Egypt travel - Factsheet and tips

We are back from our Egypt vacation with sand in our eyes and tombs appearing in dreams most nights. Egypt is so stuffed with history that the only way to go through them in the 2 weeks one can usually spare is to visit all the highlights. Here is how we did it

Cairo – Spent the first two days here. One day pyramid hopping and the next Islamic Cairo and Coptic Cairo. I was prepared to be dazzled by the pyramids but the latter I had known nothing about and was suitably impressed. We saw the sound and lights show at the pyramids which was not all that impressive.

Cairo is more crowded than Mumbai and has more traffic as well. So it is not a place to linger around and walk about. See the sights and get out. One good thing though is that shops are open until 11 p.m., so if you want to walk around in the night after the day’s sightseeing is done, it is a great place.

We also went to the Egyptian Museum but did it on the last day of our Egypt trip after seeing all the other tombs and temples. This was a good idea because by then we had a sense of who’s who and what’s what. We also did all our souvenir shopping at the famous Khan-el-kalili bazaar on the lost day to save on lugging around stuff during the trip.

We stayed at the Talisman De Charme in the downtown area. Charming and cozy hotel but the area was crowded. I would have preferred to stay in Zamelek area. We did have dinner in Zemalek and managed to see what the yuppies of Cairo looked like.

Aswan/Abu Simbel – We flew out to Aswan from Cairo to visit Abu Simbel and then board the Nile Cruise. Abu Simbel is a one day trip from Aswan and has to be done along with a convoy of other vehicles that leave either at 4 a.m. or 11 a.m. (Obviously we chose 11 a.m.). It is worth going just to see the giant statues of Ramses II seated majestically in front of the temple.

Aswan’s itinerary included a visit to the dam on Lake Nassar (world’s third largest dam and largest manmade lake respectively), unfinished obelisk and the Temple of Philae. The last one was located in a lovely island and the temple itself look quite pretty. Possibly because it was our first temple in Egypt.

Nile Cruise – The cruise takes 4 days when you go from Aswan to Luxor and 5 days if you go from Luxor to Aswan. We decided to take the shorter option and it was not a bad idea since we got a LOT of time to just hang out at the ship anyway. The stops on the cruise were at Kom Ombo and Edfu. Both nice places but not something I would have seen if it had not been part of the cruise. The cruise also arranged for the guide in these places as well as for Aswan and Luxor. We went on Movenpick’s Radimis I, which was pretty good.

Luxor – We spent a day here. Which was a big mistake since as the mother lode of all temples, it requires atleast two days to do justice to the place. The Nile splits the city into two – the West Bank which was the ancient necropolis and is now being rapidly vacated so that the tombs can be an open air museum and the east bank which is the living city.

The west bank contained the Valley of the Kings, the valley of the queens, Hatshepsut’s temples and so on. The east bank contained the Karnak Temple, Temple of Luxor and the hotels, town and so on. We also saw the wonderful sound and lights show and attempted a balloon ride which did not happen due to poor weather conditions. We stayed at the Steigerberger which was smart and well-located

Abydos and Dendera – These two temples are not usually included in tour itineraries but they turned out to the best temples I saw in the whole trip. They were fairly well preserved and one could see the colours on the carvings. Worth a detour from Luxor.

Dahab – There are three famous beaches in the Red Sea – Hurghada, Dahab and Sharm-el-Sheik. Since we wanted to see Mt Sinai as well, the choice was between the last two. Dahab is more laid back and that seemed to suit our style fine. Not to mention we stayed at the Le Meridian which was an awesome property with a private beach and cost much lesser than one would have expected. Dahab is an awesome place to lie in the sun after all the history and walking around. Plus has good snorkeling and diving.

Mt Sinai – This place is loaded with religious history. We visited the Monastery of St Catherine, which had a lovely collection of old Christian iconography. From here, D did the 3 hour easy climb to Mt Sinai. The place is a day trip from Dahab and Sharm.

Desert Safari – Egypt has 5 oasises, the best being Siwa and the next being Bahariya. Siwa was too far to finish in the 3 days we had, so Bahariya it was. From Bahariya we went on a two night camping trip covering the black desert and the white desert. It was absolutely stunning to see the changes in the desert landscape and eating under the stars listening to our cook sing was a good experience.

All this took us 17 days. We could have combined Petra/Jordan with this as a lot of people do, but eventually dropped the idea due to lack of time.

If had just a week and wanted to cover all the historical highlights, I would have done atleast the following –

Cairo – Pyramids, Egyptian Museum, Islamic and Coptic Cairo, shopping at Khan-el-kalili (3 days)
Aswan – Abu Simbel, Temple of Philae (1 day)
Luxor – Valley of Kings, Valley of Queens, Hatshepsut’s temple, Karnak Temple and Temple of Luxor, balloon ride, sound and lights show (2 days) and day trip to Abydos & Dendera (1 day)

Egypt is a highly tourist oriented town and hence a few special things go into the planning

Trip planning -
December is a good time to go but is obviously crowded since it is the peak tourist season. If you start planning and booking in advance, you can still stay in the good places and get the better guides.

If you are planning the trip yourself, it is necessary to be mindful of logistical constraints. Egypt Air flies internally and there are days and times when it won’t ply from city to the next. This needs to be taken into consideration while planning the itinerary. Also the cruises start on specific dates, so you need to be mindful of that. St Katherine Monastery is not open on Fridays and Sundays.

Tour guides are needed everywhere you go or else you will just end up wandering around blindly, clicking snaps. It is easy to find references and book online. Our guide in Cairo, Rasha was pretty good. Our Abydos & Dendera guide John was also good. We wish we had used him instead of the one provided by the cruise at Luxor.

Most cities are like any other cities around the world and have internet, atms, stores for buying prepaid SIM cards and so on. You can easily stock up in Egypt if you have forgotten to carry anything along.

It is good to read a couple of books on Egypt before or during the trip to get a sense of (1) the general timelines of who ruled when and (2) the gods. We got into the groove reading Gods and Myths of Ancient Egypt by Robert A Armour. LP provided the rough timelines of dynasties which came in handy. For Abu Simbel, since guides were not allowed beyond a point, we bought a book that told us about the carvings on the walls inside and carried it along during the visit.

Carry along -

Egypt is dry, dry, dry. Take plenty of strong cold cream along (Nivea Crème works very well) and also sunscreen to reapply regularly. I ignored this advice on the first couple of days and paid with rough, red and itchy skin for the rest of the trip. Also, important to keep drinking water regularly (no tap water ever. Only bottled water)

Carry toilet paper with you everywhere and be prepared for dirty toilets.

Carry lots of small change everywhere. We found our 5 and 10 Egyptian pound notes flowing out like water to taxi drivers, bellboys, waiters etc. Our 1 pound coins came in handy at the toilets.

Always check where you are going to have your meals on any trip. If you think there is going to be no decent hotel around then better to pack a food box along. On a couple of occasions we had to subsist on biscuits because the shops at the location had only chips and biscuits.

It is a good idea for women to wear clothes that don’t show much skin. Egyptian women go around fully covered and hence tiny shorts or spaghetti straps tend to stick out like sore thumbs and attract attention from the local men. At the minimum, stick to jeans/trousers and half sleeved tops.

Egypt can also be cold in the winter with nights reaching 10 degrees in some places. We carried along a sweatshirt, sweater and jacket each.

The days can be bright and sunny. Sunglasses and a cap come in handy.

Wear comfortable shoes. There is a LOT of walking around to be done in Egypt. And like me if have been totally slothful in the recent past it may be a good idea to get some exercise before the trip. A lot of days we walked for around 3 hours totally but sustaining that day after day and not being too tired to skip some parts would require some energy

Desert special – apart from the above, the desert requires a bit of additional packing –

Temperature variations in a single day are huge. So layering clothes is a good idea. Apart from the winter clothes mentioned above, I also had gloves and a woolen cap. For the day, I had a scarf to tie around my hair. It is too windy for a cap and the sand gets into your hair real fast.

It is good to check what kind of tent is going to be used and ask for covered ones if needed. Ours was just two walls erected at right angles. So absolutely no privacy to change. However the experience of sleeping under the moon and stars was worth it.

Good to wear floaters and socks instead of shoes since sand tends to get in and stay in shoes. Also good to have toilet paper handy since toilets are usually just a quick dash to the back of some handy rock outcrop.

Egypt is definitely one of those must-see places and thanks to all the planning (mostly by D), we had a pretty good time.

Turning 21

Recently a cousin turned 21. As I began to write her a greeting that sounded sensible without being aunt-ji type advice (and I must say I did not do quite well) I began to think about what things were like when I turned 21.

Obviously I had no clue that life would change within a few years when my academic life ended and worklife started, when I began to live in a home of my own instead of the supervised environs of parental home and hostels and when everyone around me began to test what serious relationships were like. In retrospect, my early 20s was probably the time I actually discovered the ‘real world’.

The change from school to work was the most traumatic one I must have had. In my final years at school, I regularly got good grades. Work was a whole different world.

I could understand that some people were brighter than me and did better at work than me. I was at a loss to explain how some people with obviously lesser intelligence than me shone too. It took me a long time to work out that the parameters by which you are judged at work was very very different from the near black and white evaluation you have at school. You needed to be not just hardworking and sincere but also street smart, networked and have a whole host of skills that never came in books.

Not to mention, the lack of ‘intellectual’ challenges at work also perplexed me. After the exciting world of cutting-edge valuation techniques gleamed from international text books, most of my time actually went into photocopying, working on presentations, inputting annual reports into the risk system and other such tearful tasks.

The question loomed – was I in the right field at all? And within this field, was I in the right role? Was I in the right organization? With absolutely no idea of what to expect from the real world, I was shooting in the dark and incidentally, so were a lot of my friends.

In the 5 – 6 years after we all started work, the batch’s professional profile changed quite a bit. When we left campus, pretty much all of us sounded like high- flatulin MBAs ‘who wanted to work in intellectually challenging careers’ in investment banking, consulting or top IT or marketing companies.

Five years later, people had fanned out. Some had decided they needed to work on a bigger scale and decided to do a second MBA overseas. Some moved into entirely new fields like economics, developmental work, research (one guy from another school even started his own music band!). Some left their jobs and started their own companies. Some had stayed in their own fields, but moved to less ambitious positions and organizations that did not require 15 hour days and politicking like mad. It was as though all of us had been released from the B-School/parental/peer ideal of a top job and come to realize where our strengths, skills and interests lay.

It turned out that unlike our parents, at twenty-something we had not got stuck in the job we would do the rest of our lives. We could change roles, change organisations, change fields and infact even just sit at home to think for a while, without too much of an impact on our CVs or financial status. At junior levels, jobs were so plentiful that the worst that could happen was that you would have to start again with lower-brand name firm. And you were paid peanuts in any role, so the difference in working in an ad agency vis a vis working in a consulting job was not going to hurt for a few months. At any rate, it was worth taking the risk of making changes to find what you really wanted to do.

In the midst of all this existential angst on work, I had totally ignored personal life. Not that I did not care for relationships. However, the way I saw it, my parents would find a suitable prospect and one fine day I would get married. That of course, did not come to pass.

Happily enough, I was not the only one. My generation was lucky enough to push the definition of an ‘old maid’ slightly and change the perception to ‘independent, single woman’. Instead of the giggly, ‘I have a crush on you’ type school girl relationships, everyone began trying their hand at the more serious stuff. And learnt a lot on the way.

Like work, it turned out that you had to figure out what kind of Prince Charming would fit you well to have a shot at the happily ever-after.

Probably the most important change that happened in my twenties was my relationship with my parents. I had finally gotten over my teenage fixation of blaming my parents for everything and being equally dependent on them for most major decisions in my life. Instead we began to drift towards a new territory of an adult-adult relationship from a parent-child relationship. This meant that they had to accept some of the difficult decisions I made and I had to accept that I would have to disappoint them in some ways.

It was not just me. Parents all around were upset when their brilliant child who had gotten a great-paying job out of school had decided to quit and join an unknown start-up. Parents were upset that their children had chosen to marry outside the community or to postpone marriage indefinitely. They were reluctant to cut the apron strings, and when they were ready to do so, they were apprehensive about whether we were mature enough to take our own decisions.

As I said, I was discovering the 'real world'

But boy, was it also fun!

Finally we had the money and the time to enjoy it. We could go on Saturday morning shopping binges and Saturday night party binges without the guilt of spending our parent’s hard earned money. (The thought of saving money did not enter my head till I turned 27 or 28).

We were now responsible young adults, but we were only responsible for ourselves and not even to a spouse, forget children.

We could have a house in which mattresses strewn over the floor replaced sofas as seating, mealtimes were entirely dependent on the sleep/work/party cycle, lighting could be from the cool low hanging paper lanterns rather than the elegant, refined lighting of our parents’ homes.

There was always someone who had a relationship to be discussed and analysed and having ‘girly talks’ was a lot of fun.

We knew that no matter how bad things were at work or at relationships, one could get out and look for something new. There was no pressure to bring a semblance of permanence to our actions. Our options seemed wide, wide open.

One of the interesting things I have always heard about the West is how kids take a break year and ‘find themselves’ when they leave school. Of course, that concept would probably be laughed at in India. Looking back, I realize that we do not entirely skip the phase, especially when one is from a reasonably well-off middle class home in an urban centre. ‘Finding yourself’ is just what you do in your twenties.

Interesting times..

Delhi dazzle

Delhi is a city I have always loved to hate. The scary reasons exist of course – it is not safe for women, people can pull guns at you or worse, pull the trigger at you and all other things associated with crime and violence that come with people having too much power.

Yet perhaps the one reason I don’t particularly like Delhi is that it is so Delhi. This is, understandably a very superficial and highly offensive thing to say. Unfortuantely, this is also a serious drawback as I can see it. Everybody speaks with a slightly nasal ‘haan-ji’ accent. Everyone on the road is aggressive, despite the super-wide roads. Everyone dresses up in a similar manner. Everyone is into the whole ‘my house is bigger than yours. My maid drives a better car than yours’ competition. Somehow, Delhi never gives me a sense of diversity when I walk in its streets.

It also does not help that with my Mumbaiya Hindi (telling auto guys ‘station hoke jaana hai’ is so Bombay), my dark skin and my usually sober clothes, I stick out like a sore thumb in the city.

So everytime work takes me to Delhi, I safely tune out the city and sit in the car waiting to be ferried to my next destination. The one friend I have in Delhi, I explain away as a product of having lived outside of Delhi most of her life.

Yet my last trip made me look at the city with new eyes. I suddenly sounded all arty and French, going on about the ‘light’. The November sun was casting a soft yet sunny glow on the whole city and everything looked majestic, calm and peaceful. Newly cleaned up CP’s beautiful white buildings shone. Humayun’s Tomb and India Gate looked like entryways to magical worlds. Suddenly the roads did not look aggressive. The people looked gentler in the gentle light.

If all of this was not too much of a change in perspective to handle, I also got punched right in the face by Gurgaon when I went to watch ‘Zangoora’

Oh Bombay, Bombay, how your glory has been swiped from under your feet by Gurgaon!

Zangoora turned out to be the ultimate Bollywood Musical. The sets were fantastic and state-of-the-art. The story was wafer-thin and was in place just so everyone had a reason to dance to the Bollywood numbers that kept coming in regular succession. The cast did all the Shiamak Davar steps one would like to see. Sure the dancing was sometimes off. The hero did have an annoying voice which did not entirely compensate for the rippling muscles that put in a display when he took off his shirt Salman Khan-ishtyle.

I sat enthralled, tapping my foot to every number while thanking the stars that my friend managed to get the last few tickets (The show has been sold out since it opened).

So the last trip has been an eye opener of sorts. I still don’t love Delhi but atleast it has got a nice roundness to its personality now.

Aha moment

Coming to office on a Monday and finding out

1. Your colleague is on leave

2. Your secreatry is on leave

3. There are too many deadlines to be met and it is a short week

4. You are dependent on too many other people to meet these deadlines

Then you rummage your drawer for a pencil and find a single creamy, crunchy, chocolatey Oreo cookie from a packet from last week.

Suddenly the little stress spot on your shoulder disappears..

Festival time

One of the big debates I have been having in my mind of late is how do I celebrate festivals and what traditions do I follow.

I am agnostic, wearing towards atheist. I totally admire the concept of a god at a personal level since it clearly helps you grapple with issues too large for you to understand (eg. The death of a close friend’s child. The only way they got over those days was to assure themselves that maybe god meant for things to be this way). Or how much faith can help a person (like a friend’s uncle who found battling cancer just a bit easier thanks to his belief in religion).

I also admire the concept of god for society as a whole since it really is a sort of carrot and stick that tells you to behave decently and be nice to others (or else here is your passport to hell, mister)

However, when you have intellectually decided that the concept of a god is really a bit of a crutch and a bit of direction-setting for the society, then it is difficult to cross the threshold back to being a believer. A threshold which I desperately tried to cross back to when a close friend was hit by a serious illness a few months ago. A threshold which I always thought I could easily cross when it came to it. Yet, I could not do more than utter empty and meaningless prayers from childhood, perhaps just to calm myself down.

Now that it is becoming increasingly clear that the bridge to my belief in god has more or less been burnt (who knows, it may be resurrected someday), more practical questions arise.

The most important being, how does one celebrate festivals when one is in a no-man’s land? These things never concerned me much when I was single since really it is no fun celebrating a festival all by yourself and I never even attempted to do that. With D in the picture, there is a quorum to have some celebrations at home now.

I love festivals. I love shopping for new clothes and then wearing them. I love getting together with the family. I love the smell of the feast being prepared in the kitchen, the desperate urgency to string together mango leaves and tie them to the door before the brief pooja starts, the removal of lamps from storage so they can be cleaned and lit. In short, I love all the cultural trappings associated with festivals and I have some very happy childhood memories of them.

And festivals are about both – religion and culture. Unfortunately the two are so intricately mixed up that it is difficult to separate one strand from the other. Is it possible to decorate a statue of an elephant-god, complete with a colourful umbrella and yet not feel slightly hollow about the act?

This is not a big concern when we are with the larger family. The rest of them, while not devout, are atleast still believers and can actually pray during the pooja. So it is almost like somebody else is renewing their faith and I am just celebrating with them.

The real issue is when it is just D and me.

D happens to be agnostic as well. Like me, D also loves the festival food and the celebrations. Yet, can the two of us, by ourselves, sustain the motions of a celebration without touching the religious core of the day? How do we separate the cultural from the religious? Some actions – good food, decorations, new clothes – can be easily put down to culture.

There are other actions that are not as clear. Is it religion or culture that dictates you light lamps at god’s altar? (We still have a mini-alter tucked behind the water cooler, having inherited a god’s picture each from our parents) Can you lamp lights at an altar knowing it is a mere picture and not the supreme being that the day revolves around? If you don’t light the lamps at the altar, is your celebration even complete?

These are clearly difficult questions and the answers are going to take their time coming. Or perhaps they are not difficult questions at all since millions of Indians go through the cultural motions of festivals without consciously thinking about the gods they may be invoking.

For now though, it is Diwali next week and time to shop, eat and have a blast with the family.

p.s. This is not a theological debate on the existence of god. That is a separate issue that may appear some day in this blog.