4/29 - 5/3
The overnight bus was less than fun, but not as bad as we had anticipated. We were unceremoniously dumped on the outskirts of Delhi though - I should have confirmed the exact destination. An hour of laid-back haggling while we woke up and sipped on chai got us a reasonable taxi price, but we got taken to a real shit-hole of a hotel. Luckily I recognised the area so we paid off the driver and found ourselves a reasonable place to stay nearby.
After checking in and showering the water cut out and remained off all day as the temperatures soared to 41C. We eventually got a trickle of water at around 11pm, then about 3 hours sleep. At 4am we were wandering the streets trying to wake up auto-rickshaw drivers until we found one to take us to the airport.
All this should have left us exhausted, but by the time we got to Cairo I was feeling OK as we trudged about looking for accommodation. Everything we found was in the region of 90-150 Egyptian Pounds, so when an old geezer promised us a 40 pound room we followed him through the streets and ended up at a really fancy place for 100 pounds. Figure that out. Actually, despite the dodgy start the staff were really nice. The hotel was a brand new venture they'd started just weeks before the revolution cleared the streets of tourists and replaced them with people running and the whiff of tear-gas. We arranged trips to the Pyramids, the nearby desert and some decent restaurants through the hotel, and although they weren't the cheapest option around they protected us from the worst of the scams and did their best to ensure we had a good time.
This is the ridiculous bed of the 'honeymoon suite' they gave us on our return to Cairo from the western desert.
So, things to do in Cairo: Visit the museum, the citadel, the grand mosques, the Pyramids and Tahrir square where revolutionary fervour still ran high.
Talking about the revolution, it affected us in only a few ways. Prices were cheaper, hotels had rooms, people passing us on the street cried 'welcome!' all the time and more than a few people had interesting tales to tell and opinions to opine.
First stop: Food. Good shwerma, OK fuul and cheap kushari filled our bellies, and along with falafel, pita, feta and chicken that's pretty much all we ate in Egypt.
Second stop: Books. Guide books may be useless for finding accommodation and restaurants, but to get a decent grounding in a country's culture, language, food and attractions and provide a bunch of maps there aren't any better options.
We were impressed by the book market, with dozens of stalls like the one below and a few more organised ones. We offloaded our battered old Rough Guide of India and picked up the newest edition of the Lonely Planet with just a touch of mould for less than 5% of the price listed at high street stores.
The Egyptian museum was fascinating. History from 8,000BC, achievements 1,000s of years ahead of other civilisations. Mummies were a highlight, of course, but a few things stood out for me, stuff I hadn't known before.
The oldest surviving boats in the world are there.
The really rich Pharaohs, like Tutenkamen, could end up with all their wrappings, amulets and trinkets, a massive funeral mask of gold, then a solid gold sarcophagus, then a gold leafed wooden sarcophagus, then an outer wooden or stone sarcophagus. That's a whole lot of layering.
Most people know about hooking the brain through the nose, and all the guts through the waist. I didn't know the corpse underwent 40 days of desiccation with sodium bicarbonate, that the heart was often left in, or that later embalmers often replaced the dried organs into the chest.cavity. Oiling and wrapping took another 30 days. Stones or onions replaced the eyes!
One of the mummies was 180cm tall, a veritable giant for the age.
Regular folk were supposed to have their heart weighed in the afterlife and depending on its weight it'd either be eaten or they'd be admitted to paradise. Pharaohs might not have had to go through that, but they had to go on a 12(?) hour night-time journey with the sun god, and hopefully defeat the serpent and its minions to ensure another day dawns. Quite a responsibility, and entire walls and rooms were decorated with inscriptions describing this journey and how to prepare for it.
Holy animals - unusually large or coloured - were afforded as much respect when being mummified as a Pharaoh They were considered gods in their own right.
Incestuous marriage was the norm, a Pharaoh would marry his sisters, his mother.
The Valley of the Kings and other sites were looted and raided by farmers, locals or the guards themselves as the Egyptian empire crumbled. Priests rescued the mummies and artefacts they could and often piled them all on top of each other in more secret locations. Imagine that, the poor wrapped corpses, gods in the minds of those that protected them, stripped of all their jewellery and stacked up like firewood.
The museum exterior. Note the burnt out building in the background.
The overnight bus was less than fun, but not as bad as we had anticipated. We were unceremoniously dumped on the outskirts of Delhi though - I should have confirmed the exact destination. An hour of laid-back haggling while we woke up and sipped on chai got us a reasonable taxi price, but we got taken to a real shit-hole of a hotel. Luckily I recognised the area so we paid off the driver and found ourselves a reasonable place to stay nearby.
After checking in and showering the water cut out and remained off all day as the temperatures soared to 41C. We eventually got a trickle of water at around 11pm, then about 3 hours sleep. At 4am we were wandering the streets trying to wake up auto-rickshaw drivers until we found one to take us to the airport.
All this should have left us exhausted, but by the time we got to Cairo I was feeling OK as we trudged about looking for accommodation. Everything we found was in the region of 90-150 Egyptian Pounds, so when an old geezer promised us a 40 pound room we followed him through the streets and ended up at a really fancy place for 100 pounds. Figure that out. Actually, despite the dodgy start the staff were really nice. The hotel was a brand new venture they'd started just weeks before the revolution cleared the streets of tourists and replaced them with people running and the whiff of tear-gas. We arranged trips to the Pyramids, the nearby desert and some decent restaurants through the hotel, and although they weren't the cheapest option around they protected us from the worst of the scams and did their best to ensure we had a good time.
This is the ridiculous bed of the 'honeymoon suite' they gave us on our return to Cairo from the western desert.
So, things to do in Cairo: Visit the museum, the citadel, the grand mosques, the Pyramids and Tahrir square where revolutionary fervour still ran high.
Talking about the revolution, it affected us in only a few ways. Prices were cheaper, hotels had rooms, people passing us on the street cried 'welcome!' all the time and more than a few people had interesting tales to tell and opinions to opine.
First stop: Food. Good shwerma, OK fuul and cheap kushari filled our bellies, and along with falafel, pita, feta and chicken that's pretty much all we ate in Egypt.
Second stop: Books. Guide books may be useless for finding accommodation and restaurants, but to get a decent grounding in a country's culture, language, food and attractions and provide a bunch of maps there aren't any better options.
We were impressed by the book market, with dozens of stalls like the one below and a few more organised ones. We offloaded our battered old Rough Guide of India and picked up the newest edition of the Lonely Planet with just a touch of mould for less than 5% of the price listed at high street stores.
On our return to Cairo we passed the same stall, where the inevitable had happened.
The Egyptian museum was fascinating. History from 8,000BC, achievements 1,000s of years ahead of other civilisations. Mummies were a highlight, of course, but a few things stood out for me, stuff I hadn't known before.
The oldest surviving boats in the world are there.
The really rich Pharaohs, like Tutenkamen, could end up with all their wrappings, amulets and trinkets, a massive funeral mask of gold, then a solid gold sarcophagus, then a gold leafed wooden sarcophagus, then an outer wooden or stone sarcophagus. That's a whole lot of layering.
Most people know about hooking the brain through the nose, and all the guts through the waist. I didn't know the corpse underwent 40 days of desiccation with sodium bicarbonate, that the heart was often left in, or that later embalmers often replaced the dried organs into the chest.cavity. Oiling and wrapping took another 30 days. Stones or onions replaced the eyes!
One of the mummies was 180cm tall, a veritable giant for the age.
Regular folk were supposed to have their heart weighed in the afterlife and depending on its weight it'd either be eaten or they'd be admitted to paradise. Pharaohs might not have had to go through that, but they had to go on a 12(?) hour night-time journey with the sun god, and hopefully defeat the serpent and its minions to ensure another day dawns. Quite a responsibility, and entire walls and rooms were decorated with inscriptions describing this journey and how to prepare for it.
Holy animals - unusually large or coloured - were afforded as much respect when being mummified as a Pharaoh They were considered gods in their own right.
Incestuous marriage was the norm, a Pharaoh would marry his sisters, his mother.
The Valley of the Kings and other sites were looted and raided by farmers, locals or the guards themselves as the Egyptian empire crumbled. Priests rescued the mummies and artefacts they could and often piled them all on top of each other in more secret locations. Imagine that, the poor wrapped corpses, gods in the minds of those that protected them, stripped of all their jewellery and stacked up like firewood.
The museum exterior. Note the burnt out building in the background.
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