In the Chinese zodiac, 2012 will be the Year of the Dragon, which is conveniently also a very lucky symbol!
Our guidebook on Nile Cruises will be published early this year, in time for the ITB travel fair in Berlin in March, where Egypt is the main partner country.
Photos of Uzbekistan from a trip in 2004 are now online.
The Omar El-Khayam rose to the occasion
(for more Egypt photos, click here: March 2007, June 2011, July 2011)
After six weeks travelling through Upper Egypt, Cairo and Alexandria we are now back in Berlin. Working in Egypt was quite a different experience from just travelling independently through the country. As there were not many tourists due to the summer heat and the revolution, people were quite eager to show us around and present their hotel, restaurant or ship at its best.
Once we visited a cruise ship that was not in operation. We had to enter a special harbour area in Aswan and then a small boat brought our small party out to the ship, where the captain and one other staff member were already waiting. We were prepared for dimly lit cabins, and a semi-dark dining hall with the chairs put up on the tables. What a surprise when we found the ship in full operation and fully lit. The Jacuzzis and the pool were filled, some of the cabins prepared as if guests would arrive within the next hour. Only the giant fridges in the kitchen were empty except for a few sad tomatoes and some La vache qui rit cream cheese.
Later we found out that the fleet manager accompanying us does not visit all that often and so this was a chance for the crew to impress.
In total we visited and compared about 30 ships and joined two cruises: One classical Nile cruise and one on Lake Nasser south of Aswan. We enjoyed both – especially the lack of mobile / internet connection on Lake Nasser! But alas, the book is still not written…
(for more Egypt photos, click here: March 2007, June 2011)
Alexandrians are soo sophisticated - they like eating out and can choose from the full range of fancy cafés, old-fashioned coffee-shops, clean modern fish restaurants and retro Hotel Bars with high ceilings and fans. Even without all the museums, mosques and Roman ruins, checking out the restaurants is a veritable sightseeing task.
So where is El-Fellah, we ask Khaled and Azza, our local contacts. Both stare in disbelief: „You really want to eat there? It's rather … down to earth!“ A hearty smell comes from the restaurant. El-Fellah serves traditional liver dishes, and we are vegetarians...
On the Corniche, we wonder where the Fresca sellers have gone, who should be offering honey wafers. But in these temperatures, everyone is eating ice cream, also one of Alexandria's specialities.
After a long day on the Corniche and in Downtown, we end in the modern quarter of San Stefano. And there, all these sophisticated Alexandrians are back in force, gathering in the food court of Alexandria's newest mall for pizza, pasta and Chinese noodles!
(for more Egypt photos, click here: March 2007, June 2011)
The donkey is a common means of transport in Egypt: you see five-year-old boys, old women and peasants riding with all sorts of luggage. And even tourists like us can give it a try.
Mondy picks us up around 5 pm at the hotel with Sissi (whitish and nervous) and Minnihaha (grey and lazy) for our sunset ride on the West Bank of Luxor. To mount the donkey one has to perform a jump reminding of the vault practice during physical exercise lessons in school. Natascha robs undignified onto the back of Sissi, while Isa cheats by using a stepping stone. And off we ride!
First we have to cross the only busy street on the the West Bank and even ride along it for a while. One would expect the drivers to be considerate of some clumsy foreigners on donkeys, but it seems they are sufficiently occupied with the normal traffic chaos. Natascha and Sissy almost collide with a microbus, the passengers curiously watching and waving.
But once in the more quiet alleys, we start to enjoy the permanent rocking on the animal back. It is nice to to meet other donkey riders coming back from their fields on eye level. On the way we visit the village of New Gurna, built by the Egyptian architect Hassan Fatih at the end of the 1940s, relish at the sunset at the Pharaonic temple of Medinet Habu and fight the mosquitoes on the way back along a water channel. We even consider briefly buying a donkey for our next trip to Egypt.
By the way: No muscle soreness the next day!
After the revolution, there are only few tourists in Egypt, and we had a very pleasant camel ride on the Giza plateau with a view over the empty desert and all nine pyramids.
More photos from Egypt: June 2011 and March 2007
Ruins of old Siwa (click here for more Egypt photos)
Ten years after World War I, the small oasis town of Siwa at the edge of the Western Desert was destroyed. A few hundred kilometres to the north at the Egyptian and Libyan coast, the famous battles of Field Marshall Rommel had taken place. But Siwa’s misfortune came not from war but from water – the most precious resource in the desert. Three days of heavy rain left the houses built of salt bricks and mud in ruins.
„Overshoes, this way please!,“ the caretaker shouts to every visitor from 10 m afar. Sand and dirt is everywhere as the Ibn Tulun Mosque in the Islamic part of Cairo is being restored. Since only foreign tourists are made to wear them (and presumably to pay for them), we refuse the protective cotton bags and walk around in socks. The Ibn Tulun mosque is one of the most enchanting mosques in Cairo. Built in the 9th century by Baghdad native Ibn Tulun, it features a ziggurat style minaret, influenced by the Great Mosque of Samarra in Iraq. We sit in the large courtyard and watch groups of Spanish and German tourists stumble about in the large overshoes – many of the women with open hair and bare shoulders.
Whenever we enter a mosque, Isa struggles to wrap a 1 meter long and 10 cm wide purple shawl around her head to cover her hair. Eventually she decides to buy a scarf of the appropriate size and, on this occasion, learn how to bind it correctly. For weeks we have been admiring the colourful patterns Egyptian women create with their headscarves, using two or three different coloured ones together for a more stunning impact.
„Na’am, spanish?“ The Egyptian shop assistant giggles while she winds the headscarf around the back of Isa’s head with a coquettish knot at the side. Isa now looks like a Flamenco dancer. The next moment with the scarf fixed under the chin, she wouldn’t stick out between the Turkish Mamas shopping for groceries in Ankara.
We both liked cosmopolitan Cairo, with its opera and art galleries, western-style cafes and bookshops. In the evenings mixed groups of young men and women sit in restaurants, go to the cinema or stroll through the streets of downtown together. Young couples walk hand in hand along the banks of the Nile. The city feels save and open-minded.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean it is also democratic. One day we hear loud shouting in the street and look down from our window on the 5th floor: A small group of about 10 protesters carry banners along the street. The same evening we pass dozens of police cars. Groups of riot police stand at the ready, and on several street corners we see plainclothes policemen (easily recognisable at their military posture) receiving last instructions. The next day, the Egyptian parliament decides in favour of an amendment to 34 articles of the constitution. The most controversial points include the elimination of the judicial oversight of elections and of an article guarding the people’s rights – which has been replaced by an anti-terror law. Critics claim that the amendment leads to a massive erosion of civil rights and favours President Mubarak’s son as his successor. In the public these far-reaching changes passed almost without notice.
When we visit Siwa on our way from Cairo to Libya, it rains every day – just a few drops, or a half-hearted rain lasting 20 minutes. Enough to form puddles on the street and in the sand. While we lament the non-photogenic cloudy skies, the locals are happy. It is strange to realise the importance of rain while looking at the ruins of old Siwa, destroyed by rain. We have been in deserts several times during the last months – passing through them by bus for hours, or sometimes riding camels, hiking and camping out. Although the fascination of the sheer vastness is not lost on us, we find the desert too uncomfortable. It is sandy, and there is, by definition, not enough water and accordingly you can’t wash and shower as much as you would like (most times not at all). That others don’t do it either is an additional drawback. The smoke of those romantic camp fires burns in the eyes, and the light of the flames is not bright enough to read.
We have meanwhile safely crossed Libya and arrived on the Tunisian touristic island of Djerba. A blog entry about Libya as well as budget pie charts for Egypt and Libya will follow soon.
The Nile at Maadi (Cairo) (click here for more Egypt photos)
“How long have you been waiting?” smiles Sayed, our contact man in the Libyan embassy. “Only three-and-a-half hours – no problem,” we smile back. “Three-and-a-half weeks,” we think and try not to let the tension show. Sayed then produces our passports and incredulously, we stare at the 10-day transit visa.
“At most we will give you five days!” he had said almost four weeks ago, when we handed in our visa application. Since then, we have time and again come back to Zamalek, a leafy island on the Nile in the centre of Cairo, where the Libyan embassy is situated. It has neither a sign in English nor does it show the Libyan flag, and we recognized it only thanks to the posters of Colonel Kaddafi with his characteristic old-fashioned sunglasses.
Two pharaonic guardsmen in short blue-golden skirts stand at the entrance of a building society next to the Libyan embassy. Both are made from plaster, and one is facing backwards, towards the wall. The real guards are drinking tea. We have decided to ask our own embassy for a note verbale (a letter of recommendation) to increase our chances of getting a visa, and now we are back to re-enforce our application. “Come back in two weeks!” Sayed doesn’t even imply that we might get a visa then. In fact, he never implies anything.
Two weeks later, no answer has been received from Tripoli yet regarding our admittance. This is obviously not a good sign, but is it necessarily a bad one? At least we could obtain a mobile phone number along with the permission to call again the day after tomorrow. On the way back to our hotel in downtown Cairo we pass the Opera House and on a whim buy tickets for the evening performance: “Zenobia, Queen of the Desert” staged by a Syrian dance company. The story of the two-hour ballet is quite difficult to follow, even with an English synopsis, but we feel tremendously metropolitan. Afterwards there is a buffet reception. Eating our way through potato pies and toxic-looking green meringues we watch the Cairene elite. Ladies in elegant costumes try not to spoil their fur jackets while dipping strawberries and marshmallows into the chocolate fountain that has been set up in the lobby. Although we know nobody in Cairo we move through the crowd eagerly looking for acquaintances, as everybody does, hoping that our traveller trousers and faded shirts will not stick out too much.
Since we have ample of time we visit a lot of mosques and madrasas. At the Mosque of Mohammed Ali, two veiled women take photos of each other with their mobile phones. They have climbed over the chains fencing off the Qibla wall and are posing in front of the carved wooden Minbar. A young man is lying on the carpet in the middle of the mosque, trying to photograph the green and golden dome and the hundreds of lamps. Outside, groups of schoolchildren are marched to the next attractions on the citadel hill: The carriage museum and the mamluk An-Nasim Mosque.
Two days later still no news from Tripoli. On the verge of a nervous breakdown we consider flying straight to Tunis. An employee at Utopia Travel suggests the cheap “Mother’s Day Special tomorrow - just two seats left!“ But instead we take a bus to Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast.
“I’m sorry, the system seems to be down,” apologises the young woman at the help desk, where we enquire after books about Libya. The new Bibliotheca Alexandrina aspires, in memory of the ancient library of Alexandria, to become one of the leading libraries in the region, if possible in the world. Most of the shelves are still empty, and the handful of readers sitting at the pleasantly arranged reading desks are far outnumbered by tourists who are led to the best viewpoints on level F2.
A few days later, when we call the Libyan embassy, Sayed is in high spirits: “Natascha, how are you? We received invitation from Tripoli! Bring your passport!” Again we rush back to Cairo. This time we are even allowed to pay the visa fees and leave the embassy, moderately hopeful, with a tiny slip of paper that seems to be our receipt for the passports and visa fees.
Two more days in Cairo. Time to visit more museums, mosques and bookshops and to feel the pulse of this large city. At night, the streets of downtown that were just stinking thoroughfares for ramshackle taxis during the day liven up. Families, gangs of young men, and groups of giggling girls push each other between the T-Shirt and underwear stalls that have been set up at dusk. Droves of people gather around the street window of the famous Kuweider bakery, everyone holding up their receipts and shouting their favourite ice-cream flavour at the shop assistants: “Mango and Cassata! Vanilla and Hazelnut!” All around, satisfied customers are smiling and obliviously licking their ice-cream. Then they return to shopping.
When we returned to the Libyan embassy we finally got our visas. We are now at Marsah Matruh near the border and plan to enter Libya tomorrow.
(click here for more Egypt photos)
From the corner of our eyes we have noticed them staring at us, whispering and giggling, for the last five minutes. Finally, the father gathers his courage and barks "Where are you from?" while his teenage daughter bursts out in laughter. On Fridays the promenade of the Suez Canal is packed with families having their picnics, and once more we smile and answer "from Germany". Then all of us fall silent, and we watch the towering Evergreen Ever Useful approach. On board, hundreds of blue and brown containers are stacked in rows of 16 across and 20 lengthwise. The pilot, who has guided the ship since Port Said, steps down the narrow gangway at the side of the ship onto a small boat that will bring him on shore. We feel a childish happiness thinking of our books and other belongings that must have come through the Suez Canal on a ship like this, on their way from Japan to Germany.
About ten huge container ships follow the Evergreen Ever Useful towards the Indian Ocean. Then the canal is empty again, the families pack their boxes, cushions and footballs and leave. The shy daughter even dares to wave us Good Bye. When we asked in Port Said, the Mediterranean entrance point to the canal, how many ships pass every day, the answer was vague. "Maybe 40?," the woman at the tourist office guessed, "but I really don’t know."
From Suez, we took an awfully slow bus to El-Milga, a village in the middle of the Sinai mountains: podgy red sandstone with stripes of a darker, harder stone that sticks out at the ridges like the carapace of a strange dinosaur. From the village we organised a trekking tour for the next few days.
"Come in," says Rajab, our Bedouin guide, and climbs over a stone wall, the regular entrance into a fruit garden in the middle of the desert. Soon we sit under blooming apricot trees and drink one cup after another of heavily sugared tea while Rajab livens up, smoking and chatting with our hosts. Then we start again scrambling over huge boulders until we reach a high-lying Wadi. Only a few times each year, this valley is filled with water from rain or melting snow, but now it is just a dry desert floor with the occasional date palm. On both sides, strange rock formations rise up, and once we pass a partly mummified donkey. "It has been lying here for five years!," Rajab beams.
That night we stay at a dirty stone house with a veranda and two very small rooms. In summer during the school holidays, the families move up here from the villages, but for the moment, our Bedouin guides and we are free to use the buildings. Jawali has arrived early with the camel and our provisions and is about to cook dinner over the open fire: rice with lentils and a slightly too salty vegetable soup. "Give me light," he demands after dinner. With our torch, he rummages among the rubble in one of the rooms and comes back triumphantly with an old iron sheet, the top of an oil ton. Half an hour later, our bread ration for the next day is baking on the sheet while we shift between the cold of the surrounding night and the flames licking out from under the baking sheet.
We decide to sleep outside under the stars, rather than in one of the dusty rooms. With four filthy woollen blankets piled over our sleeping bags and woollen hats we feel like in our traditional house in Tokyo in winter. Only the smacking noises of the camel hobbled a few meters away are unfamiliar, but the sky is luxuriously full of stars.
The next day we walk through more wadis, and climb more mountains. "Before the road was built, we had to go by camel through that wadi over there to the sea to buy food and other necessities." We are sitting on the rocky top of 2165 m high Ras Abu’alda and look down, straining our eyes to see the Gulf of Suez in the distance.
Back in El-Milga, we join the hundreds of day tourists to visit St. Katherine, the famous orthodox monastery with its treasure of old icons and manuscripts on the foot of Mt. Sinai. It was built in 330 AD by St Helena beside the burning bush from which God spoke to Moses. Its successor, a common blackberry bush, can be visited in the courtyard. In the afternoon we climb Mount Sinai, where Moses was given the Ten Commandments. Today a very uncomfortable cold wind is ruthlessly blowing, and we hope for Moses that his visit was at a warmer time of the year.
