Tips on Touring Egypt

I don't know how helpful this post will be, since travel guides and situations change so rapidly, but I figure that since I've gone through the process of traveling in Egypt, I may as well share some of my thoughts: what worked for me, what didn't work, etc. Let's do this in Q&A format, because when I talk to myself, I tend to figure things out better. (Hah!) Here we go...

So, Steph, talk to me: Egypt. What's the deal over there? Is it safe to go?

Well, western media certainly portrays Egypt as this chaotic and tumultuous place, with riots on every street corner. And while it's best that you avoid Tahrir Square during your time in Egypt, beyond that acreage, there's little sign that political upheaval is going on. It is quite interesting to see the charred remnants of Mubarak's former offices right next to the Egyptian Museum, and evidence of government issues can be seen in the stalled construction and restoration projects across the country. But little of this actually compromises your safety or your enjoyment of your time in Egypt. In fact, this is actually an argument to go now, or soon, because many would-be tourists have been scared off by the media sensations, and now even peak tourism season is affordable and not so crowded.

What's the visa situation? How do I get one?

US citizens and a number of other countries do not need to acquire a tourist visa in advance. Most people enter through the Cairo Airport, and you just have to buy the tourist visa from any of the bank windows that line the room before Immigrations. The visa is a sticker that is typically a single-entry tourist visa valid for up to three months, and costs $15, or around 100 Egyptian pounds. This site has some more specifics about which countries' citizens can or can't get tourist visas upon arrival in Cairo.

What's the best way to get around Egypt and visit all the places I want to go?

This is very important: Egypt is not the country for individual travelers/individual traveling. The people I met on my travels were lovely and interesting, but that doesn't mean there aren't people who wouldn't take advantage of a confused foreigner. Furthermore, the public transportation infrastructure is unreliable and in many cases don't allow foreigners on board.

The best thing you can do for touring Egypt is to do a group tour. There are many companies that provide a variety of tours that can cater to all kinds of travelers, from luxury to budget to adventure. You can choose to join up with a larger group with other travelers, or arrange your own, smaller, private tour with friends or family. My friends and I organized a private, customized tour through Egypt Uncovered. For a little over $100 per day, we got tour guides, private van transportation with nice drivers, accommodation at 5-star Egyptian hotels, a sleeper train from Luxor to Cairo, all entry fees to sites paid for in advance, airport transfer, and FREE GOODIES, like this extra-large t-shirt:

Okay, I mostly just wanted a reason to use my long-abandoned webcam. Moving on...

The two different guides we had (one for Upper Egypt, one for Lower) had different styles but were both really informative and helpful people. It really helps to have your own form of hired transportation. I cannot stress this enough: Egypt is NOT the place for individual travel, both for logistical and safety reasons. Looking into tour companies beforehand will be the best way for you to make the most of your time in Egypt.

What are my touring options in Egypt?

Rather than providing a list of tour companies you can look into (I wouldn't even know where to begin--or end--that task), I'm just going to give a quick rundown of some transportation options you have:

• Nile cruise - This is probably the most relaxing option. Most cruises run between Aswan and Luxor, with side trips going to famous sites or temples via bus or even horse-drawn carriage. You won't actually be doing a lot of cruising, but this takes care of the transportation business for you.
• Felucca - More adventure-y types can consider a trip down the Nile on a felucca, or traditional canvas-sail boat. It's like floating down the Nile in your room, with mattresses on the deck, crew members preparing meals for you, sleeping on the boat, and, uh, doing your business out in the wild. Like camping without the moving and the hard work.

Our felucca, with our first guide on the left.

• Vans or buses - These can be organized for you via your tour company. It's worth doing a little extra research to make sure that your tour company provides reliable vehicles etc etc. These are the most popular and easiest ways to get around the sites.
• Train - Not all trains accept foreigners, and if they do, you usually are confined to the first-class cars. Some tour companies will arrange a train ride for you as part of your tour, which is the way I think most foreigner visitors use trains in Egypt.

What things should I watch out for in Egypt?

Overall, Egypt is very accommodating of and friendly toward tourists. The touristed areas are well-developed, and while pickpocketing and scams still exist, they usually won't bother you too much if you keep your wits about you. Some issues you may encounter, however, include stalled construction and unregulated safety measures. Did you hear about the deadly Luxor balloon crash that happened recently? Yeah, the hot-air balloons are a fairly popular touristy thing to do for more affluent visitors, but they don't have a really good track record of safety, as the result of confusing safety standards that don't seem to be properly carried out.

The good thing is that, according even to our tour guide, the balloon ride was just so-so: it's not as if you see anything spectacular from up above. He didn't even push my friends and I too hard to consider the ride, and I wasn't sorry about not doing it.

An extra word of caution for female tourists: many Egyptian men still seem to think that female foreigners are opportunities for them to hone their skills of seduction and flattery and get some foreign female ass as a reward. I highly advise that females not travel alone, and try to be in a group with some males. The one hour during our trip that my friends and I had the time and interest to wander around an Egyptian city on our own resulted in a constant barrage of stares, catcalls, uncomfortable references to our physical features or race, and propositions. I consider myself a fairly confident young woman who doesn't let guys mess with her, but even I was overwhelmed with the gazes in just that short amount of time.

Let me summarize: the Egyptian men won't try anything physical, but they can be persistent. Don't make eye contact, don't react to what they're saying, and look like you know what you're doing.

Let me know if you're planning a trip to Egypt and want any more info!

Egypt: Part 2 of 2

Catch up with Egypt: Part 1 of 2!

At the end of Day 7 / Part 1, my two friends and I boarded a sleeper train bound for Cairo. We woke up the next morning... to a very, um, grayish-brown sky, and mountains of trash piled up against garbage-choked canals. Welcome to Lower Egypt!

Day 8

After being delayed several hours on the train, we arrived in Cairo and were whisked off to the Pyramids of Giza. It may come as a surprise to you that the Giza Plateau is actually located within a bustling urban district. As we drove through the smog and traffic ("This is just morning mist," our guide said; it was noon), the Pyramids suddenly loomed through the buildings and haze. It's not hard to imagine, from this vantage point, that the Pyramids could have been the work of something extraterrestrial, something beyond human.

But by ancient human hands they were really built.

We got to go inside the Great Pyramid, and ride camels and get a photo op. The place is perpetually swarming with tourists and insistent touts, but it's still a must-do for your traveling lifetime, easy-peasy.

After braving the crowds at the Pyramids, we next braved another kind of crowd--Cairo traffic--in order to get to the Egyptian Museum. The problem with Cairo traffic is that there are an incredible number of vehicles on the road and simply not enough space for everyone to go. Whereas in the States you can take back roads or detours in order to avoid congestions, in Cairo there's nowhere to go but on the main path, along with everyone else.

It took a while for us to get to the Museum, with the result that we had less than two hours to spend in a place that can take the better part of two days. The Egyptian Museum is dizzying with the scope of its contents--the treasures discovered in Tutankhamun's tomb take up a good quarter of the museum, and there are two extraordinary mummy rooms featuring a dozen or so pharaohs--but is also an example of how important the display is for the object: long stuffed to the brim, artifacts are displayed three deep, and the few captions that exist are faded from decades of neglect and poor lighting. Let's hope that the long delayed Grand Egyptian Museum project gets back on its feet, so that future visitors to Egypt can properly enjoy the museum!

No cameras are allowed in the museum, so instead, here's a picture of the outside:

I also bought The Illustrated Guide to the Egyptian Museum, which is a full-color inside look into approximately half of what the museum contains, to supplement my short visit. Did I mention that I love and appreciate books? Oh, you knew that already?

Day 9

Probably my favorite day of the whole trip! Today was the day when we went outside of Cairo to explore the oft-overlooked pyramids of Dahshur and Saqqara. These interesting pyramids are the precursor to the ones at Giza; they're also great because they're rarely visited by the tourists that mob Giza, and thus, you can have a much more enjoyable and intimate experience with these pyramids, and really get an idea of what it might've been like to come across these structures in the middle of the vast desert.

Dahshur and Saqqara yield some very unique pyramids, such as the Bent Pyramid, which the pharaoh Sneferu had his workers start building at a 54-degree inclination, until they realized that the slope was too steep for the structure to sustain itself, and thus completed the pyramid at 43 degrees. Whoops?

Saqqara is home to the Step Pyramid, considered the first pyramid attempt, and the first time that anyone (in this case, pharaoh Zoser's architect Imhotep, that poor genius maligned in the Mummy movies) attempted a stone structure on such a large scale. Prior to this, people of importance had been buried in squat mastabas, and Imhotep expanded the idea into what we consider representative of Egypt.

Day 10-11

We took a two-day, one-night trip to Alexandria! This city is a far cry from what it was back in the days of the Greeks--in fact, the original Alexandria is completely underwater, due to shifts in water level and all that--but it's an incredibly pleasant city. Sights and highlights included Pompey's Pillar:

Colorful fishing boats along the harbor:

The sunset:

And library lover's paradise, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Ohmigod, I'm in love:

Every community needs a library like Alexandria's. Swoon. Swoon swoon. Swoon. Okay, I'll try to stop now.

And thus basically concluded our Egypt tour. We arrived back in Cairo in the evening, and caught planes to our various homes (US, China, South Korea; yes, we are a very international crew) the next morning.

It would be pointless to try to express how awesome the trip was, and how lucky I was to be able to do it with my friends. Without a doubt, Egypt is still a must-see destination (although with proper caution; I'll write more about this in a bit). I hope y'all will be inspired to put Egypt on your list of destinations to visit before you die, if it's not there already!

Egypt: Part 1 of 2

I don't know about you, but I went through That Phase in my childhood when I glommed over all things Egypt. I devoured books on Tutankhamun; I wondered over (and was more than a little creeped out by) the mummification process. When I got the chance to go to Egypt in January to attend a college friend's wedding, I knew that I would do whatever it takes to make the wedding and then perhaps do a little more.

Fortunately for me, my friends and I decided to use the trip as a really unusual one-and-a-half-year college reunion. My four close girlfriends from the swim team and I made the wedding; three of us then went on afterwards for the Egypt tour that took us to see sights I never thought I'd actually get to see in person over the course of eleven days.

Days 1-3

This wedding was a multi-day affair, yo! The majority of it took place in the "backyard" of the Sofitel Legend Old Cataract Hotel in Aswan. Aswan is the slow-paced city that the Nile floats dreamily by at the beginning of its journey through the rest of Egypt, and the Old Cataract is this UN-BE-LIEV-ABLE place that looks straight out of the set of an early twentieth century movie. The place exudes glamour--check out the "backyard":

Can you imagine having your wedding in a place like this?!

As I said, the wedding was a multi-day affair. It consisted of a Nubian dinner/dance, a trip for all of us out to an island to see the Philae Temple, a cocktail party (with open bar), the wedding itself with a good 500 guests (with open bar and white flowers allegedly flown in from Alexandria), and an after-wedding farewell brunch.

Oh, I forgot to mention that halfway through the wedding there was a 10-minute fireworks interlude set to the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song while spotlights played on the ruins across the river from the hotel. I don't know how all these things fit together but I'm going to mention it anyway, BECAUSE.

Crazypants.

Day 4

Our tour is under way! Woke up at the wee hour of 3am and made, under a star-studded desert sky, the three-hour drive to Abu Simbel, the site of that gigantic Ramses II temple that you've probably seen pictures of. (Ramses, he be an egotistical man, so we've learned.)

Then it was back to Aswan, where we said goodbye to two friends, and then the remaining three of us began our two-day, two-night "cruise" down the Nile aboard a felucca. I put "cruise" in quotes because a felucca is this:

A canvas-sail boat, and that's a very comfy mattress placed across the whole of the deck area, because that, ladies and gentlemen, is where we sat and slept for the next 40 hours. There's not much to do on a felucca except to read, sleep, and relax, which is what we did:

Day 6

Temples, temples, and more temples! Today we saw lots. Of. Temples. It started with Kom Ombo (we were its first visitors of the day); went onto Edfu, the most well-preserved Greco-Roman style temple in the world; Karnak, a temple of gargantuan, imagination-inspiring proportions; and Luxor at dusk.

They're all stunning and beautiful in their own ways--my favorite was Karnak, because of how its incredible size reflects the unified vision (and egoism) of dozens of pharaohs--but visiting four temples in one day is certainly overwhelming! My friends and I kept on disappointing our tour guide by mixing the stories behind the temples up--"Wait, which one was built to worship a crocodile god again?"--but oh well.

(It's Kom Ombo, by the way. They worshipped the crocodile god there.)

Day 7

Today we visited the West Bank of Luxor, the location of the famous Valley of the Kings, secret burial site for dozens of pharaohs. No one is allowed to bring cameras into the valley itself, so I'll just tell you about sloping tomb entrances painted with marvelous images of rituals and everyday life and gods and wars, and standing at the end of the tomb, staring at a huge sarcophagus carved from stone and imagining the place filled to the brim with mounds of treasures as befits a royal. Incredible.

We also visited Hatshepshut's Temple--

--and Medinat Habu, where the pharaoh Thutmosis III wanted his achievements to be permanent (at this time pharaohs and others used to go around graffitiing other pharaohs' monuments in order to try and "erase them from history") and so ordered all the carvings on this temple to be made extra deep.

Later that night, we climbed aboard a sleeper train to continue our journey in Cairo. And that's where I'll stop for now!