19th October 2013

Egypt 

Aswan.

Having landed safely and got our change from the visa man, our fixer chap, Kamal picked us up and took us to the hotel. This was a fairly long drive, that if we had taken a taxi we may have paid a lot, maybe even an inflated price and we may not have found it so easy to find a taxi, so we were very happy.  The hotel is just what we needed. Air conditioned, lovely shower, very comfortable, good price etc, etc. 

at the Philae Hotel

The delightful staff

Aswan is a town that is wholly dependent on tourism and as there were simply no tourists, the situation is quite desperate. A very sorry sight is the large number of Nile Cruise ships, moored on the bank, all lying idle.

A small part of a fleet of over 500 ships lying dormant

When this place is crowded with tourists it is bad enough with predatory touts everywhere, flogging souvenirs and boat trips and all kinds tours. When you are the only tourists it is impossible. Every time you step outside, they follow you down the street. Now they are really struggling but to feel sorry for them is dangerously close to sharing your kids with a lion because he looks hungry! We did have an incident where two delightful kids attempted to pick my pocket! Suffice to say they were ‘unsuccessful’.

Actually there is more evidence of Egypt’s troubled times apart from the complete absence of tourists. All along the main drag of Aswan are stationed heavily armed and thoroughly bored cops, some dozing, sprawled out in patrol cars that never move or peering out of armoured cars. Some of it was a harsh reminder of the short time I spent in Derry all those years ago. There is a lot of anger here against the police.

Many restaurants are closed as there is no business and it is quite hard to find nice food.  It is very hot indeed. However, there is a Mcdonalds here which has air conditioning and milkshakes.  Sorted!

The traffic is quite strange as it seems to have waves of being quite dense during the day and then is quiet for a while. Quiet, I use the term advisedly as even when the road is empty with just one car it will blow his horn every now and again for no apparent reason. Also, for reasons that neither of us can fathom, most of the cars are fitted with some extra noise making device and indeed many of them have got a police siren! The noise pollution is tremendous and apparently quite pointless.

3^rd October 2013

Today we went to collect the van from the harbour. It arrived early yesterday but we were told that we could not come for it till today.

Shuffling the barges around 

On arrival, we found that the barge it was on had been unloaded and moved off the quay to allow another barge to be unloaded and then reloaded. Our van and our friend’s motorcycle were stuck on the barge. The circus that followed was both dangerous and annoying in equal measure.

The bunch of amateur clowns that pass for the crew set about swapping these vessels over, amid a tangle of ropes, a lot of chugging back and forth and a huge amount of shouting (it seems to me that it is not possible for Arabic speakers to raise their voice without sounding angry to my ears) and very little leadership. Sorry lets correct that. There was rather too much leadership as everyone wanted to have a go! It all took about an hour.

Most of the work was done by us

With the barge in the correct position, we then set about trying to retrieve our van, our friend’s heavy motorcycle and another car. All 3 were crammed onto a deck between two large holds. There was no room to manoeuvre and there was water on two sides and a 15 foot drop on the other two sides of the barge.

The chaos that followed in the next hour or so was hazardous and amateurish and it took several attempts for my German friend (owner of the motor bike) and myself to get the crew to leave us alone when we were eventually able to get our vehicles off the barge .

Finally!

Anyway, three hours later, the paper work is completed and we have our Egyptian number plates and off we go  By now it was sufficiently late that we had another air conditioned night in the hotel and we will move on in the morning.

Luxor

We left Aswan and drove along the Nile route. It was an interesting drive, though it was much slower going than we had been led to believe. We reached the town of Edfu where there is an important temple to the God Horus, which Ping insists on pronouncing as Horace. So Horace it shall be.

The humungous temple of Horus

We have been quite tired and wary of doing touristy thing. One of our friends pointed out that in view of the fact that we are here we really should seize the opportunity and make the effort. I do feel he has a point. So here we are in Egypt heading wards the Temple of Horace.

Here's Horace!

Edfu is not a huge town but as soon as we had past through the centre we found ourselves in a road that had a high railing all along one side. The railing had a huge empty space behind it and a row of closed down shops. On the other side of the road was a heavily fortified wall, probably 5 metres high with gun turrets all along it but no sign of any guns or soldiers or anything. We drove the length of this road and realised that the empty area was the car park for the temple.

Which one is the grumpy lookin bird?

So we drove in, there was a cop with a gun at the entrance who confirmed that we were in the right place. 

This vast car/coach park was all but deserted. The shops we had seen were souvenir shops all closed down and the only other inhabitants of this space were a troop of police dotted around. It might seem they were protecting us from terrorist, I am not sure. In addition there were several patrols with plain clothes officers, deep under cover. They could only be identified by the discreet machine guns that they carried.

It turned out that we were indeed the only visitors there for quite some time. It seemed bizarre indeed that there should be such an armed presence when there is no one to protect.  We felt quite discomforted by being the only guests. It was very interesting to have Horace to ourselves. The temple is really quite large and was discovered, having been covered in sand for hundreds, possibly thousands of years. This big building was, it seems completely covered over.  When the sand was removed, it was surprisingly well preserved. Well, we paid our entrance fee and spent a n interesting hour and a half wandering round. We were accompanied throughout by a man who spoke no English but was convinced he would be our guide. We didn’t want a guide even if we could communicate, but he persisted together with a young girl maybe 8 or 9 years who at first had tried to sell us a bracelet and when she failed she just stuck with us throughout. It was really quite creepy.

I look like I have just finished building this

Once we had our fill from Horace we went back to the van to continue on to Luxor. We had the choice of three roads to get to Luxor one on the East bank of the Nile, one on the West and a road that goes through the desert. My esteemed life Partner had ordained that it would be much quicker to take the desert road. Well, we spent about 45 minutes finding it as nobody seemed to know of it. 

Then at a rough estimate it turned out be about 70 or 80 km longer, but it did get us to Luxor. It was getting late when we got into Luxor and we were searching for a recommended camp that turned out to be closed down. Bit of a pattern emerging here you might think. 

Egyptian drivers are really quite anarchic at any time, for example at traffic lights some people stop when red, but only a few. Others just drive straight through as if it were not there. At a green light, it is not uncommon for the road to be blocked by minibuses disgorging their passengers.

I mention this because when we were looking for a camp we stopped and asked a traffic cop. He indicated that he knew where to go and we should follow him, so follow him we did, red lights flashing all the way. Absolutely no one took any notice of him. I don’t just mean they didn’t give way, some were going faster, so blew their horn to get past, others cut him in on the inside, and despite his presence no one stopped for the traffic lights. It was actually quite a source of worry as we tried to stick with him. Then, without any warning, he stopped to ask directions. Not only did this take several minutes, but nearly everyone wanted to volunteer directions to us, in Arabic and again the cop was completely ignored. Several people said follow my taxi which we knew was not going to be free, one man said follow my horse and cart. It was a thoroughly bewildering experience, not just for us, because at the end of it, the cop seemed quite disoriented and for a few moments walked of in the opposite direction and could not find his bike, despite it being lit up like a bloody Christmas tree.

Eventually we arrived at the camp but not without a serious near miss where another motorbike, ignoring the flashing lights was overtaking him as the cop turned left across his path. I just managed to brake in time to avoid the biker who was taking evasive action. What a palaver!

We arrived at this new camp and settled in. We were the only guests! Aside from what seemed to be a religious Christian gathering that involved a lot of very loud, very enthusiastic and truly dreadful singing! Ping went to investigate and returned to report that it was a religious karaoke. Once over at about ten pm we got to sleep and slept quite well till the mosques started at about 4 am. It really is quite an amazing sound as one after another starts up and the sound is all around. Amazing it may be, but it is also quite difficult to sleep through. That was when the rooster in the chicken shed adjacent to our van started up. We did manage to doze off again but then the base guitar player from the Religious Karaoke group decided that he needed more practice. I agree with him, he did need the practice (it was truly awful) but not when I want to sleep and not with an amplifier at full blast, but I complain too much………………….

In spite of all this, our stay here was not bad at all.  The manager was really helpful and we had a lovely but gargantuan meal there. We managed to visit the Temple of Luxor which is quite interesting and grand. 

Karnak temple  Luxor

We also visited the Temple of Karnak which is about a mile down the road. This temple is remarkable for its sheer size, its age about 3000 years and the fact that there is an avenue of sphinxes at each of its entrances. The main avenue leads from the Luxor temple. This is a distance of about a kilometre or more. Now, I don’t know if you think in metric or imperial but either way that is a huge number of sphinxes. Karnak is quite breathtaking. It is huge. We both commented that with the column and statues and rocks around it was quite reminiscent of a large garden centre. 

How many sphinxes did you order?

The main difference being that where there might have been working pensioners offering advice and encouragement there were annoying ‘ne’er do wells’ lying around and who on seeing a foreigner took up the mantle of ‘guide’ despite not sharing any language. As far as I can see, they had few other skills to offer though they expect to be paid.

Western Desert

The next day we drove back along the Nile and eventually rejoined the desert road that we had arrived on  this time it would take us out into The Western Desert.

The Western desert is in fact a continuation of the Sahara and the locals refer to it as such. As I may have mentioned before I do so enjoy desert driving and I was really looking forward to what would be a few days drive up to Cairo to see the pyramids at Giza.

The road takes a wide sweep around away from the Nile  and through a series of Oasis.

What a great drive!

I am certain that this point you have a mental picture of a pond, a couple of palm trees a camel or two and depending on your gender there will either be man in a dress with large curved dagger or a beautiful maiden  doing the dance of the seven veils. Perlease………… get real!

A  candid shot of an Oasis town

portable bullet proof shield   -  
                                These things are everywhere i n Egypt                         

Oasis dwellers

The main Oasis are busy important towns, lots of hustle and bustle and urban decay. There are also a string of lesser waterholes where out of the arid desert pops a clearly defined area of deep green actually one we saw was mainly growing flowers. 

There is oasis beauty too. Flowers grown commercialy

Rather surprisingly we have not seen a camel since we left Luxor.

There has been a serious initiative by the government to encourage people out to what are called The New Valleys and extensive estates/villages have been built near these various water holes but many of them are just empty and decaying in the desert.

We had been driving for several hours and I was quite interested to notice that a railway crosses the road several times which seemed odd to me. It also seemed odd that the tracks were being taken up for relaying but that the level crossings which left a huge deep scar in the road had been just left there. I photographed a couple of these. Then we came to a small town where they had a delightful little station and it started to emerge that a lot of this railway was still working, the station was sufficiently pretty that I decided to photograph it.

A few minutes later I noticed that a police truck was seemingly glued to my bumper.  A blast from his siren brought us to a halt and I got out to see what grief was in store for us. Four police armed with pistols and AK-47s got out and asked the usual where are you coming from and where are you going. Then they seemed to get frustrated by the lack of common language and they got back in their truck and indicated that they were done with me. So a bit mystified, we continued on our way. 

On further examination of my rear view mirror I noted that they were once again inches from my back bumper. This continued for ten minutes or so and it was very unpleasant. Then they overtook us. There were a number of hand signals that made very little sense to me and then they stopped on the side of the road. Believing that they may have thought further and decided that there was more to investigate I once again got out and went to speak to them. Lots of dismissive gestures and thumbs up, it seemed that this was not the case and I was free to move on. So I did.

Mirror, signal, manoeuvre, then pull out. I got to the mirror bit and yes there they were back on my back bumper! I can tell you it was very freaky! I took the precaution of getting Ping to delete the railway pictures from the camera. Just in case that was what was concerning them. We were even considering burning any possibly incriminating documents. Burn them and chuck them out before they can find a reason to throw us in jail! I jest but that was how we were thinking.

Just then a filling station came into view, so we decided to refuel and see what happens. I pulled in and they stopped up the road. So I left Ping to fill up and I walked out to confront them. Once again, they were all smile and reassuring gestures. In this desert, every 50 to 100 km there is always a police checkpoint. I was thinking that we were being kept in view until we reached the next one where we would be detained. We, by now were pretty alarmed. They just were not going away. 

I decided that I should show willing, as I had formed the belief that this was something to do with photographing the railway. So I produced the camera and showed them that there were no pictures of interest. They got quite excited about this so I thought I had got it right. Unbelievably instead they formed up to have their picture taken.

Safe on our watch!

Then they managed to get someone on the phone who spoke a bit of English , but this  did not amount to an explanation only a lot of ‘don’t worry’ and I will see you when you get here.

So we proceeded to the next checkpoint where we were greeted by more Kalashnikovs but no English speakers. At one point we were surrounded by happy, jovial heavily armed and (in my opinion) way too young cops. We continued the festival of non communication until the English speaker came on the phone again. He said ‘just drive 5 km along the road and I will be there waiting for you’. So off we went this time another police car peeled off to follow us. We drove 10 km with our bumper fully occupied by police.

Then out popped a man accompanied, even more bizarrely by 4 cyclists. It turned out that he is head of tourism in this town and the 3 Irish and 1 Spanish cyclist are cycling from Cairo to Cape Town.

3 Irish and one Spanish adventuers just setting out on an incredible ride of a lifetime

Our new friend explained that the police do this from time to time to demonstrate that they are busy protecting the tourists, who universally hate the experience. Oh really?!

Anyhow, we now followed our friend Mohsin, who was taking the cyclists to their hotel. We then had to go to his office, where I was to write a demand not to be escorted which he would translate into Arabic. Our police car followed us until the ink was dry and then they evaporated, like magic.

We stayed one night and then carried on our desert journey.

What can I say about this? One might think that a huge expanse of nothing much but sand would be pretty dull. It is not. It is exhilarating and serenely beautiful.

Entering the Western Desert 

Simple beauty!

As I have spoken about in previous blogs there is a sense of danger never being far away, though we always have plenty of water and fuel.  In this desert the temperatures are down to about 32°C which is far lower than in Sudan. The scenery constantly changes. We’ve run out of superlatives to describe the beauty. Flat sand and straight road as far as the eye can see but there is so much more. There are mountain ranges in wonderful pastel shades, huge rock outcrops in all manner of shapes and there is the railway which I spoke of, long and straight it is incredible that this can continue to operate but it does. 

Between these stretches of sand and rocky mountains there are the oasis - sudden splashes of colour and life which bring prosperity to these places.

The high spots for us both were the areas known as The White Desert which is mile after mile of flat land and mountains which are pure white with chalk. You will see from a distance a lake at the side of the road. You may think it is a mirage but as you get closer you see it’s the sun reflecting off a white area of ground. It reflects differently to golden sand around it. It appears to be water almost up to the point where you can touch it. There are beautiful and bizarre shapes rising out of the sand in brilliant white chalk.

Shapes and brilliance in The White Desert

Our desert camp

We stayed out here in the desert up a  small hill a long way from the road. It was absolutely stunning and we were quite alone. Well almost. After dark I went up onto a ridge by our camp to see the town away in the distance. As I did so in almost complete darkness I saw the silhouette of something vaguely dog shaped pass across in front of me. I was quite shocked and it really was as you might see in a horror movie. I rushed back to the van to warn Ping. As I did there beside the van was a tiny desert fox with huge pointed ears.  It was beautiful and not at all concerned about our presence, and it hung around for much of the evening.

We had such a lovely night more stars and everything.

The next day we drove on through the White desert into, yes you’ve guessed already,

Leaving camp

The Black Desert.

Here the mountains and outcrops and indeed sometimes the sand itself  is quite black. This I am told because there is a high content of manganese which is oxidised and appears black. Another extraordinary thing about desert driving is that another time, or someone else passing through may well have a completely different experience.

Hmmmm! oxidised manganese!

Oasis in The Black Desert

I could go on for hours about this but really you had to  be there. Such a good experience.

Our  next destination was for Giza and the Pyramids. I had for no good reason been under the impression that at the end of the desert road we would come to the Pyramids. This is the case but it seems that Cairo has sprawled out and it is not the romantic and lovely experience that it might have been years ago.

Most importantly as much as 60km out you start to notice the haze which I guess must be from pollution. It just goes on and on.

Dumping on an unimaginable scale into and all around Giza

Then about 40 km for Giza you start to become aware that ‘fly tipping’ is really endemic all along the side of the road for mile after mile is a continuous tip mostly of building materials but also rotting household stuff and vegetation, even old used oil is dumped in frequent unsightly patches. 

Oh yes this was among the flytipping!

There has been a massive building program but there are hundreds of blocks of flats that are completely unoccupied.

Hundreds of blocks of flats unfinished and empty

As we approached Giza, the traffic became increasingly dense and then on the main road in, we discovered that some traffic was heading toward us on the wrong side of the road. This is something that happens in Egypt but we were unprepared for what followed. There was a truck overturned on the opposite carriageway and the traffic was just starting to reroute itself into the opposite carriageway. As this progressed a level of chaos ensued the like of which I have never seen before. Rush hour traffic going in all directions. It was like a  dodgems track with real cars and trucks. It became clear that in Egypt if something is in your way you go round it no matter what. It also seems without exaggeration that when necessary the notion of driving on the right is not actually a rule but merely a sort of custom. For me what followed was about two hours of the most intense, chaotic and dangerous rush hour traffic. Two hours to travel about 10 km. At the end I was totally rinsed out! We mercifully had not collided with anyone. I just don’t know how.

We eventually found the Salma Hotel camp which was not recommended but appeared on our GPS so we opted to try for it. This really was a mistake and I urge other overlanders to avoid it. We were in a difficult position as we were really tired and it was already dark. We negotiated a price for camping and found that we were the only people there. 

The squalid bathroom at Salma Motel Camp

The toilet and showers were in such a  dreadful state. Not only were they filthy but they were falling apart. Only one toilet had a seat. There were no doors fitted only what were once plastic curtains. 

The showers were above the toilets and consisted only of a jet of water from a pipe no rose or shower head. When I spoke with the manager, he said ‘well, we have not had anyone here for a year’. 

‘Ok but you are open for business and ready to take money for this.’

‘Well, we have had Germans and Italians here and they don’t complain’.

I told him that it was late for us to go elsewhere. 

"How much would he charge for us to just park in the car park overnight?" His reply was it didn’t matter to him if we used the facilities or not, the price would be the same, take it or leave it. 

I am starting now to get very short of patience with the Egyptian way of getting money from foreigners. I was getting mad with him and we had to stop for the night but I really did not like it. It is all I can do to warn others which seems pretty lame.

The next day we found another place about 2 km away and the driving was a good deal easier. The  Isis Camp is run by Sue and Helal.  Very pleasant people who are open for a few guests and have room for just one overland vehicle. Fine if you have a Land Cruiser as room is quite restricted. We managed to fit the Iveco in, Just! Anything larger and you would have to park on the street. The place is a haven from the city as it is all behind a high wall. So it is pleasant and private there is a pool and a lovely garden. In comparison to other camps it is not cheap but it is a good place for a much needed rest.

Pyramids.

We had talked together about whether to visit the pyramids. We felt that we are pretty overloaded with tourism. It has been a long year. We had also been advised, quite rightly, to take full advantage of being in Egypt and not to simply pass through. Other previous travellers had said they felt the same way and they found you can see the Pyramids from the road so they scooted on through.

We decided that we should at least take in the experience. I knew that the touts that operate there are a nuisance, actually we were well briefed that they would be very aggressive, climb on your vehicle, pose as officials, even as police. The little patience that I have for these people is now pretty diminished due to our previous experiences. I decided that if we were to go then a fairly aggressive approach was the only way to avoid any kind of engagement with them. I drove ‘assertively’ but when I found that there were literally dozens of people trying to stop us in any way they could, by saying they have to check our ticket, to redirect us to their car park or to tell us we would not be allowed to drive and that we should go by camel /horse. One guy said, ‘if you drive your car up to the pyramids, you will be searched and it takes hours, but I can come with you and it will be easy’. So I drove faster and a bit closer to them than they were used to. I felt no sympathy as they bumped into one another to get out of my way. We arrived at the car park without incident and with me feeling a bit smug in outwitting them.  Ping was a bit annoyed with me as she does not like that kind of hard driving. I have to say I feel no empathy at all for these crooks. There are plenty of decent people in Egypt who are having a tough time at the moment. I think I shall empathise with them.

Once in the vehicle entrance the van was supposed to be searched but the policeman who was quite happy to let us in was overruled by some manager who said that a right hand drive vehicle was not allowed in as it is too dangerous! This is in a place where people drive on whichever side of the road that is most convenient for them! I put up a spirited defence saying that we’ve driven all over the continent on both sides of the road and had no problems. So he changed tack saying that as it had writing on the side it was a commercial tour bus and that is not allowed.  Was not having that either. A more senior manager then intervened on our behalf, so the first guy spoke to the cop who said there is a gas cylinder in the van and that is not allowed. I of course spat my dummy and said that despite coming all this way I no longer wanted to visit. I was pretty stressed by the drive in but now I was boiling over. Ping went with the senior man to speak to the cop’s boss. He said it isn’t a problem. So off we went with our van to see the pyramids. It was pretty amazing!

Just about the culmination of our time in Africa!

But the hassle continued throughout the visit and it really got under my fingernails. When we were charged Egyptian£5 to use a manky toilet, I had just about had enough. 

Mohsin, the arch diplomat

That was when we met with Mohsin. He was the senior manager who helped at the gate. He greeted us like long lost friends and took time to talk with us not just to apologies, he was really quite embarrassed, but we had a really enjoyable chat which to a great extent helped to change the mood.

When we returned to our camp I found I was completely tired out, it had been a long day. By the way The Pyramids were pretty good but really not worth the hassle and the horrible drives to get there but we are both glad we went.

Out of Africa

We are almost at the end of our drive from Cairo to the east side of the Sinai peninsula and as we cross into Sinai, we realised that we have indeed left Africa and we are now in the continent of Asia. We had to go through a long tunnel under the water so we never got to see The Suez Canal, we were very disappointed. 

Entering The Suez Canal

After that we drove in a long V shape down one side of the peninsula to Sharm el Shaik and then back up the other side up to the Israel border. Last night we stayed in the car park of a holiday resort where we were treated as a welcome guest.

We had thought finding somewhere in Sharm el Shaik but it was just full of expensive package tour type resorts and the town was just like Benidorm but with very few holiday makers, The main reason there were any was the Egyptian holiday week.

We are about 70 Km from the Israeli border and we have stopped for the night. There is nowhere to stay so we have been kindly put up at one of the many emergency rescue stations in the desert. Once again such lovely hospitality!!! It seems to me that this kind of Egyptian behaviour puts the tourist touts further to shame.

My feelings about Egypt are really mixed. I find that the various tombs, pyramids and archaeological sites are really only of passing interest and unless one has a strong interest in them then they are just not worth the hassle. I genuinely regret having to say this!

Ping – It was a truly remarkable experience to take in the pyramids after jumping through hoops to get there – to see the only surviving monument of the 7 ancient wonders of the world! Could have done without the hassle though!

The frequent heavily armed police checks and vehicle searches are quite wearing and mindless. What remains with me as a positive memory is the genuine kindness that we have received from some remarkable ‘ordinary’ Egyptians. Our heartfelt thanks to them!

These have been days and days of overwhelming beauty. I have simply run out of superlatives to describe them. The Egyptian deserts are truly astounding. I am in danger of repeating myself but the Sianai desert is very different and is yet again stunningly beautiful. 

More beauty in Sainai

I know that we could have made so much more of this part of the journey had we the time and the nerve to leave the road more bravely.

We will toddle off to Israel tomorrow, on our way first  to Jordan and then back to Israel to get the boat to Europe.

We have found a camp to stay in that has managed to stay open. It is a nice place right on the beach of the Red Sea. With the mountains of the Saudi desert just across the way. It is a lovely vista.  The camp is run by a nice family who are establishing  a community farm where in completely arid environment they are showing their neighbours that at a time when it exceptionally hard to make a living there are an array of cash crops to be  grown. They have regular meetings with scientists and other experts so that they can build a template for other people to use to grow their own organic crops without too many problems. Very interesting!

From the deep!

I had a diving lesson which was a really good experience although my lack of anything that looks like skill in the water rather let me down. It made it difficult for my very patient instructor, who nevertheless ensured that I had a beautiful dive on the coral reef where I saw so much of exotic fish and wonderful aquatic countryside.

That's all from Africa!

Lot of love 

Ping and Noel

pingbow54@gmail.com

noelbow51@gmail.com