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Aswan, Egypt
Salam Alaikum or hello from Egypt!!!!
Wow, I can't believe it's taken so long to write anything, but it seems like I haven't had a moment to stop and collect my thoughts! So, I just arrived in Aswan and am finally putting down some words about Egypt. It's been three weeks now and it all feels like a bit of a blur. Egypt has been surprisingly contrasting and unexpected. I spent my first week in Cairo sorting out our Sudanese and Ethiopian visa's and fitting in some sights as well. It is very much a working city and felt like a parallel universe compared with home. Cairo has a population of around 11 million people (though this figure has caused some debate). Needless to say it is manic. It's busy, alive and not particularly clean. The first words I learnt were bakshish (tip), laa (no) and finally shokran (thankyou). That sums up many of my first conversations, and gives you an idea of what my first impressions were!! It took me a few days to adjust to the constant staring and demands for money, but now that seems like a distant memory. I had a great time visiting the Khan-al-Khalili (Cairo's famous bazaar) and enjoyed my first attempts at bartering. Needless to say I thought I did quite well, but later found out I paid over the odds :) I managed to take in most of the sights visting Islamic Cairo, the Egyptian Museum, Coptic Cairo and obviously the Pyramids and the Sphinx. There was so much history to digest it was virtually impossible to get a grip with the timelines and artifacts, and i didn't feel like I left Cairo suitably educated. My most traumatising memory is of seeing the mummies in the museum which were quite frankly disturbing!!
After a week in Cairo we finally got onto the 'truck' and headed into the Western desert which has been my favourite part so far. Overlanding is turning out to be a lot of fun. We have an enormous yellow truck which attracts attention whenever it goes and most people wave or beep their horns at us. There are 22 in the group and we sit facing each other in two long lines. There is a section named the beach which is elevated and roof free where you can go and lay down, read a book, take pictures or recover from a hangover - take your pick! It turns out I love the desert. The Western desert spreads from the banks of the Nile towards Libya and is referred to as 'the land abandoned by god'. The landscape was both bizarre and captivating with vast areas of nothingness and random rock formations gradually being eroded away. Within the Western desert there is a national park with two specific deserts called the Black and White desert. These are literally what they say, one part is black and one part is white. Without a doubt my favourite day was waking up in the White desert. This is an surreal area of windblown rock formations. We woke up to the sunrise and just wandered around taking pictures and doing silly things, it was amazing!!
Sporadically throughout the desert we visited various Oasis (Bahariyya, Farafra and Dakhla), these were very traditional towns. some of which were friendlier than others. Bizarrely we found an amazing artist who had turned his house into a gallery specializing in sand sculptures, and though I have limited sand sculpture knowledge they were pretty outstanding! Badr Moghny was his name! Throughout the oasis there are apparently 600 hot springs which came in handy as there were no showers. It was slighly surreal on one Monday morning to be sat in a hot spring surveying the desert, beats work though! The temperatures are phenomenal, we're guessing between 35 and 40, it has simply re-affirmed my view that I should have been born in a hot country - I love it!
Bush camping has turned out to be great fun (I may change my mind later on), I managed to put up a tent with limited difficulty and have even cooked my first meal for the group (fish, baked potatoes on the fire and cous cous salad for those who are interested!) My diet has completly taken a turn for the worst and I am missing vegetables. Food choices are pretty limited and I have point blank refused to eat any meat - I am officially a vegetarian. The visual slaughter of numerous chickens has basically made me want to cry. I'm weak, I know!!! There is one amazing dish which has become a staple favourite. It's called kushari and consists of noodles, rice, lentils and chick peas. Combined with a chilli sauce it's really good, though I will be happy if I never see another falafel again.
We finally hit Luxor last Thursday and after a week in the desert I'm embarassed to say it became the party town. Me + swimming pool + cold beers = happy. We found an amazing karaoke bar which contained the following: bar, swimming pool, karaoke, osterich, camel, rottweiler and the most amazing toilets. Needless to say we were happy. I did manage a little sightseeing including both Luxor and Karnak temple, the Valley of the Kings (we saw the tombs of Ramses the I, III, IX) and my favourite which was the Valley of the workers which I did not know existed. The Valley of the workers basically was for the artisans who produced the tombs for the Kings and Queens. They spent their whole lives working on the tombs and when they had time off they were allowed to build small tombs for themselves. For some reason I found them more impressive, probably because the depictions were so much more personal revealing more of a family feel to them. The scale of vanity that these people must have had to indulge themselves in this way is insane and I could not get over the level of work which it must have taken to produce them. Without doubt my favourite temple was that of Ramses III which had the most amazing hieroglyphic's, and I only wished that I could understand what they meant.
We left Luxor yesterday and drove straight to Aswan (Egypt's most southerly city). This seems alot smaller and friendler than the other cities and we arrived just in time to view the sun setting over the Nile as the felluca boats sailed past. Beautiful! We're in Aswan for the rest of the week and I have plans to have a felucca sail, visit Abu Simbel and hopefully get a chance to learn something of the Nubian people, who are a distinct ethnic group with their own customs and language. I think Aswan is more African in character and I can't wait to move down into Sudan and see ever increasing changes.
I pretty sure that's enough for now and I will not leave it so long next time. In the meantime it's hot, there's a roof top pool and a sunlounger with my name on it, so signing off.
take care
m xx
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