C Travel Adventures

Bahariya Oasis on the horizon

I am currently nursing an electricuted hand, courtesy of the hostel computer which doesn’t really have any casing. So there is another excuse for any typos. Also, a notice for mum and dad, when I texted yesterday saying “the internet has desert” I actually meant that the desert has internet. It was too expensive to send another text correcting that.

Bedouin Tea on arrival

Yesterday we left Egypt’s sprawling metropolis of a capital for the Sahara Desert. We had originally planned to spend 4 nights in Cairo, but we felt that we had seen what we needed to see, and were also starting to get a bit tired of it. It is a city of 20 million people - an inconceivable amount that is nearly three times larger than London, and it heaves with an energy that is invigorating at first, but after with something as simple as crossing the road being fairly life threatening, we were after somewhere a bit calmer. The bus journey to the Bahariya Oasis took 5 hours and was an amazing experience. We drove through the oil fields to the west of the city where the landscape is completely barren, bar the odd oil derrick. Half way through the journey we stopped at a small bus station and this was probably the only thing that resembled a settlement on the 300km between Cairo and the oasis. To think that the Sahara continutes for thousands of miles beyond this is amazing. The oasis was exactly what I expected to be, except on a far larger scale - all of a sudden there is a shimmering on the horizon that develops into a large green area covered in palm trees. Bahariya consists of several oases, and we were staying at the main town - Bawiti. A minibus arrived to collect us from the bus station and took us back to the hostel, along with three french people who we got talking to.

Pick up truck ride to town

We arrived at the hostel and were given Bedouin tea (which is very sweet) to drink in the shaded seating area, before being shown to our room. I then spent two hours writing the preceding two blogs - it is a marvel that there is internet this far from civilization so I am not really complaining. The owners of the hostel offered to make us dinner while we went into town, so after a little wander to see the sunset we came back and had a meal of soup, local bread and fish - all for about 2GBP (there is no pound symbol and the word pound is confusing anyway). After the meal we were given fresh mango juice made from fruit picked from the garden, while we watched Argentina vs Brazil with Arabic commentary and also a comedy about two Egyptian guys on holiday in Bangkok which the family here found hilarious. The nights here are epic because the sky is so clear - my camera can just about take photos of the massive amount of stars.

Tom giving me a motorbike lesson

Woke up late the next morning, which was surprising considering that my bed is actually made of bricks. We showered, which was amusing because the water smells like rust and it is really just a hose on a hook. It was warm though so we can’t complain. We hitched a lift into town on the back of a pick up truck (all the locals drive them and are happy to let us hop in if we flag them down) and rented a motorbike for the day for 20GBP. A lot of the local Bedouin people have bikes and are happy to rent them out when they aren’t using them. Tom had ridden before and gave me and Danni lessons for the morning, which was fun but tough on the sandy streets - I fell off when I tried to go too quickly around a sandy bend, but its all cool. We then tried to go and find one of the springs around which the oasis is based, but only found little ones - or hot sulphurous ones that were not recommended. A local guy saw we looked confused and decided to help us, telling us that a cool spring was “one minute away”. Unfortunately it became clear that after half an hour of walking, ‘one’ was the only number he actually knew. Amusingly, when we arrived it turned out that it was a little warm pool with water that came up just above our ankles - so tomorrow we are going to go and find one we can actually swim in. After walking back into town and doing a bit of shopping and postcard writing, the three of us got on the bike and Tom drove us out into the desert.

Tom and our motorbike

This journey was epic, and three English people on a motorbike was definitely the most exciting thing that the town had seen in a while - EVERYONE waved or said hello. It took us five minutes or so to negotiate the town centre and to reach the desert beyond, where the roads are deserted and we were able to reach far higher speeds (nothing unsafe mum and dad - I’m still alive right?). After driving about 20km out of town, to where there was nobody around at all, we parked the motorbike by the side of the road, took the key out and wandered out into the desert. The Bahariya oasis is surrounded by high cliffs and mountains made of sand and rock, so we picked one and decided to climb to the top of it. The walk wasn’t as tough as I thought it would be - there were a lot of rocks in the sand which were good for getting grip. At the top, me and Tom who were slightly ahead of Danni had the one in a life time experience of seeing a desert fox. Apparently they are incredibly rare, but unfortunately we scared it off as we got over the crest of the ridge. We decided to try and follow it, walking further into the desert whilst vaguely following its tracks, but we didn’t find it. We headed back to the ridge and found a load of broken pottery which could have come from anywhere - Ancient Egyptians, Romans, Englishmen and Bedouin have all settled in the oasis, so to find pottery was epic. We had a team photo on the ridge and then ran back down the dunes towards our motorbike. It was approaching the time that we had promised to return the bike and it was getting dark, so we headed back into town as the sun setI decided I felt comfortable enough to hold my camera whilst on the bike, so there are now some EPIC video clips of us riding through the desert and the town, with every local that you see waving at us.

View over the Sahara

We hitched back to the hostel after a quality day and are now sitting around watching the TV and will go out for dinner in a bit. We don’t know quite what we are doing tomorrow - we would like to find a cold spring and are also tempted to spend a night camping in a Bedouin village, but the prices they are charging are very high. Who knows. But log in tomorrow anyway.

Team photo

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I have just received a text from Ellie saying that there are two typos in the first paragraph of the first blog (found below). If it is any excuse, this keyboard is in arabic and is very sticky. But apologies.

Preparation of a cow for Eid

After rejecting both the 4am minaret alarm and the 9am alarm that we set, we settled on getting up at 10. Danni and I walked out onto the balcony to find that the mosque below was in the process of slaughtering and preparing a cow for the Muslim festival of Eid. The festival is a family time and is marked by the traditional preparation of half an animal for the family and the other half for poorer people. This was what we saw happening and watched with fascination as the head was hacked off, the skin torn off and the guts pulled out by a group of around 10 men. The reason that I haven’t been able to get on a computer until now is that the internet cafes have been shut for Eid - just like the Grand Bazaar was shut when I was in Istanbul for Eid last year. An annoying coincidence. We still had an appetite for breakfast after the slaughter however and ate before we got a taxi for the Pyramids. Tom had already been, so Danni and I lost our Arabic speaking guide. We were still able to travel the 12km to Giza on a combination of the Cairo metro (which rivals any that I have been on in the west) and a taxi. The outgoing journey cost 11EGP for the two of us - about one british pound.

Me and Danni in front of the Great Pyramid

There are two things that struck me first about the Pyramids. The first being just how much they dominate the surrounding area of city, which comes right up to it (they would be visable from most of the city if it weren’t for the Cairo smog) and the second being just how small the Sphynx is in real life. We paid our entrance fee and wandered towards the base of the Great Pyramid, past people selling all kinds of Ancient Egypt minatures and offering rides on camels and rather ill looking horses. It was here that we picked up the camel owner who, after following us and lowering his price as he went, we chose to give us a tour. This meant that we had to partake in the terrifying, but worthwhile experience of getting up on to, travelling around on, and getting back off, a camel. They are remarkably tall, because the passengers sit on the hump which towers above people on the ground. The tour lasted for about an hour and yielded several once in a lifetime photos. It was ridiculously expensive (in Egyptian terms - we are now all massively stingy and will quibble over as little as 50p) but we were willing to pay as he had been friendly and had warded of the numerous little kids who spent their time riding around on horses, trying to scare the camels and in doing so cause them to throw off their tourists. Our guide even said he loked like his son - which was a nice attempt at making me like him, but was pretty inconceivable considering that I have yet to see a ginger Arab.

Blinded by the Light - notice man with pizza board

After the epic camel we wandered around for a bit, went down into a small tomb (we weren’t able to go under the Pyramid itself as the number of tickets was restricted and they had run out) and then headed for the exits. One of the major flaws on my travels is that I am bad at fitting in meals - last night our dinner consisted of the free bar snacks at the Four Seasons. As a result we didn’t have lunch until 4 in the afternoon and by then were so hungry that we went to the first place we saw - the Pizza Hut opposite the Pyramids entrance. It was far cheaper than in England and the food was similar, and there was the added advantage of a terrace overlooking the Pyramids. It was up here that we found a group of other English speaking backpackers - Aussies, Canadians and Americans, who wanted to watch the “Light and Sound Spectacular” at the Pyramids, but weren’t willing to pay for it. Unfortunately the authorities had realised that people would try and “steal” their show by watching from outside the gates, so had put massive floodlights up that shone onto the terraces of the surrounding buildings. We shielded our eyes though with whatever we could (Lonely Planets, cardboard boxes and even, amusingly, a pizza serving board) and actually saw a fair bit. It was pretty cheesy and not worth the 95EGP entrance price, and the cynical attitude of the 15 or so English speakers we spent time with made it far more amusing than if we had paid.

The Pyramids illuminated

The “spectacular” finished at half 7 and we made our way back to town and met Tom for dinner - a full meal which cost about 1.50GBP each. A lot of locals were about for Eid and Tom said that this was because all of the children get a new pair of clothes from their parents for the festival, and walk around town showing them off. We ate our takeaway dinner on our hotel balcony and stayed up talking with the owners until midnightish when we went to bed. We would be leaving at 8am for the town of Bawiti in the Bahariya Oasis about 300km west of Cairo in the Sahara Desert. Worlds apart.

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Sorry for taking so long to update the blog - I am now in the Sahara Desert at the Bahariya Oasis, where the internet is easier to come by than in Cairo. With a new era of blogging comes a new format. I now plan to write my blog “on the hoof” in my moleskine diary and ten just type it up when I get to an internet cafe. This is partially because with a third world internet connection, I don’t want to hang about, but it is mainly because I aspire to be like the hypothetical love child of Indiana Jones and Howard Carter. And this hypothetical love child would carry a moleskine.

We had to get up at like half 4 in the morning for our 9am departure. I did some last minute packing and found that my watch had stopped, leaving me with the choice of either having no watch (which would kill me) or borrowing mum’s pink Swatch. I went with the latter and all of the Egyptian men give me funny looks. The flight out (Heathrow to Cairo with BMI) was very painless - we arrived early and didn’t queue at any of the desks or checks, allowing me time to buy some sunglasses and an epic full English breakfast. The flight was just over 4 and a half hours long and as it included TVs in the seats, lunch (all day breakfast amusingly) and free drinks - the two of us had wine, the time flew by. Like the plane did. See what I did there. Upon arrival we headed through passport control and got our visas with Danni getting her stamp from Canada completely obliterated by the massive Egyptian one. In her annoyance she left her passport on the customs desk (tourist mistake number 1), but luckily the guy shouted after her. The hostel sent a free pick up to the airport, but it took a while for us to find our name sign as the guy had written “Mr Alex” on it. I commited tourist mistake number 2 as I tried to get into the driver’s door. We are learning.

The view from the balcony

The drive to the hostel on the roads of Cairo was an experience in itself. There was a constant sound of horns, the road markings appeared to be strictly decorative, there were no rear seatbelts and there was a variety of people and animals walking around the roads/highways. However we arrived at our hostel (Hotel Meramees) in one piece and waited around for Tom to turn up before going out for a late night walk to the River Nile - an experience that was quite special, with it being probably the most famous river in the world. We also had our first Egyptian meal at the grand cost of 57p each for a chicken sandwich. Our hotel has a balcony over the street, so we sat up until the early hours.

The Egyptian Museum, Cairo

Tom had been staying at a different hostel and had already been to the Egyptian Museum, so didn’t make his way over with us in the morning. We were woken up at about half 4, by our very own “Allah Akhbar” alarm clock - the balcony on our room is literally in front of a minaret, before heading downtown. The museum is very grand and surrounded by massive security - we went through two sets of metal detectors. Unfortunately we couldn’t take photos and its hard to describe the place, but part of the spectacle is the sheer amount of artifacts and how intricate and intact they are. The museum itself is pretty rustic, but this is part of its charm - despite the grand building, it has the feel of an old fusty bookshop. The only part of the museum with shiny steel and glass is the Tutenkhamun exhibit - this was so amazing to see “in the flesh” that we went in and saw it twice. On the topic of “in the flesh”, we decided to pay the extra fee to visit the special exhibit holding the actual 4000 year old corpses of the Pharoahs - so we have seen the actual body of people like Ramses and Nefertiti, which when you think about it is massively impressive.

The Citadel, Cairo

We left thoroughly impressed and met Tom before getting a taxi to the citadel - the 700 year old castle complex that used to be home to the rulers of Egypt. The area is built on top of a hill with a wall around it and contains several mosques and museums along with epic views of the city. There were however loads of touts and sellers and we received our first offer for Danni’s hand in marriage - in the form of 50 million camels. So you won’t be hearing anything else of her, but we now have a lot of free transport which is nice. The people of Cairo are very talkative - they always say hello and welcome to Cairo and only a small proportion actually then proceed to try and sell you stuff. They seem genuinely warm and interested. Next to the citadel is Al-Azhar Park, which used to be a landfill site, but was turned into the city’s only park (and green space). It was very well laid out, with rivers, streams and gardens along with a well priced restaurant where apparently Cairo’s elite hang out. We ate there - me and Tom were adventurous and tried the Lebanese chicken, only to find it was very…youghurty. Having finalised our plans for the rest of the trip, the three of us (we didn’t actually trade Danni) went to the train and bus stations to get tickets for the rest of the trip.

Buddha Bar - Sofitel Hotel, Cairo

After returning to the hostel and freshening up, we went out to sample the other side of life in Cairo at the Four Seasons Hotel bar, on the banks of the Nile. We were welcomed in and sat at a polished table next to the grand piano and a view over the river and the high rise city centre. After a bit of sipping expensive spirits, we went for the equally upmarket but slightly more exciting “Buddha Bar” at the Sofitel Hotel. The security was tight, but once inside it was wonderfully opulent and there seemed to be an assumption that as three 18 year olds had the nerve to sit at the bar of a five star hotel, we must be someone important and were treated as such by the staff. We stayed out until like 3am - early by Cairo standards, and got a taxi back to the hotel. A classy end to a very busy day.

Me and Tom at the Four Seasons

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It is now November and Overlord is long gone. For the last few months I have been restlessly working to earn money for a few more adventures over the coming ‘gap’ year. I am hoping that gap is a rubbish way of describing the coming year as I am intent upon it being very well filled. The first part of this filling the gap comes in the form of a 10 day trip to Egypt. For all of you avid Overlord followers who witnessed the dramatic cliffhanger in Ljubljana which left me without a passport, I am pleased to tell you that I have a new one. I have to say that Egypt hadn’t particularly occurred to me as a destination and the principle reason for my travelling there is that I have a friend out there already. Tom, of being hit by a branch through the train door fame, is currently in Alexandria teaching English and will be our in country rendezvous. I say we because I shall have an accomplice for my trip - Danni Swinburne for all those who don’t know.

After Overlord, a name which was originally a joke between me and Daniel in the common room, stuck so emphatically to our interrailing in Europe this summer, (www.overlord2010.blogspot.com) I wanted to try and think of a catchy title for this trip. At first Operation Pharaohlord/Overpharaoah seemed promising, until I decided it sounded ridiculous and realized that perhaps the trip didn’t suit a nickname. The blog, however, needed a title and this would have to incorporate something Egyptian, with the fact we are going in winter, with a bit of Britishness and this of course led to Ice Cold in Alex. For those of you who don’t know, this is a fiction book written about a group of British soldiers in World War Two who are stranded in the Egyptian desert and spend a lot of time thinking about having an ice cold beer in Alexandria when they find civilization again. It is tenuous and nowhere near as catchy as Overlord, but it will do until I can think of something better. At the very least, my name is Alex and I am so cool I am ice cold. Or something.

I have, of course, planned the trip extensively. We depart on the 14th November from Heathrow to Cairo and arrive back from Luxor on the 24th November. We are lucky that at the start of November, Easyjet opened up a route from Gatwick to Luxor which is a third of the price of British Airways/BMI/Egyptian Airways, who have up until now held the monopoly on flights to Egypt. There is a good chance that it will open up the country to budget travel. At the moment, the itinerary is thus:

14th Nov to 18th Nov - Cairo

The Pyramids at Giza, Cairo

18th Nov to 20th Nov - Alexandria OR one of the Oases

Alexandria Harbour

Siwa Oasis

20th Nov to 24th Nov - Luxor

Hatshepsut’s Mortuary Temple, Luxor

Having said that Egypt hadn't occurred to me as a destination, there isn’t really a good reason why not. As Lonely Planet points out, tourists have been arriving in Egypt for thousands of years - thinking about it, there are few cities in the world that evoke such feelings on interest and exoticism as Cairo. For the modern tourist it has everything - some of the most famous sites in the world (including the only remaining wonder of the ancient world), a culture that is very different to the west, a wonderful warm winter climate and, from what I gather, enough chaos that to plan and pull off a trip there should give a real feeling of achievement. Out of my travels to date, I feel that this trip is the most challenging. It isn’t as long and complex as Overlord, or as dangerous as Costa Rica, but we are truly going to be a lot more isolated in Egypt - with neighboring countries of Libya, Sudan, Israel and Palestine, it is clear that this region of the world is one of the most volatile. I say that I think we will feel isolated because of the language gap - Arabic is so completely different to English that it will be impossible to translate any signs in Arabic script. I am hoping that the English (and more recently Americans) have had enough of an imprint for multi-language signs to be common.

The hotel in Cairo is very budget - it costs £3 per night per person, but it has very favourable reviews (apart from a few which say there tend to be a lot of dead cats around, but some people are just overly negative). In Luxor we are going a bit more upmarket (to £15 per person per night) and this will get us a hotel with a rooftop swimming pool and a Nile view balcony. Our primary means of travel around the country is the railway system, a remnant of the British colonial days. The trains apparently have three classes, appropraitely named first, second and third. A third class ticket from Cairo to Alexandria costs about 50p, A first class ticket costs about £5. As I say, there is definitely the potential for shoestring budget travelers to start arriving here. There is a gap between Cairo and Luxor which is, painfully for me, as yet unplanned. What we do in these few days will be decided when we are in country. The original plan was to spend some time with Tom in Alexandria, but it now looks like he will join us for the whole trip and he says there isn’t much point in going there, so who knows where we will end up. We depart in just over a week’s time. See you in Cairo.

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