Day 134 of international places giving smiles – Remembering Cairo in Egypt
August 2012… As our airplane prepared for our descent into Egypt, I could see the rapidly changing scenes below us. Black roads emerged from the middle of the brown sandy desert. Rows of green trees were grown in lines next to each other. Even all the buildings were in different shades of brown.
We were now at Cairo international airport and this was my first step into the continent of Africa. With lots of Arabic looking men around. And where people seemed to have a lot of time. Maybe that is why it took more than an hour for the checked in baggage to emerge on the carrousel.
The mid day heat welcomed us as we came out and drove through the dusty roads. Yes, this was my first impression of Cairo. As if the whole city had decided to cover itself with a layer of fine sandy particles! Maybe that is why almost all the buildings were basically painted in different shades of brown! With many minarets rising across the city skyline, the strong influence of Islamic architecture was visible in this city.
I found our car on a bridge across the river Nile. As I spotted our Barcelona 3 Pyramids hotel, I looked at it with palpable excitement, wondering what my daughter was doing in our tenth floor room there!
The guide escorted me safely till the reception desk. I eagerly came up to our room and knocked. No reply. Knocked again. No reply. Opened it with my key. And there curled up on the bed, sleeping like an angel was my one and only, my best of all, my baby doll, my darling daughter. Only a mother will understand the ecstasy of being reunited with her child after a physical separation of more than three months!
It was time to catch up with a lot of talking. And we had to sleep to take care of the jet lag. At night we decided to explore the local streets of Cairo. We went to the Cairo mall and got lost in a sea of women all wearing head scarves or burkhas. Never expected this much crowd at eleven p.m. We were told that in Cairo there was no restriction about shop timings. People were free to keep their shop open till whatever time they chose to! And during this holy season of Ramadan, it was common to see bustling activity in the malls even unto 3a.m.!
We also went to see a small local bazar and picked up a ladies purse with Egyptian looking writings on it. As we walked back to our hotel a small boy came running behind us saying money money…ok we did look like tourists! We decided that from the next day onwards we will always have our scarves with us….we just had to cover our heads if we wished to try and blend with the crowds!
In the next afternoon, we went to the papyrus showroom and had a demonstration of how paper was initially made from its original source – the papyrus plant. We just had to buy an authentic Egyptian painting out of courtesy to the attention they gave us. Next we went to a jewelry showroom to buy a silver pendant called khartoosh, like the seal of the king. This personalized gift had the name of the recipient written in the hieroglyphic symbols form.
Next it was time to go to a local mall and supermarket and get different varieties of dates for gifting purposes. We got out of the broad tourist centered pyramid road and into one of the inner narrow roads. This reminded me so much of any of the typically crowded roads of suburban Mumbai! We were in search of a money exchange counter and I was told in Egypt foreign currency could be exchanged at any place, whether the airport, hotel or bank at the same rate of exchange. This was not true.
After almost 5 hours out in the hot sun we were happy to get back to the luxurious comfort of our hotel. As we neared the old looking El Giza station, we covered our heads fully and tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. We got into our coupe in the train and tried to figure out how to operate the different parts of it. Dinner was served on board and as usual they did not have anything special for us vegetarians. We enjoyed the juices and the tea and later realized that this was charged extra. Next time we would clarify about what is or is not included in a pre-paid meal. We laughed at our experience and enjoyed the rhythmic movement of the train to rock ourselves to sleep.
After the fantastic Nile cruise experience, we found ourselves back in the city this time at the Cairo station. The noise, the garbage, the crowds reminded me of a typical Mumbai local station. As we tried to wheel our suitcases up and down the uneven floors, the pollution of the city life affected us and we wondered why we felt tired after just an hour of entering the city!
Luckily our hotel was very luxurious looking and we sank into the comfort of the soft big beds and the extra big bathroom! We had fun discovering the different restaurants and also the in house casino of the hotel. Our hotel was strategically located in the Garden city area just next to the bridge across the riverbank and close to the open square where we saw some kind of a meeting at night, complete with people holding up Egyptian flags! It was only when we read in the Indian newspapers the next day,that we came to know that this was the people’s way of supporting their new president who had sacked their army chiefs on that very day. The Times of India caption read….thousands gather at Tahrir square on Monday night. On 12th Aug’12 at Tahrir square, we unknowingly became a part of modern Egyptian history!
At night, we could also see the crowds of people shopping for clothes, bags, and shoes in preparation for their forthcoming Ramadhan festival. The McDonald ice-cream that we had that day was smelling different, probably because of the thick rich quality of milk that is consumed all over Egypt.
Our last sightseeing stop in our Cairo itinerary was at the Egyptian museum. And we appreciated every single explanation given by the guide about every item of sculpture, artifact, mummy or jewelry in the museum. Being the end of the trip we were aware of most of the stories about the Kings and Queens and Gods from the ancient kingdom, the middle kingdom and the old kingdom.
But what really made us gasp in admiration was when we saw the rich treasures found in the tomb of Tutan Khamun. Gold and precious stone laden jewelry,4 gold plated big canopic chests, 3 mummy coffins, 11 kg gold funerary mask, beds, palanquins, canopic jars, offerings, lamps, statues…the list of treasures was almost endless. Imagine what other treasures must have been found in other tombs…Egypt was really an extremely rich country in the ancient days! We then wondered around the ancient Khan El-Khalili bazaar and tried to soak in the charm of being surrounded by the local goods.
We got stuck in long traffic jams as we made our way from our hotel in downtown Cairo to the airport. This was good because we got time to observe the different parts of the city. The Tahrir square across which we had walked the previous night was the focal point of the 2011 revolution against the former president Hosni Mubarak. We saw churches located along the fortress walls in the Coptic Cairo section of the city.
We drove swiftly on the broad roads of the military cantonment area. We saw swanky hotels and even the walls of the presidential palace at Cairo. We passed by the satellite city on the west of Cairo called the 6th of October city. We also drove through the upscale neighbourhood called Heliopolis.
The last memory I have of this largest city of the African world is of two balancing rocks seeming to be suspended above each other just outside the Cairo international airport…this visit to Cairo and Giza was like a never before visit to an ancient world!
So which place made you smile today?
Be grateful for the places that make you smile!
Recent Comments