Egypt, Part I: Where I (Indeed) Walked Like One

So in our Egyptian Christmas vacation pre-departure-tour literature, the modes of transportation listed were: motorized coach, train, horse-drawn carriage, camel and donkey. Me: hmmm. Camel? Donkey? Surely this is an exaggeration thrown in as a joke on the naive American tourist. I mean, really. Who rides a donkey?

And yet, three weeks later, I watched my husband trundle off on a donkey that may well have weighed the same as J (what do they feed donkeys, anyway?), with a Cuban cigar clenched in his jaw (my husband's, not the donkey's). Um... okay. And so, with no further ado, here's my Christmas vacation, donkeys, camels and viral head colds all, in 500 words or less. Or, you know, thereabouts.

Thees ees my leetle mule.

Day 1-2, 23-24-Dec: In Which We Discover Egypt is Very, Very Not Western

Fabulous and incredible are two words I overuse (liberal arts higher education, people), but really, they apply to Egypt. We arrived in Cairo on the 22nd (side note: I've decided that in an age of cut-rate airfare, Heaven might look a lot like business class on a Swiss A.I. flight), and after the most insane taxi ride of my life - swerving at 120 mph in front of very large buses and other vehicles that could not only end my life but pulverize my remains to powdered sugar - J and I arrived at the Pharaoh's Hotel and promptly went to the bar. Hey, I know how to handle stress, okay?

We chose a backpacker's tour, "Treasures of the Nile," with Gecko's Adventure Tours, mostly because of the dates and also partly because I like their responsible tourism spiel, and thusly knew our hotels would be budget... except that budget in Egypt has a whole new spectrum of meaning. We didn't have to choose a shower with or without water, necessarily, but we didn't stay at the Four Seasons - or even the Best Western - either. Regardless, it didn't matter so much, as we spent almost no time in our hotel rooms over the next ten days, and both J and I are less concerned about hotels as seeing the sites and having a good time. I mention it, however, because there were some members of our tour who where very unhappy with the accommodations, so fyi: before you choose a grassroots tour, make sure you're okay with the, you know, grassroots part of it.

Anyhoo, back on point. So after a tasty "local" beer (made by Heineken) called Stella (adding to my theory that most things in life with "Stella" in their name are happy, happy, happy), and a good night's sleep on a lumpy and hard mattress, we were up bright and early to have breakfast, meet our tour group and head out for the day's sightseeing.

First up was the Great Pyramid on the Giza plateau, which I always imagined as an exotic place in the middle of the desert, but as it turns out is more of a big, sandy, touristy plaza on the edge of Giza, Cairo's west bank sister city. Giza and the pyramids were fascinating. We saw three Old Kingdom pyramids, including the Great One of Cheops fame (2560 BC, the only remaining Seventh Wonder of the Ancient World), and the two smaller pyramids of Chephren (Cheops' son) and Menkaure. They're are all grouped within walking distance from each other... and yes, we went in Chephren's pyramid, which might have been one of the scariest things I have ever done.

So here's the deal: to get into the inner chamber of Chephren's pyramid, you have to duck-walk down a 25-meter slope, through a tunnel that's maybe 4-ft wide by 4-ft tall. You then get maybe five steps of regular walking before duck-walking up another 25-m slope, also 4x4, into the burial chamber. In the meantime, the air temperature shoots up about 15 degrees (F) and 50% humidity. All the people who have been in the burial chamber are duck-walking out past you, and sometimes getting bound up such that you have to stop and hang out, waiting and squatting in this teeny-tiny corridor with an unimaginable weight of stone engineered over 3,000 years ago hanging over your head, trying to keep yourself from imagining the freaky stampede that would happen should anything go wrong. I tell you what: if there was ever a time for Ujjayi yoga breathing, that was it. If you're even a little claustrophobic - for me, normally just in crowds - you're screwed. HOWEVER, as one of the top ten bravest moments in my life, I made it in, checked out the empty and undecorated but incredibly spooky granite burial chamber (the link also has a photo of the passageway), and then safely out, with my husband making bad jokes behind me the whole way. THIS is why I will need someone else in the labor room with me, because if he makes bad jokes while I'm in painful labor with our child, I might become very, very unhinged (more so than normal).

Imagine me, under all that.

Anyway. So that was victorious, and for the rest of the time in the blessed and free open air, we climbed around the remnants of the enormous funerary complex of Chephren, and then bused up a back hill to take photos of the three 'mids together. In some ways, Egypt is a lot like a video game: your goals are to try not to get killed by the insane taxi (and other) drivers, navigate around the touts trying to sell you cheap nickel souvenirs for ten British pounds, and enjoy the historical and cultural gems in a country buried in economic woes without getting either ripped off or abducted by terrorists. I know, I know, I said Egypt was fabulous and incredible, and I promise, it WAS. But it also took a little getting used to...

This ain't your grandma's vacation.

At Giza, we also saw this guy. He's limestone, carved out of the bedrock of the plateau, part of Chephren's funerary complex, bears no relation to "The NeverEnding Story," and has a tail. I liked him, but Jon wouldn't let me take him home.

Less fluffy, but likely easier to ride than a camel.

After the 'mids, we had a tasty lunch of shawarma (shaved meat in a soft pita, sort of like a middle eastern fajita), and then spent the afternoon at the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, a huge museum with a striking resemblance to a high school gym, only stuffed with semi-organized, dusty antiquities. On second thought, it was a lot like the Vatican Museum: the M.E.A. has so many riches of antiquity, it feels like those riches stopped having as much meaning to the Egyptians as we (Westerners) might ascribe to them ("Oh, another priceless 4,500-year-old statue? Just throw it in the corner with the others that sort of match it."). We saw lots of mummies - Ramses II (the "Great"), Queen Hatshepsut and Tuthmosis III (who I will explain in Part II), and a couple of mummified crocodiles and pet dogs - as well as the golden mask, coffin and tomb loot of King Tutankhamen and statues from the Old (26 to 22 C BC) and Middle (21 to 17 C BC) Kingdoms. It's amazing to visit a place where so much ancient history is so - easily found, gathered and stored. Finding antiquities in Egypt, like in Rome, is sort of a way of life.

Day 3, 24-Dec: In Which I Discover that Egyptian Trains Leave Something to Be Desired

The next day, Christmas Eve, we started the day with a trip to Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt (from 3100 B.C.), and its associated necropolis, Saqqara. There's not much left of Memphis - it's mostly a big field full of rubble - but I liked it better than Giza, both because there are less tourists and touts, and also because the age and history really caught my imagination. At Memphis, we saw an alabaster sphinx (aged 18 to 15 C BC), the Colossus of Ramses II and another, smaller statue of RII, both from the Temple of Ptah (Memphis' creator God). To refresh, RII, or Mr. "The Great," was a 16th C BC pharaoh who ruled for 60-something years and possibly/allegedly had over 50 wives and consorts and over 117 children (one of our guides suggested he married a queen from every nome (42) and principality (14) of Egypt to help cement his rule). You'll be hearing more on him shortly.

Um, Mr. The Great? That pinkish speck would be me.

Saqqara, the Memphis necropolis, was also much quieter than Giza. The first pyramid in Egypt, the Step Pyramid of Zoser (27th C BC) is there, as well as some earlier pyramid attempts (in the distance) at Dahsur. The Step Pyramid was built by Imhotep (I swear that name got chanted through 75% of "The Mummy"), and in my opinion was one of the greatest ancient works of engineering ever, Cheops or no. We also saw Zoser's enormous and partially restored funerary complex (where they mummified the pharaoh and all the other people who wanted to be buried around him), a fabulously decorated Old Kingdom tomb (maybe the Tomb of Akhethotep?) that we may or may not have been legally allowed in ("No. Cameras," our informative, mildly-oily and tape-recorder-sounding guide told us), a pile of dirt that turned out to be the Pyramid of Unas (clearly he didn't hire Imhotep for his 'mid) and a super crazy deep Late Period Saite tomb shaft (like, five stories, but down instead of up). It was quite a morning.

Where's Brendan Fraser when you need him?

We spent the afternoon with about half our tour group at the Khan El-Khalili market in Islamic Cairo (how is that not the whole city?), after a taxi ride that was way too much like riding Greased Lightning at Astroworld (oh, Astroworld, RIP). The market is huge and packed with pretty much anything you could want: jewelry, copper, tourist-stuff, baskets, Frederick's style lingerie (a shock when 98% of women on the street in Cairo wear either full-on robes or super loose clothes and headscarves), spices, good fake purses from China, and - after MUCH searching - lunch. The Egyptians don't mix shopping with food; it took us a full hour to find the food court. The tasty Egyptian pancakes, or pitas with cheese and other miscellaneous toppings (including eastern style hot dogs, which none of us ever figured out, although we pretty much all ate them), were worth the search.

Like I wasn't going to find the mall. Really.

In the evening, we boarded the train for the 15-hour overnight ride to Aswan, in Upper (southern) Egypt, which I will leave (mostly) out of the story, except to say: the train runs on Egyptian time (which means it may come sometime this month), has a refrigeration system that tests the boundaries of thermodynamics, and I, frankly, have been in port-a-potties AFTER a North Carolina Toby Keith concert that were cleaner than the bathrooms. Opa.

Day 4, 25-Dec: In Which I Rode Camels, Learned Christmas Crackers are not Edible, and Caught a Nasty Cold

So on Christmas Day, we hopped off the train, showered and hopped back on a motorboat across the Nile for a camel ride. Here's one of my major trip (and life) lessons: camels are TALL. If you fall off one of those dudes, it's a long. way. down. J was pretty funny with his camel, smoking a Cuban while cah-lump-ing along. While I also enjoyed my ride, I did get hijacked halfway through by my camel-handler, who decided to ride with me, ookily close, to "show me Josefina's gallop," and then after I got off, asked J for a tip and me for my phone number. Um, really?

Me, camel-jacked. And you thought I was kidding.

After the fun camel-riding and near-camel molestation incident, we settled onto a deluxe felucca, lazing about on a floofy mattress with pillows, gliding across the Nile while our Nubian crew made us tasty fried chicken and rice and fresh veggies for Christmas dinner. The Nile is everything you would imagine: wide as a lake and lazy and rippled like old glass. The river is lined with date palms and desert escarpments in the background, and the sunset sparkles off the water and turns the sand a burnt/flaming orange (I know, I know). The Nubians, who populated southern Egypt (that would be... Nubia) until the High Dam was built and flooded their land and they were forcibly relocated, run all the water taxis and sail the feluccas, and they sing as they're sailing, especially in the evening, so their voices echo on the water. Fabulous AND incredible.

A Christmas both holly and jolly.

Less fabulous was the extra half hour on the boat we spent waiting for a water taxi after dinner, in which I finally succumbed to the viral head cold that had been lurking in my sinuses. On the bright side, Egyptian pharmacies are magic places that don't require prescriptions - or really, proof that you're sick - to give you cold meds, cough syrup and even antibiotics.

Day 5, 26-Dec: In Which I Get up at 3:30 a.m., Sick, and Am Happy Anyway Because Egypt is WAY Better than the Discovery Channel

So on the 26th, after our really nice Christmas-Nile-Nubian dinner, we had a super-early wake-up call to head out to Abu Simbel, two New Kingdom temples dedicated to RII and his chief wife and consort, the possibly-Nubian Queen Nefertari. Abu Simbel is on Lake Nasser, the vast reservoir created by the High Dam, three hours away from Aswan. Buses heading to Abu Simbel require a police convoy, so we had to be up and gone well before sunrise, both to beat the heat (less of an issue in December!) and to catch the convoy.

Abu Simbel, carved out of a mountain in the 13th C BC, was completely worth the trouble. The two temples were originally located about 50-m lower than their current location, but, like the Nubian people and 17 other temples, had to be relocated when the High Dam was built and the upper Nile (upstream is to the south, which is really hard to wrap your head around!) flooded Nubia and created Lake Nassar (which, fyi, is one of the last places on the Nile crocodiles live). Abu Simbel is part of the reason I was so excited to take this trip; I saw a few minutes of a Discovery Channel documentary on how the temples were relocated into a new, man-made mountain, and I was hooked. I know, I'm not cool. But as I get older, I'm getting to be okay with this. Well, sort of.

Anyway. Abu Simbel was incredible. Nefertari's temple, dedicated to the goddess of fertility, Hathor (usually portrayed as at least part cow), was beautiful:

See... a mountain!

...and the Temple of Ramses II was... okay, incredible. The temple is dedicated to the falcon god, Horus, and the facade is lined with falcons and four gigantic statues of RII, called the Colossi of Ramses II. Inside, the first inner hall, or hypostyle hall, is lined with Osiride statues of the pharoah (basically, RII dressed up as the god Osiris) and enormous columns, and the walls are covered in hieroglyphics depicting RII's military victories, including his war with the Hittites, as well as honoring Horus. Walking through the hypostyle hall, it's easy to imagine the temple gleaming with the original bright colors in which the hieroglyphics, statues and ceilings were painted. I also thought it was interesting that only priests and royalty were allowed inside. The common folk had to wait outside, and the temple was engineered such that when the sun hit the inner sanctuary of the temple at the right time (only two days a year!), the faces of the statues of gods in the sanctuary would be illuminated and shine out to the worshippers. Crafty.

It's good that he wasn't shy.

In the afternoon, we visited my favorite site of the entire trip, the Temple of Isis (or Philae Temple) on Agilkia Island near Aswan. While the temple is much newer than Abu Simbel - in its current incarnation, it was built by Nectanebo I, of the last (30th) native Egyptian dynasty, in the 4th C BC, and finished by the Macedonian-Ptolemaic pharoahs in the 3rd C AD - it's both romantic and beautiful. Originally on Philae Island, it was partially submerged (with the island) over time by Nile flooding, and then completely submerged after the High Dam was built. In the 19th C, tourists took sailboats to the ruins and looked down into the water at the temple ruins! ...which for some reason puts me in mind of Louisiana swamps.

The temple, dedicated to Isis, was relocated in the late 70's, and is now situated on the lush island of Agilkia that's been landscaped to look like Philae. With an incredible outer court with two colonnades, a hypostyle hall full of huge columns, semi-colorful hieroglyphs, and several outer temples, including my personal favorite, Trajan's Kiosk, the whole temple looks like a cross between an Egyptian temple and Greek one. We visited at sunset, and the light cast the temple in a romantic/mysterious glow - really, I'm not doing much justice with words, so here:

Me: (Sniffle) Oooohhhh....

And my favorite part, Trajan's Kiosk (which, btw, means "pharoah's bed"):

Me: (Sniffle) Aaaahhhhhh....

Better.

Okay, so I didn't make it in anywhere near 500 words, but there's the skinny (or really, the pudgy) on the first half of our Egypt tour. Coming up: more crocodiles, sunset temples, pharmacy stops, bad bathrooms, cruise boats and one insane bus driver. Now excuse me while I blow my nose...

Smooches -s