Egypt
There are not many countries in the world which present greater tourist attractions than Egypt and certainly not many with a longer history. Attractions in Egypt are so well known that the response to "I am off to Egypt" is always a "When?" and never a "Why?". Not surprisingly, for the first time in three attempts, it wasn't hard for me to convince a couple of my friends - Aravind and Kartik - to join me for a trip overseas. And my long cherished dream of visiting Egypt finally came true when I landed in Cairo late one sultry summer evening and that city is where we spent the next three days.
The first of those three days was spent at the two of the biggest attractions of the city viz., the Giza Pyramids and the Egyptian Museum. Over the centuries the pyramids seem to have become the symbol of not only the country, but of history itself. The impact of the first sight of them was pretty breathtaking to say the least. The pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) is the only surviving member of the seven ancient wonders of the world and at a height of 140 m, it also remained as the tallest structure in the world for over forty centuries. The Egyptian museum is so huge that it would take about an year to view all the exhibits. The highlight of the museum was definitely the Tutankhamun's section and the mummy room. The gold collection of Tutankhamun makes one wonder how much a pharaoh like Ramesis, the great, could have carried to his grave when the least important boy king took west Africa's budget deficit with him.
The next day, we took a trip to Saqqara and Memphis and braved the scorching heat to visit the oldest stone structure in the world - the Step Pyramid of Djozer. Built in 27 century BC by Imhoptep, the step pyramid is still in a very good condition. Saqqara complex also houses the funerary complex of Djozer, the Pyramid of Teti with its famous pyramid text, and the 32 room funerary complex of his vizier, Mereruka. Memphis, the capital of the first dynasty (c. 3200 BC), contrastingly, has nothing to offer except a small museum housing a fallen statue of Ramesis II.
On the last day in Cairo, we started off with an hours drive to Dashur to visit Snefru's Red and Bent pyramids, the forerunners of the Giza pyramids. We spent the rest of the day visiting the Coptic Cairo and the Citadel. The Coptic Museum, which contains relics dating from the first millennium AD and the Hanging Church, a 7th century church built on top of two towers (and hence the name) were the the highlights from the Coptic region. The Citadel is the site of the famous Mohammed Ali mosque, built in 1830s as a scaled down replica of the blue mosque in Istanbul. It also houses the Mohammed Ali's palace where the host murdered 40 Mameluke chiefs to start a new dynasty. The same night, we took an overnight train to Aswan. A chair-car in a vehicle which goes into a vibrating trance every few minutes was not what the body was crying for after a hard day of sightseeing. But at least it brought us to Aswan with enough time to spare on the following day for sightseeing.
The two days in Aswan - outside one crazy afternoon on the Sahara dunes - were easily the hottest days on our trip. Almost all of us were dehydrated by the end of our stay. On the first scorching day, we covered the Unfinished Obelisk, - abandoned due to a flaw in the stone, the Aswan high dam, the Nubian Museum, and the island temple of Philae. The Philae temple was easily the pick of the lot, its island setting adding to its beauty. This temple along with the pair in Abu Simbel were moved piece-by-piece to a fresh site when the Nile flooded the original location after the building of the Aswan high dam. The temple, however, looked twice as pretty under the lighting for sound and light show in the night.
We had to get up at an inhumanely hour early next morning in order to catch the convoy to Abu Simbel. As a consolation for the early start we got to see a spectacular sunrise over a pretty dramatic desert scenery. The twin temples at Abu Simbel, dedicated to Ramesis, the great and his wife, Nefertari, were easily the best among the monuments we saw during our trip. The four 20m tall statues of Ramesis, staring coldly at Nubia across the Nile, were awe inspiring to say the least. Equally amazing is the feat how the temples and the mountain were rebuilt here after the Nile flooded in the '60s. The three of us were the only souls brave enough to spend one more afternoon in the Aswan heat, this time to visit some of its lesser known attractions. We started off with the Tombs of the Nobles, which was worth the effort for the bird birds eye view of the city. A distinctly uncomfortable 30 minute camel ride from there brought us to the San Simeon monastery, a 7th century monastery destroyed by Salah al-Din during the crusades. Aswan also has two islands: a smaller "Kitchner Island" which due to the work of a British General, Kitchner, is entirely dedicated to some exotic plants and a larger "Elephantine island" which contains a ruined temple. We walked through the former and floated past the latter to bring our afternoon adventure to a close.
We spent the next three days and three night floating down the Nile - from Aswan to Edfu - on a felucca, a lanteen-sailed boat introduced by the Romans. After five days of sleep deprivation, three days on a felucca was exactly what the doctor ordered for us. The temples of Kom Ombo and Edfu were the big stops worth mentioning on our trip. The temple of Kom Ombo sits right on the banks on the Nile and is perfectly symmetrical about its centre and hence contains two temples in one. The one on the left is dedicated to Horus the elder (the brother of Osiris) and the one on the right is dedicated to the crocodile God, Sobek. The temple of Edfu is dedicated to Horus the younger (the son of Osiris) and is one of the best preserved temples in the country.
A two hour bus ride from Edfu brought us to Luxor, the capital of the Middle and New kingdoms and one of the most visited cities in Egypt. Luxor temple, built by Amenophis III and Ramesis II, was our first stop. The temple was the home of Amun's consort Mut and his son Khonsu while Amun, the greatest God of the region resided in the nearby Karnak. The courtyards of Amenophis III and Ramesis II were the most impressive part of the temple. Compared to the Luxor temple, Karnak is a monumental megalith built over 1300 years starting with SesostrisI's XII dynasty core. Highlight of the temple are the unbelievable 6000 sqm hypostyle hall housing 134 columns 15 to 23m high, the ram headed avenue of the sphinxes, queen Hatshepsut's well preserved obelisk, her wall showing the scars of the earliest political vandalism when her step son, Tuthmosis III, destroyed all her images. Apart from visiting the temple we also had enough time on the first afternoon to squeeze in two of the best museums in the city - the Luxor Museum and the Mummification Museum. Luxor museum houses one of the best sculptures of the country and more importantly is small enough not to intimidate the visitor by its sheer volume. The beautiful statues of Amenophis III and the recreated walls from the Amarna period stand out among the exhibits. The mummification museum is even smaller; but is big enough to give one an overall picture of the ancient mummification process.
The next morning we took a 3 hour donkey ride - which proved how wrong I was to criticise the camel ride in Aswan - to the Valley of the Kings. Fearing that the conspicuous pyramids are an open invitation for the tomb robbers, the pharaohs starting from Tuthmosis I had their tombs cut inside the arid Thebean hills. The fact remains that all the tombs except a tiny one belonging to king Tutankhamun were stripped bare of its treasures. Despite that, the intricate drawings, the inscriptions and the decorations inside these long shaft like tombs make them truly priceless. We visited the unfinished tomb of Ramesis XI, unfinished due to the untimely death of the pharaoh, the tomb of Ramesis III, the grandest tomb then open to public and the tomb of Merneptah, the tomb of the biblical pharaoh. After the tomb visits, we had just enough time to ride past the hauntingly beautiful mortuary temple of Hatshepsut, the sheer beauty of which should have prevented her step son from destroying it, the famous Ramesseum, the subject of Shelly's Ozymandias and the Colossi of Memnon, two 20m statues of Amenophis III wrongly attributed by the Greeks to the Trojan hero, before scrambling to catch the convoy to Hurghada.
Two days of driving with an overnight stop at Hurghada and another 3 am wake-up to catch the convoy brought us to St. Katherine monastery situated in the foothills of Mt. Sinai. We reached our destination with just enough time to scramble to the top of the mount for sunset. Mt. Sinai, 2285 m, is the second highest peak in Egypt and highest among its immediate neighbours. The highest peak in Egypt is Mt. Katherine, named after the patron saint of the monastery whose bones were transported to the top of the peak by angels. A three hour hike, final section of which involved walking up the steep steps of repentance, brought us to the summit from where we saw a spectacular sunset. Mt. Sinai houses two chapels: a chapel on top which marks the place where Moses got his commandments and a chapel few metres below marking the Elijah's basin - the place where Elijah hid from Jezebel.
Next morning we visited the monastery before heading to the desert for a two day trek. St Katherine is a Greek orthodox monastery built in 3rd century AD under the instruction of empress Helena. It houses a transplanted descendant of the Burning Bush, the chapel of the burning bush, the Moses' well and a splendid collection of gold artifacts donated by various kings across the centuries. Our trek in Sinai desert included a trip to the white/sugar canyon (named so due to the powdery nature of the white rocks found here), the closed canyon (named so because the canyon ends in a steep cliff) and a two night stay at a Bedouin camp, Wadi Hamdi. Although the hospitality of the Bedouins was exemplary, we cut short our stay due to the unbearable heat and decided to spend an extra evening at Dahab, by the sea.
The following day, me and my two friends, all of whom can manage to drown in anything deeper than a bath tub with varying degree of dexterity, decided to push our luck by opting to go for an introductory scuba dive. Although each of us spent only 30 mts under water that too between a depth of 2 to 5 m, we all would pick diving in red sea as the no. 1 highlight of the trip. With so many colourful fishes so close to the shore and surface, it was not hard for us to believe why red sea is the greatest diving spot on the planet.
Our first stop on our drive to the oasis of Siwa was the monastery of Wadi El Natrun. We visited two of the four monasteries of the region. Deir Anba Bishoi, a 4th century monastery named after Anba Bishoi - the first monk in Wadi Natrun - and Deir al-Suryani, a 6th century monastery, named so as it was started by a group of Syrians after a dispute over the importance of Virgin Mary. Our next stop was the war cemeteries of El Alamein. One of the most critical battles of the World War II was fought over the control of the Suez Canal in the deserts of Egypt, Libya and Algeria. The battle ended in El Alamein when the allied 8th Army under General Montgomery defeated the Afrika Korps under Field Marshal Rommel.
Siwa oasis is the westernmost of all oasis in Egypt lying at the edge of the great Saharan sand sea. Siwa also hosts some ancient ruins and sites. The most famous of which include the oracle of Amun, visited once by Alexander, the great himself who wanted to confirm his divine birth, the ruins of Shali, a 13th century berber town ruined by a rainfall in 1920s and the mountain of the dead, tombs of some Greek nobles some of which still housing mummified remains. All the three sites also offer excellent view of the oasis. Rest of the sites including a dirty pool attributed to Cleopatra, a unimpressive tomb attributed to Alexander, the great are eminently avoidable. We spent the evening at the Fatnis island in Siwa to see a desert sunset and as it turned out, we ended up seeing the best sunset on our trip.
We left Siwa early next morning to Alexandria, the second largest city in Egypt after Cairo. The Graeco-Roman Museum was our first stop on the following day. The museum houses sculptures from the Greek and Roman period pick of them being the busts of Roman emperors. The 2nd century catacombs of Kom es-Shoqqafa is easily the pick of the sites in the city. The catacombs held over 300 mummies during the Roman times and it was interesting to see the Egyptian Gods portrayed with Greek and Roman attire. The Royal Jewelry Museum houses a stunning array of diadems, bracelets and other artifacts - including a exceptionally beautiful chess set - mostly belonging to king Farouq. It is kept in an equally spectacular palace belonging to his wife's relative. The minor attractions of the city include Roman amphitheater, Pompei's pillar (actually raised to honour Diocletian), Fort Qaitbey (a 15th century fort siting on top of ruins of ancient lighthouse of Alexandria) and Alexandria's new library.
All the above attractions in Alexandria pales in comparison to the city's best kept secret, Ahmed Mohammed restaurant - a fast food place serving the best foul, falafel and mussoura on the planet..... best by a long way and a great way to end such a wonderful trip.
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