Egypt (4) - Cairo

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.

In the taxi again, caught in congestion, I have time to pause and think a little more. Presumably, the point is not checking off another site, another attraction, another been-there-done-that.  Maybe it's as simple as sitting with a bubble pipe in a coffee cafe, listening to the gentle click-clack of backgammon?  That's what finally worked for me in Istanbul, if I recall.  After travelling so far, am I really still no further on?

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

In a society that is so alien to my own, I need to give out more credit, and take in more of what is in front of me, before rushing to judge. 

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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?

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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 ]

Egypt (3): The Western Desert Ride

Need time for a little contemplation?

 One day's ride on quick, straight roads has taken me far into the dry, barren wild west.   I'm keen to avoid getting stranded, as you can imagine, and confronting a degree of nervousness at venturing so far from mechanical assistance.  I'm taking my chances that a slow puncture in my front tyre will behave, and that fuel stations will remain stocked through Eid (the four-day Islamic holiday).  The bike is loaded with water and provisions, and three giant aluminium serving trays lashed over the luggage: to reflect the sun and protect the sensitive electrical items in my kit.  

I pass quietly through a number of small, dusty towns - distinct settlements amongst 150-mile stretches of gritty sand and limestone rock.  There's little going on, especially as the sun climbs higher.  Just a few little shops and faded homes, the usual collection of battered Peugeot taxis.  I roll on, listening to a podcast series about the US presidential election: my eyes and ears a world apart.

Stretching west, surviving the shifting dunes, is a legendary desert oasis chain.  I make the Dakhlar Oasis - one of these improbable green gems - my base for the first night.  It's about 20km long, by 3km wide, fertile and urban.

In Mut, the main town in this particular oasis, a handful of budget hotels offer much better value-for-money than Luxor, unsurprisingly.  Although, the amplified noise from the mosques is much the same and has started to wear thin.

After resting, I take a stroll around the neighbourhood.  The locals eye me up.  I realise belatedly that it's my shorts drawing the stares: I've forgotten that exposing one's knees (yes, Mum, even my knees) is frowned upon in polite Islamic society.   (Luxor has too many debauched Westerners for this to be an issue any more; but fair enough, a demerit point for McMullen.  Must do better.)  This is an example of where my own culture creates a barrier and hinders me from understanding this new one.

My faux pas aside, I get the impression the townsfolk here are friendlier and more genuine than their Nile-ist countrymen.  Everyone is keen to help the visitor - with neither sugar-coated wiesel words nor any expectation of reward beyond reciprocated friendliness.  Kids come up to try their English out, and adults nod their consent at my camera waving. 

Or at least, the menfolk do.  It's hard to catch the eye of women - and my cheery manner is doused by the dark veils or their downward-looking eyes.  It's another faux pas - I should hardly be communicating with them at all. 

This season black is the new black.

I'll always find it hard to understand or accept such conservative conventions.  I'm falling into the trap of assuming Egyptian women are all down-trodden, repressed victims; I sometimes fail to notice the many educated, middle or upper class women working in offices, and presumably trying to juggle family and professional lives just as 'liberated' Western women do.  I need to think about this some more... my preconceptions are unsatisfactory.

The twilight walk is rewarding.  I head up towards an old mud-brick fort - long since abandoned, and surrounded by crumbling back-to-back dwellings.  The guidebook draws a parallel:

Just like the mud-brick houses in rural Egypt today, ancient homes were warm in winter and cool in summer.  Small, high-set windows reduced the sun’s heat but allowed breezes to blow through, and stairs gave access to the flat roof where the family could relax or sleep.

Often whitewashed on the outside to deflect the heat, interiors were usually painted in bright colours, the walls and floors of wealthier homes further enhanced with gilding and inlaid tiles.  Although the furniture of most homes would have been quite sparse – little more than a mud-brick bench, a couple of stools and a few sleeping mats – the wealthy could afford beautiful furniture, including inlaid chairs and footstools, storage chests, beds with linen sheets and feather-stuffed cushions. Most homes also had small shrines for household deities and busts of family ancestors.

The collapsing mud-brick dwellings in Mut are neither grand nor ancient, but ducking through the low doors and narrow passage ways I feel like I've stepped back centuries.  This is different to how I felt in the network of favelas in Brazil, or the villages in rural China, even though they resemble one another in terms of tiny living space.

Up top, the fort has good views over the oasis town.  Green date palms stretch out a few kilometres in every direction, shading irrigated fields; but then the desert encroaches and kills off any wandering plant life.  Far off an imposing shelf of limestone cliff runs along the horizon, lit from the west as the sun settles down into the Great Sand Sea...

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5am rise and shine.  Another long day in the saddle takes me around a giant loop, through crescent sand dunes and north to a smaller oasis town: Farafra.  There's even less to this town, and few doors are open, what with Eid well underway.  A freshly sacrificed cow carcass is hanging outside one small convenience store, and a chap is hard at work butchering it up. 

I fill up at the only open gas station and chat to a couple of attendants and customers.  It's cooler here, in the shade.  The guys are intrigued by the foreign motorbike and ask all the usual questions - opting to 'phone a friend who can translate for us.

Beyond Farafra, the White Desert National Park is ahead.  Predictably, the desert surface starts to lighten, and then fleck with chalk(?) particles, pebbles and rocks.  But it's no coral-sand beach as you might have imagined.  No, this desert looks tough and scruffy, with little of the majestic grace conjured up on Hollywood movie screens.

I'm riding through the middle of the park on black asphalt, when wind-smoothed white spectres appear to either side of me.  The coarse wind-blown sand has sculpted these prominent rocks into strange and beautiful shapes.  Sadly, few are so close to the road that I can get a close up look (or photo).  Most are set back in the soft sand - too far and too deep for me to try with the bike or on foot.  Camping there with a 4x4 would be lovely, though.

Strange light beyond the White Desert - it turned into fog, but no rain as I got further up the road

Next up, the Black Desert.  The clue's in the name...   The desert surface ripples and ruptures into hills and ridges (nothing more than 280m tall, but prominent against the otherwise featureless surrounds).  It's dark and forbidding, but easier on the eye, as the glare is less.  I keep motoring, and watch with envy as a convoy of 4x4s drives by, heading for adventure.

And you know by now just how much I LOVE riding across soft sand.

I have reason to be grateful to one such convoy when I reach the Bahariya Oasis.  The local gas station is empty, and I doubt I have enough to quite reach Cairo.  A halfway-to-Cairo fuel stop is down the road (160km) but if I push my luck too far I could be stranded there.  Instead, I follow a friendly teen back to his dad's hotel, where he assures me is black market 'benzine' for my bike.

His offer to help, and his dad's good humoured hospitality leave me a little embarrassed:  I arrive expecting a hard sell and pressure to take a room.  Far from it, I get a free drink and tasty lunch and information on the road ahead.  If you're passing through, I recommend the Desert Safari Home of Badry Khozam (M: 02-38471321 / email: Khozamteego33@hotmail.com).  Their friendliness makes it a pleasure to give them business.  (I wouldn't say the same about - and recoiled from - its antithesis, Ahmed's Safari Camp.)

Also at Khozam's place, I bump into an English ex-pat group.  They treat me to something better than black market benzine:  high quality '92 grade petrol from their spare container.  Although the spare container is sound, the Land Rover that surrounds has just suffered a few bumps and bruises so can't join their convoy into the desert.  I'm tickled to top the Bavarian right up with the equivalent of a few free pints of Stella.   It's enough to make her topple over with giddy delight, but we soon have her upright again.  Ahem.

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Riding through the Western Desert, I've been skirting the giant dunes of the Great Sand Sea (see below).  With a properly kitted-out 4x4 one could get up close and personal, but my laden Beemer wouldn't stand a chance: we'd be stuck in yards.  

However, I've enjoyed the different landscapes, and there's a thrill seeing the sand encroach over the road.  I can imagine the stealthy threat of this environment keeps folks honest and draws a community together. 

From my Lonely Planet Guide:

One of the world’s largest dune fields, the Great Sand Sea straddles Egypt and Libya, stretching over 800km south to the Gilf Kebir. There are 18 sand seas around the world, four of them in North Africa. The Great Sand Sea begins south of the Mediterranean coast. A branch splits off in Libya, south of Siwa, forming the Calanscio Sand Sea; the rest carries on southeast within Egypt.

Sitting on a rise in the desert floor and covering a colossal 72,000 sq km, it contains some of the largest recorded dunes in the world, including one that is 140km long. Crescent, seif (sword) and parallel wavy dunes are found here, some of which are on the move while others remain in place. Undulating and beautiful, the dunes are treacherous and have challenged desert travellers for hundreds of years. ...

Aerial surveys and expeditions have helped the charting of this vast expanse, but it remains one of the least-explored areas on earth.  The Great Sand Sea is not a place to go wandering on a whim, and you will need military permits as well as good preparation.

If the threat of the desert binds communities together, perhaps this is analogous to the other influences on Egyptian society?  Against the rising, shifting influence of Western culture, which is perhaps increasingly secular and permissive, the conservative religious values evident in Egypt are standing up strongly.  In southern and western Egypt the common thread is very evident - just listen again to the five prayer calls echoing across the landscape every day.

From my Lonely Planet Guide:

Within Egypt, nothing functions outside of the realm of religion, which is often regarded as the very fabric that holds the entire country together. The family ethos, maintained and fostered by Islamic law, facilitates channels of cooperation, arbitration, conflict resolution and economic assistance within the greater community.  Furthermore, these same interactions are also used as enforcement mechanisms for common moral values, which certainly serve as a deterrent for crime within the community. Not surprisingly, breaking these informal moral ethical codes often comes with a heavy price – certain individuals may not be able to find a job, a spouse, a home, or even negotiate the bureaucracy of state institutions.

So, if I want to find the moral code and cultural integrity that I at first felt was missing in Egypt, my answer is to look at the very aspect of its society with which I am most ignorant - its religious creed.

Will this be enough to turn me into an Pharoah-phile?

[After reading all the Egypt blog posts, you can view a full photo gallery here: Photo Gallery - Egypt Slideshow ]