Having good friends move to Cairo, Egypt ensured that we had to plan a visit in 2019 – how could we not take the opportunity to visit such a fabulous country. We made the decision early on to go without the boys - for many reasons but the amount of history and the cost were definitely deterrents. First impressions of Cairo was that the roads were really good, however the traffic rivalled Bangalore, and we never thought that would be possible!! Not sure if this was why the cars were all so horrible or not, but we didn't see a decent car in the 5 days we were there !!
After a fun night catching up with our friends we were ready to visit the Giza pyramids and be big time tourists. I am not going to regurgitate the history of the pyramids, as I am sure many of you will have more knowledge than I could ever have, and can definitely research better than me. First impressions was just utter amazement at how HUGE they are !! The 3 Giza pyramids that are for the king, son and grandson are all within the same region but not as close as many of the photos seem to portray and are various sizes. In the same area are the 3 much smaller pyramids of the queens and the Sphinx. The sheer magnitude of the pyramids and the sheer effort required to build these amazing structures had us spend a couple of hours completely aghast. What a feat of engineering!
We were warned by our guide to play ‘deaf and mute’ for the many hawkers trying to sell you things, take photos and generally annoy you while you are visiting most of the touristy places in Egypt. We are fairly used to that in India, so not a problem for us. There are loads of offers for you to ride a camel or take a horse and buggy around the area but all the animals do not seem to be in a good state and there is now encouragement to do quad biking instead to prevent these poor animals from suffering any more.
We then moved on to the Sphinx, which is surprisingly small but still very cool to see in the shadow of the largest Giza pyramid. The local villagers and the Pizza Hut have one of the most iconic views across the world and most of their buildings are slums. Crazy to think how much that view would cost ! I hope you enjoy the many photos I have included – it is just so hard to choose only a few. An unforgettable memory of one of the world’s great wonders.
In the afternoon we headed out of town to visit Sakaara, where the Step Pyramid of Djoser is situated which is the ancient burial ground for the ancient city of Memphis. The size, current state and location of these pyramids and tombs is simply amazing. The tombs are still in such great condition and the paintings on the walls so detailed and descriptive - hard to believe how long ago these were created.
During the day we escaped the heat and went to see the historic tradition of making paper from papyrys. It is an interesting process to go through but definitely a common tourist spot for guides to take visitors and the for them to purchase a little piece of Egypt.
We definitely fell in love with the Egyptian food - lovely grilled meat and delicious dips and bread. What's not to love ? In the evening we enjoyed a lovely evening eating and drinking on a traditional Egyptian boat, a Falooka, on the Nile. What a fabulous experience to share with great friends. I still cannot believe that we cruised along the Nile. I spent the entire time in Egypt pinching myself believing I was actually there.
We were lucky to be heading back in to town on Friday - being a weekend, the traffic was nearly non existent, and this allowed us to hit most of the remaining big tourist spots – the Salah El-din Citadel and the Mohammad Ali mosque. What fabulous view of Cairo from up there. We visited the area called Garbage city - where a slum settlement has been created where the people that live there collect, sort and then recycle/reuse each specific type of garbage for a specific purpose. The area is supposed to have a number of extremely wealthy people living there but each of them living a very content and simple life - even though it didn’t exactly smell like roses!!
Nearby to Garbage City there are 2 amazing churches that have been built into the side of the mountain. One is called the summer cave church, the other the winter. They hold over 2000 and 20,000 people respectively. Absolutely massive and yet another engineering feat. We finished off our sight seeing with a trip to the Egyptian museum which is currently being rebuilt at a new location and many items have already been moved to the new museum but the Tutenkamen exhibits were amazing.
We finished our visit in Cairo with a lovely dinner with friends and an early night before our trip to Luxor !
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