cairo, and I was surprised to see the modern layout and glass protection of each item, each labelled in Eglish, Fench and Arabic. Did the Catholic church’s money have anything to do with it, in comparison to the Egyptian museum, I wondered? Likely so. In any case, it was enjoyable few hours and I met Ahmed back at the car with a ‘where to next?’

We drive in crazy traffic for about 15 mins before arriving at the Citdel, the largest in the world, containing mosques and museums within the stone walls. The Alabaster Mosque (or Mohammed Ali Mosque) was the most magnificent of these – built in 1824 in a style similar to mosques in Istanbul with beautifully decorated ceilings 83m tall – I walked around marvelling at the architechture before crossing the road to admire the two mosques on the square of Saladin, Mosque-Madreassa of Sultan Hassan and Al-Fifai Mosque before driving past Mohammed Ali’s Palace and the Cairo cemetary (City of the Dead) with a quick visit to the marketplace of Khan Al Khalili.

It was well worth the taxi fare and tip I paid Ahmed at the end of the day, and I felt that even if I did nothing but read and sit in the hotel for the rest of the week, at least I can say I had well and truly seen Cairo.

-Sarah