Egypt Recapped

Our pre-cruise visit to Egypt was organized at the last minute because of a late change in the original cruise itinerary. Two days didn't seem nearly long enough but it would have to do, that's all we had. It also meant that we wouldn't get any real sleep for almost five days. Despite all that, we knew we had to do it and everything fell into place so effortlessly that we just had to go for it.

Egypt was everything I had thought it would be and more. Being there allows you to grasp the essence of this ancient place in a way that no book, movie or history lesson can convey. Feeling the grit in your mouth as the wind picks up the desert sand in the Giza plateau; seeing the entrances to the tombs of the slaves who died while building the pyramids; tasting the sweetness of a sugar pie from a local bakery, so fresh it is still too hot to eat; standing next to the Sphinx, which turns out to be smaller than you thought it would be and yet larger than life. I'm so glad we came.

The population of Egypt is about 90 million people and approximately 21 million of them call Cairo home. It is the largest city in Africa and the Middle East and was founded 1,400 years ago where the Nile widens into a fertile delta. Cairo is a hectic place; people honk their horns all the time; not in the aggressive, exasperated way you hear in South America or even Europe, more like a short warning toot which most of the time seems to be just for the heck of it. There is garbage strewn about, there is insane traffic where cars on seven lane-wide avenues are constantly shifting lanes for no discernible reason, and every one of them toots their horn as they go.

Without the Nile there would be no Egypt. The river creates a long verdant strip that splits the country from the south to the north where, having traveled through Africa from its source in Lake Victoria, it empties into the Mediterranean Sea. The Old Kingdom started in the 3rd millenium BC with the uniting of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first king Menes. Its capital was Memphis, south of Cairo, and then Luxor. This is when the Kheops and Khephren pyramids where built at Giza. The country then begins its decline and breaks up into small kingdoms. Finally, under king Mentuhotep I, the kingdom reunites, Thebes becomes the capital and the arts and literature reach their zenith. Then it is invaded by the Hyksos with their horse chariots.

During the 16th to 12th centuries BC the New Kingdom is once more reunited, it becomes an imperial state extending its borders and power, and reaches the greatest period in history. This is where a new religion is briefly introduced replacing all the Egyptian gods with one god, Aton. And on and off it goes, from invasions to reunification, until Alexander the Great conquers Egypt in 332 BC. This is the Late Period, during which Cleopatra reigns. She seduces Julius Ceasar and when he dies she gives her support to Mark Anthony who gives her back part of the empire. There is a big naval battle, and Octavian claims Egypt as a Roman province. Dear old Cleo commits suicide.

An Arab invasion begins the spread of islam and in 969 AD Cairo becomes the new capital. The Ottoman Turks conquer Egypt in 1517, it is later occupied by Napoleon and the French begin restoration of monuments and tumbs. The 1800s, under the reign of Mohammed Ali, see the modernization of Egypt and the Suez Canal opens in 1869. Egypt is under British occupation from 1882 until World War II but power remains with the British until it is declared a republic in 1952 when Nasser becomes head of state. He is succeeded by Sadat until he is assassinated in 1981 and Mubarak takes control for the next 30 years until early 2011, when a revolution results in Mubarak's ousting and the dissolution of the constitution and parliament. Morsi takes over the presidency in 2012 but a popular uprising puts an end to his rule merely a year later when, in June of 2013 a military interim government is set up. The military holds control but word is that the Muslim Brotherhood is managing to infiltrate the higher military ranks and this spells more trouble ahead.

 

 

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Day 2 - Cairo

We overnighted at the Hilton Luxor and had our first decent sleep in three days. Even so, we awoke at 4 am to start our journey back to Cairo. Breakfast boxes from the hotel in hand, we took the 6:30 flight to Cairo and got there just in time to start our planned tour of the Egyptian Museum and the Giza Plateau - we could not cram much more into the day as we had to be back at the airport for our flight to Mumbai at 4:30 pm.
The Egyptian Museum is just unbelievable. We have seen various Egyptian exhibits at the Met, the Louvre and the British Museum, plus we saw the traveling Tutankhamon exhibit when it came to the BC Royal Museum. Well, all those combined are but drops in the bucket of Egyptian antiquities housed at the Egyptian Museum (the new one being built near the pyramids should have been ready two years ago but there's still no official opening date) and that is what you can actually see, which is only a tiny fraction of what's kept below in storage, not even catalogued.
There were so many highlights (no photographs allowed so nothing to post here) that it's difficult to list them, but my two favourites were without a doubt, the mummies room and the contents of King Tut's tomb. If there was one thing over which I had mixed feelings, was that having seen the real Rosetta Stone at the British Museum (of which there's only a copy here) I could understand the Egyptians' less than kind feelings about the plundering of their national treasures, which they are very slowly and not very successfully trying to recover.
One thing we observed while in Egypt, was that we felt absolutely safe. There was not much of a military presence in Luxor but in Cairo, around Tahrir Square, there was an amazing show of preparedness, both police and military. Again, at no time did we feel in danger or any kind, only sadness at the damage being done to the Egyptian tourism industry by the overblown media reporting of isolated events. The picture below shows an entire column of tanks at the ready in the narrow street between the museum and the Ritz Carlton.

Egyptian Museum

Tanks at the ready

From the museum we were off to Giza. Some people had told me that after Luxor's magnificence, the pyramids and the Sphinx can be a bit of a let down. Well, let me tell you that's not the case. The pyramids are just as fantastic a sight and the Sphinx, which is perhaps smaller than one may think it is, all together create the most amazing set of monuments set against the backdrop of modern Cairo. A camel ride was also in order; tourist trap? sure, but riding on the back of a camel surrounded by the sheer magnificence of the plateau is quite something.
I honestly could have spent hours and hours there, just taking in the ever-changing view of the pyramids; drifting clouds making shadow plays on them, making one look almost white while the next one took the darkest of shades.

To round out our day in Cairo we ate some delicious traditional sweets on our way to the airport. We didn't see much of Cairo itself; we drove from the airport through busy, heavy traffic, mostly along highways and a major road called 6 of October (marking the date of the revolution) where we saw nice examples of the city's arabic and British architecture; we drove by Hosni Mubarak's house (a humongous enclave where no one lives nowadays but which is heavily guarded by the military), and along some of the poorer areas of the city marked by an unending collection of half-finished brick buildings. Our guide told us that those "buildings" where in fact family homes; traditionally, extended families live all in one house but on different floors, so that floors are added as the family grows but the construction never really ends and not much money, if any, is spent on finishings such as stucco, paint, windows, etc.

One sight that surprised me was that on the way to Giza and along what seems to be a canal, the banks are used as a dump by the neighbourhood's inhabitants. I saw women hurtling garbage bags and multitude of birds picking at the monumental amount of rubbish accumulated on either side of the canal. What was surprising to me was that the road is a main route to Giza and therefore one of the tourists' first impressions, and there seems to be no attempt at cleaning it up. On to Mumbai we go.

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Day 1 - Luxor

We arrived in Cairo at around 1 am on Sunday and were quickly and efficiently handled by the tour company rep, Mustafa who took us straight to our hotel, the Gabriel. It is a small boutique hotel not far from the airport but by the time we got there it was already 2 am and we had to be up by 4:15 to catch our flight to Luxor. We really hadn't slept very much at all during our flights and, of course, the more we tried to sleep knowing we only had two hours, the harder it was. But never mind that, it's all so worth it!

We started our day with a brief stop to admire the Avenue of the Sphynxes. This magnificent new find (only discovered five years ago or so) consists of approximately 5,000 sphynx statues lining a wide path that joins Karnak and Luxor temples.

Our first tour was of Karnak Temple, where our guide, Sayed, explained that each of the 40 cities of ancient Egypt had a main god, to whom the main temple was dedicated. In this case, Karnak is dedicated to Imn Ra, which means "The Invisible Sun". Imn Ra's manifestation is the ram and his wife Mwt's is the lioness and this is evidenced by the multitude of sphynxes in the temple with a ram's head with a lion's body.

Karnak Temple is magnificent. As the story goes, every year on July 20 Imn Ra would

sail up the Nile on the solar boat from Karnak to Luxor temple to visit Mwt and create a child. Karnak temple was built by Ramses II, who despite having 102 wifes, loved Nefertari the most and is shown in the picture above between Ramses' legs. Ramses II is shown holding a flail and a croock, the symbols of a farmer and a sheppard.

There are 134 columns and two standing obelysks at Karnak Temple, each column richly covered in hyeroglyphics, some of which, despite having been exposed to the weather for several thousand years, still show vivid colours.

Each Pharaoh had two names, one for when he was King (son of a Pharaoh) the "earthly" name, and one for when he became Pharaoh (the "heavenly" name). The cartouche in the picture above shows Ramses II's earthly name which means King of Upper and Lower Egypt and depicts a bee and a flower, his heavenly name below, shows the goose and the solar disc, meaning Son of the Sun.

From Karnak Temple we went to Luxor Temple, the temple dedicated to Mwt. Much different than Karnak, it has a very large open area lined with columns, a unique characteristic of Luxor temple is that it contains within both a Christian church and a mosque.

Picture above shows King Tutankhamon and his wife.

Mosque inside the temple

We then took a five minute boat ride across the Nile to the Valley of the Kings. After an introduction at the visitor centre we made our way to the tombs area on a funny, disney-like electric train; there we visited four tombs, each one different but all sharing the common elements of the hyeroglyphics and other symbols depicting the king's life. No pictures are allowed in the valley at all, but the vivid colours and bright scenes are imprinted in my memory (and on the expensive postcards we bought).

The valley itself is contained within magnificent limestone mountains, one of which (photo below taken from behind the valley, at Queen Hatshepsut's temple) is a perfect natural pyramid. Our guide filled our heads with the myths and myriad details necessary to understand what we were seeing, patiently explaining the significance of symbols and stories. It was here that King Tutankhamon's tomb was found, one of very few tombs that had eluded tomb raiders. This was, as Sayed explained, because when King Ramses III went to build his tomb, he decided to do so right on top of King Tut's (lots of bad blood here) and as Ramses' tomb was excavated, Tut's was covered. This saved the tumb from robbers until it was discovered intact in the early 20th century.

Natural "pyramid"

Our last stop of the day was Queen Hatshepsut's Temple, and what a splendid sight it is!

The temple was rebuilt in the 1920s following an earthquake which had destroyed it, thus the "new" feel to it, despite the fact that it was rebuilt in faithfull detail based on a model made by the temple's orginal architect. Queen Hatshepsut's story is worth telling; born a Queen, she was 100% of royal blood because her father was a Pharaoh and her mother a queen. The problem was that she was a woman and as such, it was her half-brother (who was the son of a secondary wife of the Pharaoh) who inherited the throne. The brother was only five years old when the Pharaoh died and Hatshepsut swiftly took care of things by imprisoning the kid for fifteen years, during which she ruled. She dressed like a man and wore a false beard so as to be respected as the ruler.

Finally, the Colossi of Memnon. The day ended with a lovely late lunch at the Moon Valley Restaurant. This place is where locals eat and the food was beautifully fresh and tasty.

Tomorrow, Cairo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Third time's the charm...

After booking - and cancelling - two cruises to the Middle East in the past few years, this is it.  We're all set to go, this time on the Seabourn Sojourn on an 18 night cruise departing from Mumbai and ending in Athens.



This was not, however, the itinerary we had signed up for; as the name of the cruise "Egypt Gems and the Holy Land" implied, the main destination was to be Egypt, with an overnight stop in Luxor and a day each in Sharm-El-Sheikh and Sokhna (Cairo).

Then, with less than a month to go, the big bummer.  Seabourn cancelled all port calls in Egypt, resulting in a couple of nice substitutions: Kusadasi in Turkey, a second day in Israel, and a day in Mykonos (which is lovely but we've already been to), but overall a great disappointment.  Anyways, we immediately set to figuring out how we could do Egypt after all, and after some quick thinking decided to do it pre-cruise.

The most challenging part was changing our outbound flights to go to Cairo, not Mumbai, two days earlier than planned, and to arrange for a two day tour of Luxor and Cairo and then make it on time for embarkation in Mumbai.  It all worked out really well and now we're all set to go, just as new travel advisories for the Middle East are issued!

So, from Vancouver to Cairo and Luxor, then on to Mumbai, Oman, Jordan and through the Suez Canal to Israel, Turkey and ending in Greece, here we go.  Follow us as we travel through 5,000 years of history, I'll try to update the blog every couple of days.