We took a flight from Casablanca to Cairo. Cairo was a big change from any of the cities in Morocco. With a population of 17 million people, Cairo is huge and noisy - lots of traffic jams, lots of hustlers on the streets, a lot of dirt and more. The signs are almost completely in Arabic - the British influence seems to have completely vanished other than some of the buildings.
At the airport, we were "greeted" by a number of touts who wanted to arrange our Egypt visit for us and also drive us into Cairo. We managed to get past them without paying any money and made it to a bus which cost us LE2 (2 Egyptian Pounds) which is about 30 US cents as opposed to what the taxi drivers were charging (LE80). Since then, we have been warned several times not to take up the offers of any of the taxi drivers or touts. A favorite trick of theirs is the bait-and-switch - they quote you a very low price - then, once you have walked with them away from the airport or bus station, they profess ignorance of the place that you want to go to and consequently ratchet up the price by 10 times! Another trick is to try and get you into their taxi without negotiating the price with you beforehand. Another one that they apply with great vigour is the cartel move. If you are in a place where there is no other means of transportation, then the group of taxi drivers will set the price very high and not budge from it. Since they are all standing together, they all know that price and also have agreed not to bid each other down.
We arrived the day that Ramadan was starting. It was nice to get an introduction to how peoples' daily routines change during Ramadan. As you know, there is no eating or drinking of any kind during daylight. One of the evenings in Cairo, we were walking around at 5pm - at about 5:20pm, we noticed that the streets were completely empty and all the shops had been shuttered, other than restaurants/bakeries, pharmacies and Internet cafes - we were told that most of these shops are owned by Christians who therefore do not have to abide by Islamic rules, even though many do. It was somewhat eerie, like a ghost town, relative to the noise and bustle just 20 minutes beforehand. The namaz started blaring out from several directions - several groups of men were praying on the sidewalks. We also saw several tourists just wandering around with nothing else to do! At about 6:30pm, everything opened up again and families came out onto the street to eat and shop. The shops were open until 2 or 3 in the morning.
One of the interesting things in this conservative Arab country is the profusion of naked mannikins in all the shop windows! In addition to the naked mannikins, there are millions of Chuckie the Doll baby mannikins in every shop window. Every clothing store looks exactly the same and the clothes on display in the windows have absolutely nothing to do with what is available inside the stores!
The day after we arrived, we went to the Jordanian Embassy to get a Jordanian visa. I had applied 4 weeks beforehand. The person at the consulate window spoke no English and professed no knowledge of my application. After a half-hour, he looked up a diary and said that no reply had been received from Jordan... As you can imagine, this was quite frustrating and a foreshadowing of things to come.
Anyway, off we went to the Egyptian Museum to see the Tutankhamen exhibit. We were accosted by several guides once inside the museum grounds. Seeing the huge crowds inside, we agreed to hire one of the guides. She made a big show of telling us that she was an official guide - we forgot to notice that official Egyptian guides should not be asking for payments in US dollars. She whisked us around the museum in 1 hour (which is much too little time), saying that she would give us the highlights and then we could spend more time afterwards going through it ourselves. She also said that her father was an archaeologist and that she had been an archaeologist for several years as well. While on the tour, she kept mentioning that she would take us to two additional museums nearby - the Papyrus museum and the Fragrances museum, all with the same Museum ticket! After an hour, she took us across a street into a shop nearby which was selling Payprus paintings (with the Sphinx and other similar things painted on them) and Egyptian fragrances (Lotus, Nefertiti etc.) - the full sales job was given to us, including how the fragrances last for 24 hours, are unique to Egypt only, are the last of their consignment being offered to us, have aphrodisiac qualities, etc. etc.. Of course, it was a complete scam - this was no museum, it was a shop and our hoax guide was getting a commission for anything we would buy. We said we'd come back later and made our escape! For anybody going to the museum, no guide is needed - each exhibit has a description right next to it and the 2nd floor with the Tutankhamen exhibits is the only thing to see really.
The next day, we took a bus to the pyramids at Giza. It was exceedingly hot and we got chased around by camel drivers and horse drivers who wanted to "take us for a ride" :-) around the pyramids. We declined and moved along on foot. The pyramids were fantastic, more from the outside than the inside. The inside was just a very hot and humid set of tunnels leading to small rooms that were completely devoid of any objects of interest and of any wall paintings or decorations. But, hey, we can now say we've bene inside the pyramids!
Nearby, we saw the Sphinx. We sat next to the Sphinx and had a nice buffet lunch with wierd space music playing on the restaurant speakers! Every few minutes, a huge group of tourists would arrive in a bus, disembark at the restaurant and sit down for lunch. We also saw the Dar-e-beiri or funeral boat of the Pharaoh Khufu (or Cheopes). This is a huge boat that was buried in a rock tomb right next to the biggest Pyramid of Khufu. It has been reconstructed by the Egyptians.
We decided to take a taxi back to central Cairo - that was quite an experience. Our mad taxi driver kept saying, at the top of his voice, "Me Egypt, you India!, Me Egypt, you India!.... Amitabh Bacchan very goood." In fact, this was a trend (not the mad taxi driver but the Amitabh Bacchan references) that has continued all the way through Egypt. Apparently, just like in Morocco, Indian Bollywood movies are huge here - especially for the older people, they grew up on a steady diet of Raj Kapoor and Rishi Kapoor and Amitabh Bacchan. Some of the people we've met have started singing some of the filmi songs in front of us! A lot of the Egyptian taxi drivers, waiters, shop keepers and policemen have told us that they think that they consider Egypt and India to be very similar in terms of the people (their temperament, their physical features and how the look), culture (music, etc.) and level of development. Some of them have mentioned the friendship between Jawaharlal Nehru and Nasser.
We also went to the Al-Azhar Mosque and the Khan-el-Khalili tourist trap. At the Al-Azhar mosque, Smruti had to don a covering before going in. Right next to it, the Khan-El-Khalili bazaar was very crowded and very difficult to get out of without being accosted by hundreds of touts. One could see that this was a complete tourist trap!
We had a very good dining experience in Cairo....at a Chinese restaurant! - if you've read our previous blogs, you'll see how Chinese food figures prominently. Even here, the references to India kept coming from the waiters. We tried several other Egyptian places for food but only found a few (such as Felfella and Abu as-Sid) to be good. The rest did not have much veggie food at all. Also, most of the places opened up only after sunset.
Overall, in our opinion, Cairo has mainly the Egyptian museum and the Pyramids/Sphinx as tourist attractions. Spend no more than 2 days here before moving on the Luxor, Aswan and the Sinai.
-Dev
Ahh...the land of the pharaohs. Another mystery that remains to be solved--why is Dev wearing the same shirt throughout Egypt? Smruti--not sure you're really the burkha type but it's an interesting look for you.
Posted by: camille | Tuesday, October 26, 2004 at 05:14 PM