Katie's in Africa: Crazy Cairo

From the air Cairo looks like a big sprawling mess. It has more people than the whole of Australia and it’s also very polluted.

After arriving at the guesthouse recommended by the tour company, I met up with a couple of people who had already arrived - an Irish guy and an English guy. Following a lovely lunch at a place called Tabouleh we spent the afternoon walking around a park near the citadel, which has great views of the city, albeit hindered by thick smog. That evening some more people had arrived and since then others have trickled in, and the introductions start over again.

We have worked out there will be 22 of us on the tour including the two guides. About 12 of the people are aged in their 50s, a couple of us in our 20s and the rest in their 30s. The older ones are all very experienced campers so I’m going to learn a lot from them.

On Tuesday we spent three hours at the Australian embassy to get a letter to support our Sudanese visa applications, where they made us read a very strongly worded advisory against travel in Sudan and then write a stat dec saying we understand we shouldn’t go there but want to anyway. Then we had to pay for the privilege. It was interesting to compare what different embassies had advised – the Brits had no problems at all but had to pay more for their letter while the Irishman received no warning but didn’t have to pay a cent. Not sure what the Aussie government has done to the Sudanese government but clearly there are some high level politics at play.

Once that was sorted we headed to the Khan el Khalili bazaar in the old city area of Cairo and where you can buy pretty much anything imaginable. Navigating our way through the narrow laneways with locals shouting, haggling and trying not to crash into one another on scooters, bikes, donkeys and in cars was quite exhausting.

The next morning, with our little tribe having increased again overnight, some of us headed out to the pyramids, which are only about 45 mins drive from the city. There are 140 pyramids in Egypt though many are closed at any given time for restoration, which is ongoing. We went to the first and second “true” pyramids built (true being a key word as there are claims by other countries to have older pyramids but theirs aren’t geometrically precise). The first is quite rounded and was abandoned after they realized it wouldn’t be structurally sound and a new pyramid was built about a kilometer away. The size of them is overwhelming, especially when you consider how big the blocks of stone were and that they were carried over huge distances before being lugged up a building site, all BC.

Next we stopped in at Memphis, the original capital of Egypt, which is now more of a courtyard with some incredible statues. After this we went to another pyramid where the whole forum in front of it has been excavated. Despite being incredibly grand, these areas were only used once for the burial of whichever king was being laid to rest in the pyramid.

On Thursday while the rest of our tour group sorted out their letters with their respective embassies we went to the Coptic area where a number of Greek orthodox churches stand next to mosques and a synagogue. In light of all the religious violence going on in Egypt right now it serves as a reminder that people did live in this city quite peacefully for centuries.

After this we cabs cabs across town to the hotel where we met the rest of the group and had our first whole-group briefing. It was good to put faces to names, and I was surprised at the mix of people. We’ve worked out that of 22 people including the guides, there are 10 women and 12 men. Seven of us are aged 24-30, another seven are aged 30-50 and eight are over 50. Some people are like me and left their jobs to do this trip, others were made redundant, a few are travelling this whole year so the tour is just part of their epic journey, while others are retired or semi-retired.

Today we went to the Egyptian Museum which houses, among thousands of other artefacts, the jewels found in Tutankhamen’s tomb. It has a heap of mummies which are really quite creepy, thousands of statues ranging in size, carved stones full of hieroglyphics and writings on papyrus.

While we were in the museum a huge crowd was building in Tahrir square just near where we were, so I must admit to being more interested in that than the museum. I did manage to get across to it for awhile and took some good photos of the several thousand people protesting for various reasons.

In the afternoon we headed out to the main touristy pyramids, which are as spectacular in person as you imagine, though the locals selling touristy wares were particularly aggressive.

Tomorrow we head out into the desert for four nights. The first will be in a proper campsite and the following three we'll be roughing it .... Wish me luck!