 |
| Camels will cost you extra, sorry. |
With every mile covered, as I draw closer
to Cairo a conflict of sentiment intensifies.
Cairo is the symbolic 'end' of my Cape-to-Cairo leg. My bike is running smoothly and it's very
probable I'll now make my destination without disaster. I'm excited, relieved, tired and yes, a
little bit proud.
Alas, the traffic density deepens; the
highway heads through dune-like estates of identical concrete accommodation
blocks. The average Egyptian family is
much poorer than their Western equivalent, and lives in crumbling
accommodation, covets his neighbour's rusty Lada, and struggles with drudgery
if he's fortunate enough to hold a job, that is. Cairo is struggling to cope with it's
expanding population.
It's only 9am, and a holiday, but the noise and debris of this sprawling mega-city starts to eat away at my desert-induced zen-like calm. Car horns compete with belching tail pipes, a cacophony that reaches fever pitch as I turn into Giza's Pyramid Road and squeeze through the crowd of taxis and touts and camels and horses and busloads of tourists all heading to the iconic attraction.
I need to reach my destination, but part of
me wants to abandon Cairo already.
The Giza pyramids sit shockingly close to
the urban centre, within easy sight of the smog pall hanging over the 22
million inhabitants. A majority of
those appear to be visiting the pyramids today, and I'm resigned to including
the odd tour group in my photo of the grand daddy pyramid - Khufu, or Cheops to
his friends.
I cite the Lonely Planet
Guide again, to save time:
The oldest
pyramid in Giza and the largest in Egypt, the Great Pyramid of Khufu stood 146m high when it was completed around 2570 BC. After 46 windy centuries, its height has been
reduced by 9m. About 2.3 million limestone blocks, reckoned to weigh about 2.5
tonnes each, were used in the construction.
(Even calculating 2.5 million x 2.5 tonnes doesn't
adequately convey the sheer bulk of the thing.)
My uncle subsequently informs me that my own grand daddy -
whilst serving in Egypt in WWII - whacked a chunk off the pyramid and
thereafter used that as a paperweight. A
shocking confession, and how am I supposed to reconcile that with my belief in sustainable
tourism, eh? ;)
Being a model tourist, I take only photos and leave only
footprints (and tread marks). No camel
ride for me - I already have a far more attractive beast of burden as my
companion. In fact, I lose count of the number of tourists who want to have
their photo with me and the bike, rather than old Cheops. I suppose they think my name is Ewan or
something...
Anyway, with the remarkable access afforded to foreign motorcyclists
- the police seem used to it, and are very friendly - I ride around the site a
little and even find some space to be alone.
The grandeur of the rocky plateau is impossible to deny, and I'm really
quite taken by the place: the elegant pyramids standing against the cobalt sky
as they have for millennia. These are the only surviving Ancient Wonder Of The World, you know. The lines of camels plodding
around the surrounding desert just add to the atmosphere. I still enlightenment, but at least I've found
my 'kodak moment'. 
Cut to the late afternoon.
I've set up tent in the backyard of a grand property on the edge of the
West Bank. The miniature pool looks
nice, but the price is steep, the mosquitoes voracious and the owners
prickly. I think I'd rather be in a
hostel somewhere central, but here the parking is secure and I have the company
of a friendly English couple about to head south to Cape Town. (It's fun how the overlanding community stays
in touch with one another - I know of them, and they know many of our mutual
acquaintances.)
On Monday I set out on a huge tour of Cairo. The Egyptian Museum is on everybody's list (I
can tell - everybody seems to be here), and this warehouse of a building
contains hundreds of huge granite carvings and thousands of smaller, equally
priceless artefact's. It's slightly
overwhelming, and requires a degree of pre-reading and stamina that I
lack. Two hours takes me on a whirlwind
walk through all those dynasties, and I admire the treasures of Tutankhamun:
what a find that must have been!
My hired driver-for-the-day adopts Ben Hur driving techniques to get through Tahrir Square into
Downtown, and then on into the Islamic quarter - the medieval heart of the city. The Citadel presides over a commanding view
of the city, and comprises two huge mosques.
I'm reminded of the fabulous Turkish mosques of Istanbul.
 |
| Looking out over the Islamic quarter of Cairo |
Lonely Planet saves me typing...
Saladin
began building the Citadel in 1176 to fortify the city against the Crusaders,
who were then rampaging through Palestine. Following their overthrow of
Saladin’s Ayyubid dynasty, the Mamluks enlarged the complex, adding sumptuous
palaces and harems.... The only Mamluk structure left standing was a single
mosque, used as a stable. Mohammed Ali
completely remodelled the rest of the Citadel and crowned it with the
Turkish-style mosque that currently dominates Cairo’s eastern skyline.
The fortress
is dominated by the Mosque of Mohammed Ali. Modelled along classic Turkish lines, with
domes upon domes upon domes, it took 18 years to build (1830– 48), and its
interior is all twinkling chandeliers and luridly striped stone. Perhaps the
most evocative description of it is in Olivia Manning’s The Levant Trilogy:
‘Above them Mohammed Ali’s alabaster mosque, uniquely white in this
sand-coloured city, sat with minarets pricked, like a fat, white, watchful
cat’. Other writers have called it unimaginative and graceless and compared it
to a toad.
I thought it looked quite good, personally. Shows what I know.
Local families are enjoying the last day of the Eid
festival, sitting out of the sun and enjoying the views. The young Egyptians are shy, but ask me politely
for photos - after all my own snapping, I can hardly refuse them a shot of the
bearded foreigner. The short
conversations that follow imbue me with a warm enthusiasm for these teens and
twenty-somethings. They are guile-less, sincere
and glowing with the aspirations of youth.
Maybe this is a Generation Y that will take their country - post-Arab
Spring - in a positive direction?
If so, it seems (if I may be so bold) that there is much
for them to do. The once-beautiful city
of Cairo is almost crushed by overburdened transport channels; the canals
choked with filth and plastics; the air thick with pollution. I read time and
again that one must look beneath all this to find the charm, and to fall in
love with the metropolis. But honestly,
when so many other cities succeed in creating a better first impression (and
back that up), why would I?
 |
| Seen at Aswan. Many a true word written in jest... |
Today, Cairo has all the charm of a giant sports stadium
on cup final day, spilling out an hour after the final whistle blows: bad food,
dirty toilets, litter strewn, overcrowded, and somewhere you'll get your pockets
picked. The kind of place you're
suddenly in a press to leave.
No doubt,
if one relocated here, and made more of an effort than I have, it would win your
affections. But that is true of every
city - even Swindon.
Shameless in my superficial judgment, I keep up my
mini-tour and call in at the Coptic quarter.
I study the Lonely Planet again:
Coptic Cairo
is the heartland of Egypt’s indigenous Christian community, a haven of
tranquillity and peace that reveals layers of history. Archaeologists have found traces of a small
Nileside settlement on this site from as early as the 6th century BC.
... Egyptian
Christians split from the Orthodox Church of the Eastern (or Byzantine) Empire,
of which Egypt was then a part of, after the main body of the church described
Christ as both human and divine. Dioscurus, the patriarch of Alexandria,
refused to accept this description, and embraced the theory that Christ is
totally absorbed by his divinity and that it is blasphemous to consider him
human.
The Coptic Church is ruled by a patriarch, other members of the
religious hierarchy and an ecclesiastical council of laypeople. It has a long
history of monasticism and can justly claim that the first Christian monks, St
Anthony and St Pachomius, were Copts. ... The Copts have long provided
something of an educated elite in Egypt, filling many important government and
bureaucratic posts. Furthermore, they’ve always been an economically powerful
minority, and the vast majority of Copts are wealthy and influential.
With that said, there are also a lot of Copts at the very bottom
of the heap: the zabbalin, the garbage-pickers of Cairo, who collect and sort
through most of the city’s rubbish, have always been Copts.
Okay... But I'm
bamboozled by the place, and my lack of research is telling - I completely miss
the point; the point for most tourists being to find the quaint enclave hiding
below street level. I also missed the
entrance to the Sphinx yesterday, and I suspect the spirit of Cairo is teaching
me a lesson - reserving some of her best for those more willing to appreciate
it. It's a fair indictment of my
graceless visit, sure enough.
I try to put to one side the anxiety and resentment
stirred in this self-pitying tourist-victim.
I think of the individuals I've met in Egypt that gave me a good
impression. There are examples, lovely moments, and instances of the 'graciousness
and humour' my guidebook promised.
 |
| I didn't see what they were drinking, but had it been England I'm sure it would have been alcoholic |
-------------------------------------------------
Returned to camp at the end of the day, I've received travel
news: the next ferry to Turkey from Port Said leaves in a couple of days, and I
have time to make it. The service is
irregular and the bureaucracy involved in leaving Egypt is notorious, but it's
the best option on the table right now:
Libya is (effectively) closed, and exit from Israel is expensive and
relatively untested.
I have little time to waste, and this is the excuse I need
to leave Cairo. Clearly, I'm hardly any
the wiser as to her charms. But if I do
return, I hope I'll now have more respect and bring more resourcefulness. Like Egypt, Cairo is hard for me to
understand - but maybe that's what makes it a suitable place to revisit one day?
---------------------------------------------
 |
| Not at Darfur, but if you've seen one pyramid... right? ;) |
Before heading north, the following morning I follow my co-ordinates
on a detour 30km south to the pyramids of Dashur. I defer again to my learned friend, the
Lonely Planet Guide:
The world’s
oldest true pyramid is the North Pyramid, which is better known as the Red
Pyramid. It derives its name either from the red tones of its weathered
limestone, after the better-quality white limestone casing was re- moved, or
perhaps from the red graffiti and construction marks scribbled on its masonry
in ancient times.
Having
learnt from their experiences building the Bent Pyramid, the same architects
carried on where they had left off, building the Red Pyramid at the same 43°
angle as the Bent Pyramid’s more gently inclining upper section.
The entrance
– via 125 extremely steep stone steps and a 63m-long passage – takes you down
to two antechambers with stunning 12m-high corbelled ceilings and a 15m-high
corbelled burial chamber in which fragmentary human remains, possibly of
Sneferu himself, were found.
What I can say for myself, is that the air inside the
pyramid is indeed noxious; but worth breathing just to knowingly stand with
that incredible weight of granite and sandstone propped up above me - it's a
spooky experience! Getting out is
tricky too, if you are 6.3ft and wearing motorcycle gear... that tight, 63m shaft back to the 'surface'
takes quite an effort to complete.
Now, will getting out of Egypt itself be any easier?
 |
| That Kodak moment when Cape to Cairo became the past tense |
[After reading all the Egypt blog posts, you can view a full photo gallery here: Photo Gallery - Egypt Slideshow ]
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