We are here!! We are finally here…..After the issues yesterday, today was pretty smooth. No major visa issues, no issues with the short connection, and even our luggage arrived in time and completely intact. The funny thing is that by now, with all the visas and the revenue stamps – including the additional Egyptian visa we got yesterday – we have pretty much exhausted the pages in our passports!! We now have 3 blank pages – one for Kenyan visa, one for Tanzanian, and one for Lesotho, if required. So going forward we have to remember to ask every immigration officer to not stamp anything on a new page…and hope that he/she agrees… :)
Anyway, back to Cairo. The initial reaction at seeing the city from the air was a sense of awe at the amount of barrenness: as far as I could see from the plane, there was brown, dry sand – no traces of civilization, greenery… life. As our plane taxied to its gate, the first few planes we saw were old, discarded, sand-covered ones belonging to now defunct airlines. The sight just added to the sense of lifelessness and decay that we felt from the air.
The old feeling of the city continued with us as we drove through the city in our taxi. Most buildings were pale yellow in color, all covered by dust, all seemed to be past their prime years. The whole city seemed to depict a place that was important and well-developed a few decades back, and then the powers-to-be had decided to ignore it. Most cars, especially taxis, also seemed to come from a different era – there were tons of Peugeots and Lada Rivas that I can only guess were from the 80s.
As we moved through the city, we started chatting about our plans in Egypt. With us losing one day in the visa issue, we thought it wouldn’t make any sense to go to Luxor, as it was about 9-10 hours of journey, which wouldn’t give us enough time in Cairo. We were debating if we could squeeze in a trip to Mt. Sinai. Mt. Sinai is the place where Christians, Muslims and Jews believe that Moses received the Ten Commandments from the Big Boss. It is supposed to have one of the best sunrises anywhere in the world and we were drawn both towards the natural beauty of the place as well as its historical & religious significance. At the same time, squeezing in a trip to Mt. Sinai would be pretty tiring – we had taken a red eye flight to Cairo, and would have to sit in a car for the whole evening and part of the night to get to the base of Mt. Sinai (takes about 7 hours). From there on, there’s a climb for a few hours to the top, and then the journey back. So we were debating between the two options and decided to get some local opinions…
Anyway, we reached hotel Osiris, where we met up with the friendly and knowledgeable owner Mr. Nabeel. We had also called up Fatma – giving her our coordinates. Fatma was M’s roommate from her single days in Chicago. A reunion of old friends followed at the hotel when she showed up, along with her cute son Youssef. It was an interesting feeling to see someone who was quite a carefree person now taking care of her own kid!!
Anyway, back to Cairo. The initial reaction at seeing the city from the air was a sense of awe at the amount of barrenness: as far as I could see from the plane, there was brown, dry sand – no traces of civilization, greenery… life. As our plane taxied to its gate, the first few planes we saw were old, discarded, sand-covered ones belonging to now defunct airlines. The sight just added to the sense of lifelessness and decay that we felt from the air.
The old feeling of the city continued with us as we drove through the city in our taxi. Most buildings were pale yellow in color, all covered by dust, all seemed to be past their prime years. The whole city seemed to depict a place that was important and well-developed a few decades back, and then the powers-to-be had decided to ignore it. Most cars, especially taxis, also seemed to come from a different era – there were tons of Peugeots and Lada Rivas that I can only guess were from the 80s.
As we moved through the city, we started chatting about our plans in Egypt. With us losing one day in the visa issue, we thought it wouldn’t make any sense to go to Luxor, as it was about 9-10 hours of journey, which wouldn’t give us enough time in Cairo. We were debating if we could squeeze in a trip to Mt. Sinai. Mt. Sinai is the place where Christians, Muslims and Jews believe that Moses received the Ten Commandments from the Big Boss. It is supposed to have one of the best sunrises anywhere in the world and we were drawn both towards the natural beauty of the place as well as its historical & religious significance. At the same time, squeezing in a trip to Mt. Sinai would be pretty tiring – we had taken a red eye flight to Cairo, and would have to sit in a car for the whole evening and part of the night to get to the base of Mt. Sinai (takes about 7 hours). From there on, there’s a climb for a few hours to the top, and then the journey back. So we were debating between the two options and decided to get some local opinions…
Anyway, we reached hotel Osiris, where we met up with the friendly and knowledgeable owner Mr. Nabeel. We had also called up Fatma – giving her our coordinates. Fatma was M’s roommate from her single days in Chicago. A reunion of old friends followed at the hotel when she showed up, along with her cute son Youssef. It was an interesting feeling to see someone who was quite a carefree person now taking care of her own kid!!
We pretty much spent the rest of the evening catching up with Fatma over food and tea. Tea is quite an obsession in Egypt – it is usually served, without milk, in small glass cups that look like shot glasses. It is pretty refreshing, and once you taste it, you can clearly understand why it is liked so much! We had some tea at the rooftop terrace of our hotel, as we saw the sun go down in downtown Cairo.
Walking around the town, we also witnessed two other obsessions of Egyptians. One was soccer – people follow the game pretty seriously, and things become quite absorbing when you mix obsession #1 (tea) and #2 (soccer). Here’s a pic to show what I’m talking about - Egyptians sitting in a street cafe catching a game of soccer while drinking tea….
Obsession #3 is smoking….Egyptians love to smoke, and there’s second hand smoke available everywhere and free-of-charge! This despite the fact that the cigarette boxes here don’t just have a health warning – there is usually a ghastly picture of a lung-cancer patient with no hair and a bunch of tubes attached to the throat and the mouth. If that can’t deter anyone from smoking, I don’t know what will…The love for smoking runs so deep that it is usually difficult to find a non-smoking hotel room – we were lucky that Osiris had a strict non-smoking policy in the rooms, although the common areas and the balcony were full of it.
Based on our conversations with Fatma, we had decided to skip going to Mt. Sinai, just taking it easy in Cairo instead...This meant that we had to walk around Cairo, looking for a clean hotel with breathable air – an activity that would become a regular one in the days to come! Fatma had done a good deal of research to help us out, and Mr. Nabeel was also pretty helpful, to the effect that we found a decent place without much hassle. We wrapped up the evening with a quick trip to Fatma’s place, where M started to doze off in the middle of conversations….that’s when we figured that we wanted some shut-eye really bad!!
Walking around the town, we also witnessed two other obsessions of Egyptians. One was soccer – people follow the game pretty seriously, and things become quite absorbing when you mix obsession #1 (tea) and #2 (soccer). Here’s a pic to show what I’m talking about - Egyptians sitting in a street cafe catching a game of soccer while drinking tea….
Obsession #3 is smoking….Egyptians love to smoke, and there’s second hand smoke available everywhere and free-of-charge! This despite the fact that the cigarette boxes here don’t just have a health warning – there is usually a ghastly picture of a lung-cancer patient with no hair and a bunch of tubes attached to the throat and the mouth. If that can’t deter anyone from smoking, I don’t know what will…The love for smoking runs so deep that it is usually difficult to find a non-smoking hotel room – we were lucky that Osiris had a strict non-smoking policy in the rooms, although the common areas and the balcony were full of it.
Based on our conversations with Fatma, we had decided to skip going to Mt. Sinai, just taking it easy in Cairo instead...This meant that we had to walk around Cairo, looking for a clean hotel with breathable air – an activity that would become a regular one in the days to come! Fatma had done a good deal of research to help us out, and Mr. Nabeel was also pretty helpful, to the effect that we found a decent place without much hassle. We wrapped up the evening with a quick trip to Fatma’s place, where M started to doze off in the middle of conversations….that’s when we figured that we wanted some shut-eye really bad!!
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