14th Dec 2007

Our first day in Cairo- We reached Cairo at 3 am and were met at the airport by our cab driver, a chubby guy who did not speak English and so we just smiled and then some more at each other as an introduction. We had a nice ride to Cairo downtown with him. Cairo looked like any other Asian city at that time. After reaching King Tut hostel the only thing we could think of was to drop those bags and hit the bed. We started our day late at 12 with the typical Egyptian breakfast of bread, cheese, jam, boiled egg and coffee. Then we set out to walk to Khan el Khalili market, but lost our way and ended into some wholesale market so we decided to take a taxi to Egyptian Museum. And here starts the haggle. This is one thing about Egypt when you travel there on your own; you start and end your day with a haggle. There are so many tourists coming to the country for more than a century but people still do not speak English well. Also everyone remotely related to tourism industry tries to cheat you. But being an Indian still gave us some advantage since we are kind of used to this.

Just near the Museum we met a guy who asked the typical question which everyone asks in Egypt ‘Where you from’ we answered him ‘India’ and then he says what we would hear almost every time there after ‘India! Amitabh Bacchan!!’ followed by the second typical line ‘Welcome to Egypt’. He told us that since its Friday, the museum will open at 2 for foreigners and right now it’s only open for local people. He suggests that we see another museum meanwhile and takes us to see a demo of how to make papyrus. After a while we realise that he was trying to sell us papyrus. We manage to escape from there and find our way to the Museum. The Egyptian Museum is something which overwhelms everyone, it is said that if you decide to look at each artefact there for even one minute, it will take you years to see the entire museum. This even though only the 1/3rd collection is on display and the rest 2/3rd will be put on display after the new museum is ready, sometime in 2009. We referred the Lonely Planet guide to decide on the galleries that we had to visit and then relied on the English descriptions at the display site turning down the numerous guides who tried to convince us that we were making a big mistake by not taking a guided tour. This decision did not serve us any badly and from there on Lonely Planet became our dependable companion for the rest of the trip. In the museum, King Tut’s collection, (which is unbelievably huge) rules the roost. Here is a king who died when he was 19 years old and his tomb had gilt covered carved sarcophagi which fit into each other like those Russian dolls, jewellery, and articles of daily usage including furniture, chariots and other means of war. All this was relatively untouched since his tomb was found below another king’s tomb, thus making it difficult for centuries of thieves to find. There were other kings who were more influential and lived more than Tut but their treasure was looted long ago and we will never see that. But looking at Tut’s treasure we can just imagine the magnitude of treasure stored in the tombs of these kings. All said and done this was best museum I saw till now.

We then decided to go to Alfy Bey, a restaurant known for its good Egyptian food. After a taxi ride to a wrong place but still somewhere near the restaurant we managed to find it using a map. The waiter there was surprised to learn that we did not want to eat meat. We finally ordered some mezze (starters), soup and the only vegetarian option available in menu, Dolma. The food, which turned out to be quite delicious, arrived and then the waiter discovered that a piece of meat was in my Dolma, which he proceeded to remove swiftly with nonchalance and looked at me with a triumphant face. His actions performed in any other situation might have offended you, but here we could not help laughing at his prompt action. We tried to find our way back to King Tut hostel and were surprised to see that the street looked so different at night when all shops were open. Shops in Cairo are open even after 1 am and it was pleasant surprise after seeing the UK shops closing at 6 pm. We went to buy a jumper for Anand and committed a faux pas. There are no coins in Egypt, 50 pilastres which ordinarily would be used as coins (100 pilastres make a 1 Egyptian pound), are used in the form of paper money. The jumper was for 50 Egyptian pounds and since we did not know that there are no coins, I was trying to give the shop owner 50 pilastres instead of 50 pounds since both of them have 50 written in English and we did not notice the difference. All the customers and workers in the shop were laughing at us while the shop owner was trying to tell us that he wants 50 pounds and not pilastres. Finally we realised the mistake and looked at both the notes to see the difference. After going back to our hostel, we booked a taxi and the guide to go to pyramids the next day.