by Roy -

This article is written by Meenakshi Bhalla, a Businesswoman  and a travel writer, based in Mumbai, India

I remember the great excitement when I landed in Cairo the first time. Foreign land, in an unfamiliar airport, yet bubbling with unbridled excitement knowing I was in the land of the most ancient civilization ready to discover history for the first time in my life (despite having a double passport book)!

The airport was not glitzy but my God the city certainly looked snazzy! Flyovers crisscrossing zanily a la New Yorkesque, people buzzing busily on the streets, traffic zooming in all directions and the ride to the hotel saw me absorb all the sights and sounds in gulps!

Egyptians pay a lot of attention to traffic laws…and I understand why, better now- because of the much dreaded police (worst symbol of the tyranny of the Regime) who are autocratic, wilful and powerful.

Cabbies crazily and stubbornly don’t move their hands off the horns, as they weave in & out of traffic. The people who ride in public buses instinctively know when to jump out of harm’s way and onto the streets. The buses always overloaded with people, with barely any standing room, sway from side to side making their way on a busy road. I felt completely at home. These scenes are just the same in India:) Egypt to this extent was not another world…but sure, another culture with codes of their own which one definitely respected.

Culturally, Egypt is a Muslim country. Even in the big cities (Cairo, Giza, Luxor, Alexandria) a woman should have a male companion with her when on the street. Ladies should have shoulders and upper arms covered, closed neck top, skirt below the knees, pants are ok, but ought to be loose. Modesty is the key word. I respected their culture and adhered to the codes.

As hot as Egypt is, the warmest things I saw were the smiles of the children – sometimes I so wish for a world made of only children. We would have no corruption nor politics.

Smiling Cairo Kids

Love crosses cultural lines! Talking to Egyptians in a universal language (signs and symbols) was a wonderful experience. Walking through shopping streets I observed them as warm, loving parents with their children in the parks and malls. Speaking with foreigners I saw them flirt, guide, direct and converse intelligently. Cultural differences indeed vanish when people care! A positive environment is all that is needed.

The Nile River was just across the street from us, we took a cruise on the Nile. It is much larger than I had ever imagined. We met many young people who were out on a date, or accompanying their college/school for a picnic. Singing popular Egyptian songs set to rhythmic foot tapping beats ( a la Bollywood). As modern Egyptians lived their lives in a busy bustle, I also saw many people still living as they did many years ago. Fishing on the Nile for a livelihood (a la Kerala), washing off stream (a la Varanasi). Images of diverse India would flash past the mind, so often.

Did you know Egyptian influence is huge on French cuisine? Yep! An important influence of Egyptian cooking is the use of wine to soften meats and also to change the feel of vegetables. Many people think that it is part of French cuisine but actually wine has been in use by Egyptians in their cooking for many centuries. Bamya is a dish consisting of okra and meat which is made into stew. Though this is unique to the Egyptians, one can find this in French cuisine too. And omg the sweets/mithais of Egypt are to die for, those who have not read my older post < I have dedicated a post exclusively to Egyptian sweets.

Bamya: Meat & Okra Stew

The Cairo Museum: my first impressions of the beautiful landscaped gardens, an oasis of peace. And on the inside I do remember the mummies amongst a lot of other ancient treasures. Rooms full of mummies. And believe me, once you have seen one mummy, they all look alike:) But yesterday when I saw the museum on fire, my blood curdled and I wanted to shout and scream and run to save the museum! I felt sad for why would these pro- Mubarak protesters want to damage their own treasures? They have treasures that we don’t have. Their history goes back into the sands of time…the times of the Pharaohs, the times of the ruling Queens, the time of Moses, the time when Joseph & Mary fled with young Jesus…Why would they want to destroy something that is their own? Do they even understand and respect their history?:(

The Cairo Museum

Its surreal to see the unrest in Egypt. While I know and understand that the present day inhabitants of Egypt are not the indigenous people, I still feel a kindred spirit and very at home in Egypt. Many even thought I belonged to Egypt and spoke to me in Arabic! Regardless, whether they knew I was an Indian or a tourist I could see they generally wanted me to enjoy my stay in their country.

Fast forward to the unrest I see on TV, sure we are seeing one of the rarest of things — a moment when the people lose their fear of the State, when, as the Chinese say, “the mandate of heaven has fallen” and it is only a matter of time before the old regime must yield. Revolutions are great fun during their early days. (Despite the violence, there is an extraordinary exhilaration to them) Then food runs short, there is disorder, travel is disrupted, the economy grinds to a halt, and there is a longing for a return to a sense of order.

It is one thing for the people of a country to reject a leader. It is another thing entirely for a foreign nation to invade, particularly under false pretenses. The USA has been meddling in Egyptian business by supporting Mubarak for 30+years. Suddenly pushing him to acknowledge the will of his people is meddling? To be honest, I think that Egyptians probably understand more about freedom and democracy than Americans do, since it has been Egyptians who have been suffering under a dictatorship and right now it is Egyptians who are fighting and dying in the streets for their freedom.

It blows my mind that USA gets away by saying Egyptians only know Sharia Law and Theocracy. Umm, no, Egypt has been under a secular dictatorship. They know nothing except US-backed secular tyranny. Still, the fact that they are fighting valiantly for freedom and democracy gives me hope that they will indeed get their freedom and will cherish it. They will come to value it more than most Americans, I’m guessing.

Unlike other nations in the region, Egyptians are not aggressive; Cairo’s foreign policy itself is built on the very fact that its diplomats are often at the forefront of goodwill missions, engaged in peace conferences or acting as mediators in long-standing conflicts.

And finally on a very personal note: When I came back home to India I saw a sign that captured the source of my “energy” during my Egyptian adventure. The sign said, “What you are is God’s gift to you. What you do with your life is your gift to God!” For me, Egypt was an environment for imbibing, learning, discovering. I am immensely proud of that. Cross cultures do touch lives in amazing, positive ways! I hope and pray for peace to once again bring sunshine to the Egyptian lives soon.

Meenakshi Bhalla

2011

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by Roy -

This article is written by Manoj Radhakrishnan, an engineer and a travel photographer & writer based in Pune

There are not many countries in the world which present greater tourist attractions than Egypt and certainly not many with a longer history. Attractions in Egypt are so well known that the response to “I am off to Egypt” is always a “When?” and never a “Why?”. Not surprisingly, for the first time in three attempts, it wasn’t hard for me to convince a couple of my friends – Aravind and Kartik – to join me for a trip overseas. And my long cherished dream of visiting Egypt finally came true when I landed in Cairo late one sultry summer evening.

Travelling in Egypt, like travelling in any new region, had its share of idiosyncrasies. Adjusting to strange numerals in the automobile license plates to ceiling fans which ran faster at lower regulator settings was challenging enough, but the hardest thing to cope with was the security. It ranged from being forced to register your passport within the first week to walking through x-ray machines every time one entered a hotel, bank or a shop selling chewing gums. But the high point was definitely the intercity convoy – which is a bunch of tourist vehicles flanked by army trucks with each tourist vehicle having a pair of Kalashnikova carrying policemen. As if this wasn’t enough, the convoy always chooses to leave at the strangest early morning hours. The funniest part is that the convoy invariably falls apart within metres of leaving the city and the policemen always try to outdo each other in emulating Rip Van Winkle. Luckily, the convoy does not exist off the beaten track, that is if you can put Sinai and Alexandria in that category. Despite these minor glitches, the overall security in the country is enough to protect you from everything except perhaps the obstinate shop keepers who refuse to believe that one may not be interested in buying spices at three in the morning.

Given the security, it was no surprise to learn that Egypt is extremely safe to travel around. But it was definitely surprising to hear that the tourism wasn’t affected by the events of 11th Sep. The only thing that seems to keep the tourists away is the heat. Summer in Egypt is a constant 40 C + which, thanks to the hot winds, seems twice that in the Sahara. Even our group strength was only nine (four during the last week) – it is normally about twice as big. Some of us were badly affected by the heat and almost all of us were dehydrated at least once during our stay. On the bright side, enduring that heat offered us a chance to photograph the country’s monuments without having 200 clueless tourist staring randomly in the foreground. Luckily for me, I came back without doing much damage to my body. Although I am tempted to attribute it to my strong build and rugged lifestyle, the real reason for my good health is just dumb luck.

Egypt has enough history to leave anyone dazed. It is easy to feel intimidated by so many names and information hurled at you everyday. Although doing a bit of research before the trip helps, we quickly realised that our best defence was to hire a guide at every spot, be it a temple, tomb or a museum. Even in the following pages, I have tried my best to separate the historical information about the sites – all of which are accessible via hyperrlinks – from the general travel journal.

It is not possible for me to end this section without mentioning a strange torture me and my two friends were subjected to during our trip, we being singled out purely due to our country of birth. Everyone we met, passed by, ignored, saw, didn’t notice, was adamant in addressing us as Amitabh Bacchan, an Indian film star of the ’80s. How they could figure out our nationality is still beyond my comprehension and by the end of the trip, I was pretty much reduced to referring to my passport to remember my own name!

A night view of Cairo

We spent three days in Al Kahira (otherwise known as Cairo) which was just about enough to give us a taste of what the city has to offer. The first of those three days was spent at the two of the biggest attractions of the city viz., the Giza pyramids and the Egyptian museum. Over the centuries the pyramids seem to have become the symbol of not only the country, but of history itself. The impact of the first sight of them was pretty breathtaking to say the least. The pyramid of Kufu (Cheops), the tallest of the three Giza pyramids, is the only surviving member of the seven ancient wonders of the world and at a height of 140m, it also remained as the tallest structure in the world for over forty centuries.

The sphinx and the pyramid of Khafre (Chephren)

Our time at the site was spent going into the pyramid of Khafre (Chephren) – which involved crawling through a long dark narrow passage half the human height – looking at the 4500 year old solar boat of Kufu (currently preserved in a temperature and dust controlled museum) and driving to the nearest plateau point to get the view of all the three pyramids in one shot. And of course, no trip to the region is complete without gaping at the sphinx and visiting the valley temple of Chephren and the nearby Papyrus institute – all of which were duly completed before lunch. The Egyptian museum is so huge that it would take about an year to view all the exhibits. But a good guide can show you the highlights and probably teach you quite a bit of Egyptian history in less than two hours. We had a great guide, Sahar, and I probably learnt more from her in that afternoon than my month long self study prior to the trip. The highlight of the museum was definitely the Tutankhamun’s section and the mummy room. The gold collection of Tutankhamun makes one wonder how much a pharaoh like Ramesis the great could have carried to his grave when the least important boy king took west Africa’s budget deficit with him. The mummy room, on the other hand, presents you with an unique opportunity to look at Egypt’s greatest rulers centuries after they breathed their last.

The Step Pyramid Saqqara

We had our next free day in Cairo after we returned from Sinai to complete the first leg of our three week tour. That day the three of us along with Melody, Jane and David took a trip to Saqqara and Memphis and braved the scorching heat to visit the oldest stone structure in the world – the step pyramid of Djozer. Built in 27 century BC by Imhoptep, the step pyramid is still in a very good condition. Saqqara complex also houses many other tombs, most of which are always closed for renovation or excavation. The ones which were open included the funerary complex of Djozer, the pyramid of Teti with its famous pyramid text, and the 32 room funerary complex of his vizier, Mereruka. Memphis, the capital of the first dynasty (c. 3200 BC), contrastingly, has nothing to offer except a small museum housing a fallen statue of Ramesis II. This day was also the day when we bid farewell to half our group and the rest (the three of us and Melody) continued on to Siwa and Alexandria.

Alexandria Fortress Egypt

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