Egypt part 1

 

The role of 11+ 

This was 11+ year for my youngest. She is at a good school and can stay there till A-levels. But she decided, with some encouragement from me, to appear for a grammar school. (Grammar school entrance exams are very competitive, even more so in London. The speed and accuracy required in these exams are of an extremely high standard. But more about the 11+ in a different blog post.) 

Planning for the trip 

We booked our tickets about 10 months ago. It gave us something to look forward to for the time we were studying. During the year, we also were able to convince my daughter's best friend and her family to also visit Egypt during the same time. While both families did not fly in and out of Egypt together or on the same dates, we were together for 8 out of the 10 days we were in Egypt. 

The wife and I hold a different approach to travel planning. She likes to research and plan out things, while I like to visit the highlights, and then walk the streets. As it happens, we end up following the wife's plans in every trip. 

A number of my friends have been to Egypt, so we had a good list of recommendations. 

We decided to:  

1) Not go on a cruise to save time in going from A to B

2) Visit Abu Simbel by flying to Aswan 

3) Pyramids and GEM

4) Go to the White desert* 

* decided by the wife 

Itinerary

Day	Night	Activity
Wed	Cairo	Reach Cairo
Thu	White desert	Desert safari
Fri	Cairo	Back to Cairo
Sat	Cairo	Pryamids of Giza (32 mins by Car), Khan Market (45 Mins)
Sun	Cairo	Gems Meusuem (13 Mins) + Cairo Tower + Feluca ride with dinner
Mon	Luxor	East Luxor - Luxor Temple , Karnak temple
Tue	Luxor	West Luxor - Valley of Kings and Balloon Ride in evening . Hatshetput, colosimemon
Wed	Hurgada	Morning Hot Air Ballon in Luxor + Head to Hurghada
Thu	Hurgada	Chill
Friday	Hurgada	Deep Chill
Sat	Cairo	Fly to Cairo / 5.30 pm Flight to London

Flying to Egypt 

We landed on a Wednesday at 9pm, flying Egypt Air. The airline had some frightening reviews online. I was not overly worried - I am from India, it is a 5 hour direct flight - how bad could it be. 

I was pleasantly surprised - the flight was on time, the check-in was smooth, the crew were friendly and took care of us. The only dampener - no vegetarian options. EgyptAir will only carry vegetarian food if you ask for it, else its 'chicken or beef' with a huge smile. 

      Athens at night

The immigration lines were short, and the officer was quick - they did stamp a 'register within 7 days' stamp on our passport, but we did not notice it then. 

We reached the hotel (Novotel Al Borg) in an Uber. (Uber works well in Cairo to a large extent)

Overnight to the White Desert

Most of the desert tours pick up tourists from central hotels in downtown Cairo or from Giza necropolis. We were picked up from our hotel (as our hotel was close to Tahrir Square in central Cairo) in a 10 seater van. This van picked up people from a few other places then left Cairo. 

We headed to the Bahariya Oasis, which is about 400km from Cairo in the desert. The desert starts almost immediately after leaving Cairo. Egypt is essentially all desert except for the Nile. So, if you head away from the Nile in any direction, you reach the desert.  

I was not in a good mood when the journey began. It could be because of the early morning wake up, the not very comfortable seats in the van, the prospect of 4+ hours in it, etc, and I might have moaned a bit to the wife. 

But things picked up. 

The road was fantastic. 2 lanes each way separated by an extra wide central verge. Smooth surface, flat and straight. The van was soon doing 130-140 kmph. 

The kids were behaving much better than me. They were sleepy, but were not complaining and were busy reading and listening to music. 

 

At Bahariya, we had lunch and shifted into a 4x4 drive with Ala. Ala was going to be our guide, driver, cook and valet for the next 20 hours. 

(Ala and me)

We went for another 200km - similar roads continued into the desert towards the oasis at Farfara. Our destination was the White Desert National park, which gets its name from the white chalk rock formations, formed due to the erosion of by wind and sand. 

It reminded me of a sea bed - sand and On the way, we did off-road driving (120+kmph), some sand boarding (approx 15kmph), visited the black desert and a crystal mountain. We also found many fossilised marine creatures encrusted within the  limestone at a few places.  

Just before sunset, we arrived at our tent. Ala got busy - he made a small wind break next to the car, and then began preparing food for us. We huddled next to a small fire and watched the sun set. 

Soon after sunset, the stars came out. I had been looking forward to this. Long ago, the night time view was like this every night. The sky would be littered with stars. The view was well worth the effort. We spent the night in the tents.

In the morning, we work up to watch the sunrise and had breakfast at the same time. We wrapped up and left the tent at 7.30am. On the way back, we stopped at a hot water spring. After that, we bade farewell to Ala, and sat in the van to head back to Cairo.

The Pyramids 

There are many pyramids around Cairo. The largest one is the Great Pyramid at Giza, which has three pyramids and the Sphinx.  You can buy an entry ticket and walk around the entire area. However, you will be approached by many people offering to show you around - by a car, or a tanga (horse-cart), or horses. 

We took a Tanga-wallah masquerading as a guide for $70. We were happy to have bargained it down from $180. However, the joke was on us. The tanga-wallah knew less about the pyramids than we did. 

For the money, we got photos like the ones below. 

We were a group of 4 adults, out of which the men were not very enthusiastic about a claustrophobic walk inside a 5500 year old tomb.  So, we decided not to go inside the pyramid. 

GEM 

The next day, we went to the Grand Egyptian Museum. It is a modern museum with impressive architecture and has an impressive collection of Egyptian artefacts. 

I will not recommend the guide tour offered by the GEM - it is usually very large (our tour had 50 people), so it is hard to talk to the guide or even see what the guide is talking about. By the time you reach the artefact that the guide has been talking about, the guide has moved on to the next thing. 

Another tip, the tour tickets include entry tickets, so do not buy the entry ticket if you have bought the tour tickets. We bought tour tickets, and then entry tickets as the language is not very clear on the GEM website. They were sympathetic but they have no way of refunding a ticket, so we ended up with double entry tickets for 8 people :( 

If you have already bought entry tickets, you can get your tickets upgraded for the tour at the museum (but not online). 

You can uber to GEM and uber back. In case your uber driver asks for payment by cash (we were asked for $20 for a ride which cost $3), just cancel and rebook and you will eventually find a driver who won't. See a similar conversation with another uber driver. 

Khan-el- Khalili Market 

Close to central Cairo is this market which reminded me of Delhi's Sarojini Nagar and Karol Bagh market. We went there at 9pm and it was not very busy then. There are shops for clothes, souvenirs, stone, glass, jewellery, cutlery  - and there is a lot of bargaining. 

The Egyptian salesmen

I was mildly irritated by the repeated sales pitches but this irritation changed to admiration gradually. Every person who approached me did so with a smile. They wanted to talk to me and get me to walk into their store. If I refused, they would persist as long as I was smiling. If I lost my smile, they would immediately withdraw. 

They would usually start to talk by identifying me as an Indian, saying Namaste, and then start talking about Bollywood. They would make jokes about how they dislike the actors in Bollywood as their wives like them, and how they are happy that the Bollywood stars are far away from them. 

They would always smile while negotiating on price. 

We adopted a 80% discount to the starting price. It was an extreme step, but once more, the joke was on us. Soon, we were suprised to note that the shopkeepers were happy to part with their wares at this discount. 

Egypt is not the richest of places. Their currency has been hammered in the last few years and months and is now at about 50EGP to 1 USD (down from 20EGP to the USD from a few months ago). So, I would imagine how a lot of things are more expensive now. Tourism has also been hit - earlier by Covid, and then by the war in Palestine. So, it must not be easy to earn your living in Egypt for many who depend on tourism. So, beneath the smiles, there was the serious business of earning a living. But the mask did not slip. 

For this, I admired them.

In the second part to this blog, I will cover the remaining part of the trip - Abu Simbel, Luxor and Hurghada.