It is freezing cold. I never thought it would be so cold in a desert but here in winter, it is cold. Jersey, scarf and beanie weather, thermal underwear. My fingers ache when I type and my body cringes when I wake up in the morning and stick my hands out from under the covers. I am not amused.

Hathor Temple

The flight from Nairobi was, apart from a guy at the back getting raucously drunk and throwing up in his seat, uneventful. It was a stop over in Khartoum, which almost broke my heart. The Cairo passengers were not allowed off the plane, in theory, but I sneaked onto the stairs and looked out into the darkness and smelt the sultry, hot air and fell in love with the place.

The streetlights hung yellow against the three ancient cities that make up modern-day Khartoum. Where the White Nile meets the Blue Nile there is a bridge connecting the three, and I have always wanted to stand on it and watch the colours of the two rivers meet. When I looked out the window later on I could see the Nile below, glowing in the moonlight, with nothing but the desert darkness surrounding it. One day I will return.

Arriving at Cairo airport we had the first of what I have officially named our Visa Escapades. On a South African passport, you are entitled to a 30 day visa issued at the Egyptian border or Cairo airport. There is a visa fee but this is wavered for South Africans. So we get to the immigration counter and the official demands to see our visas. There ensues a long and exhaustingly repetitious dialogue about why we do not have visas. Our side of the conversation mostly going “but we are South African, we do not need a visa”, and his side of the conversation going “where is your visa?” as he dramatically thumps his fist on our passports in intimidation. But he was such a pompous man that it was hard to take him seriously.

After half an hour of waiting on the sidelines, without our passports and watching everyone else (who obviously had visas) file passed us, the immigration officer beckons to us and stamps our passports – for a seven day visa. Seven days. I have never experienced a problem like it before.

We had organised a pick up from our hotel at the airport. Cairo’s taxis are rusted black and white jalopies which seldom start, grind changing gear, and have this strange rattle, like a loose bicycle chain, beneath the chassis. Never mind that the doors seldom open and the windows are adjusted by holding the glass and yanking up or down.

The brakes have to be pumped to stop. This would not be so bad in ordinary traffic but combine it with Cairo traffic (lanes, what lanes? but at least everyone goes in the same direction down the same street) and you have a situation where you shudder to a halt barely 2cm behind the car in front of you. Headlights are optional at night, hooters are used for everything, you see a space you move into it, pedestrians just walk, a street of three lanes can fit five rows of cars, and you have to dodge the donkey carts.

Alison was horrified. We got to the hotel and she was like “did you see the way that guy drove, I thought we were going to die”. But it is not that the people are bad drivers here (in my experience this is the one universal of mankind, regardless of our religion, race, gender, nationality, political affiliations, sexual orientation, language, education, any thing else you care to define yourself by, put us behind the wheel of a vehicle and we all think we can drive). To survive in this traffic, you drive exceptionally well. This is evidenced by the lack of accidents, even minor fender benders, and a lack of panel beaters.

We had a booking at the Berlin Hotel, which was the only Lonely Planet budget hotel that had space. It was typically Egyptian and gave me the grils (a shiver up your spine every time you think about it). The curtains were black with dirt, the wooden floor boards were rotting, the walls were cracked (one crack ran the length of the wall and was as wide as four fingers at its start). The ceiling was cracked as well. This, it being a several-storied building, particularly worried me, but there were stunning views of Downtown (the shopping district where all the cheap hotels are).

There are no single storied buildings here. Most buildings have a labyrinth of spiraling stairs leading to its many parts (which have been progressively added on over the years). The buildings are often so old that the stone stairs are visibly worn away by footsteps. When you walk the stone is uneven; it feels like waves beneath your feet.

Hanging Church, Coptic Cairo

Then there are the lifts, if they are working. Small shoe box-like machines rusted with age and use. The wrought iron door to the shaft opens whether the lift is there or not – as Alison almost learnt the hard way. The lift is only about a metre wide and its two doors have to be closed for it to move. Or you can just press the button by the door and ride with the lift open, as we have to do for the lift in the building where we are staying at the moment (otherwise it doesn’t work and I am not walking up seven flights of stairs). The button is barely a centimetre and a half from the wall as the lift moves up. A plaque on the wall states that the lift was manufactured in Manchester in 1874. 

The cats, of course, make themselves at home. We saw one pack of dogs, in Luxor, but otherwise cats rule the streets here. They are mostly well looked after, although today I saw a shop owner throwing water on a kitten and laughing. But I have seen others give the cats pieces of the takeaways they are eating, and men walking the pavement bending down to stroke a passing cat.

Downtown is where Cairoites like to shop. All shops in Egypt are open until midnight (the streets are dead at 10am). It is wonderful being able to walk around at night again. The bright lights of designer stores, movie houses, and restaurants. It is like the V&A Waterfront (in Cape Town) on acid, just add more coloured light, more people, and a lot more noise. The stores are mostly designer labels, with a disproportionate array of lingerie on display. I suppose you can wear anything under that chador.

It is like wealthy Cairo comes out at night. Couples hold hands and eat ice cream, families make a night of it, and packs of young men wearing jeans roam the streets around the movie house, or stand on street corners and smoke cigarettes.

These are things I did not see on my trip here ten years ago. The wealth is one thing. It is like Egypt developed a burgeoning middle class overnight. Couples hold hands, share ice creams and have coffee, very obviously dating. Ten years ago there was very little contact between the sexes, and you had 40 year old men acting like 14 year olds about sex because they did not have a clue about women.

Dress codes have also changed. Jeans are common. Young women wear them as well. The older women wear the loose robes and almost all women (aside from the Coptic Christians) wear headscarves. Some of the young women wear figure-hugging outfits and show their hair under their scarf.

Giza Pyramid

Alison wanted to see the shopping mall on Talaat Harb, one of the main streets (where we are staying), but I hated it. It was packed with labels, young trendy Cairoites and cigarette smoke. So we went back outside and dodged the street stalls (selling everything from fleeces to men’s underwear to tissues) and consoled ourselves with banana and litchi ice cream. Alison loves it.

No smoking laws have yet to reach Egypt. You can buy a train ticket at the train station from a guy happily puffing away (or rather, puffing in your direction) in his office. Or you can order a meal at a restaurant from a waiter contently sucking a cigarette from the corner of his mouth.

Alison commented that there were so few tourists walking around the city, we had seen some backpackers but we really felt we had the place to ourselves. Then we went to the Egyptian Museum and almost got mowed down by tour groups and their buses.

We went to the museum on our second day in Cairo. It is, I am relieved to report, no longer the haphazard collection of artifacts I remember; now it is organised into periods, such as “Middle Kingdom”, or “Hellenic period”. There are still no explanations, but the sections make the 6,000-odd pieces on display a little less daunting.

We headed straight up the stairs to King Tutankhamen’s treasures and the mummy room (it was one of Alison’s dreams to see a mummy; myself, I had seen the mummies before and I found the experience belittling and disrespectful, so I did not go inside again).

The display of artifacts was amazing. King Tut’s tomb was the only royal tomb found intact. A man named Howard Carter stumbled upon it in 1922. There were burial caskets, coffins, funeral masks, jewellery, documents, urns, as well as his iconic gold and blue burial mask. The mask is shown in all Egyptian tourism advertising. It is the image of the teenage pharaoh, as the masks showed the face of the person being buried.

The museum was interesting and I loved wandering around and marveling at ancient statues and the burial chambers of queens, but I have a feeling of disconnectedness from it all. It is hard to imagine something – anything, never mind that intricate piece of gold jewellery buried with a queen – from 2690BC. I just have no concept for it. It’s too far away from me; it is unimaginable.

Karnak Temple

The next day we went to Giza to see the pyramids, which was another of Alison’s dreams. The three pyramids are surrounded by Cairo’s suburbs, the sphinx looks out not over never ending yellow desert but over an horizon glazed with purple exhaust fumes and blocks of unpainted grey flats whose inhabitants pay a small fortune for the view. There are camel-ride touts and donkey-ride touts and postcard touts and busloads of tourists, I have never seen so many tourists in one place in my life. 

Do I sound cynical? I suppose not many people can say they have seen the pyramids of Giza twice, and I was awed, both times. But there were way too many tourists, some of the structures had been rebuilt and modified and this destroyed the feeling of them being so old, and the whole thing felt like a money-making racquet (although entrance was only R60). It spoils the majesty of it all.

But it is majestic. Three pyramids spaced apart in a desert, built 4,000 years ago with blocks of stone that stand as tall as I am, and these blocks piled as high as office blocks. Alison was so awed she looked like she was going to cry.

We had scored cheap transport through our hotel so we got to go to Memphis, Saqqar and Dahshur (for the other pyramids which Alison had not heard of and I had not seen, I think she has been so over-awed by pyramids).

We stopped at the Memphis Museum, which I didn’t see being too busy throwing up quietly in the parking lot (travel bugs). Memphis, 24km outside of Cairo, is the ancient capital of Egypt. Near it is Saqqar, the site of the first pyramid and thus of the oldest stone monument in the world. The Step Pyramid of Zoser rises out of the yellow desert sand in layers, like a cake. The bricks are smaller than the giant Giza pyramids, but it still strides up into the blue sky way above anything I can describe. There are no suburban views. The desert surrounding the pyramid is being excavated for surrounding temples and tombs.

Nearby is the Red Pyramid of Dahshur, which is still partly covered by sand. Dahshur is a 3,5km-long field of pyramids, pyramids older than the ones at Giza. Of the pyramids at Dahshur, one is bent outwards, so it ends up looking more like a circle than a pyramid, and another (the Bent Pyramid) has sides that cave inwards and it slopes hopelessly off-course.

With the sun going down the surrounding desert (no suburban views) becomes a rich orange, and the stones of the Red Pyramid become red. The tourist police officer, posted at the pyramid to ensure the safety of tourists and that they are not harassed too much by touts, was selling rides on his official, state-issued camel.

Alison attempted to go down into the pyramid (no way you will catch me in such a small space), but as the tunnel got smaller and the air thinner and turning space became more restricted she came back up. Her legs were sore for days afterward but I got a joyful little smile every time she complained and I was like "well you want to climb into pyramids" in sympathy.

The next day we went to Old Cairo, also known as Coptic Cairo. I was surprised (I am so naïve) by the number of tourists. We got there on the Metro (underground/subway) which is surprisingly efficient (the surrounding Gulf states call a siesta “Egyptian PT”, so you can just imagine how long it takes to do absolutely anything in this country). There are two carriages specifically reserved for women, which takes the stress off the travelling, but some men just climb in anyway, and then a few stations on a police officer chases them all out again.

The Coptic Church was founded by Mark, one of the 12 disciples of Jesus. They claim to be the successors of the pharaohs. This I find really interesting because statues of the ancient Egyptian priests, who practised magic, show them holding the Coptic Cross, the three tiers with an upside-down tear shape at the top in place of the fourth. It is said that the term “Copt” is derived from the Greek "aigyptos", which was derived from the ancient Egyptian of “ha-ka-ptah”, or “the house of the spirit of Ptah”. Ptah was a highly-placed deity in Egyptian mythology.

Perhaps this also increased my curiosity, because Old Cairo was also known as Babylon.

The Coptic Church has a patriarch, such as the Catholics have the pope, whose lineage can be traced back for 2,000 years, all the way to St Mark.

Their churches are beautiful. We saw the Hanging Church (which is suspended over alleyways leading into a labyrinth of nunneries, chapels, old prisons (the guardian’s English and my Arabic were not good enough for him to explain) and souvenir stores), the church of St Sergius (which marks the resting place of Jesus and his family when they fled King Herod), an ancient synagogue (no longer in use and impossible to get the feel of because it is packed – and I mean PACKED – with package tourists), and the old bazaar (still going for the tourists). Nearby is an old (well, a few hundred years is practically new in this place) Greek graveyard with stunning tombstones and old black and white pictures on the graves.

That night we took the train to Aswan. First class was fully booked so we settled for second class (happy with the price) and arrived at the Ramses Train Station fully prepared for the worst. The blue seats were grimy and the floor had not seen a mop (or a broom) for a while (if ever) but it was comfy enough, the air con worked and the massive windows gave a stunning view of the sunrise over the desert. This was until I had to go to the loo. The toilets on the train reminded me why I had rated Egyptian toilets the third worst in the world (after China and Tibet – and the only thing that saves Tibet from that top spot is the view). The squat toilet was tin and lined with grime. The floor had not seen a mop in ages. There was human excretement smeared into footprints and washed into patterns from the urine slowly making its way into the corners.

Aswan was brilliant. I absolutely loved it. I was so comfortable there, it felt just right. The Nile was blue and the islands were yellow and brown in the distance. The massive souks (shopping areas, for want of a more definitive way of describing it) stretched across streets and mosques (we stayed right next to a mosque and that muezzin was REALLY loud for pre-dawn prayers) and Coptic cathedrals. The pedestrian streets were lined with colourful flags or the sunlight would filter through thick plastic overhead.

Karnak Temple

The people, mostly Nubians (an African race with its own customs and language), were relaxed, there were still touts but people were more accepting of our “no we don’t want a felucca/taxi/cup of tea/cheap hotel/tour/fake papyrus/tourist t-shirt, etc”. Aswan was more African than Egyptian. I felt it was probably more like Sudan, or Zanzibar. The Nubians’ original community was flooded out by the building of the Aswan dam in the 1950s. They were relocated, but it makes me wonder if the dam would have been built in that particular spot, or if there would have been more deliberation on the matter, if an Arabic community had to be moved.

You could smell the spices and incense.

At Aswan we attempted to get our seven day Egyptian visas renewed. The escapades continued. We found the passport office at the police headquarters, where every other nationality can get their (30 day) visa renewed, dodged round the line of men saying their mid-day prayers, and found a woman who could (vaguely) speak English. She told us to go back to Cairo.

The first day of the year, after a muted New Years Eve in which we ate chocolate (a rare treat, when you can find it) and wandered the souks, we woke up at 3am, in the dark and cold, caught a tourist bus (the only way you could get there) and made our way to Abu Simbel, the most intact ancient Egyptian temple. It was so early we beat the muezzin.

We had to leave so early because there are travel restrictions in the western desert and all vehicles travelling the area must do so in convoy (although I really didn’t get the point because as soon as all the police check points were passed it was each driver for himself). So everyone meets at the first police check point, the drivers sit smoking cigarettes until 4.30am, tourists like me think wistfully of an hours extra sleep and a cup of coffee, and then the road opens and we have permission (Egypt is big on bureaucracy and permission, which probably needs to be filled in in triplicate) to drive the three hours to one of the most spectacular sights on Earth. The sunrise over the desert was amazing.

The Great Temple of Abu Simbel was hewn from a hillside (in the middle of the desert) to honour the gods Ra-Harakhty, Amun, Ptah and the deified pharaoh Ramses II. It was discovered protruding from the shifting desert sands in 1813. The four colossal statues of Ramses II are over 20m tall and flanked by smaller (human-sized) statues of his wife, Nefertari, and his mother. The statues face east, so the great pharaoh has watched the sun rise for 4,000 years (again, 4,000 years, how can you imagine something like that?).

The interior hieroglyphics are incredible. Eight massive statues, four on either side and double my height, stand in the centre room. Leading off are smaller rooms lined from floor to ceiling with writing.

Next door to the Great Temple and also hewn out of a hillside is the Temple of Hathor, guarded by six statues of Ramses II and Nefertari. Again, the hieroglyphics are amazingly intact (that is, no colonial archeologist or grave robber took a chisel to the stone to transport the hieroglyphics to his country).

Both temples were taken apart and winched to higher ground when the dam was built.

There were, again, masses of tourists. It was probably more noticeable (although I am doubtful) because we all had to travel there at once, had to spend the same amount of time there, and then all had to return at the same time. Oh, and the driver of our bus unashamedly went around to his passengers and, just in case we had not got the point, announced over the loud speaker, that it was more than ok if we tipped him. We, unashamedly, did not.

The requests for bakeesh in this country are endless. It is surprising though, given my previous trip (and Dibbo and Mare, whom I travelled to Egypt with ten years ago, will back me up here), that most men will just help us and then quietly continue to do whatever it was they were doing before they went out of their way to lift our packs onto the luggage racks on the train, for example, or carry our bicycles up a flight of stairs (we obviously looked like we were battling). It is just a few who make us wary of accepting any help whatsoever – because as soon as the task is done their hand comes out for money. The train assistants are particularly good at this.

The second day of the new year was another early start (I think we have had one lie in in a week – embassies keep excruciatingly early hours for Cairo’s late nights): Our train to Luxor (also second class) left at 6am. I didn’t bother to look in on the toilets this time, I could smell them from the platform.

I had been to Luxor before. I remembered dusty, unpaved streets, a rotting dog corpse in the alleyway of our hotel, much harassment, and Karnak Temple. We found tarred streets (mostly), busloads of package tourists, the same Nile cruise ships (definitely the way to do it I reckon) as in Aswan, and an incredible number of foreigners walking about brandishing expensive cameras and obviously independent of a tour guide.

Karnak Temple

Luxor is divided in two by the Nile. The East Bank is the main town, the train and bus station, the restaurants (including a MacDonalds only frequented by tourists), the Luxor Temple, and the nearby Karnak Temple. The West Bank is reached by public ferry (which just like all public transport, runs 24 hours, costs R1,20, but only leaves when it is full) or felucca, and is near the Valley of the Kings and Queens, where the Egyptian royals were buried thousands of years ago. 

We stayed at a place called El Gezira (which I write about because the rooms were R100 a night, included a massive breakfast, were spotlessly clean, had an amazing view of the Nile, occasional hot water, a balcony, rare double beds and, best of all, its restaurant served the most amazing food in Egypt) on the West Bank. It is quieter than staying on the East Bank, more like staying in a village.

When we stood on our balcony we overlooked the Nile, palm trees, paddy fields, and our neighbours’ backyard, replete with donkeys. Instead of traffic we heard donkeys, sheep and cows (I mistakenly told Alison there would be no cows here, well, not like Africa anyway, and there are cows here, although buffalos are more popular). We could watch the package tourists heading off to the Valley of the Kings, looking very uncomfortable on camels.

Here was a repeat of our earlier Visa Escapade. We walk 4km to the passport office only to have a woman who spoke slightly better English than the one in Aswan explain to us that our visa was really for three weeks – the immigration officer (pompous ass that he was) had given us one week but all tourists have 14 days to leave the country after their visas expire. So we had an extra two weeks “free from the government”. She assured us we would have no problems leaving the country with our expired visas if we left within 14 days. We will be testing this at the Egypt-Jordan border, and I sure hope she is right.

We hired bikes and braved Egyptian traffic, dodging the tourist buses, cars, horse carts and donkeys, and cycled out to Karnak. I noticed Alison had reservations and often stopped when I just went without a glance behind. The traffic is definitely not South African. Not even if you imagine a whole lot of (minibus) taxis vying for space and driving exactly according to stereotype (South African minibus taxi drivers have a REALLY bad driving rep). This was after Alison had to learn how to cross the road. Here is Egypt (as in Asia), you just walk. Either the cars will stop (doubtful but being a foreigner helps) or you will move. There no such thing as a break in the flow of traffic for you to cross the street. Pedestrians find their own way.

Dibbo and Mare will not believe the amount of tourists at Karnak. I actually took a photo (in the photo gallery of Egypt on this site) because I wanted to show people back home how packed the temple was with package tourists. Thankfully Karnak was scheduled for the morning for most tour groups, and they only ever have time to see the start of things before hussling off to the next stop, so independent travellers had the place to themselves soon after we arrived.

Karnak is just amazing. Second time around and the awe has not been diminished. The temple is a conglomeration of sanctuaries, pylons and obelisks. It was begun in the Middle Kingdom, and added to for the next 1,500 years. An Avenue of Sphinxes lined the road between the Luxor Temple and Karnak. There were 730 of them, but only 58 remain.

The Great Hippostyle Hall, constructed around 134 lotus-blossom pillars (see the pics in the photo gallery to get an idea of just how massive it is), is awe-inspiring. The pillars are four times my height, and if I stretch out my arms I do not even get them around half of a pillar. The pillars were covered in hieroglyphics (of which much remains). If you look up, you can see the hieroglyphics on the stone beams connecting the pillars.

Further into the building and a row of statues of priests, each holding the Coptic Cross across their chest, guards a sanctuary. Further in and some of the hieroglyphics on a ceiling still retain their red and blue colour. The sacred lake is filled with water and a statue of the sacred scarab overlooks it. It is impossible to tell you how big everything is.

I think I like Karnak so much because it is the only place of ancient Egypt that I can imagine complete, as it was 4,000 years ago with priests and servants and magic. I can walk around it and understand that there would be a roof above me where there is now sky, or a door or cloth where now there is just a hole, mats where there is now a sand floor.

Alison was sick in bed for two days (she has been sick since Nairobi and as I write this she is lying in bed sleeping off the remnants of flu), so we did not get to see the Valley of the Kings and Queens (I have horrid memories of being an overweight smoker cycling up desert dunes in summer to get there, on a total lack of sleep, so perhaps it is just as well). Instead I sat on the roof of the hotel (I love flat roofs), overlooking the Nile and drinking copious amounts of coffee. I also got to update the website a bit from when it crashed (like I have said before, I am too busy sightseeing to worry about it most days/weeks/months), which got some stuff off my (over-crammed) mind.

Alison still sick we caught the train to Cairo. I had dreamt of first class: Spacious seats, perhaps even clean spacious seats, a swept floor. It might have even been possible to get clean toilets. Or at least toilets that did not stink out the whole carriage if the door was left open. But it was not to be. We got seats in a second class carriage that smelt of vomit and urine and had a resident mouse. But at least it was only ten hours.

It was a day train and looking out the window I saw the Nile, paddy fields green with rice, fields of sugar cane and cabbages, square brick houses (almost all three-stories), boys on donkeys, men on motorbikes, blue skies and endless sunshine. Men in white turbans and long grey robes sat on the platforms we passed, or strode amid groups of women who wore loose black habibs and carried overstuffed sacks of vegetables on their heads. As we headed north the attire become more Westernised. Young men wearing in jeans waited on platforms with suitcases (most people travel the trains carrying at least ten large cardboard boxes, which they enlist the help of the nearest passengers to offload), and young women wore makeup and skirts.

Karnak Temple

Now we are back in Cairo for the (end of the) Visa Escapades. We wanted a visa for Jordan because we needed a visa for Syria (and, even though we could get the Jordanian visa at the border we wanted to be very sure not to repeat the Cairo airport and seven day visa saga). So we head out to the Jordanian embassy only to be told we need a letter of recommendation from our embassy here in Cairo (although to be fair that, and one photo, is the only thing we need for our visa).

Which meant we had to go all the way to the other side of Cairo (and Cairo has been around for what, 2,000 years?, so it is pretty sprawled out) to the South African embassy. But the embassy was closed because it was some Christian holiday that half of the city was adhering to and the other half wasn’t. We went back and got the letter today. A no hassle affair we did not even have to pay for. Although the embassy cannot give me extra pages in my passport (but it is a problem I will worry about later).

It is the only time I have ever needed to contact a South African embassy while travelling, and I was surprised at how helpful it was. Oh, and something that appealed to my sense of reality. Very South African. The embassy is on the sixth floor of a larney building on an avenue lined with trees in one of the upper class areas of Cairo. Trees, merely for the purpose of decoration, are unusual here. So is any sort of pot plant or flower or any sort of decoration like that. But you look up at the building that houses the South African embassy and the balconies of the sixth floor are lined with pot plants. All the other balconies are bare.

The Syrian embassy, for which all this fuss is about, takes one look at our passports today and tells us it can only issue visas for Egyptian residents, we must go to Pretoria to get a visa. We have heard a rumour of the possibility of obtaining Syrian visas at the Jordanian/Syrian border, and another that says we cannot get Syrian visas in Jordan at all. I hate winging these things. We do not even have a guidebook (which is probably good since we do not have visas yet).

So wish us luck. We head to Dahab and then Nuweiba in a few days to catch the ferry into Aqaba. It is the route myself, Dibbo and Mare went ten years ago - it turned out to be the only practical one. Alison wants to go to Greece, so we have to get to Europe. The only other way would have been through Libya, and an invitation from a tour operator is needed for a visa. At the time, it seemed like too much hassle.

Other than that I dream of finding a shower with running hot water (I have had two hot showers in Egypt so far; I had one in Tanzania, one in Nairobi, and before that the last I can remember is taking the hot water in Namibia and South Africa for granted). So in a way I am looking forward to Europe. The small luxuries of hot showers, toilet paper, and drinking water that comes out of a tap. Some form of heating would be accepted gratefully.

I also dream of a washing machine. And sinks that have plugs.

"Much harm can come from writing, perhaps even more than comes from speaking." Louis de Bernieres "Birds without Wings"