Egypt - Cairo

Oldest mosque in Cairo


The Sphinx

"Are you from India ? Welcome! I love Amitabh Bachchan." We heard this multiple times in Egypt. The Egyptians seriously love Big B, especially the men. Egyptians are warm, friendly and forthright. First thing we noticed right off the bat, 90% of the Egyptian men are chain smokers and therefore smoking is allowed pretty much anywhere. When they're not smoking cigarettes, they're smoking a hookah or sheesha as they call it there. You'll see elderly men sitting in front of shops merrily smoking a sheesha for hours on end. Many of the restaurants offer flavoured sheeshas to the tourists. Sindhu is terrified of smokers so we had to constantly tell drivers and guides to put out their cigarettes or move to different seats in restaurants to avoid the smoke and many times we just had to deal with it. Rushil got a real kick out of Sindhu's fear and constantly teased her by saying the word "cigarette" to get a reaction out of her.

Cairo is a modern city and has all the problems of pollution, congestion and traffic of an urban city. It has huge malls, gated housing communities, international schools and all the modern conveniences of any city. Although the majority of the women do wear hijabs, you'll find more women uncovered in Cairo than in Aswan or Luxor. More men wear western style clothing unlike in Aswan where you'll see many of the men wear traditional garb.

The plan was to see the Pyramids on Day 1. Ashraf, our guide gave us an excellent introduction to Egyptian culture on our drive to Giza. 80% of the population is muslim (no surprise there) and the remaining is Orthodox Christian. Apparently, "love marriages" are common and arranged marriages are no longer the norm. Joint families are also not common in the cities. He felt that their culture is similar to Morocco and Tunisia but their food is more Lebanese/Mediterranean. Our guide had a double college degree, was married to a doctor, grew up in Dubai, and has his own tourist guide company, not the typical guide.

The Giza Pyramids are impressive, three large structures, in the middle of nowhere. What's more interesting is the story behind them. What are the theories on how they were built, why were no coffins found in any of them, who built them, were they built by slaves, etc.. The same family built the Pyramids of Giza, the grandfather built the largest, his son, the 2nd largest although it appears as if his is the largest as it is on an elevated piece of land and the 3rd by the grandson. There was one theory that slaves built the pyramids, but Egyptians believe that due to a flood many workers didn't have farming jobs and were available to build the pyramids and were provided food and shelter as compensation. It's really an engineering marvel as many of the sights in Egypt are. The Sphinx was equally impressive. The Sphinx was built 5000 years ago, the colours have faded and some pieces have fallen off and most of the erosion has happened in the last 100 years.

We had a quick lunch at Felfela which serves authentic Egyptian food. We enjoyed the mezze (pita with hummus, tahini sauce, yoghurt dips and baba ghanoush), lentil soup, kushari (mix of rice, lentils, pasta, fried onions and tomato sauce) and falafel. We pretty much lived on this diet for the next 10 days.

Next stop was the Egyptian Museum which is somewhat like the Louvre in Paris, it is such a large museum and impossible to see all of it in one day. Ashraf showed us the highlights. We saw the treasures found in Tutankhamun's tomb, the most famous because it was intact. We saw the Mummies, this was the moment Rushil was waiting for during the trip and all he talked about afterwards. He and Sindhu were simply fascinated by the whole process of mummification. It was amazing to see how much emphasis the ancient Egyptians placed on their after-life, and the trouble they went to preserve themselves and their possessions in preparation for it.

That same day, we squeezed in a trip to City Star Mall, Cairo's newest mall. We hadn't bought any Xmas presents for the children so we thought of letting them choose a gift there but unfortunately it didn't work out. Yes, I know pretty pathetic, don't worry Sindhu and Rushil didn't let us forget. But seriously shouldn't the trip be good enough?

We returned to Cairo at the end of the trip and this time we stayed in downtown. Some of the key places we saw during our last few days were Islamic Cairo, Khan El Khalili, the famous souks of Cairo, lunch at Khan el Khalili & Mahfouz Coffee shop, shopping in Zamelek which is an upscale shopping area with interesting stores. Zamalek store vendors are less pushy. We bought a lovely lamp at Loft Gallery, they have unique lamps and antiques, definitely worth a look. Coptic Cairo merits a visit as you get a flavour of the Coptic Christian influence in Cairo. There are other places to see but we took it easy the last few days.