Our new friend Henrik is not only a ridiculously generous host or a hard-smoking, movie-loving, Egypt-studying Lutheran priest, he's also an accomplished travel planner, as we had opportunity to learn on the 6 day trip to northern and western Egypt that he set up for us and three of his friends visiting from Denmark, Canchanah, Mia, and another Henrik. We set out early in the morning a week ago, packed happily into a rented van. Although it took more than an hour to push our way out of Cairo, and our driver kept looking frighteningly like he was going to fall asleep as he drove, we made it to Alexandria and started our fun journey for real.
Alexandria was one of the central cities of the ancient world, but the physical evidence that remains of that is pretty limited-- a pillar here, a cool tomb there. The famous lighthouse, one of the 7 wonders of the world, and the ancient library, no longer exist. But in the last ten years the government has directed an international effort to build a new Bibliotheca Alexandrina, which we toured. Every aspect of the contemporary architecture of the building holds symbolic importance: the letters from all different languages carved into cement to represent the international character of knowledge, the pyramid-shaped wall to represent the contributions of Egyptian civilization, the slab resembling a rising sun to represent the centrality of Alexandria in the world of the mind, etc. The interior, also impressive aesthetically, attempted to be ecologically harmonious as well, with hundreds of eyelid-shaped glass planes in the ceiling allowing the grand main reading room to be lit primarily by sunlight. There was an expansive, well-organized (at last!) exhibit of photos, paintings, and maps of the city from different time periods in the basement, and a large screen linked to one of the 300 computers available for use exhibited the interactive digitized version of a French collection of histories and drawings of Egypt compiled during the Napoleonic Era. That night we went to a restaurant overlooking the Mediterranean, where we chose fresh sea bass from the selection of fishes lying on ice, and they grilled it for us with tomatoes and onions. (The only thing missing, which we did really really miss, was a good white wine to accompany it-- even fancy restaurants like that are alcohol-free). We discovered that all of us enjoy savoring yummy food and interesting conversation, commonalities that served us well throughout our trip.
The next day we drove along the northern coast toward Marsah Matruh. The water, when we could see it, was brilliant, glimmering in various shades of turquoise. But the view was consistently marred by the cement corpses of half-built resorts and condominium complexes, and their equally-ugly completed counterparts. We were able to make our way through an abandoned-feeling area to enjoy a bit of beach, though. We also stopped at the war cemetary of El Alamein, the site of a WWII battle between British and German and Italian troops that was considered a turning-point victory for the Allies. Arriving in Marsah Matruh we found the tourist parts of town bleak and abandoned, but that served us well, because when we went wandering around the market after dinner, we had the enjoyable experience of having hardly anyone pay attention to us (except for the man who waved and shouted, "Hello, America!" as we walked by). It was all lovely, but we were still hankering for beer. Henrik asked a young man on the street if there was a place we could buy some, and he pointed to a side street, which we went to, and still saw no liquor store. Henrik asked someone else, and he found another man, who found another man, who surreptitiously opened up a metal grate covering a small, set-back doorway, and led Henrik and Erik in while the women (trying not to be more offensive to Egyptian expectations than we inherently are) waited outside. We got a little worried when they'd been in there for 10 minutes, but eventually they emerged victorious, holding cans of beer wrapped first in one opaque bag, and then in another. We figured that probably everyone in town knew what the teal colored bag meant (and a woman had walked in while the guys were in there to chastize the seller for doing business during Ramadan), but we got back to the hotel fine and sat around enjoying the beer.
The following morning we set out for the place that was the main point of the trip—the Siwa oasis, the only town in western Egypt, set in the desert in the northwest, close to the border with Libya. It was a cool thing, after driving for 5 hours in a barren desert landscape, all of a sudden to see thousands of palm trees, weighed down by luscious bunches of dates. In Siwa, as elsewhere, the hotels we were staying in were none too nice, but a friend had recommended that we go check out a certain restaurant at the good hotel. This we did upon arrival—and went back twice more within 24 hours. The restaurant was set up on a roof, in the midst of a grove of date palms. The look of the small hotel, unlike any others we have seen in Egypt, was harmonious and temperate, with a sense of flow and intimacy. The main dishes varied between decent and good, but what kept drawing us back, in addition to the atmosphere, was the appetizers and desserts. The baba ghanouj, olive tapenade (made from local Siwa olives), tahini, hummus, and salads were fresh and bursting with interesting flavors. Then there were date milkshakes, date crepes, and an ethereal apricot pudding, cold and smooth and perfect. We had a funny moment the second time we went to the restaurant, for tea and dessert that night. The waiter asked where we were from, and the Danes, wary of being received poorly due to the recent reignition of the cartoon debacle, said, as they had before, “Belgium”—a country they had chosen for its smallness and the unlikelihood of people knowing much about it. But the waiter responded with enthusiasm: “Oh, Belgium! The queen of Belgium was here six months ago” (the Danes look at each other, wondering if any of them know the name of the queen…). “Do you speak French of Flemmish?” Mia: “Flemmish” (a lie). Waiter: “A waiter here lived in Belgium for 8 years! He is your friend. Maybe he is downstairs….” Mia, smiling through her teeth: “Oh, uh huh, great….” After that the Danes decided to suck it up and try being Danes—too nerve wracking the other way.
The central activity we were going for in Siwa was two days and two nights out in the desert, exploring the sand dunes (which stretch all the way to the Atlantic Coast of Morocco) by 4WD by day and sleeping peacefully under the stars at night. The first afternoon with the jeep, the plan seemed to be on track. We stopped to swim at cold and hot springs (they are scattered all over the oasis), raced roller-coaster style down steep inclines, occasionally pushed the car when it was stuck in particularly deep sand, and generally spent hours admiring the incomparable look of desert stretching into desert stretching into desert. But then, when the sun set, our driver pulled the jeep into a camp where several other jeeps were parked. It was exactly what we weren’t looking for: the lights of the city were fully visible; there was a tent and a dirty outhouse (which we got unwillingly directed to when we tried to wander off to pee in the sand); there were a number of other tourists there, with more arriving regularly, with the accompanying noises of jeeps and talking; the food was cooked not over the fire but in a kitchen; and, to top it all off, because of a small spring, the place was swarming with flies and mosquitoes. We tried to make the best of it, asking for our own fire, away from the other tourists, and eating around that, now and again feeling like naughty teenagers as we snuck sips of the beer Henrik still had in his bag from Marsah Matruh. But as the evening went on, pretending that we were somewhere else became a bit more challenging, because, much to our chagrin, the Disney-esque “Bedouin Party” we’d seen advertized on some tour company posters began. For two hours, around the main fire, Bedouin guides banged drums, played accordion-like instruments, clapped, and sang, as they led tourist women in shaking their hips. Three times, the owner of the company and of our jeep came over, scolding us to come join the party, trying to pull Mia away to dance, and completely, absolutely refusing to accept that actually we just wanted to sit and talk, and that this party fit nowhere into our picture of a night in the desert. He finally walked away disgusted, but by that point the feeling was pretty mutual.
There were some more misadventures the next morning, as our jeep headed into town, not back into the dunes as we had thought. After some long arguing about whether we had to pay more (no) and what the rest of the trip would be, though, things got worked out, and we got what we were looking for. We visited some cool tombs, including one with perfectly preserved 3000 year old mummies lying in greeting in the walls, went to some more springs, and then happily went back into the desert. We spent some time walking around an area where the normally-distant fact that the desert was once under the sea was wonderfully evident, as the ground was full of calcified shells and fossils of small sea stars. Then we ran into some dunes that tried to suck the jeep up, getting stuck over and over again (that was fun, though) and eventually having to find an alternate route. We stopped back at the camp for dinner, but then enjoyed the feeling of leaving the other people and Bedouin party behind and heading out to our own spot, behind a dune, where the city lights could not be seen. Our driver built a fire and sat and talked with us for awhile. He is 25, and has been working since he was 11, when he stopped going to school. He likes Siwa (“none of the women smoke here,” he said with some admonishment as Mia and Canchanah lit a cigarette), and he doesn’t want to leave Egypt, but he wants a European wife (Mia or her sisters seemed to be on his list). It was nice to talk to him, but also nice when he left, and we were alone, without a jeep, without noise, to have our night in the desert. Canchanah (who doesn’t drink) made the rest of us even happier when she remembered that Henrik had brought a bottle of cognac with him to Egypt. He retrieved it from the bag, we toasted each other and the desert, and enjoyed our starry, silent night.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Soft Beach, Hard Desert
After descending Mt. Sinai, we headed to an ecologically-minded place on the beach in Nuweiba which turned out to be much more expensive than we thought (and which we later learned doesn't allow Israelis to stay there, making us glad that we didn't either). The place we ended up was a "camp" called Soft Beach. Our accomodation was a reed hut with palm fronds for a roof and mats (with a few bed bugs) for a bed; although not the lap of luxury it worked out just fine. We spent days there enjoying the sandy beach, shaded areas with cushions, and good food from the restaurant (among the pictures is the "Egyptian breakfast" with falafel, fried eggplant, cucumbers, tomatoes, soft cheese, flat bread and tea) which at dinner time we have to guard against the especially daring cats. For some dinners, we've received along with our order a fly swatter to keep at bay a lovable but bold and persistent black and white cat named Goldie (whom Rachel named Prince Charles, for being an adorable royal pain in the ass).
To break up our lazy days at the beach, we went for a two and a half day camel trip into the desert, loading all of our food, water, bedding and other supplies onto two camels. Our camels were around 10 and 15 years old (they can live to be 45 years old). They're pretty amazing creatures--they can go for 3 weeks in the desert without water, and drink 60 liters of water at a time. Their feet are flat and broad, perfectly suited to walking on sand without sinking in; the hairs around their nose, eyes, and lips looked equal to whales' baleen as powerful filters; and their gums are tough enough to withstand eating desert branches lined with thick inch-long spikes. They can also carry huge amounts of weight, including, of course, us. Along with the camels we had two Bedouin guides, Muhti (who spoke English) and Selim. We talked with Muhti about how the Bedouins are treated by the Egyptian government. Muhti, who is 26, has been married twice, to an American and an Australian woman, with a big part of the incentive for being that marriage to a foreigner made him exempt from the army. He said that until around 10 years ago, Bedouins were not allowed to serve in the army because they were considered to all be potential traitors. After Muslim fundamentalist bombings in the Sinai in recent years, the Egyptian government imprisoned and even killed random Bedouins in an attempt to intimidate them. Muhti told us that Bedouins preferred the Sinai under the control of the Israelis, who pretty much left them alone.
On our first day, as we had crossed over the highway and were just making our way past the huge power lines into the desert, we stopped while Muhti walked over to retrieve something from behind a rock, coming back with several large, dried stalks with green buds on them. Rachel asked "Are those for hitting the camels?" and Muhti answered that no, they were for smoking, which he did in copious amounts the remainder of the trip.
We rode on the camels some of the time, but often walked. The first day, one of the camels decided to take off on a run, so Selim had to mount the other camel, chase down the fugitive camel and bring it back, all of which took about 45 minutes. While we waited, Muhti made us some of our first "roasted marshmallow tea," black tea with a smoky flavor from being made directly in the fire and with a ton of sugar. We had worried about how hot the time in desert would be, but our pace was relaxed: we rested in the shade for about 3 hours each day at lunch time. At our camp the first night, Selim made the first yeastless bread, cooked directly in the ashes on top of hot sand, then beaten with a stick to get the sand out, while Muhti cooked a stew over the camp fire. After dinner we gazed at the incredible stars, and later during the night the moon rose and the whole sky was bright.
Day 2 began with us waking up around dawn; after breakfast we set off for the Colored Canyon on foot--there was one point the camels couldn't climb. The Canyon, with its stripes of color and patterned swirls, was interesting despite being marred by Russian graffiti. Later that day we passed a camel that had died two months ago; its bones were mostly picked clean and bleached white, except for some dried skin. We camped that night inside a short rock wall enclosure (which it took Muhti and several Swiss tourists two weeks to build) at a small oasis. After a short time of walking on Day 3, Muhti hid his weed behind some rocks, and we left the desert and rode the camels along the beach back to our camp.
The desert was very empty, and very quiet. But it wasn't completely empty of people: not counting the tourists in the Colored Canyon, we saw two pair of mother and daughter with a donkey and their sheep, and one friend of our guides', riding past on his camel with a boom box playing. It also wasn't homogonous in landscape. The sand could be soft and deep or hard packed like pavement; dust-fine, pebbly, or a field of rocks; wide-valleyed or mountainous, clay or granite. And despite being mostly rock and sand, it certainly wasn't empty of plant life. The most prominent vegetation was the only tree, the see-al (sp?), which can stay green for 20 years without water. Its large, spiky thorns were no deterrent to the camels, who loved to eat it (after the guides had gathered firewood, they had to keep it out of reach or the camels would eat it). And there were multiple varieties of small plants. Muhti told us about the Bedouin medicinal uses of these plants, and we tried some of a plant to calm the stomach. We also tried a "desert fruit," which looked a little like a fig but with a red skin with yellow pulp and black seeds inside. It tasted curiously of wasabi.
We knew we were starting to get old when the mattress in our hut left us with aches and pains after returning from the desert. Nonetheless, we relished our remaining couple days in the hammocks on the beach, before saying goodbye to Prince Charles, Muhti, and the rest and heading back to Cairo.
To break up our lazy days at the beach, we went for a two and a half day camel trip into the desert, loading all of our food, water, bedding and other supplies onto two camels. Our camels were around 10 and 15 years old (they can live to be 45 years old). They're pretty amazing creatures--they can go for 3 weeks in the desert without water, and drink 60 liters of water at a time. Their feet are flat and broad, perfectly suited to walking on sand without sinking in; the hairs around their nose, eyes, and lips looked equal to whales' baleen as powerful filters; and their gums are tough enough to withstand eating desert branches lined with thick inch-long spikes. They can also carry huge amounts of weight, including, of course, us. Along with the camels we had two Bedouin guides, Muhti (who spoke English) and Selim. We talked with Muhti about how the Bedouins are treated by the Egyptian government. Muhti, who is 26, has been married twice, to an American and an Australian woman, with a big part of the incentive for being that marriage to a foreigner made him exempt from the army. He said that until around 10 years ago, Bedouins were not allowed to serve in the army because they were considered to all be potential traitors. After Muslim fundamentalist bombings in the Sinai in recent years, the Egyptian government imprisoned and even killed random Bedouins in an attempt to intimidate them. Muhti told us that Bedouins preferred the Sinai under the control of the Israelis, who pretty much left them alone.
On our first day, as we had crossed over the highway and were just making our way past the huge power lines into the desert, we stopped while Muhti walked over to retrieve something from behind a rock, coming back with several large, dried stalks with green buds on them. Rachel asked "Are those for hitting the camels?" and Muhti answered that no, they were for smoking, which he did in copious amounts the remainder of the trip.
We rode on the camels some of the time, but often walked. The first day, one of the camels decided to take off on a run, so Selim had to mount the other camel, chase down the fugitive camel and bring it back, all of which took about 45 minutes. While we waited, Muhti made us some of our first "roasted marshmallow tea," black tea with a smoky flavor from being made directly in the fire and with a ton of sugar. We had worried about how hot the time in desert would be, but our pace was relaxed: we rested in the shade for about 3 hours each day at lunch time. At our camp the first night, Selim made the first yeastless bread, cooked directly in the ashes on top of hot sand, then beaten with a stick to get the sand out, while Muhti cooked a stew over the camp fire. After dinner we gazed at the incredible stars, and later during the night the moon rose and the whole sky was bright.
Day 2 began with us waking up around dawn; after breakfast we set off for the Colored Canyon on foot--there was one point the camels couldn't climb. The Canyon, with its stripes of color and patterned swirls, was interesting despite being marred by Russian graffiti. Later that day we passed a camel that had died two months ago; its bones were mostly picked clean and bleached white, except for some dried skin. We camped that night inside a short rock wall enclosure (which it took Muhti and several Swiss tourists two weeks to build) at a small oasis. After a short time of walking on Day 3, Muhti hid his weed behind some rocks, and we left the desert and rode the camels along the beach back to our camp.
The desert was very empty, and very quiet. But it wasn't completely empty of people: not counting the tourists in the Colored Canyon, we saw two pair of mother and daughter with a donkey and their sheep, and one friend of our guides', riding past on his camel with a boom box playing. It also wasn't homogonous in landscape. The sand could be soft and deep or hard packed like pavement; dust-fine, pebbly, or a field of rocks; wide-valleyed or mountainous, clay or granite. And despite being mostly rock and sand, it certainly wasn't empty of plant life. The most prominent vegetation was the only tree, the see-al (sp?), which can stay green for 20 years without water. Its large, spiky thorns were no deterrent to the camels, who loved to eat it (after the guides had gathered firewood, they had to keep it out of reach or the camels would eat it). And there were multiple varieties of small plants. Muhti told us about the Bedouin medicinal uses of these plants, and we tried some of a plant to calm the stomach. We also tried a "desert fruit," which looked a little like a fig but with a red skin with yellow pulp and black seeds inside. It tasted curiously of wasabi.
We knew we were starting to get old when the mattress in our hut left us with aches and pains after returning from the desert. Nonetheless, we relished our remaining couple days in the hammocks on the beach, before saying goodbye to Prince Charles, Muhti, and the rest and heading back to Cairo.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Moonlight and Mt. Sinai
After arriving back in Cairo from our less-than-ideal trip to Upper Egypt, we headed to the Sinai Peninsula with a spirited group of friends for three beach- and pool-side days. The group was made up of Henrik and five other Danes, most of whom we had met previously. Henrik had organized the trip, which was to a newly-opened resort where they were still working out some kinks in service and finishing the building, but where we also got an excellent price on rooms and board. It was not the kind of place we really like to support: everything on super-size scale, and no environmental consciousness save light switches that can only be turned on when the key is in them. But we will certainly admit to enjoying the comfortable bed, high-pressure shower, and plentiful lounge chairs; more significantly, we had a great time hanging out with everyone, and even fancied that we understood Danish sometimes when they would switch into that language. We didn't do much besides watch the kite-surfers showing off with leaps into the air and sprints across the water, read, swim, and have vicious games of pool in which my incredible skill at scratching was showcased. We also taught everybody my favorite childhood card game of Bullshit (or "I Doubt It", in Silverstein family parlance), and had as much fun playing that as we did reading aloud from our set of Bush cards. (An answer to the administration's assignation of a card to each high-ranking al-Qaeda person, listing the fine accomplishments or stunning words of a Bushie instead).
When our friends headed back to Cairo, we went instead toward Mt. Sinai, the famous site of Moses and the burning bush. We had been advised to hike in the middle of the night, in order to watch sunrise from the top, but didn't know whether there would be few or many people doing the same thing. Arriving at the base just in front of three full-sized tour buses, we got our answer. But happily, once we started up the mountain, we were virtually alone most of the climb.
Security at the base is heavy, and no one is allowed to hike without a guide, all of whom are local Bedouin. Our guide, Solomon, had spent his childhood in a village within the national park surrounding the mountain, and had not left the area ever before three years ago. He is now an army conscript based in Cairo, which he strongly dislikes, but is allowed 10 days each month to come home and work. He told us some about the historical monastary of St. Katherine's, which is at the base of the mountain, and pointed out some stars to us, but often we just walked enjoying the quiet. The moon was just two days past full, casting incredible light on our path. In searching for a way to describe it, we decided the look was more similar to walking by a fluorescent streetlight than to any other kind of light, but that still doesn't capture it: there was no harshness as with an artificial light, and it was somehow as if the path and we were lighted but everything was still dark. In any case, it was strange and beautiful.
The path was wide and basically gentle, with only a few steep bits. Looking out, we could see many other mountains and one tiny Bedouin village in a valley, and occasionally we came across people trying to sell camel rides or snack-stand tea houses filled with Snickers bars and Coke. The desert-ness of the mountain was striking; with no trees or grass around the path, and only sand and stone everywhere, it was almost hard to distniguish Sinai from the surrounding area. Between that and the fact of it being the middle of the night, a time neither of us had ever hiked before, it was quite a cool sensory experience.
The most wonderful part of the night came when we arrived at the peak. It was 4 a.m. and we were among the first people there, with the tour-bus groups still somewhere on the way up. The sun wouldn't come up for another hour and a half and the air and wind were very cold, so we wrapped ourselves in a rented blanket and sat in the shelter of a rock on the side of the peak. As we drifted between wakefulness and sleep, the silence was so complete that it reverberated in my ears-- something I'd thought was only a flighty literary expression before I actually experienced it! In the silence, I kept imagining three bell-like voices ringing out, singing "Dona Nobis Pacem" in a round. It would, to me, have been the only thing fitting to break the quiet.
When we woke up to the beginnings of sunrise at about 5:15, the peace had been pretty solidly broken. The hundreds of tour-bus people had arrived, and were crowded onto the east-facing part of the peak. Some of the Bedouin guides and blanket-sellers were talking and laughing at volumes that felt, perhaps unfairly, designed to be abrasive. The same feeling returned later, as they would run past all of us making our way down at high speeds, shouting to each other across the mountain; we found it understandable that they could be bored and frustrated by the tourist scene, which they saw every day, but given that for us it was a one-time experience, we found it a little annoying. Anyway, as the sun continued its brilliant rise, changing the colors of the clouds and sky and mountains minute by minute, no amount of noise could have cancelled out the magnificence of it.
The hike down had none of the solitude of the hike up; on the contrary, we were caught in a huge stream of people the entire time. This was largely because the downward path consisted of 2940 uneven stone stairs, laid out by a dedicated 12th century monk along what is said to be the original path of Moses. The other tourists were almost all Russian, and many of the women were wearing clothes that (if I were to wear them) I would put on for a night out in the city, not for climbing a mountain; the woman directly in front of me most of the way down, for example, had on fishnet stockings and 2 1/2 inch platform mules. But somehow she made it, and so, sleepily, did we.
When our friends headed back to Cairo, we went instead toward Mt. Sinai, the famous site of Moses and the burning bush. We had been advised to hike in the middle of the night, in order to watch sunrise from the top, but didn't know whether there would be few or many people doing the same thing. Arriving at the base just in front of three full-sized tour buses, we got our answer. But happily, once we started up the mountain, we were virtually alone most of the climb.
Security at the base is heavy, and no one is allowed to hike without a guide, all of whom are local Bedouin. Our guide, Solomon, had spent his childhood in a village within the national park surrounding the mountain, and had not left the area ever before three years ago. He is now an army conscript based in Cairo, which he strongly dislikes, but is allowed 10 days each month to come home and work. He told us some about the historical monastary of St. Katherine's, which is at the base of the mountain, and pointed out some stars to us, but often we just walked enjoying the quiet. The moon was just two days past full, casting incredible light on our path. In searching for a way to describe it, we decided the look was more similar to walking by a fluorescent streetlight than to any other kind of light, but that still doesn't capture it: there was no harshness as with an artificial light, and it was somehow as if the path and we were lighted but everything was still dark. In any case, it was strange and beautiful.
The path was wide and basically gentle, with only a few steep bits. Looking out, we could see many other mountains and one tiny Bedouin village in a valley, and occasionally we came across people trying to sell camel rides or snack-stand tea houses filled with Snickers bars and Coke. The desert-ness of the mountain was striking; with no trees or grass around the path, and only sand and stone everywhere, it was almost hard to distniguish Sinai from the surrounding area. Between that and the fact of it being the middle of the night, a time neither of us had ever hiked before, it was quite a cool sensory experience.
The most wonderful part of the night came when we arrived at the peak. It was 4 a.m. and we were among the first people there, with the tour-bus groups still somewhere on the way up. The sun wouldn't come up for another hour and a half and the air and wind were very cold, so we wrapped ourselves in a rented blanket and sat in the shelter of a rock on the side of the peak. As we drifted between wakefulness and sleep, the silence was so complete that it reverberated in my ears-- something I'd thought was only a flighty literary expression before I actually experienced it! In the silence, I kept imagining three bell-like voices ringing out, singing "Dona Nobis Pacem" in a round. It would, to me, have been the only thing fitting to break the quiet.
When we woke up to the beginnings of sunrise at about 5:15, the peace had been pretty solidly broken. The hundreds of tour-bus people had arrived, and were crowded onto the east-facing part of the peak. Some of the Bedouin guides and blanket-sellers were talking and laughing at volumes that felt, perhaps unfairly, designed to be abrasive. The same feeling returned later, as they would run past all of us making our way down at high speeds, shouting to each other across the mountain; we found it understandable that they could be bored and frustrated by the tourist scene, which they saw every day, but given that for us it was a one-time experience, we found it a little annoying. Anyway, as the sun continued its brilliant rise, changing the colors of the clouds and sky and mountains minute by minute, no amount of noise could have cancelled out the magnificence of it.
The hike down had none of the solitude of the hike up; on the contrary, we were caught in a huge stream of people the entire time. This was largely because the downward path consisted of 2940 uneven stone stairs, laid out by a dedicated 12th century monk along what is said to be the original path of Moses. The other tourists were almost all Russian, and many of the women were wearing clothes that (if I were to wear them) I would put on for a night out in the city, not for climbing a mountain; the woman directly in front of me most of the way down, for example, had on fishnet stockings and 2 1/2 inch platform mules. But somehow she made it, and so, sleepily, did we.
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Upper Egypt
Upper Egypt: Aswan and Luxor
We left Cairo by train for Upper Egypt (basically everything south of Cairo, which is considered Lower Egypt. In addition to this flip from our thinking of north as ‘up,’ the Nile also flows from South to North.). Of the two most famous ancient cities of Egypt, Memphis was located near Cairo, while Thebes was located in Upper Egypt near Luxor, now known for Pharaoic sites and Victorian vacation spots-cum-tour group resorts.
We first arrived in Aswan, which our guidebook promised as much quieter, calmer and prettier than Cairo. Unfortunately, we found this to be true only in comparison with the noise of Cairo, as it was still far from quiet or relaxed. We found a cheap but grungy hotel and headed out to the Nubian Museum. The Nubian people have a separate history from Egyptians, as Nubia encompasses southern Egypt and Northern Sudan. While it had far fewer objects than the sprawling Egyptian Museum, and a better presentation than the laughable Police (which had a few old black and white photos and rusty objects) and Military (atrocious faux-palace interior decorating and unreadable captions) museums at the Citadel in Cairo, overall we were underwhelmed with the Nubian Museum.
Our next activity was a felucca ride, the traditional one-sail boat (our second experience, after taking a one hour ride after dinner on our last night in Cairo). The tourist office told us to ask for “Washington, like your capital” as our felucca captain; when we did so the captain walked over and said “Hi, I’m Muhammed.” His felucca was named “Devine Steel.” Muhammed exuded the felucca spirit—very laid back, he started singing the chorus of Bob Marley’s “Get up, Stand up” and said that he used to have dreadlocks. He told us about an American friend (from California, of course) of his who, after experiencing the felucca vibe, came back to Egypt and became a felucca captain himself. At one with nature, at the iftar (break-fast) at the end of our ride Muhammed dipped an empty water bottle into the Nile and quenched his thirst.
For dinner, we went to a place on the Nile which, according to the guidebook, served beer, but they told us that they don’t serve it during Ramadan. Being in Egypt during Ramadan has been difficult for us in multiple ways: not only restaurants but museums and stores have different hours, and while people are understandably more short-tempered and aggressive, we’re also expected to tip more. There are also some positives: one person told us that there are many fewer people at the tourist sites during Ramadan, whereas otherwise going to a temple “can be like being on the metro” (Our most crowded and unpleasant metro experience award goes to the Cairo metro (the only metro in Africa)—it was even worse than Mexico City, which Cairo rivals in somewhere between 2nd and 4th place (the exact population is unknown) for the world’s largest city.). And the Ramadan strings of flashing, brightly colored “Christmas” lights are nice.
When we returned to our hotel, we asked a third time for toilet paper in our room; after having been told “yes, we’ll bring it up in 5 minutes” previously, we were finally told the truth that actually, the hotel doesn’t provide toilet paper. Our first experience with it, but apparently it’s typical for Egyptians to not give you a direct “no” but to say instead “in 5 minutes.” After angrily buying our own toilet paper, we sat on some broken chairs on the roof top, with a terrific view of the town at night, including a busy market and kids playing soccer on a nearby field.
The next day in Aswan, we went to the Aswan High Dam and the Philae Temple. The dam is huge—over a kilometer thick at the base, with 17 times the volume of stone as the Great Pyramid. It’s proclaimed on a sign there as “Egypt’s challenge to the silent nature,” and provides hydro-electric power for much of Egypt. There’s also a towering, very Soviet-looking memorial to the Egyptian-Russian collaboration in building the dam. The Philae temple is one of the many sites that were moved (in its case stone by stone) in a massive UNESCO operation during the building of the dam, since they otherwise would have been underwater. It was a temple dedicated to the worship of the goddess Isis—lots of cool hieroglyphics. We had to take a boat to reach the island, and were just about to give up waiting for someone to share the price with when we met a group of an Egyptian-American couple who lived in New Jersey and Florida, and an Egyptian and German couple from Germany who let us share their ride. So far, it seems like Egypt is not very backpacker/budget travel friendly: most of the people are on package tours: Spanish, Japanese, Russian, and lots and lots of British (many of whom rival Americans as the world’s most obese, and, although we don’t want to become puritanical wardrobe police, seem to wear the most ridiculously inappropriate clothing for a conservative Muslim country).
In the afternoon, we paid to use the pool at a nice hotel (next to the beautiful Old Cataract Hotel, where Agatha Christie stayed to write Death on the Nile, and according to our cab driver costs an absurd $14 per person just to go inside and take a look), then caught the train to Luxor, where, as advertised, we were ceaselessly hassled on our walk to Happyland Hotel. It was a much nicer place than our hotel in Aswan, but also one which was constantly drilling us to recommend it to others (like the Manchurian Candidate line: “Happyland is the kindest, bravest, most honest hotel I know…). It was clean, had a good restaurant and a great breakfast—and provided toilet paper.
The next morning we considered renting bikes to go the Valley of the Kings, but postponed the decision due to the poor condition of the single-speed bikes, and instead walked to Karnak temple. We missed the turn off for the temple, and ended up on an interesting walk through daily life in a village, people working in the fields, etc. When we made it to the temple, we found it impressively was massive. Some of the highlights were rows of ram-headed sphinxes and a “hypostyle hall,” which apparently refers to an area with a lot of columns. The caption there read “This is the world’s largest hypostyle hall. It has no equal.”
On the way back to the hotel for lunch, we lost our appetite walking past all the meat (both alive and dead), produce, and other food being sold on the street. The combination of sun, heat, dirt, garbage, commotion and hanging carcasses/scraggly live poultry was nauseating. I suppose that in a way getting food in this type of environment is “closer to the source” (actually seeing the animal instead of a detached piece of meat in a sterile, Western-style supermarket), but my idealization of being closer to what you eat is more a combination of both pastoral setting and sanitation, instead of urban squalor.
That afternoon, I felt worn out, and Rachel had a fever, so we stayed in that night and the next morning. The next afternoon, we had to spend awhile in the heat hunting for hotel that a) would let us pay to use the pool and b) wasn’t ridiculously expensive (one of the cases where the prices have quadrupled from what the travel guide says). For dinner we went to a British pub, where we were happy to have some beer, less happy with what tasted like it may have been a camel-burger, and happiest to sit next to a super-friendly northern English couple, both nearing 70, who talked our ears off even though we couldn’t understand most of what they were saying because of their accents. The woman gave us both hugs as we left, and we headed for the train back to Cairo.
We left Cairo by train for Upper Egypt (basically everything south of Cairo, which is considered Lower Egypt. In addition to this flip from our thinking of north as ‘up,’ the Nile also flows from South to North.). Of the two most famous ancient cities of Egypt, Memphis was located near Cairo, while Thebes was located in Upper Egypt near Luxor, now known for Pharaoic sites and Victorian vacation spots-cum-tour group resorts.
We first arrived in Aswan, which our guidebook promised as much quieter, calmer and prettier than Cairo. Unfortunately, we found this to be true only in comparison with the noise of Cairo, as it was still far from quiet or relaxed. We found a cheap but grungy hotel and headed out to the Nubian Museum. The Nubian people have a separate history from Egyptians, as Nubia encompasses southern Egypt and Northern Sudan. While it had far fewer objects than the sprawling Egyptian Museum, and a better presentation than the laughable Police (which had a few old black and white photos and rusty objects) and Military (atrocious faux-palace interior decorating and unreadable captions) museums at the Citadel in Cairo, overall we were underwhelmed with the Nubian Museum.
Our next activity was a felucca ride, the traditional one-sail boat (our second experience, after taking a one hour ride after dinner on our last night in Cairo). The tourist office told us to ask for “Washington, like your capital” as our felucca captain; when we did so the captain walked over and said “Hi, I’m Muhammed.” His felucca was named “Devine Steel.” Muhammed exuded the felucca spirit—very laid back, he started singing the chorus of Bob Marley’s “Get up, Stand up” and said that he used to have dreadlocks. He told us about an American friend (from California, of course) of his who, after experiencing the felucca vibe, came back to Egypt and became a felucca captain himself. At one with nature, at the iftar (break-fast) at the end of our ride Muhammed dipped an empty water bottle into the Nile and quenched his thirst.
For dinner, we went to a place on the Nile which, according to the guidebook, served beer, but they told us that they don’t serve it during Ramadan. Being in Egypt during Ramadan has been difficult for us in multiple ways: not only restaurants but museums and stores have different hours, and while people are understandably more short-tempered and aggressive, we’re also expected to tip more. There are also some positives: one person told us that there are many fewer people at the tourist sites during Ramadan, whereas otherwise going to a temple “can be like being on the metro” (Our most crowded and unpleasant metro experience award goes to the Cairo metro (the only metro in Africa)—it was even worse than Mexico City, which Cairo rivals in somewhere between 2nd and 4th place (the exact population is unknown) for the world’s largest city.). And the Ramadan strings of flashing, brightly colored “Christmas” lights are nice.
When we returned to our hotel, we asked a third time for toilet paper in our room; after having been told “yes, we’ll bring it up in 5 minutes” previously, we were finally told the truth that actually, the hotel doesn’t provide toilet paper. Our first experience with it, but apparently it’s typical for Egyptians to not give you a direct “no” but to say instead “in 5 minutes.” After angrily buying our own toilet paper, we sat on some broken chairs on the roof top, with a terrific view of the town at night, including a busy market and kids playing soccer on a nearby field.
The next day in Aswan, we went to the Aswan High Dam and the Philae Temple. The dam is huge—over a kilometer thick at the base, with 17 times the volume of stone as the Great Pyramid. It’s proclaimed on a sign there as “Egypt’s challenge to the silent nature,” and provides hydro-electric power for much of Egypt. There’s also a towering, very Soviet-looking memorial to the Egyptian-Russian collaboration in building the dam. The Philae temple is one of the many sites that were moved (in its case stone by stone) in a massive UNESCO operation during the building of the dam, since they otherwise would have been underwater. It was a temple dedicated to the worship of the goddess Isis—lots of cool hieroglyphics. We had to take a boat to reach the island, and were just about to give up waiting for someone to share the price with when we met a group of an Egyptian-American couple who lived in New Jersey and Florida, and an Egyptian and German couple from Germany who let us share their ride. So far, it seems like Egypt is not very backpacker/budget travel friendly: most of the people are on package tours: Spanish, Japanese, Russian, and lots and lots of British (many of whom rival Americans as the world’s most obese, and, although we don’t want to become puritanical wardrobe police, seem to wear the most ridiculously inappropriate clothing for a conservative Muslim country).
In the afternoon, we paid to use the pool at a nice hotel (next to the beautiful Old Cataract Hotel, where Agatha Christie stayed to write Death on the Nile, and according to our cab driver costs an absurd $14 per person just to go inside and take a look), then caught the train to Luxor, where, as advertised, we were ceaselessly hassled on our walk to Happyland Hotel. It was a much nicer place than our hotel in Aswan, but also one which was constantly drilling us to recommend it to others (like the Manchurian Candidate line: “Happyland is the kindest, bravest, most honest hotel I know…). It was clean, had a good restaurant and a great breakfast—and provided toilet paper.
The next morning we considered renting bikes to go the Valley of the Kings, but postponed the decision due to the poor condition of the single-speed bikes, and instead walked to Karnak temple. We missed the turn off for the temple, and ended up on an interesting walk through daily life in a village, people working in the fields, etc. When we made it to the temple, we found it impressively was massive. Some of the highlights were rows of ram-headed sphinxes and a “hypostyle hall,” which apparently refers to an area with a lot of columns. The caption there read “This is the world’s largest hypostyle hall. It has no equal.”
On the way back to the hotel for lunch, we lost our appetite walking past all the meat (both alive and dead), produce, and other food being sold on the street. The combination of sun, heat, dirt, garbage, commotion and hanging carcasses/scraggly live poultry was nauseating. I suppose that in a way getting food in this type of environment is “closer to the source” (actually seeing the animal instead of a detached piece of meat in a sterile, Western-style supermarket), but my idealization of being closer to what you eat is more a combination of both pastoral setting and sanitation, instead of urban squalor.
That afternoon, I felt worn out, and Rachel had a fever, so we stayed in that night and the next morning. The next afternoon, we had to spend awhile in the heat hunting for hotel that a) would let us pay to use the pool and b) wasn’t ridiculously expensive (one of the cases where the prices have quadrupled from what the travel guide says). For dinner we went to a British pub, where we were happy to have some beer, less happy with what tasted like it may have been a camel-burger, and happiest to sit next to a super-friendly northern English couple, both nearing 70, who talked our ears off even though we couldn’t understand most of what they were saying because of their accents. The woman gave us both hugs as we left, and we headed for the train back to Cairo.
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