Walk like an Egyptian..

Getting out of India was just as bizarre as arriving..  Did you know that all passengers arriving in India get sprayed with pesticide?  It’s quite funny because the flight attendants walk up and down the aisles with aerosol cans, presumably to stop you bringing nasty germs into India.. ha ha…

Delhi is a major hub so a lot of flights are en route to somewhere else and leave at crazy hours.  Ours was leaving at 5.30am and so we allowed ourselves plenty of time to get to the airport and left the hotel about 1.30.  Lucky we did because check-in took about 45 minutes – the clerks like to chatter amongst themselves while they’re doing your boarding passes.  They have a grand old time but we were sitting at 6 different locations all over the plane.  Could we sit together?  Oh really – ok, no problem.  I”ll change it for you. 

Only passengers are allowed into the airline terminal and you must show your tickets and passports (plus go through baggage xray) to get in the door.  So we had already had one check; then the check of passports at check in; then you must have another check by a uniformed officer to go through another door; then immigration; then the baggage xray again with yet another check of passports.  At the baggage xray, you also have to have all your hand luggage stamped.  These guys were also having a whale of a time; laughing and hugging people they knew etc etc.

When they announced our flight and we went to board, yet another check of passports by another uniformed officer and also a check that our hand luggage was stamped – what a surprise -we had a couple of bags that didn’t have the stamp.  They made us go all the way back to the clowns at xray and put the bags through again and we had to get one of them to get out his little Colop stamper and make sure this time he actually stamped it.

Meanwhile, the plane is waiting for us to have a bag filled with colouring pencils put through xray!  They don’t care about liquids or laptops but watch out for those colouring pencils carried in an open bag by a 7 year old!!

So, Cairo..  We had read lots of stories from other travellers about how crazy Cairo was – the traffic is manic, the touts are out of control, it’s dusty and dirty etc etc.  Well lucky for us, we’d just been to India – the traffic was downright tame in comparison and the people were so darned polite we almost got in a car with the first person to approach us!

They also eat meat – that night we treated ourselves to grilled chicken and kofta – the first beef we’d eaten since McDonald’s in China.  Unfortunately, my stomach did not thank me for it but it tasted good at the time!

We went around the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities on the first day and the pyramids and sphinx the next.  That was when we got the first hint of what those other travellers were talking about.  Egypt is package tour heaven.  There were heaps of tourists everywhere we went but 98% of them were on a package tour and subsequently there’s not a lot to cater for us indies.

Signs like “No cameras allowed.  Leave your camera in the bus.” was not helpful to us without a bus!  They are pedantic about not taking photos at certain places, including inside the museum and at the Valley of the Kings – so all the good stuff I have no photos of.

We were amazed at the chaos at the pyramids.  The sphinx is fenced off but we walked all over ruins covered in hyroglyphics and even climbed up the side of one of the pyramids.  There are touts everywhere, selling camel and horse rides, drinks and junk souvenirs for outlandish prices.  They were all extremely persistent and everyone’s keen to get ‘baksheesh’ ie a tip (mostly for not doing much at all).

We left Cairo on the overnight tourist sleeper train to Aswan to find a boat to cruise up the Nile to Luxor on.  Once again, we had to fight off cruise ship touts who follow you down the road shouting prices.  We ended up getting a brilliant deal through Agoda to stay at a 5 star hotel and we booked the cruise through them.  Even then, I was expecting to turn up to the dock the next day and find a complete tub!

Turned out it was very very nice and we settled into luxurious cabins with picture windows, nice pool and pool deck and not forgetting the buffet breakfasts, lunches and dinners..  

We spent 2  nights on the cruise ship, which included docking at Kombombo and Edfu to see the temples, before arriving in Luxor.

The Valley of the Kings is an amazing sight in itself before you even see any of the tombs, which of course are pretty magnificent.  They are painted with hyroglyphics and pictures of offerings and gods of the underworld to progress the pharoah on his way in his afterlife.  You get to choose 3 tombs to visit and one of the ones we went to was extremely old and cut deep down into the side of the mountain.  We had to go up steps to enter and then go down another set into a chamber and then down another set into the actual burial chamber.  It was airless and hot inside and there was about 20 people milling around looking at the artwork all breathing the same air.  We were quite glad to get back outside.

As we had already been to the museum in Cairo and seen the Royal Mummy Room, we didn’t go into Tutankhamun’s tomb where his mummy is on display – you pay an extra 100 Egyptian pounds ($20AUD) for the privilege.  

By the time we had done the museum and visited 3 temples and seen 3 tombs, we felt we had been relatively successful in our Egyptian sightseeing and so it was time for some R&R and we headed for the Red Sea at Hurghada.

It was much cooler and we spent 3 nights at the super deluxe Marriott resort (once again an extremely good deal through Agoda).

Relaxed and refreshed, we hopped on the bus bound for Cairo to catch a flight to Jordan.