The first couple of days I had a tour of the pyramids at Giza and some at Saquara. The ones at Giza at massive, 137m I think, and you can see why there is a conspiracy theory that they were built by aliens as they look so out of place and so mystical, smacked in the middle of Cairo. The ones at Saqara are less impressive, they are the oldest stone buildings in the world and so have suffered since they are 5000 years old. We also saw Memphis, the former capital of Egypt, and a few other bits in between the main attractions. The next day I had a tour of Cairo, saw the old citadels which protected Cairo from invading invaders. In the afternoon I went to the Egyptian museum which is good, it has loads of stuff packed in. The most interesting was the mummified animals section, as well as some of the sarcophagus's. I tried taking a picture of a mummy but the security man saw me and told me off, and made me delete the picture.
The next day Rachel and Ellen, who I met doing the Giza tour, got up nice and early to catch our bus to Baharriya Oasis, the oasis closet to Cairo at 365km away. It took five hours, and involved lots of stopping at random places and military checkpoints, since it is in an area of the desert which is deemed to be at risk from militants. When we arrived we were taken to the tour leaders house, a farm between the mountains and the oasis centre. It had six springs which fed a pool next to the living quarters. We ate lunch and then were given a tour of the farm, it had the usual animals (cows, horses, sheep) as well as rabbits, pigeons, goats and donkeys.

We then went off-roading around the desert round the farm for a bit. Was really fun going up and down the dunes, and we met a German couple who had got stuck in the sand with their tour leaders, who had been waiting an hour in 40degree heat for someone to find them. We pulled them out and they went on, to get stuck about half an hour later. Then we went to the tour leaders parents house to eat dinner, they are on Ramadan which means they can't eat, drink or smoke between 4am to 6pm, which in the heat they were finding quite difficult. The next day we got up relatively early to start off, which we needed as we spent about an hour arguing with the tourist police to let us go into the desert. It is standard for tourists to go, they just have to sign a disclaimer saying they don't need a police escort, but our tour leader had something wrong with the paperwork. After eventually talking with his supervisor the bloke let us go though. After picking up some supplies we went on into the desert, first into the black desert and then onto the white desert. The black desert is so called because it is littered with black volcanic rocks, and it has these big conical hills dotted throughout the landscape. We stopped for lunch at this random spring in the middle of the desert, the water was pumped into a pool before going into the fields so allowed us to have a swim and freshen up. It was so nice being a in a cool pool in the middle of arid desert, we spent about an hour messing about with some Egyptian guys. We drove on, stopping at a place called Crystal Mountain, which is a huge rock made out of crystals. In the late afternoon we entered into the white desert. The sand is like proper desert sand, but every few metres it has weird chalk-like rocks rising 30cm to 15m from the ground. It didn't feel like a place on earth, it was incredibly quiet and still, with these rocks going on into the distance. We stopped as the sun was setting and set up camp, some mattresses on a blanket. A desert fox came and visited us, it was really small but very tame. We explored for a bit and then had dinner, chatting around a fire before eventually going to bed. It was so quiet and the stars were amazing since there was no civilisation for 200km, and really dark. Unfortunately diarrhea hit me, but there is nothing like digging a hole in the desert and looking up at he stars while you squirt your guts out. Twice. We woke up bright and early, had some breakfast and packed up camp. We had a final wonder round (I had another dump, reminded me of gone off oxtail soup) and then started the drive back to Bahariya. We stopped off at black mountain, a large hill which me and Ellen climbed, and later learnt that it was 41degreees so were pleased with our impressive effort. The journey back didn't seem to take as long, we had lunch before being driven to our bus which would take us the five hours back to Cairo. I thought I would be able to stretch out since the seat next to me was empty, but then a fat Egyptian man sat down, with his seven year old son on his lap. Seven year old boys on their fathers laps on a five hour bus journey aren't the best company, so I spent the journey squashed against the window being poked in the back. I was quite glad when our hostel manager Mustafa came to get us off the bus. The next day I had a bit of a quiet day as I was v tired, was walking round Cairo when a man started talking to me and before I knew it I was leaving his shop with a bottle of perfume. While inside he asked me to write in his visitors book, which they all seem to have, and it was full of comments from various nationalities all saying things along the line of 'I was walking through the street looking for a when I found myself with some perfume and slightly less money'. The Egyptians are well practised in mugging off foreigners, its amazing how many Egyptians love England because they have family there. So I now have some nice perfume, I just have to think of something to do with it. That evening I got the sleeper train down to Aswan and arrived about 10 the next day, where I met up with Rachel and Ellen. We saw Philae temple and the high dam at Aswan, the dam was massive but being a dam wasn't the most interesting of sights, and the temple was good, but the more amazing thing being that they moved it 500m to stop it being flooded by the dam. Hundreds of temples got flooded by the dam but 15 were saved, the most biggest being Ramses II's temple which was built into a mountain, and had to have another mountain 200km away built to accommodate it. The next day we (Rachel and Ellen remember those girls) boarded our felluca, a traditional sailing boat, and sailed down the Nile for a couple of hours. We had a nice group of people on board- Torea, a Korean, Foory, a Hungarian, Lauren, David and some guy with no hair, who were American (but still OK) and Indy, an Indian who initially was a very interesting man, but by the end was incredible annoying- he believed in balance, he believed in polygamy, he didn't take medicines, he didn't drink anything but water, he wouldn't eat anything which had the potential to become a living thing, he loved travel, he had a learning disability, yoga was his calling in life... ... We spent the evening and the next day chatting, sunbathing, swimming and having Yoga lessons from Indy. It was really nice and relaxing, and I could have stayed longer, but we were dropped off the next morning about 20 miles from Luxor. We saw a couple of temples, and then went to our various hotels. It was also the breaking of Ramadam, called Eid, and all the Egyptians were out with their families dressed up in new clothes and the kids proudly showing off their new toys, a celebration comparable to Christmas in the West.
The next day I saw Karnak temple and Luxor temple, which were good, and the day after saw the Valley of the Kings and Queens, Nefertari temple and the Collossi of Mammon. These were all good, the Valley of the Kings has hundreds of temples all winding through the cliffs, many on top of each other, and some of them still had their original colourings etc. I got back and had a kebab in a little restaurant and made friends with a guy called Abdul (I think) and didn't realise the time so was half an hour late for my taxi for the bus. The hotel man was very accommodating though, he took me on the back of his moped with his brother following with my bag to the bus stop but the bus had gone, so we got a taxi to catch up with it. Unfortunately the taxi man, understanding the rush, took the corner on the motorway a little fast and my bag went flying from the roof of the car across the motorway. It didn't matter though, he simply reversed down it, leaped out, chucked it in the back with me and sped off. We caught the bus up at the next stop and after a lot of shouting I got on. I arrived in Hurgada three hours later and checked into my hostel.
The next day I got up early and was the first one for breakfast. There was a pile of boiled eggs so I took one when selecting my breakfast, cracked it open at the table and egg went everywhere. A kindly Egyptian explained to me very slowly that they were there for decoration, and they were supposed to fry them, and that you can't eat raw eggs. I tried explaining that I thought it was a boiled egg but he didn't understand. I then got a taxi, then a ferry to Sharm El Sheikh, then a taxi, then a bus and finally arrived in Dahab.

Dahab is a town on the red sea coast, it is a mix of backpacker/scuba dive/western and Egypt. It is really nice to relax here, Egypt is such a hot, scruffy, dusty and intense place, that its a relief- you only have to tell the hasselers no twice before they leave you alone. My hostel is nice, I'm in a dorm room but right next to my window is the speaker from the local mosque, so every morning at 4.30 i s*** myself as a Muslim wails in my ear. Rachel, Ellen, a girl called Celestine and a Irishman called Connor have been spending most our days at a Bedouin style cafe, it looks out over the red sea and in the distance you can see the cliffs of Saudi Arabia. The first two days here we did nothing all day, just lazed about making the most of the cafes cheap and generous breakfast, lunch and dinners and I read The Beach. The next day we went quad biking through the desert which was really fun, and had a swim in a little lagoon. That afternoon we went to a dive spot called Eel Garden, and went snorkeling. The aquatic life is amazing, there were thousands of fishes including eels, lionfish, bannerfish, nemo fishes, swordfish etc etc. The colours were really bright and deep, and some fish were two foot long. On the way back I saw a stingray, its sting was two metres long and its bout 75cm diameter, it was really cool. It inspired me to go diving, and so have done the first dive of my Padi Open Water qualification today. We spent about 40 minutes in the water and went down to 7m. It was really good, its surprising how complicated it is, with equalising etc and making sure you don't get pressure sickness (you have to do various things to make sure your ears, sinuses and lungs don't explode). The fish life wasn't as good because we went to a sandy area so that we didn't kick the coral, but still saw lots of fish including a massive shoal, lionfish and flanders, the fish that looks like the sea floor.
I'm now sat in the cafe, at 11 we have to catch the bus to Mt Sinai and tonight we are climbing it, we should be at the top to see the sunrise. Mt Sinai is the highest mountain in Egypt at 2248m, and is supposed to be the mountain where moses received the ten commandments from god, and so Muslims, Jews and Christians all flock to it to climb it and perform various rituals. Should be fun.