Recollections and writings on four holidays in Egypt in 2017, 2019, 2022, 2023. Exploring the ancient sites, and a doing a bit of meeting the locals, with my views on a few things.
I had allowed myself 4 days in Cairo to visit the new Grand Egyptian Museum, that isn't open yet. I was looking at 2 days, possibly 3, in the GEM which is only a short walk from my hotel, and then a day deciding what to do next. A visit to Alexandria is still on the cards to explore an old family connection there, but the weather in Alex in February is not good...
In any case I have two days to fill which is easy enough because I have not been to Saqqara since 2017, and since my last visit things have changed.
And I have also been told I should visit the New Museum of Egyptian Civilisation.
Saqqara is a little bit of a journey out from Giza, the time varies with how fast the taxi driver can go... But about 45 minutes is average...
The boss in my hotel is only too happy to sell me a car and guide for the morning, except I don't want the guide, which is going be either him or his father. (The father has lived in the The States I believe so his English is very good, the son's not so good).
He looks a bit disappointed but to be honest I find that guides get in the way, and want to rush you from one place to another too quickly, which is what happened on my last visit. As it turned out my driver was quite a good guide anyway and in exchange I bought him lunch.
The trip cost 60 USD, (I could have used LE but he preferred USD), which included my lunch and the basic entry ticket to Saqqara, I opted to buy the 'extras' ticket which cost a further 180 LE on top of the 200LE I had already paid via the driver. If you have the time an the inclination I would recommend going the whole hog and buying the 440 LE ticket which cover just about everything as it works out cheaper.
Arriving outside the actual site there were the usual souvenir sellers, but of course you are not obliged to buy anything! And anyway they charge far too much, but you are allowed to haggle to your heart's content, but i wouldn't bother because they don't have a very good range of stuff, better to reserve a day and go to proper shops. One of them spoke with a strong West Midlands accent,mainly because he had lived in Wolverhampton for a lot of his life.
Inside Saqqara I was not disappointed as I could now see the Step Pyramid properly, last time I was here it was covered in scaffolding,and also there were fewer visitors so it was quite uncrowded, and I managed to tag on to a group that had an English speaking guide... Always a plus! Somewhere along the line I completely lost my sense of direction during the short video clip, that's not Cairo in the distance at all! Some of the nobles tombs are included in the extras ticket others are not even included in the full ticket.
The Museum of Imhotep is not open as they are giving it a makeover, but all around Saqqara there is more digging going on...
I didn't get a chance to see this on my last visit because the guide was in a hurry...
Just a few pictures but not enough to spoil your visit!
And now we come to a bit about the dreaded mobile phone syndrome.
I don't know how we coped before we had them, 50 years ago if you went on holiday you contacted your family and friends by sending them a picture postcard, depending on where you had gone, and for how long, it was quite usual for you to get back home before the cards did.
These days we seem to have to be in almost constant communication with the rest of the world all of the time, why this should be i really don't know, but I suppose I am as bad as everyone else!
Apart from the normal landlines which is how the internet is still done in most countries, not even fibre optic in many places, Egypt has a fully developed mobile phone system with generally excellent coverage, unless you are in the desert of course because the camels don't use the internet..... The technology of the system is such that you can bring your own mobile with you and it will work.... Generally the coverage is on the 4G network, during my recent trip, over 8 weeks, there was only one occasion when the signal was less than 4G, and that was in a taxi in an underpass in Cairo...
There are 4 main operators, Vodafone, EtiSalat, Orange, and We (Telecom Egypt), to date on various visits I have used 3 of them and found the service overall to be very good, reliable, and economic. You can look them up on the internet to see what deals they are doing for visitors and then buy a SIM card at the airport.
I don't do this because there are always queues at the airport desks, and also I have found that if you find a mobile shop near to where you are staying you will often get a better deal than the standard tourist ones!
This time around I used We where the shop in Giza gave me 4 SIM cards, ideal if you a family or group, for 156LE which included 22.5 Gb of data and 1000 minutes of local calls, (useful because I have friends there I like to chat to), but only 30 SMS, certainly enough for me. Unless you are going to be streaming movies 22.5 Gb is a lot. Each SIM had its own account and could be recharged separately. the basic credit lasted a month but could be topped up which some tourist cards cannot.
Contrary to what you might hear, you can get access to Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp. I don't know why some people have the idea they are banned in Egypt, but what I can tell you is that some of the packages sold by the companies might not include some features, for instance I have friends there who can use WhatsApp for pictures movies and general messaging, even audio messages, but they cannot make an audio or video call. for that they use Messenger or Skype.
What is difficult is if for some strange reason you try to use a VPN because these are not allowed and they are blocked although there are a couple that the government haven't found out about yet so I was able to use those if I needed to appear as though I was in my home country.
So in a small nutshell there is a bit about mobiles and the internet!
Many hotels have a data cap, as do a lot of people in their homes, so although you might apparently have an internet connection nothing seems to happen. What happens here usually is that the staff manage to consume all the data watching videos on YouTube and there is nothing left for the guests!! A bit unfair but life rarely is fair.
A little note about mobiles if you are over 60 and can stay longer than 30 days...
Theoretically your SIM card should be cut off as you cannot get one without a valid visa, and if you are over 60 and staying for a longer period then your visa has expired so you cannot still have an active SIM card.
In practice I have found this doesn't happen because it seems it has to be cut off manually!
Which is always the best place to start..... I have wanted to visit Egypt ever since I read (at primary school), about the plans to save the temple of Rameses II from the rising waters of the newly formed Lake Nasser, and also seeing pictures of the treasures from King Tut's tomb. Yes I really am that old! Somehow I never seemed to get around to making the trip until finally last August 2016, I decided that it was time to go. When I said to friends that that I was thinking about Egypt the instant response was ''Hurghada or Sharm El Sheikh?'' Neither I replied, ''Cairo, a Nile cruise, and maybe some extra time in Luxor and Aswan.'' ''You can't do that,'' they said, ''It's not safe''. Well three weeks later I am back home after one of the most enjoyable, and interesting holidays I have ever had. So let's get rid of a few myths to start off with... Egypt isn't safe - Well if you walk down unlit back alleys in the middle of the night nowhere is ''safe''. You will get robbed - As ever, walking around dripping in jewellery, flaunting expensive designer clothes is always a draw anywhere you go. There are children who will approach you begging for money - Occasionally
. People will try to sell you things you don't want - Then don't buy them. You have to bribe everyone - Well no not really, but an occasional bit of ''baksheesh'' never hurts anywhere you go. Just look upon it as a tip but a lot less than you have to pay in other countries. You have to travel in convoys with armed guards - Well actually no you don't. Unfortunately since ''the revolution'' in 2011, which was mainly centred around Cairo and Alexandria many would be visitors have been put off, and with reports of the occasional shooting by extremists at some archaeological sites 20 (yes 20) years ago, it is still more than likely true to say that you will get on the wrong end of a shooting in the USA rather than in Egypt. Take a look at this web site if you don't believe me, http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/ and then tell me how many reports there have been of tourist being shot in Egypt, and rest assured you would have heard about it if there had been! So minor rant over and let's get down to business. Of course these are only my findings, and it was after all my holiday, but I do like to ask questions and I don't always ''follow the herd''. Egypt is majority a Muslim country. Not all Muslims are extremists or terrorists, that is only what the press (and possibly your government) make them out to be. Some of them are devout Muslims, and some are not. Just like Christians of which there are a fair amount too. And look all of them manage to live together! As for Egyptians themselves? Well they are ready to smile, you smile at them they return the smile without imagining that you are some kind of nutter, not only that but they have a great sense of humour too. They are polite and helpful, and expect you to be the same. They will walk past you in the street and say ''Welcome to Egypt''. And they mean it. And they will help you to cross the street too, and boy, will you need the help in Cairo! They are incredibly impressed if you can read Arabic numbers if nothing else, even though, like everywhere these days, all the bills and cash registers print out everything in Latin characters. And virtually all them speak English. So there is your xenophobia gone for a start..... Many people still go to the Red Sea resorts, but all inclusive hotels resorts are not Egypt. To see Egypt you have to travel and this is what this blog is about.
Us English are a strange lot, apparently. Or so one of my tour guides seemed to think. Well I think that he thought that because we have an author called Agatha Christie, who wrote a book called Death On The Nile. Agatha, bless her, travelled around a bit, and she went to Egypt, to Cairo, Aswan, and down the Nile and was inspired to write the book, and ever since armchair travellers have followed her. Of course you have to remember that the English (rightly or wrongly) have had a close relationship with many parts of Africa not only with Egypt and Sudan, but many other parts of it too. My inspiration comes not from her book, but from things I read so many years ago and I don't like things that are too organised and like to do a fair amount of things on my own, with the help of the internet of course. But of course I would like to follow a little bit in Poirot's footsteps so on the list of things to do is visit Karnak, the Aswan Dams, and Abu Simbel, and stay at The Old Cataract Hotel in Aswan, and The Winter Palace in Luxor, so naturally the Nile cruise is going to be the way to go.
But I also want to see The Great Pyramid, THE Sphinx, (as opposed to any other sphinxes there may be) and Fayoum Oasis which not so many people go to. So at ''the core'' of my trip is a Nile cruise with bits bolted on to visit other things away from the Nile. There are about 280 Nile cruise ships in existence, only about 80 of them are actually running because of the current downturn in visitors to Egypt which for those tourists that are visiting, (and there are many of them), makes the whole experience mush more enjoyable as you are not vieing with hoards of other people everywhere you go. (Although it does not do a lot for the Egyptian tourist industry). This makes the choice of cruises a bit more limited especially as I do not want a flight from the UK included in the package because I live on Crete, and surprisingly some of the tour companies do not want to know you unless you are taking the whole package. So by the time I have added on the single supplement, (which I personally think should be dropped), moved my cabin up a deck, and taken the ''included drinks package'', the price came out about the same, a shade short of £900, as if I had had the flights included. Having booked a 7 night cruise I have to look at the other things I want to see so I started with 6 nights in Cairo, my original plan of taking the train from Cairo to Luxor to join the ship was changed to flying so that I got a full extra day in Luxor so that I had time to visit the Temples at Abydos and Dendera, and also booked a 2 day guided tour around Cairo, a bit extravagant that might seem but so much easier logistically than doing it my own. Further investigation produced the overall feeling that guided tours were definitely the way to go, you certainly don't want to be driving a rental car in Egypt! The prices of guided tours are quite reasonable, most of them include lunch and you get a guide and a driver both of whom are licensed. And here's Tim's Top Tip Of The Day - Car registration plates are colour coded in Egypt. Private cars have a blue stripe along the top, taxis have an orange stripe, tourist vehicles (cars and minibuses) have a cream coloured stripe along the top, and public transport/freight have a red stripe. So if you are told by someone that they are a licensed tour guide and they put you in a car with a blue stripe then they are no such thing, similarly the man that asks you if you want a taxi, grabs your bags and puts them in a car with a blue strips is not a taxi driver. Most of the important sites are already included in the cruise itinerary, but the trip to Abu Simbel is an extra, and from the cruise itinerary it is fairly obvious that to take the optional trip to Abu Simbel means getting up at 3am! I am on holiday so there is no way I am getting up at 3am, which is the reason for backtracking to Aswan so that I can take a 10.30am departure! The final night in Egypt is going to be spent in Cairo again, and as I always like to have at least one train trip I am taking the overnight sleeper train from Aswan arriving back in Cairo (well Giza actually) at around 9am which gives me another whole day to look round Cairo some more but there is an oddity here because although I can book the sleeper train on the Web, I cannot book the day train from Luxor to Aswan, but we will cross that bridge a little later. And the last thing to do is hit Ebay for a second hand guide book with small maps of Cairo, Luxor, and Aswan. And to get an Egyptian Arabic phrasebbok and dictionary which turned out to be completely unnecessary! So armed with my trusty Panama hat (a real one that you can roll up and put in your hand luggage), that everyone says make me look the part of the traditional English archaeologist, and bottle of insect repellent and a tube of sting cream, I am ready to go. Well nearly because three days before I am due to leave I realise that my typhoid jab has expired, not time to get one now, but there is not that much risk if I avoid drinking Nile water and stick to bottles.
