In Cairo, everyone wants baksheesh – money. And preferably without doing anything. We were walking in a middle class neighborhood, when a decently dressed young man walked by. He had one look to my blond hair, and I could hear the click in his head. Eyes lid, hand opened, and ‘baksheesh’ came out of his mouth. And we are talking about a guy who probably had relatively good job, not a beggar at all. Seriously, what is wrong with these people?
Cairo is huge, noisy and dirty – and huge. On our way to Giza, where the Pyramids are, we first toke a taxi for 10 minutes, then metro for 15mins and finally minibus for about 45 minutes. And still we had to walk about 10 minutes.
To get even near the Pyramids its a terrible hassle. Young men try to sell their postcards, crappy souvenirs or camel/horse rides so persistently its really annoying. Baksheesh, baksheesh, baksheesh. Even inside the area there is still some guys offering rides, but it has been calming down, because the archaeological authorities have been banning most of the touts to the site.
What comes to the Pyramids itself, I was somehow disappointed. I don’t know what I expected, or was it all the hassle and groups of tourists, but I didn’t really enjoy them much. And possibly its one of those things of which you have seen so many pictures, posters and fridge magnets that it has suffered from inflation.
We didn’t even go inside to any of them, since I have heard that if you suffer from smallest hint of claustrophobia, its not place to be. And my claustrophobia is a bit more than mild, so I didn’t even want to try to climb steep stairs in a narrow and low corridor, in heath and with hundreds of other people. Even Sasi didn’t want.
Instead, we went to see the Solar Boat Museum just behind the Cheops Pyramid. It was quite interesting how new that several thousand years old boat looked like but, then again, it was made of Lebanese ceder wood. And the planks were so big that the trees themselves must have been hundreds of years old when they cut them.
Sphinx is like one of those TV celebrities: if you have a change to see them in real life, they always appear to be smaller than you thought. And also rather hard to spot in the midst of the admirers. Safinkees, safinkees, buy safinkees, guys screamed piercingly – Arabs (even my husband) just cant say the word right. Which is not wonder as such, since the word is Greek; when Herodotus (the first modern historian and globe trotter) wrote about this marvel, he used a word from Greek Mythology – a beast of half man, half lion.
Original name of the creature is Ra-Herakhti, manifestation with sun god. It carries the face of Khafre, who was a pharaoh 4500 years ago. Its Sesheb Ankh, living image. Later, Arabs have started to call it Abu el-Houl, The Father of Terror (or fear). I never quite found out why.
Greeks also gave a new name for Tekhenu. It is better known nowadays with its Greek name Obelisk – because for Greeks, it looked like spits of kebabs.
Pyramids – done, Sphinx – done. Click, click from the book of must see places in the world. Other than that, I cant really recommend. And also, they DO look better in postcards.
In the weather report for Cairo that day was one word: dust. What kind of weather report is that, I was wondering, but got my answer in the Pyramids. Everything was hazy, due to high pollution and the end of the harvesting season, when farmers burn the fields, and smoke floats heavily even on top of the capital. With all that, all the photos look dust gray. (And you dont want to know what we blew out of our noses in the evening.)
Next day, the weather report was haze. No changes in weather, someone just decided to be more creative. We, on the other hand, were a bit hazy as well after a Halloween party by the Pyramids. After a few days of recovering, we headed for a night train taking us to south.
We arrived to Aswan in the late afternoon next day. The train was only 5 hours delayed, so we were lucky, and the whole trip was around 17 hours. And, after a few hours of sleep, we had to wake up at 2.30AM. The convoy to Abu Simbel would leave at 4.
We were packed to a minibus like chickens. It was really uncomfortable trip in the wee hours of the night, but we didn’t really have other options. Due to Egyptian security rules, tourist are only allowed to go there in convoys. Personally I think its a bit stupid, since it just makes it easier target for terrorists if they want to attack. Everyone knows the timetables of the convoys, and the routes, and all you need is a roadside bomb. There wasn’t really any kind of security forces present. It was just unnecessary and annoying, and also it means that you must buy a tour from a tourist agency, which I think, is the plot behind this all.
So we sat on each others laps, almost literally, for 3,5 hours. Then a stop of 2 hours in the Temples of Abu Simbel, and 3,5 hours back. The temples were magnificent and interesting, but to be totally honest with you, I don’t know whether it was really worth the trip like that.
Back in Aswan, we were so tired that it was getting hysterical. We had booked another tour to see the sights in Aswan, and the first stop was the unfinished obelisk. When we saw the huge block of granite on the ground, we just couldn’t hold it but burst to a hysterical laughter: is this what we came to see, block of a rock?
It wasn’t better in the High Dam of Aswan either. Somehow, you would just expect a phenomenal view, but it was rather lame, and not even so high at all. It looked like a wide peninsula instead.
The day ended good, though. The Isis Temple of Philae was breathtakingly beautiful. It stands in an island on Nile, and you have to take a boat to get there. We were there just when the sun was setting, making all the shadows long and golding the walls and its reliefs. The atmosphere was amazing, and the temple itself a beauty. No wonder Alexander the Great liked it, as well as Romans did. It was also the place where the last hieroglyphs were carved to the temple wall 24th of August, 396, and where Isis was still worshiped in 550 AD, much to a shock of Christian priests. It was the last pagan temple in the Mediterranean area.
Maiku, who suffered not only pharaonic phatigue but a curse of Tutankhamon as well. More about that in the next post.
