Egypty Days 1-2: run like an Egyptian...

11:04AM 24/3 Cairo/Giza

i'm waiting for the group outside the Hotel Zayed in Cairo and i can hear the call to prayer echoing off the buildings. i'm standing outside the Papyrus Temple in Giza and the call to prayer is going out over the tannoy at a nearby mosque. i barely notice the church spires in London, although if i search my memory i know that there are many. here the mosques are everywhere and when you're not used to seeing their tall, cylindrical spires then you notice them every time they break up the skyline. Egypt's been taken over time and again over the millenia since its own military power faded. they used to be the major power in the region, regularly fighting off the tribes of what is now Libya, the Nubians to the south and the Hittites from the East. since then the Persians (Xerxes), the Greeks (Alexander of Macedon), the Romans (Julius Ceasar), then later by the French (Napoleon) and English (who really cares? the English love taking over places - i swear they dived on Egypt so that they wouldn't feel left out). they've all left their mark in one way or another, but Islam stuck as it has a habit to, and now over 80% of the country is Moslem, the rest being Coptic Orthodox (yet another flavor of christian) and "Other".

flying into Cairo i didn't get to see much - sitting over the wing makes for shithouse mid-air sight-seeing. the BMI flight touched down in un-noteworthy fashion and parked. no terminal arms for these guys - it's an aeroplane car park. everyone hops out and onto buses that take you to the entrance. US$15 buys you a visa from the bank which gets pasted into your passport, then a surly looking guy stamps it and you're in Egypt. standing just inside the doors in no-man's-land were a couple of guys in suits or polo shirts waving clipboards with the tour company's names on them. hopping a tour seems the be one of the most popular ways to see this place. the signs are in Arabic. the people have a very different custom to where we're used to and getting around can be a nightmare even if you live here so why the fuck not? pay over some coin and let someone else deal with the mess while you get led around by the nose. GoBus have kept an eye on us every step of the way since we pulled up and there's been sights and tours and buses to everywhere we've been scheduled to go, but also with plenty of optional activities that you can take or leave if you just want some downtime or do your own thing.

the busload of people flying in from the UK for the tour assembled, shook hands, got to know and bummed smokes off each other outside the airport and we were loaded into a minibus to head for the hotel down an avenue lined with policemen every 50 metres or so (the President went for a drive earlier, so the coppers were out to keep an eye on things. apparently he can't understand why people think Cairo has a traffic problem) until suddenly the coppers were gone and the drivers threw their good behavior out of the window along with the rest of their rubbish. driving in Malaysia is a little daunting. roads in Thailand are pretty insane. Cairo's off the fucking charts. lanes? red lights? an Egyptian craves not these things. everyone's going everywhere and somehow, miraculously, i haven't seen any crashes or fatalities. Allah watches over these people or they'd all be fucking dead.

the tour company has deals going with hotels in the various tourist cities, or at least the prominent joint-signage leads me to believe. the bus pulls into a back-alley area of Cairo and disgorges wild-eyed tourists. the hotel's clean and tidy - two security guards ignore the beeping metal detector built into the doorway and the bar staff nod and smile while we eventually stop trying to work out what the fuck's going on and start to go with the flow. our passports disappear for a while, and eventually Louise and i are handed a room key and led up the elevator which's been painted with ancient-Egyptian themes. there are more of them in our comfortable little room and of course i can't resist taking photos. downstairs is a cafe with a room full of rugs, cushions and a low table with a hookah in pride of place - a couple of the Americans are already into the Shisha and there's a vibe of "what the hell?" floating around the place while the Aussies and the Kiwis start trying out the local brew. Louise and i have signed up for the evening's cultural event - a cuise down the Nile with a buffet and entertainment: a live DJ with singers and a troupe of drummers playing for the dervish and the belly dancer who come out after we've all finished eating and play with the crowd. she boogies on down, dragging the occasional member of the audience out to dance like a monkey before going table to table, cleavage flashing for the "professional" photographers who'll take your photo, get it printed out quick and try to sell it to you afterwards. it's popular around here, a slightly less sleazy version of "pay me 5 dollars for this photo or my father will beat me" game. yay! i'm in a photo with a half-naked (and very attractive) Egyptian girl! thanks but no my friend. the Dervish comes out, all copper-toned arabic good looks and a cheeky sense of humor, spinning like... well, a Dervish really. castinettes and skirts, pouring a glass of water and drinking it without stopping and spinning one of his skirts over his head while he goes over to give the ancient shrieking Cuban a kiss, which just makes him go off more. he was a old, white-haired gent who can't be long for this world, but he was having the time of his life... or what's left of it. i swear though, if he believes in reincarnation he's coming back as a fucking London Ambulance siren.

our friend the Dervish takes a break and his little buddy comes back. as something of a warmup there was a midget who came out to spin around and get some laughs. he was good though, and it's kinda nice to see that he's found a profession. where he can make some money and milk the tourist dollar. tourism is Egypt's 2nd biggest foreign-income. what the first is i've not yet been told but i'll pass it on if i find out. everything's designed to get you to come and spend up while you're here. it's a Developing Country, and with one of the Seven Ancient Wonders (unless they changed the list on me), on top of the beautiful temples and mysterious tombs, the beauty of the Nile and the fruits of its banks people are coming here in droves. if you come anyway, maybe you buy some postcards? i have beautiful statues. take a look at these laser-engraved pyramids my friend? i love your moustache! you look like Arab! where are you from! Aussie aussie aussie!

after a well needed crash we're up and downstairs in the restaurant by 7 for breakfast - a buffet of odds and sods - before loading up in the bus to head for the Cairo Museum. our guide is a funny Egyptian called Souphi, or Soobie as we're all calling him. he knows enough about the museum to be a guide there, and it shows. i thought the British Museum was a bit over the top. the Egyptian Museum in Cairo was once an impressive buiding, now run down with dust everywhere and the paint peeling. it's huge, and stuffed to the rafters with as many monuments, statues and relics as they can squeeze in there. this is where you can find pretty much the entirety of Tutenkahmun's Tomb, encased in glass and polished to perfection. Tut's was one of the few tombs that wasn't looted over the centuries - when they found it it was perfect, and because they didn't find it until after the British stopped being imperialistic arseholes they didn't get to nick any of it, so EVERYTHING is there, either gold or covered in gold leaf. it's impressive enough to knock you for 6, gaudy enough to make a Fillipino blush, as magnificent as anything i've ever seen. Tut died around the age of 19 in what archaeologists think may have been a hunting accident and the people were ao agrieved that he hadn't had the chance to build up much by way of riches that they went insane, loading him with everything they could find. the Pharohs were the sons of the Sun God Emon-Ra, and the glory shone on the king was reflected on his people. that generation must have gone to a VERY happy place.

Louise and i were left to our own devices for a while. there was the option to pay an extra 100 Egyption Pounds and get into the special exhibit where they have a dozen of the mummies of some of ancient Egypt's greatest kings, including Ramses II, but we decided instead to wander around and see as much as possible. we emerged into the sunshine and the garden out the front to meet back up with the group and head off - onwards to Giza and the (famous) pyramids (because there are more strewn around the contry) via the Papyrus Temple. the name is a bit confusing - it's a shop selling hand-painted knockoffs of classical pieces from antiquity on genuine papyrus paper, complete with a demonstration of how it's made. the were pretty, but i wasn't really caring much so wound up standing out the front watching the cars manage to not crash, pedestrians not die, and horse-buggy drivers not give a fuck about any of them. back on the bus and we were handed fantastic felafel sandwiches fron a nearby takeaway which the tourists crammed into themselves as we drove up to the pyramids.

"This is what you've waited your whole lives for!" proclaimed Soobie into the dodgy bus-mic as the bus pulled up in front of the man-made mountains that just about everyone not living in Bhutan heard or seen photos of. what can i say about it that hasn't been said before? they're fucking huge, beige and surrounded by touts. the tourists were running around like excited children, taking silly photos and climbing as far as they were allowed while trying to avoid being accosted by children postcards, and bedouins trying to steal their cameras. one of the popular ones is for a guy to come up and ask if he'd like a photo on his camel. once up there either the kid scarpers with the camera, or won't let the mark down until he pays up something exorbident. from Cheops Pyramid we bus up to the Panorama which affords some of the best views and we get back to running through our memory cards. we'd been briefed - whenever we're on the bus there's another briefing - and Louise and i are doing the optional extra: we're riding camels, baby!

you've heard of camels. big, smelly, foul-tempered, a penchance for dropping their bladders whenever the fuck they feel like it. ships of the desert. mainstay of the intrepid desert explorer. they're not particularly noble, but then neither am i and i'm riding one. loosen up your hips, roll with the rock, sit back and enjoy the view... or in my case, capture as much of it through the CCD of my camera as humanly possible. Louise and i are on different camels because a) it costs the same either way, b) this way we can get photos of each other and swap later and c) it's not as if we're attached at the hip or anything. she's struggling and i'm laughing, having a wild-good time. Mike (from Adelaide) and i have reached a mutual-imagery pact where i'll get as many good ones of him as i can and he'll return the favour. he was the first person on the tour to make a comment about my "Support Piracy" shirt, outing himself as a geek. he's got about as much available storage and backup as i have and we're snap-happy like Japanese tourists. i catch up to Louise again and we head back to the meeting point as the wind starts to pick up and drops of rain begin to fall. it's raining, however feebly, at the pyramids. how many people can say they've seen that?

meanwhile, the dust has started to kick up with the wind and it's stinging. this is nowhere near the legendary dust- and sandstorms you've heard about. this is a flurry and the locals seem barely fazed but for a bunch of whities it's murder. i'm starting to get an idea for how fucked up it can be in the desert as the dust gets in and around everything - the inside of my Oakleys has a thick coating by the time we get back to the second pyramid - the cheaper of the two to get into since it's a) not the Great Pyramid and b) a little further away from the entrance so most tours don't bother. the bus picks us up from the bedouin-boys and drops us off out the front - we could walk around there, but this gives us the biggest bang for the least ticks of the minute-hand. you go into a hole a metre high sloping at somewhere between 30 and 40 degrees for around 14 metres and the air gets thick and hot. fuck all ventilation, fuckloads of tourists sweating their ways in and out. across a short tunnel and you're heading up again around the same amount of space which spits you out into another small tunnel into the main chamber. it's spartan - an angled roof over square walls, an empty sarcophagus at the far end. it's hot and stuffy but Louise and i are standing there with looks on our faces that scream wonder and excitement. so much of the excitement of this trip has been freaking out that we're Actually Fucking Here and right now we're in a fucking pyrarmid! not for long though - it's hard to breathe in here and the only thing to see is the graffiti on the wall announcing that a mad Italian called Berlisconi was there in 1818 - he led the crews who were trying to get in and have a look around. there's a vertical hole in the 3rd pyramid from where he used dynamite to find the entrance, only to discover that the entrance is actually in the base, not half-way up. dickhead.

another bus ride gets us the the Sphynx and the duststorm's starting to find it's legs, and from the sounds of things the inner workings of my camera. arse. we get led through the Embalming Temple before being let loose on the Sphynx, sitting proud before the pyramids in the background - a lion guarding the Necropolis. if standing at the feet of Cheops' Pyramid didn't, this view captures your imagination, folds it into a crane and flings it out into Wonderland. you start to imagine someone coming across this all 3000 years ago and marveling at it all, the words of Ozymandias shuddering through your head: "Look upon my works ye mortals, and tremble." of course, we're bouncing around the place like hyperactive retards taking the stupid photos you've seen online - "hey look! i'm kissing the Sphynx!" or "i'm riding it woo!!"

it's fucking stupid, but by-gods i'm having fun trying to line up some of these shots. the duststorm's got its shoes and learned to run. visibility's started to fall and if you turn into the wind you'll be blinking dust, wraparounds or no. i've lost Louise - i thought she was with Derek (from Sydney), but while i'm waiting at the meeting point he's shown up but she hasn't. everyone else has made for the bus but i'm waiting - it's just her and the four americans left and i'm a little worried but no, there she is. the yanks can fend for themselves so we head for the bus and get the hell out of the wind.

it's back to the hotel now, via a local supermarket we've been told has non-tourist prices and we're stocking up on water and snacks for a couple of days from now when we'll be sailing for 2 nights up the Nile on fellucas - Egyptian yachts. you don't drink the water in Egypt unless you have the time to acclimatise to it. usually when people talk about not drinking the water you think of parasites, bacteria and other nasties. Egypt's solved that little problem, but not in a way that makes it any easier for the rest of us: it's incredibly, heavily chlorinated. take a shower and it feels and smells like you're in a swimming pool. i ask one of the Australians who works for the tour company and he said that he's gotten himself used to it, but seriously: steer clear, so it's bottled water for us.

tea's been arranged at the hotel. another buffet awaits with a mixture of vaguely-Egyptian and western food, but it's tasty enough so i'm not fussed. we're not sitting still for long afterwards because we need to get to Giza Train Station for our overnight to Aswan. we're delayed by phychotic trafic, but still on time and after milling around the station ("smoke em if you got em!") we're on our sitter-carriage. our group takes up more than half the cabin... for about 5 minutes before a pile of us head forward to find the smoky, cramped, but comfortable Bar Carriage and sit in sinking beers to make sleeping easier. Egypt heard about the whole "no smoking indoors" buisiness, thought about it for a minute, then presented a raised middle finger to the Eurocrats and announced they were having none of it. times they are a changing, but not very quickly. we're on reclining seats - bigger and with better leg-room than cattle-class on a flight, but not quite as swanky as business - the train's noisy (thankfully i have ear plugs) and the lights are left on all night. it's obvious that these trains were once quite grand, but years of neglect have left them feeling shoddy. the loo is utilitarian, but the seats ARE comfortable enough to get to sleep in. a couple of Luxor Classics and i'm in my seat, boots off but clothes on, a tshirt draped over my eyes and soon enough i'm out like a light.