Dusty Egypt

Peter & Angela's World Tour

Cairo. Population 28 million. Minimum wage LE 250 per month. That's about £30 and it has only just gone up from half of that. Hot and dusty. Traffic appalling. Not much begging but everyone wants a tip and is prepared to provide a service for it. No matter what. Women hand you lavatory paper with one hand, keeping the other free to receive your tip. Men come out of nowhere and grab your bags from you (most alarming) and then demand a tip for carrying them. Traffic police outside the good hotels will stop the traffic for you with their whistles so you can cross the road safely and you give them a pound or two - actually that is worth much, much more! A fertile, verdant strip of land running all the way from the north coast to Aswan in the south provides a home for the vast majority of the population on the banks and the flat plains along the banks of the Nile. The rest is desert. Just sand and rocks and very little else.

We met some Nubians whilst in Aswan in the south of Egypt. These people are extremely tall with curly black hair and very dark skin. They are kind of Sudanese/Egyptians. They are peaceful and graceful people but are narked because when Lake Nasser was flooded with the building of the High Dam at Aswan, much of their land was compulsarily purchased by the Government for peanuts. They were re-housed but even some 60 years later are still very upset having to leave their home. They speak Arabic but between themselves speak only their native language which apparently is no longer written, only spoken. The men look like basketball players and our driver, a beautiful man standing around 6 feet 10 inches in his stockinged feet had to sort of fold himself up to get behind the wheel of a reasonably large car. There was mention of unusual marriage practices in the Nubian community on the basis that the men have to be relied upon to perpetuate a declining population. Despite trying (and believe me I did), I didn't get any more information than that!

Instead of flying from Aswan to Luxor, the standard alternative to the three-day river cruise, we opted to be driven there with a couple of stops to see some particularly lovely temples (Com Ombo and Edfu) on the way. We got to see some gorgeous and lush countryside along the fertile banks of the Nile where not a single square foot of land was left uncultivated. We also got to experience the checkpoints with armed police officers which were numerous and tedious requiring our driver to declare his name, driver number and identify his passengers about once every 20 minutes. Such is the security within Egypt since the tourist shootings at Hatchepsut's Temple in Luxor about 10 years ago, that in Cairo when visiting the Hussein Mosque in the old town near Khan El Khalili, I was asked to erase a fragment of my video footage because I may have inadvertently filmed the security arrangements of the area which could have been used for some kind of preparation for terrorist activity. We sat down for a cold drink after our visit to the souk and were served falafel, which brought back such wonderful memories for me. It is NOTHING like you get even in the best restaurants in Europe. This was light, warm and delicious. A little glass of hot, sweet mint tea accompanied it whilst the old men around us puffed on their hubbly bubblies.

Something I had failed to realise about the ancient history in Egypt is that it is still being discovered today; still being dug up, still being found after three and a half millennia under the sand. When I was last here - some 23 years ago - the sphinx for example was still half under the sand - I certainly don't remember there being a body with tail and the paws of a lion, although I now learn that the hindquarters and paws were recently restored, so perhaps they were unrecognisable 23 years ago. In the Valley of the Kings in Luxor and there is still massive excavation being carried out and they are still hopeful to find the tombs of some of the kings as yet unlocated. The valley is a labyrinth of tunnels deep under the rock, all surprisingly close to each other, and yet despite the fact that so many have been unearthed, none trespass on the others. There was obviously someone with a grand plan - a map to prevent underground tunnelling clashes. We went inside several tombs and looked at the paintings and carvings which are so pristine, I began to ask myself if a little Egyptian kid had snuck in with a set of felt tips!

Tombs and temples is obviously what Egyptian ancient history is all about and we have seen some mind-blowing ones. Abu Simbel for example, the southernmost treasure in Upper Egypt (weirdly enough it's what I would call Southern Egypt, but they call it "Upper" because it is closer to the source of the Nile, as opposed to where it flows) is a fabulous tribute to Ramses II and his wife Nefertari (his favourite wife actually - not sure how many he had but he was the father of 150 children). There are two temples there, one as a (somewhat vain) tribute to himself and another to his favourite wife (smaller and built first not because he was a gentleman with good manners, but for the practice and to make sure that when it came to making his, it was perfect). The temple was cut straight into the rock in the desert and there are four images of Ramses II on the outside - they are unbelievably tall, indescribably impressive and only a picture of a human standing near one of the feet for example can give a proper perspective on the sheer magnitude of the statues. Inside it is smaller than I had expected, but with massive ornately decorated columns and lines of statues on either side of the main walkway leading to the inner sanctum where all the worshipping rituals and sacrifices were performed. The most amazing thing about this place is that when they flooded Lake Nasser, they had to cut up the temples and move them block by block to a position about 300 meters from where they first stood or they would have been submerged under the water as the lake filled up. We saw a couple of others which had also been moved (Philae for example - my favourite of all the ones we saw) now sits on its own island close to the British Dam (the first and smaller of the two dams across the Nile) and you have to take a boat ride to it which is lovely.

All the stories about the Gods these ancient Egyptian rulers worshipped and why were all a bit beyond me really. I have never been one for legend and myth, preferring facts and figures - but despite that I found it quite compelling listening to all the stuff they did to prepare for the afterlife to be sure they got the best seats in heaven. Many spent their whole lives preparing temples and their own tombs for the afterlife on the basis that life after death was for eternity and our pitiful existence as humans was really of little consequence. In the Cheops pyramid for example, that’s the really massive one at Giza in Cairo, King Cheops was buried with a wooden boat about 80 meters long in which he would travel to the afterlife!

Seeing the mummies in the Cairo museum, the same people whose tombs we gaily scuttled around in Luxor, made me feel a bit weird. Like a peeping Tom. Voyeuristic, prying. This great man, Ramses II who was so powerful during his lifetime some 3,500 years ago and built some of Egypt's most important monuments lies there in the museum, his face shrunken, teeth sticking out, with his henna red hair and long old fingernails falling out, lies there in a dusty glass box being peered at by millions of schoolchildren and people like us, which seems like a humiliating end for such a proud man. He was 92 when he died which is pretty incredible for those days. The fact that he has been mummified and his body still intact after three and a half millennia makes fascinating and compelling viewing. Still feels intrusive though.

So today, on Good Friday, we end our ten day (well nine days thanks to British Airways and their pathetic strike) visit to Egypt and the first leg of our ten-country circumnavigation. We were at Cairo International Airport, waiting for a flight to Amman, Jordan when I wrote this. The last time I was there, when I was 25, the airport was made out of wood and the man who demanded my passport also asked me if I was a virgin. I am pleased to report that things have moved on a bit now.

by Angela Warrener

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