The Lone Real Time Egyptian Post

What a fascinating trip == I have seen some truly incredible things! The sites are extraordinary and daily life in Egypt, well, is constant stimulation to all the senses. I've taken a lot of good pics which I will post when I get back to Turkey, and there will be stories for years to come, to be sure. My favorite thus far is myu experience last night at the Bazaar with Jane from West Chester (who now lives in Nevada and already considers me a second daughter). We had a great evening with a Nubian tailor who had his son custom make me a small fruit crate from date palmm wood. Who knows how I'll get it baack to Ankara, let alone home for real! Our evening ended with a crazy cab ride baack on an unpaved road in the country that appeared to be nowhere near the hotel (the prime minister was staying at our place and caused gridlock in town). We are right by the Nile, which is thrilling for me to spend time along another of the world's great rivers.

This has really been some trip -- can't wait til I have the opportunity t6o write about it. The group travel thing has had its moments of extreme frustration for me, but I have come to terms with it and (now that it's almost over!) I am getting sentimental about some of the people I have met. The egyptian people have been stunningly kind, friendly, positive about Americans, and so welcoming and charming that I feel like I've basked in their warmth. The poverty and rural life has been tough to see at times; they don't let many tourists go through Middle Egypt (we had police escort like a motorcade and were rarely allowed to move freely) so I feel like I had a tremendous opportunity that I wouldn't have otherwise.

And I've become obsessed with the way egyptians who have been to pilgrimage to Mecca paint their houses with planes, boats, mosques and elaborate designs. I'd love to do more research on that.

Anyway, tomorrow we visit the valley of the kings and then split with the group and Jane, the guides and I go to Cairo. I'm there for one night and a full day then onto my tour of Jordan for another few nights. By the time you wake up friday morning I should be arriving back to my flat, exhausted!

Oh, I had my most accurate baby prediction ever -- telling a woman that I thought she would become a grandmother that day; two minutes later the phone rang that the baby had been born. It was weird.

Not so much meditation or weird new agey stuff -- although I did see an owl unexpectedly at a temple last night and really got a thrill from it. I have a thing about owls. Ok -- I can hear Christopher laughing and telling me to get a life so I'd better reign it in.

Expect retroactive posts about the experiences,with photos next week.

PS == being surrrounded by americans who are all going home this week has made me homesick for the first time since 've been in Turkey -- I keep thinking I'll be seeing all of you this week, but alas, it's not the case.

Second Day in Middle Egypt

When our wakeup call came in the darkness at 5:30, I think I actually felt despair. My night of sleep hadn’t been good – some Egyptian dentists at the hotel for a conference were noisy very late into the night. But I have to admit that the chance to see the sun rise over the Nile was worth the lack of sleep. The light cast over the view from our balcony and the pathway to breakfast changed each minute as the sun crept up behind the mountains across the river.

Early morning fishermen in boats paddled through the water in the orange light, and although we didn’t have much time to linger that morning, what I did see of the sunrise was memorable and made me look forward to the following day.

For me there was an undercurrent that was a constant issue during this part of the trip (one which I won’t beleaguer with too much detail): after liberally using the “homeopathic anti-diarrhea” medication when I didn’t have said symptom, now I was suffering from the opposite problem. It had been four or five days since any action and I was bloated and felt lethargic. Had I been traveling alone, I would have taken a day to just focus on the problem, but with our schedule, there wasn’t any time. I just tried to ignore it, but I was getting really uncomfortable and didn’t want to eat at all.

However from the bus, which we boarded at 7 a.m. for a full day of sightseeing, the constant flow of life outside the windows provided a great distraction. This day was particularly thrilling, as we left Minya and headed southward along the Nile through a town called Mallawi and on to Tell el-Amarna, the ruins of Akhenaten’s capital city during his brief and controversial reign. The drive took more than an hour, and I sat captivated staring out the window as we cruised along. People were beginning to start the day, and there was activity all around, from women washing clothes and laundry in the river to men leading livestock through the streets. In farm fields, people were starting to harvest crops, and in the small towns, children headed to school, men sat outside cafés getting early morning fixes on their water pipes. The more urbanized areas featured stand after stand of produce for sale, usually in the spindly date palm crates to which I found myself so drawn.

Ruth began to give us a lecture from the front of the bus; people were paying attention to varying degrees. I picked up a few things, but mostly found the scenes outside the window too intriguing to pay attention to anything else. The number of people on the streets – whether walking, riding livestock-drawn carts, or in cars and trucks – was stunning. Everyone seemed to be going somewhere. At one spot, we paused to let a train pass: girls with white headscarves, long skirts, and bookbags waited alongside the line of traffic, as men in robes with scarves wrapped around their necks chatted non-chalantly. Men sat perched on large wooden horsecarts overflowing with bundles of supplies. Big trucks spewed exhaust into the air, and smaller vehicles honked. People stood on the back bumpers of mid-sized trucks, clinging on as the vehicles drove. We even saw tall trucks heaped – that is really the correct word – with children standing in the back, a jumble of young faces eyeing our bus. The scene reverberated with activity.

As we neared Mallawi, the bus slowed and the action on the streets outside the window took on an even more frenetic pitch. Perhaps it was market day, or perhaps it was just before 8 in the morning and everyone was busy getting where they needed to go, but the main intersection crossing the Nile was jam-packed with vehicles, animals, supplies, carts, produce, and people darting back and forth. A horse-drawn flatbed cart came underneath my window, the cargo area piled with dismembered parts of some kind of animal still steaming from fresh slaughter. Children’s legs dangled from the sides of the donkeys they rode, and shopowners on one side of the street were just beginning to open the metal rolling doors that protected their wares overnight. The bus stopped completely in the traffic, and we all gaped out the window. Ruth, still lecturing from the front, noticed that she’d lost everyone. “Maybe I should wait until there’s less to see out the window,” she said. “Oh yes!” cried Judy of Sonoma. “Right now it is just so exciting!”

And it was. There was so much to look at that I hardly really saw anything – the only place I’ve been that had the same tenor was the market in Iquitos, Peru. The level of apparent poverty was striking; we saw many people sleeping on the street and many of the animals’ ribcages fully showed. Behind the stores were compact streets of mud-brick houses lining tight alleyways crawling with chickens and goats. Children ran towards our bus, waving and yelling. Women in long, colorful robes strolled the streets balancing enormous trays overflowing with metal pots and pans on their heads, heading to the river to wash. Though sometimes in considerable disrepair, the architecture struck me as subtly beautiful: small buildings painted aqua blue with white scallop trim, golden yellow walls scrawled with Arabic graffiti, rainbows of clothes hung to try from small balconies projecting over the crowded sidewalks. More recent multi-storey apartment blocks contrasted with the low-level painted houses and mudbrick that lined the streets. Many buildings, though made of brick or limestone, often had no structural roofs, only reeds laying across the top of the home. Men on donkeys led cows and waterbuffalo along past mosque courtyards strung with multi-colored lightbulbs. Each block had at least several vendors in small kiosks hawking wares.

After creeping in heavy traffic for some time, our police escort finally cranked up the siren and soon we were out of the city, cruising past checkpoints and passing farm fields and rural villages rather than Mallawi’s urban landscape. Even the fields were stunningly beautiful – a green so bright I can’t quite describe it, with patches of golden yellow glowing alongside, some kind of crop. Still irrigation canals offered up mirror-images of nearby palm trees and the morning sky.

As we turned off the main road into a smaller village, Diane in front of me said, “Oh, this is the interesting part of the trip. I remember now.” I looked out the window and did find it interesting – donkeys and camels (!) burdened with heaps of cut sugar cane walking down narrow dirt roads lined with simple mud-brick houses, each with a small walled courtyard. These appeared to be farming people living directly off the land, not-urbanized at all. People looked up from their work to watch the bus pass. As we neared a larger town, I decided to make a visit to the restroom, at the bottom of the short stairwell that led to the back door.

One of the awkward things about our on-bus facilities was that the stall faced backwards. Whenever I used the restroom while the bus was moving, I felt strange sitting backwards on the careening bus. Somehow it was a challenge to maneuver, especially on some of the winding, stop and start roads we traveled. This particular time, after I placed myself in the stall, I got quite a shock.

Suddenly we seemed to be angling sharply downwards, as if going down a steep hillside. The landscape had been purely flat in most of the Nile valley, so suddenly feeling like I was angling backwards in a reclining chair startled me. The bus rocked back and forth, slowly maneuvering its way through something, although I had no idea what. What are we doing? I thought as I struggled to stand up, adjust my clothes, and work my way out of the tight stall, my body being thrown around considerably. As I managed to open the door, the bus slowed further, and everything felt decidedly unsteady. I saw my comrades peering out of the windows and everyone seemed to be excited about something. I scrambled my way up the steps with some effort, and looked out the window. We were on a barge. The driver had maneuvered our full-sized bus down the steep embankment to the actual Nile river and onto a small flat ferry, which also was supporting the weight of several trucks, a number of produce-laden horse carts, donkeys, and pedestrians. It was not a huge ferry. No wonder it had felt strange from the bathroom.

As they waited to load even more vehicles and people onto the vessel, the driver opened the door and let us out to get some fresh air and check out the situation. The photographers among us started shooting away, and the pedestrians eyed us with a mix of curiosity and nonchalance. The riverside town featured brightly painted houses along the river embankment, and boats of various sizes and shapes floated tethered along the water’s edge. This is what Diane meant by the interesting part of the trip.

The fertile green of the riverside stood in stark contrast to the dramatic craggy hills across the river; as we chugged across on the barge, I got an even better sense of the height of the mountainous outcroppings. Those cliffs, across a stretch of desert, were the site of our next stop, Tell el-Amarna.

When the ferry docked, the driver navigated his way past horse carts overloaded with oranges off the floating platform, and we scrambled to take photos of the vessel from the back window. The landscape turned quickly to desert as we drove towards the rocky cliffs. There weren’t many built structures across this stretch of land, only a few small buildings, including a place with bathroom stalls and souvenirs.

The gang straggled off the bus into the blazing hot sun; I paged through my guidebook trying to locate us on a map. We’d be visiting some tombs cut into the cliffs. The walk up involved relatively steep stairs. A guide led us one by one into several tombs, all adorned with rather striking chiseled and painted scenes. One particularly dramatic one featured Akhenaten in a chariot; there was so much detail and movement even the horse’s musculature showed. A word now about Akhenaten and the kind of art that his reign encouraged: this particular pharaoh rejected the religious system of his forefathers and decided upon the worship of one god Aten, the midday sun. Under the mission of cultural and religious reform, Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti closed old temples, purged old cults, and affirmed new priorities. They moved the capital to Tell el-Amarna. The art of the time – as before mentioned – is known for its different look and subject matter. In addition to the shift in the way that people, particularly the royal family, were depicted, artists of that time also emphasized scenes of human daily life rather than the gods and the afterlife. The royal family was shown interacting with each other, eating, making offerings; in these works, people drink wine and cook food, and blind beggars seek alms. Here, as Jane pointed out to me, the sun disks depicted emit long rays that terminate in outstretched hands, as if the god is reaching out to the subjects in a gesture of support.

In one of my favorite scenes in this set of tombs, a house with many rooms featured people at work and play. In one room, people cooked food; in another at the top I needed my binoculars to figure out that a person appeared to be bathing with a shower-like device.

One tomb, the last we looked at, showed serious signs of alteration and use; it turns out it had been converted to a chapel by Coptic Christians during the Middle Ages.

After visiting here we spent a little while at the bottom of the cliff availing ourselves of the facilities. A few people bought souvenirs or had something to drink. Our next stop was a distant Royal tomb several kilometers out a desert road. They’d done a careful job trying to restore this place, laying down hardwood floors for tourists and building an entryway of concrete that hugged the sandy hills. However, in recent years a flash flood apparently washed away all the art inside. There was still some which was under restoration and salvage, but generally there wasn’t much to see here at all, despite all the hard work.

Nearby we stopped to look at one of the boundary steles that marked out the city borders. There was a long climb up and not that much to see except for a nice view of the valley towards the river.

Here Deb managed to convince Ehab and Ruth that we should go see the Tomb of Ay, described in my book as the best one at Tell el-Amarna to see. Neither of them had been there before, and Deb had a push a bit to get the bus headed about 20 minutes or so beyond the intended destination. I overheard Ehab firmly explaining to Ruth that this unexpected diversion might mean that we’d miss something else later in the day.

On our way to that tomb we passed through a small town on the former site of Akhenaten’s city where people still live – more scenes of rural life. Children ran to wave at the bus; geese and other livestock wandered the streets; a little boy we passed was balancing a fresh pita round on a bowl, then dropped it in the sand and kneeled to pick it up again.

As far as a memorable tomb goes, though, I felt this one to be the most dramatic we saw. Unlike some of the others, where the interior columns had been damaged or removed, this dark cavern featured a forest of tall, wide posts. There wasn’t electricity so we had to make out the art via the minimal light from the door and our flashlights. There was an image of Akhenaten on one of the walls that hadn’t been defaced like the others (after his reign people were quick to deem him heretical and removed his image from many venues.) And Ruth pointed out, with great excitement in her voice, that there were actual cartouches with Akhenaten’s name written, the only place she said we’d see that on the whole trip because the others have been removed. My favorite was an image in the doorway of Ay and his wife Tey paying homage. It was gorgeous – the depiction of drapery and hair in particular.

On our way back out we stopped the bus to take a wander around an area of ruins of the city itself. I neither have strong memories of this nor many pictures since I was preoccupied with the fact that I’d managed to run down both sets of my batteries unexpectedly and was out of luck. I coaxed a few more shots out over the course of the rest of the day, but not many.

At this last stop people washed some vegetables for lunch. There was a dispute between our two guides about whether we should eat before or after we made our way back across the ferry. I remember the bantering back and forth, but can’t remember when we ate. At this point I’d gotten out of the habit of eating lunch anyway.

The ferry ride back was just as interesting as the ride over. This time, though, we were approached by children wanting to sell us brightly colored baskets. One little girl offered me a necklace made of a palm frond as a gift – I said no money. The security guards waved all the kids away from us, which prompted the children to start to cry because they weren’t allowed to sell us the baskets. Finally, actually almost all of us standing there called the kids over and bought from them, including me. The girl has far more use for my $2 than I do. Jane and I were talking on the ferry – after Ehab noted again that he felt that we looked alike – and we discovered that my great uncle Paul worked for Jane’s dad. She’d always seen him and his wife as a mentor of sorts. One more thing for us to bond over.

In the afternoon, we headed over to a place called Tuna El-Gebel, a dramatic expanse of desert sand covered with pot shards. Our first visit there was to a small tomb from the Ptolemaic era called the Tomb of Petosiris, who was a High Priest of the god Thoth. This was a later work, from about 300 BC, when there was considerable Greek influence in the region. The god Thoth was the patron god of scribes and writers and was usually depicted with a man’s body and the head of an ibis, but also sometimes appeared as a baboon. The ibis and baboon were important symbols of this particular god. The tomb itself displayed whiter walls, bright colors, and a more flamboyant style. Ehab explained that this was “not good” art – not really Egyptian and not really Greek, kind of a hybrid style that involved the copying of the ancient Egyptian traditions rather than pure concepts. I enjoyed it though – I particularly liked the repeated images of baboons on one wall. I also began to notice that here there seemed to be multicultural influences. Images on one wall had the distinct look of works from the Indian sub-continent. Deb pointed out a series of pictures of the scribe god Thoth giving inspiration to various aspiring writers. I then spotted another panel that looked distinctly Chinese in the iconography. The hieroglyphs here had a different look too, and Deb hypothesized that they might be speaking a different language. I found it totally fascinating.

From there we headed for a brief stop to an ancient well (Sid got busted for trying to climb on the outside to take a shot) and then into a catacomb filled with endless corridors that once held mummies of baboons and ibises – thousands of them. We walked around the passageways for a while; these I found particularly creepy, especially the baboon fetishes we saw in a small shrine just inside the entrance.

As we made our way up the stairwell to get out, I saw a man with a professional video camera shooting our climb up. It turns out that a team assigned to making a documentary or travel video about Minya and its tourist sites had followed us there hoping to get some footage and interviews about the experience of visiting there. They interviewed Diane (who is a lovely woman with red hair and so surely looks great), and then someone recruited Sid, who gave a charming and enthusiastic interview. My favorite moment was when he answered the question “what have you seen in Minya?” with “Well, I can’t remember what we’ve seen, but it has all been just so wonderful!” It was great. I really feel glad to have met Sid and Joyce.

We boarded the bus again and then went to our final stop – the ancient site of Hermopolis, where there really wasn’t much to see except for some baboon statues and a bathroom. We were supposed to walk through a small stretch of homes to take some photos of the city ruins, but as some children approached, the heavy police escort decided to abort the plan (as it would be a real security nightmare for us to actually talk to kids) and hurried us back onto the bus. It had been a long day.

Dinner took a pretty long time, but I enjoyed talking to Valerie and Ross, who were seated on either side of me. I recharged my camera batteries back in the room and as I recall we went to bed pretty early. The pace of our trip was starting to get the best of me. So much constant stimulation with unbelievable things.

Into Middle Egypt

We left the Mena House and Cairo early in the morning, heading south along the Nile. Our destination was a town called Minya, the provincial capital of Middle Egypt and the center of Islamic Fundamentalist unrest in the 1990s. Though there were never any tourists attacked in the region and currently the situation has settled considerably, our time in Minya featured intense security protection by the military and tourist police. In addition to Mohammed, a tourist security guard who accompanied us from Cairo, we had at least one escort car leading us down the road, heavily armed with machine-gun toting soldiers. At times we had more than one car, and at certain sites during this part of the trip, we’d suddenly find ourselves flanked by multiple reinforcements of armed guards either toting rifles openly over robed shoulders or concealing multiple pistols in holsters underneath their blazers. Between their dress (trench coats, bad ties and sunglasses) and forced nonchalance, they looked like the secret service.

I never quite got used to the security presence; some members of the group commented that the attention made them feel safe. I just felt more conspicuous, and didn’t particularly like it when they shouted at children approaching us to make them scatter in disappointment back towards their homes. As Ross said at one point, they had to make sure we were safe because if we were left alone we “might actually talk to children.” That’s not to say that the forces were anything but pleasant, and at this point in life I really ought not complain about being escorted around by polite and handsome young men. But the situation always hovered for me somewhere between strange and downright uncomfortable; I think it was Jane who echoed my underlying feeling – the presence made us feel like we were the ones doing something wrong.

The bus ride from Cairo to Luxor over the course of three days for me was the most fascinating and memorable portion of the trip. Although being caged up on a bus with the same people for three straight days isn’t usually my idea of bliss, we had enough space to spread out and I felt I could eke out plenty of meditative time to myself. And the constant film strip of views outside the speeding bus kept me utterly fascinated and entranced. It’s hard to describe the scenes of daily life in rural Egypt – the constant stimulation of the sights overwhelmed me and it was hard to take it all in. Nevertheless, it was an extraordinary opportunity to see life beyond the ancient tourist sights. Ultimately, I found myself equally, if not more, intrigued by life in modern Egypt as the pyramids and tomb paintings. What makes this place tick, I found myself wondering as we’d speed by huge portraits on the street of Hosni Mubarak, robed men smoking waterpipes outside brightly painted cafes, and women carrying various items by balancing them on their heads. Our bus got a lot of stares, especially since at times the speeding police escort set off its sirens to help us fly past traffic (they’d done that in Cairo too, at times blocking traffic so that we could pass through busy intersections against the light and without stopping.) Kids often waved at the bus – and a few I saw throwing rocks. At times I’d make eye contact with a particular kid through the window, and his or her waving would reach an excited pitch as the child beamed up at me on the bus, waving back.

The urban jumble of Cairo receded, and as we sped southward, suddenly we were surrounded by desert – wide expanses of sand under a stunning blue sky dotted with swirling patterns of bright, wispy clouds. Kilometers passed, endless ones.

I struck up a conversation with Diane, who was sitting in front of me, about her past trips to Egypt, trying to get a handle on what she gets out of this. We also talked about the impending birth of her grandchild. She talked about how much she was looking forward to going to Abydos, a place where she’d felt an intense connection on past trips. However, they were there when it was crowded with people, so she was looking forward to being there without all the other tourists. She got teary eyed talking about it, which made me curious about what the place must be like. I also got an immediate and overpowering intuition that her grandchild would be born while we were at Abydos, although I didn’t share it at the time.

As I stared more out the window, I could see in the distance a sudden burst of palm trees and bright green in the desert – the Fayoum Oasis. And further along, I spotted from afar a strange shape on the horizon. I couldn’t see at first if it was a natural formation in the desert landscape, or something built. It turned out it was the Pyramid of Maidum, our first sightseeing stop for the day. As we drew closer, I saw that indeed, though it now lacked the true pyramid shape since its sides had collapsed, now it had even more drama. We stopped from a distance to take some photos (including some shots of our security detail) and then headed into the site.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Maidum was its contrast between stark, rugged desert and the neighboring oasis of green surrounding us. The structure’s form looked more like a large mastaba perched on a hill of rubble. The day was particularly bright and crisp, and the contrast of sand and sky added to the striking visuals. The security presence there was exceptional – guards with guns hovered, and, as we were the only tourist bus, we were the only game in town.

We had the chance to scale the rubble pile and enter the pyramid itself. A shaft, then a corridor, then a steep set of stairs more like a ladder led us up into the corbel-ceilinged chamber. The heat in there was thick, and my legs felt like rubber once I got into the room. The small chamber looked very similar to ones we’d seen in other pyramids, but the scale was more intimate I think.

When we left, we got a great view of the oasis from up on the rubble, and then headed around to the side where we entered into the ruins of a cubicle (I didn’t quite get what this ruined area was, unfortunately. I was too captivated by the sky and sand around us.) While we were in there, the ever spry Sid scaled the side of the structure to get the right angle for a shot.

The grounds around the pyramid were littered with carved sarcophagi and other leftover monuments, sitting out in the sunny, sandy field. Ehab pointed out a burial mound/mastaba type structure to one side and said that was where the Geese of Maidum painting was found.

Back on the bus. We had lunch in motion after stopping to wash vegetables at a checkpoint when our security escort changed at a border. I didn’t eat much – still little appetite. We continued further through the desert, then into an area near the Nile which was bright and green. Small towns and villages with mudbrick and limestone block houses flew by. We passed livestock and farm fields and irrigation canals surrounded by bright green crops. Palm trees everywhere. Walls made of white limestone blocks. Kids on donkeys. Brightly painted trucks. The world passed by.

In the afternoon, the bus cruised into the largest city we’d passed through – Minya, where we’d be staying overnight the next two days. Ruth pointed out our hotel alongside the Nile a few kilometers north of town but we didn’t stop then. Instead we continued into the center of town, passing lovely river-side parks and playgrounds, filled with people going on about their daily routines: kids coming home from school, couples strolling. On the other side of the street, mosques and villas stood, in various stages of upkeep. I liked the looks of Minya – despite its reputation for some unrest, it seemed a pleasant enough mid-sized city, one that was using its Nile-side location wonderfully.

We zipped through town, crossed a wide bridge across the river; to the right were a series of nightclubs and riverboat-casino-looking structures. Businessmen walked along with briefcases, and kids skipped along the busy street. Despite the modern, cosmopolitan appearance, we were just as likely to see horse carts and livestock in traffic as cars. On the rugged hillside behind town, “El Minya” was spelled out in tall white letters, their own version of the Hollywood sign.

Our next sop was a ways beyond Minya on the other side of the Nile – the Beni Hassan tombs. I was intrigued by the landscape and villages we moved through on our way there. This area around the Nile glowed green, as palm trees and bright crop fields lined the river on one side of the road; on the other stood desert, with a line of craggy sandy-colored mountains creating a rocky barrier in the distance. The difference in landscape between one side of the narrow road and the other struck me as so different from the landscapes I’m used to seeing. The small villages were packed with images of rural Egyptian life; brightly painted houses; mosques strung with multicolored light-bulbs; piles of construction materials everywhere (including the cubes of white limestone that Ruth said echoed what the pyramids looked like millennia ago). Children chased our bus waving; women in vibrant dresses peered at us from their doorways. I couldn’t take it all in.

When we got to the Beni Hassan tombs and parked alongside Nile fields filled with kelly green crops, Ehab warned us that the climb up to the rock-cut tombs in the mountainside was steep, though it had stairs. We trickled our way up while some of the group stopped for a visit to the facilities. Here too we were accompanied by more than our share of armed guards; the guide to the facility was a warm and gentlemanly older man with a kindly face and striking gray eyes; he wore a gray robe with a white scarf, and his white-tinged beard contrasted with the darker gray, round cap he wore perched on his head. He carried a cane as he led us up the stairs into the blazingly unforgiving landscape of craggy rocks.

Up at the top, I looked back down to the river valley below – a stunning vista of green and sand and water. The distant sounds of braying donkeys, bells on livestock, and children playing soccer rose up to meet my ears whenever the wind blew the right way. That’s the Nile River, I kept thinking, marveling at my location. This is Egypt.

The 39 tombs of Beni Hassan are cut into the barren cliffs above the Nile valley; the guard showed us four of them, one by one unlocking the metal barred gates that blocked the openings from public view. Before we went in, I lacked any anticipation or expectation, but as we entered the first one and I saw what surrounded me, I felt my eyes literally widen to try to take it all in. The room was rectangular in shape, surprisingly large and regular, with the remains of papyrus-topped columns standing in the center. And all around the walls – with every inch of space covered – were paintings – gloriously detailed paintings of scenes of daily life in the middle kingdom, around 2000 BCE. Along the back wall, scene after scene (about 200!) of wrestlers in action (with piles of bodies perhaps representing fighting to the death in one part) gave the impression of images from a film strip – each battle scene seemed to show a slight difference in movement and I wondered what they would look like as a Muybridge-style flipbook. On another wall, I spotted hippos along the riverside, and crops like papyrus being harvested. Most of the figures were small, but there were some landmark images larger than the others, with figures a few feet tall. Hieroglyphs peppered the design. The colors – ochres, yellows, greens and blues – captivated me – how could they be so vibrant still after all these years? There were dancers, weavers, people playing games – marvelous.

The guide escorted us to the next three tombs -- more of the wonderful same. I enjoy seeing images of gods and icons, but it is the scenes of daily life that I find most stunning. Hunting of animals, dancers, people at work, more wrestlers, scenes of foods being collected and offered: there was so much to see. I noticed some female figures in one tomb in brightly colored outfits very different from the typical Egyptian attire. Ehab said that those represented women from another land. What stories these walls tell. In a couple of the tombs a shrine niche in the back held life size statues of the tomb owner, but for me the real draw was the paintings. I wished I could study them for hours to look at all the ways people were interacting in the scenes. As our visit drew to its end, I took some time to admire the views of the Valley again. It was an amazing place – one of my very favorites from the whole trip, partly because it seemed so out of the way and unexpected. Who would think that such crumbly looking rocks would hide such grand interior works of ancient art.

We spent a few minutes in a building at the base of the long flight of stairs before we boarded the bus. I have a slight regret from here; an artist guy paints there and his paintings appealed to me and weren’t expensive, but I didn’t want to hold up the group to buy one. I should have taken my time, but I didn’t. Oh well.

After getting back on the bus, I told Diane that those tombs might have been my favorite thing thus far, and she told me to wait til tomorrow at Tell el-Amarna. Our next stop was to a site called Speos Artemidos that I really didn’t understand. It was another small rock cut place in the middle of a stretch of desolate, beautiful landscape. As we wound our way the few kilometers towards there (with an even heavier police presence, I might add), we passed more homes and people. They seemed to be living in the middle of the desert in structures built of mud brick and limestone.

The little temple was supposedly made by Queen Hatshepsut and included the text of her plans for rejuvenating the empire, I think. Again, I kind of zoned out on what this place was. The most striking thing about it to me was the absolutely empty location, and the idea that such an old work of art would be here, of all places, struck me as fascinating. While I think it would be pretty doable to be an independent traveler both in Cairo and Luxor, it was this stretch of Middle Egypt that I felt so lucky to be on this tour. I saw places and things that I absolutely never would have been able to see, windows into history and current Egyptian life that aren’t open to most tourists.

Since it was getting towards sundown, we headed back towards Minya to check into the hotel. This involved driving back through the villages we’d passed on the way, and this time I was prepared, with my camera out, ready, and set for speed in hopes that it would indeed be possible to capture some images from the window of a moving bus. My photographs from Middle Egypt, largely taken from said window of moving bus strike me as unusual, even peculiar. A lot of times I’d just start hitting the shutter as fast as I could, not taking the time to look at what I was actually getting. Then, later, I’d go back through and delete the ones that showed nothing. To my pleasant surprise, I did capture some scenes – accidentally – that reflect a lot of what we saw from the bus, though the composition and images themselves are pretty random.

One of the highlights of that particular drive was a huge complex that Ehab explained were more modern tombs for average people, hive-shaped mud-brick mounds with occasional white stucco structures thrown in. They emerged dramatically from the sandy landscape. My guidebook said that these are Minya’s cities of the dead which sometimes also house the living. Most of the region is Muslim, but about 20% here are Coptic Christians, so it wasn’t unusual to see crosses as well as Islamic icons.

Nearby, houses brightly painted with stripes, flowers, and geometric designs flew past our windows. Women strolled the streets carrying trays on their heads; men led livestock through town; children gathered in loose groups to play soccer and chase. At one point someone asked for us to stop to take photos of the tombs, and Sid was the first off the bus. He was immediately swarmed by curious girls in vibrantly colored dresses. Overwhelmed, he pulled a handful of balloons out of his pocket, threw them in the air, and then jumped back on the bus. Those who were waiting to get off the bus for photos were out of luck as we sped off in our motorcade. Luckily, I’d snapped some pics from the window before we started moving again. Here, I also captured my first shot of a painting on a house representing its owner’s visit to the Hajj. In Egypt, people who visit Mecca hire local artists to adorn their homes with images of the mosque, travel modes (planes and boats) and other images reflective of the pilgrimage experience. I found these fascinating and am now duly obsessed.

The other image that lingers from this village is that of rainbows of laundry strung from balconies. I also noticed an area where it looked like little girls were working to dry patties of dung used for fuel; various forms of livestock roamed around. And it wasn’t unusual (but always a thrill nonetheless) to pass camels ridden by robed men.

We made our way back into Minya, which looked positively cosmopolitan after our foray into rural village life. It didn’t take us long to get back to the hotel, and we were all assigned rooms in small pink bungalos in the heavily-guarded hotel complex along the river. Deb and I lucked out. We got, I think, the best room, with a patio overlooking the river and the rugged hills on the other side, rapidly turning pink in the fading light. I knew I needed to deposit some of my cousin’s ashes here, in the Nile. I sat on the patio a while, watching with my binoculars a man across the river leading water buffalos to the water, while a woman washed clothes and dishes from the bank. Occasional small boats paddled past. I was amazed at how much this region of Egypt reminded me of the Peruvian Amazon, desert landscape notwithstanding. The feel of life along the big river here echoed some of the images still in my head from my visits to Peru.

Around six, after the sun had set, we gathered for a lengthy dinner in the dining room of the hotel. I had a really good meat dish with gravy that tasted a lot like Salisbury Steak. I was sitting next to Ehab, who started asking me if I had a boyfriend, and if not, why not. I get this question – almost always from men – and it just seems preposterously unanswerable to me. I mean, I could give some answers, which would be either too detailed and psychoanalytical for casual dinnertime conversation with a relative stranger, or other answers, which would involve a high degree of flippancy and overgeneralized statements about half the world’s population. What is the point? Maybe it is a cultural thing – in this part of the world, unmarried and highly independent women of my age living on their own are pretty unusual. But, I am not from this part of the world, and I am not that much of an oddity in my home culture (well, maybe that’s not really true!) Anyway, I managed to negotiate that conversation and move on, mostly by changing the subject and piling on questions to Ehab about his life instead.

After dinner, Deb and I decided that we wanted to go out on our own and check out the bazaar area of Minya. We considered walking, but the distance listed in my guidebook seemed pretty far, so we instead asked Ruth and Ehab about getting a driver. They didn’t bite and didn’t offer to help us go out on our own (Ehab said that the market area was only for local people and didn’t have anything tourists wanted to buy. I said that was just the kind of place I wanted to see.) So, Deb and I went to the front desk and arranged with the receptionist for a taxi to come pick us up and take us to the market area. What ensued was quite an adventure.

When the driver arrived we reconfirmed the price and boarded the cab. He spoke English (which amazed me, that a taxi driver in a non-tourist area of Egypt would speak English that well. Actually everyone seemed to speak English much better than most average people I encounter in Turkey. The same was true of Jordan, where people kept asking me why people in Turkey don’t speak better English! It happened a couple of times. I don’t know if it speaks to Turkey’s educational system or its non-colonial past or what, but I think that the country needs to ramp up considerably before becoming part of the EU. Even on our English-speaking campus I’ve noticed that many of the students are pretty weak, and even some of the professor’s documents I’ve seen, written in English, are rather sketchy and rife with errors. And this is METU, one of Turkey’s very finest universities. Actually I think that Turkish and English do not mesh well at all, so maybe that is part of the problem. Oh, I don’t think I’ve yet mentioned that it was really fun for me in Egypt to pick out all the Arabic words that are the same in Turkish—there are lots.)

Anyway, when we got in the cab, another man joined us, sitting in the front seat. Deb insisted on finding out who it was; turns out it was our own personal police escort for the evening, who would accompany us on our excursion. We told the driver that we wanted to go to the market, but he insisted on taking us across the river to show us proudly the El Minya sign and the nightclub district. We managed to convince him to take us back to the market, and we got out of the cab and started walking around the busy streets with our police escort close at hand. We were trying to find scarves to buy – and we did find a little stretch of stores for women which we entered to look at the headscarves. The setting was a bit intimidating; I felt not unsafe but rather conspicuous, and I started having the feeling that I would rather have been there on my own than with another tourist. I needed just to wander and not worry about thinking about someone else’s feelings and needs. But that wasn’t the case, so we ended up walking around a while. I was amazed at how busy the streets were for after 8 at night. Lights were bright, stores were open, and women and men alike strolled along window shopping and sucked on water pipes (the men only of course) in cafes. Lots of fruit vendors lined the streets, selling vegetables out of the spindly date-palm crates that I’d been drawn to since the start of the trip. I’d even told Ross that if I could take one home as a souvenir I would be thrilled, but they are too big. Vendors were also selling street food such as fava beans that they ladled from huge metal amphoras with narrow necks. Donkeys and horse drawn carriages and carts were more common on the streets than cars, yet we passed several rather up-to-date looking cybercafés filled with young men playing computer games and smoking.

We spent about a half an hour or so wandering around with our two escorts, and we each bought a simple scarf. I found the chance to see downtown Minya at night yet another window into modern Egypt, and the experience left me feeling like I wanted to see more of daily life. The ride back to the hotel was uneventful; when we got back we sat on the patio for a while drinking beers ordered from room service and listening to chanting in Arabic, gunfire, and music drifting over from across the river. Ehab said the next day that there was a wedding.

Near the Bazaar.

Smoking water pipes: Valeria, Ehab, Tina, Jane (struggling with logistics)

Sid and Joyce.

Last Day in Cairo

I have to admit that the best thing about getting sick at Giza was the resulting opportunity to stay in bed, miss the morning wake up, and have some time to myself. Having not been ill for a few hours, I decided to order some oatmeal from room service and a 7-Up. I showered, dressed, and watched some TV. My whole midsection ached from the day before, but at least I wasn’t actively nauseous.

Ruth called up around 11:30 to say that they were downstairs, and I could come down any time if I wanted to go to the museum in the afternoon. I didn’t want to miss the Cairo museum, and since I was feeling a little more energetic, I decided to go for it. Ruth, Diane and I were the only ones around, because everyone else was at a Papyrus factory on another shopping trip. We ended up waiting a really long time for everyone to finish, sitting in the minibus on the busy Cairo street, as people trickled out to the van one at a time. A few people took a really long time – I found it interesting – I didn’t get a vibe that it was OK to keep the group waiting to spend more time looking at a site or even to go to the bathroom. But if shopping was involved, no word was ever said about one or two people making the rest wait for, on occasion, up to a half an hour. I guess if people are making commissions off the sales, the more time people are stuck there the better.

Anyway, our next stop after waiting for what seemed like an interminably long time at the papyrus joint was lunch. Of course, I still had no intention of eating much of anything. But the setting was lovely – an outdoor garden with bougainvillea glowing red all around and lots of green everywhere. Ruth said that this was a place that real Egyptians would eat, not tourists (the two other tour groups that arrived while we were there notwithstanding.) There were women making fresh pita at the front, clapping for us to take their photos so that we’d give them tips. The food looked great – lots of salads and pickles and other tasty looking things. However, I stuck to the fresh made pita and a soda, and enjoyed chatting with Jane all through lunch.

Afterwards, we headed to the Egyptian museum for our organized tour and free time there – scheduled for the better part of the afternoon. The place is huge, crowded, and packed to overflowing with extraordinary antiquities. As far as an interpretive experience, the place was lacking all trappings of “museum” that I consider key (little wayfinding, no natural flow, tons of things with little information) but the collection itself was phenomenal – one of the most stunning I’ve ever seen. Of course in such a short visit I only saw a little bit as I traipsed along behind the group feeling worn out from the beginning and a little woozy, but what I did see made a strong impression.

Around every corner was something else intriguing. Our first stop was the Palette of Narmer, a small slate tablet with a beautiful carved relief, dating from about 3000 BCE. The second I saw this I flashed back to Mrs. Murphy’s art history class senior year. This one was definitely something I’d studied before. I couldn’t believe how, well, new it looked, with the details of the relief carvings still sharp. The scene depicted the uniting of the upper and lower kingdoms by King Narmer – on one side he wears the white crown of upper Egypt and is hitting an opponent. The whole thing was less than a few feet tall, and even narrower across. A rather elaborate, custom made plexi support kept the odd-shaped palette standing upright. One of our group asked how something that couldn’t stand on its own could have survived intact after all these years.

One small room had a great display of memorable artifacts. In the center of the room stood the life-sized statues of a prince and princess (Rahotep and Nefert), seated in thrones. Ehab explained that it was typical to show man’s skin as ochre colored and women’s skin a light creamy tone, and this statue was a good example of that. The prince was bare from the waist up, but the female was clad in a thin robe carved from the medium – and I found myself marveling at the craftsmanship and artistry exhibited in the delicate drapery. Many of the statues had inlayed eyes of stone, which gave them an eerie and lifelike quality. This particular statue was found at Meidum, along with a painting along the far wall – another vaguely familiar piece from art history classes: the Geese of Meidum. Though about 4000 years old, the colors of the painting of a row of geese were bright and vibrant. Nearby stood a tender statue of a dwarf, his wife, and their children. The dwarf sat on short crossed legs, while his non-dwarf wife draped a gentle, loving arm around his shoulders. In front of them, their two children stood sucking on their fingers, a symbol, Ehab said, of childhood in Egyptian art. Another favorite of mine was a nearly life-sized statue of a man, made of painted wood. Ehab explained that this statue was known as the chief of the village, because the Egyptians who unearthed it on an archeological site saw it and said it looked just like the chief of their village. Indeed, his twinkling eyes, distinctive features, and swelling pot belly looked remarkably similar to many Egyptians we’d seen on the street. Ehab joked that it looked a little like him. In a small alcove on the other side of the room we saw a tiny statue of Cheops, the maker of the Great Pyramid, only a few centimeters tall; nearby were some remains of organs from canopic jars found at a site.

On our way to the back wing of the museum, we stopped off to take a look at a statue of Hatshepsut, a fascinating character we’d hear a lot about over the course of our time in country. After her husband died, she arranged for herself to be named the actual pharaoh – the only female pharaoh in history; she’s often depicted with the body of a man, wearing men’s clothes and the pharonic false beard, but her face is distinctly female.

Around another corner was a small area featuring artifacts from the Amarna era, when Akhenaten (who ruled from 1379-1362 BCE) rejected the multiple god-worshipping system, declared there to be only one God, Aten, and built a new capital at Tell El-Amarna, on the Nile several hours south of Cairo. His wife was the famous, and famously beautiful, Nefertiti. He’s a controversial figure, and people definitely have strong reactions to him one way or the other. The artistic style of the Amarna period has a different look and feel; the royal family’s heads seem to be bulbous and almost alien-like; Akhenaten, though male, is depicted in statues with a feminine rounded belly and thighs. His face in statues is long and thin, with a distinct expression radiating from his slanted, staring eyes. Many of the pharaohs we’d seen in artistic images had a typical look – and Akhenaten’s image struck me as completely different. A bust of the head of his wife (though not the famous image now in Berlin) showed Nefertiti’s stunning beauty, if not absolute perfection. Multiple 12 foot tall statues of Akenaten stared down at us, seeming to follow our every move, as we examined his glass and gold inlaid coffin, with the guilding – recently returned from decades in Switzerland – encased in a plexi shroud nearby. Ehab pointed out another statue – a small one – that showed Akenaten with one of his daughters sitting sideways on his lap. Her head was turned to face the father, and the two were kissing fully on the lips.

My initial reaction to the Amarna work was to notice its difference but not have much of a response one way or the other. Deb, my roommate, had done a paper on the era when she was an undergrad – so she was thrilled to see the works in person. She’s a big Akhenaten fan – and was appalled by the insinuations and allegations people make from the statue of him kissing his daughter in an unusual way. Jane, on the other hand, had an entirely different reaction – she found him creepy and didn’t even like to be in the room with his statue. I have to admit that the more I looked at the work, the more intriguing I found it on one level, but the more disturbed by it I became. I didn’t like the expression on his face at all, and if someone in real life looked at me like that I’d be distinctly unsettled. As my time in Egypt progressed, I found myself becoming less and less comfortable with Akhenaten’s image, although I liked the rest of the Amarna style. Later I realized that something about statues of Akhenaten reminds me strangely of Michael Jackson.

On our way upstairs to see the King Tutankhamun collection, I stopped on the staircase to admire the endless display of ancient painted papyruses lining the walls in inexpensive looking frames. It was amazing to me – most museums would be thrilled to have one of the millennias-old images in their collection. These guys had hundreds – and they’d hung them covering every inch of stairwell walls, where they gather dust.

Seeing the Tutankhamun collection was a thrill – one of my earliest ever museum memories was seeing the exhibit when it came to the Met back in the 70s, and it was exciting to see it again as an adult. The nesting golden shrines that encircled his sarcophagus were stunning – and it was amazing to think of them as so many thousands of years old. The artifact halls went on and on – we stopped the tour briefly for some free time in the room of King Tut’s jewels, coffins, and famous funerary mask. Gleaming with gold, studded with lapis and other precious stones, and exhibiting an artistic and aesthetic sense that would make anyone gape, the coffins and the mask set me marveling – what extraordinary colors and level of detail! The jeweled pieces – scarabs, bracelets, belts, collars – were stunning. Outside that gallery were chariots, game sets, model boats, thrones, beds – room after room and case after case of objects brought from this famous tomb in the Valley of the Kings. I especially enjoyed seeing a famous guilded throne depicting the boy king and his wife – there was a long description of the piece in Howard Carter’s book about his discovery of the tomb, which I picked up in a book exchange in Jordan.

We ended our tour by looking at a few statues with erect kilts (Jane of course made some off-color comments about their shape); then it was free time for wandering. I decided to forgo the mummy room (I’ve seen plenty of mummies in my time and am still recovering from the orgy of them that is Guanajuato Mexico) so I enjoyed a leisurely wander around the exhibit halls. By that point, I felt fairly satiated and exhausted, so I didn’t try to see too much more, although I did catch a glimpse of some blue hippo figurines. I’ve always liked those guys.

I took a quick look in the crowded gift shop and then went to sit outside in the front garden. Some members of the group were already beginning to gather, even though we had about 25 minutes or so left of free time. Ruth had returned from a visit to an internet café and was chatting with Ehab on the wall in front of the museum. Tourists filed in and out, and the whole sculpture garden buzzed with excited energy. I decided to head back in and hit the bathroom again – Ruth had earlier described the facilities in the museum as subpar, but I was impressed – they were clean, relatively new-looking, and very roomy. That known struck me as a better alternative than ones at the bazaar, our evening outing. Almost not realizing that I was saying it out loud, I announced that I was going to go back into the bathroom. Ruth said I shouldn’t go back inside; there was an administrative bathroom to the right that I could use. She’d take me there. What ensued is a longer story that I wrote up, considered putting on here, and then, upon advisement, deleted (or rather kept in an “unedited” version for my eyes only.) The basic idea, which I include only as background, was that in the process of taking me to the bathroom, our guide told a mistruth to some Egyptian staff about whether or not I had a ticket stub. It sounds silly, but it had an impact on me because once I witness someone not telling the truth (for no particular reason especially), it kind of calls into question for me all subsequent interactions with that person until the level of trust is rebuilt. So at that point I experienced a distinct and unfortunate attitude shift (that I don’t think was unreasonable, frankly) with regard to my interactions with our leader, and I became somewhat (unfairly? Justifiably?) critical about some things. I tried to hide it as best as I could – and I certainly didn’t want to effect anyone else’s experience. But I do have lessons to learn about being gracious under duress. Despite my general policy of candor on this site, I’ve decided not to dwell on these incidents and give them a weight that they really don’t deserve, particularly when compared to the wonders of Egypt. I decided to include this much because to just ignore the situation entirely in a venue in which I have been committed to speaking as authentically as possible about my experiences – well, that made me feel a little bit compromised as well. So that’s the situation.

Our next stop was dinner in the Khan el-Khalili Bazaar. The rooms were atmospheric, and in order to accommodate us, we split into smaller tables – I ended up sharing with Sid and Joyce, delightful company for the evening. Such interesting people – Joyce was telling me about a new interest she has in Yemeni wedding jewelry. Unfortunately the meal didn’t go that well – I ordered some kind of stew which was tasty, but way too rich for my stomach. Sid loved his meal, but Joyce didn’t eat hers. She felt the meat was perhaps spoiled; she was exceptionally gracious about it, and sent it back to the kitchen uneaten. I hoped she wouldn’t have any ill effects from it. (She didn’t, she informed me quietly the next day with a smile.)

The meal took an exceptionally long time -- which ate considerably into our time wandering the bazaar, a disappointment for me. I’d hoped to get off on my own and explore, but it ended up we only had an hour, maybe less, before the meeting time. And somehow I ended up in a group. For me that kind of shopping is best done independently, since those waiting while others are in a transaction are sitting ducks for come ons from other vendors. I found that stating right off the bat that I’m living in Turkey took off a lot of the heat from the salesmen, who figured I am well-versed enough at bargaining. I actually had a couple of good conversations with them; the guys at the bazaar in Istanbul are more aggressive and less pleasant, I think. Here, the Egyptian salesmen had very clever, pleasant jokes and lines, and it was easy and even fun to interact. They had lots to say about people in Turkey, namely that they think the people from here are too terse in their bargaining, so I found that pretty amusing.

I wasn’t compelled to buy anything – a lot of stuff for sale was pretty run of the mill in the section we wandered in, or at least the kind of thing I can get easily in Turkey. Globalization has had its impact; many of the products seemed to be manufactured elsewhere and shipped to places like these in Istanbul and Cairo for sale under local guises. Ross and Lynn told me later that they ended up in an untouristed neighborhood area and it was fascinating – I would have liked to explore on my own more, but it just didn’t work out.

There had been talk all week of a trip to a grocery store to buy food for our bus trip into Middle Egypt. There’d been lots of questions as well – what were we supposed to buy, for how many days, do you mean we should buy all our own food and water? Over dinner when the subject had come up, Sid said, at that point of a long day, he’d be just as inclined to trust Ruth to buy enough food for us. Although there is nothing I enjoy more on the road than visiting grocery stores (really), I had to agree with Sid. The idea of releasing 14 tired American tourists into a grocery store in Cairo at 9:30 at night to buy four days worth of food sounded like a potentially chaotic nightmare. When we boarded the bus alongside the busy market area, all those questions bubbled again to the surface since the grocery store was our next stop

A few minutes later, Ruth began her explanatory spiel. We’d be spending several days on a bus in Middle Egypt, traveling south along the Nile. Since Ruth had never done this stretch of the trip before, she didn’t know what to expect in the way of amenities. Breakfast and dinner would be at our hotel, but we’d need to purchase anything we’d want for snacks or lunch, in addition to the water. I asked if we each needed to get our own water, and she said no, that she’d get a bunch of cases, in addition to potato chips, yogurt, cheese, etc.

“Where are we going to put all of the water and groceries on this bus?” someone in the back asked.

“The bus has a big compartment underneath and there will be extra seats,” Ruth said, talking about the bus the next day.

“No,” Sid said, “This bus. Tonight. What are we going to do with the stuff tonight?”

“Oh, that’s the great thing,” said Ruth. “I’ll get the bellhops to unload it and keep it overnight.”

“No,” I said, “We mean on this bus. Where will we put it.”

“Oh, there will be plenty of room on the bus – it’s a big bus.”

Sid finally got through to her. “When we leave the grocery store, tonight, where on this bus will we put all the water and groceries?”

You could see the wheels – the “oh I hadn’t thought of that” wheels – turning. “Oh. I don’t know. I guess we could put it on the roof, or is there room in our seats?”

David, in the back, offered a solution – that the people in the back row should sit on the pull down seats in the aisle and we’d stack all the stuff in the back seat of the bus. Good lord.

I still had concerns about the concept of throwing all of us tired, confused people into a grocery store with no plan. I tentatively raised my hand, and Ruth called on me. Before I spoke I heard the tone that was going to come out, so I said nothing for a second, and then offered a mild, “I’m trying to phrase my question.” Then I managed it, with as little tone as possible. “Is there a strategy or a plan for this mission?”

“Kris is asking if there is a strategy,” Ruth called out, regaining the group’s attention. I felt a bit vulnerable. Maybe my attempts to remove all tone didn’t work. Ruth explained the strategy: everybody go in. If you want something, throw it in her cart. If you want stuff that you won’t share with the group, buy it yourself. She’d get enough water, yogurt, chips, and processed cheese for everyone. And, for the tired people, if you trusted the group mind, you could stay on the bus and try your chances. A few folks said that was what they’d do. I decided to go in, just to see the grocery store and check if they had ginger ale if nothing else.

I enjoyed seeing the neighborhood too. Despite the late evening hour, the busy street buzzed with activity. All the stores were open and people strolling and shopping filled the sidewalks. Our security guard looked a bit like he didn’t know how to handle the idea of “guarding” us in a supermarket. I kept seeing him inside the store, wandering the aisles as if he were trying to keep an eye on ten people who scattered in different directions as soon as we went in. I headed first for the soda, and to my great joy I spotted a row of Canada Dry ginger ale perched on the bottom shelf, next to Barque’s Root Beer. There weren’t many there, so I decided what the heck – I’ll buy them all and take them back to Turkey if I don’t drink them. There were only seven there – and two looked a bit worse for the wear, coated on the lid with gooey brown stains. I left those and put the rest in my basket with some pretzels and nuts. That was all I needed.

I looked around a bit more and was amazed at how many more American products there were in this store compared to the grocery stores in Turkey. Stuff I haven’t seen the likes of since summer lined the shelves: Crystal hot sauce, Tostitos salsa, TGI Friday’s Loaded Potato Skins snack food. I ran into Ross, who was as intrigued as I was, and we spent a few minutes looking around some more. Those who hadn’t gone in – four or five people – were locked inside the van, and the driver was no where to be seen. They couldn’t figure out how to let me, or Sid, inside, so we stood on the street taking pictures for a few minutes. I liked that street a lot – I felt like I was getting a glimpse of real-life Cairo. Back on the bus I asked my comrades if I'd been rude when I asked if there was a strategy. There was a chorus of emphatic no's. "It was an excellent question that needed to be asked," somebody said.

Watching the driver, the guard, and staff from the grocery store load the cases of water and all the food into the back window of the van was a sight in and of itself. We squeezed ourselves into the aisles, and it wasn’t long before we were back at the Mena House trying to check out. After that was settled, Deb and I shared a beer at the lovely bar, and Tina joined us. We laughed a lot – it is hard not to laugh with Tina – and it was a good end to the night. Though a bit on edge about being under tour leadership, I felt happy to be with the people I was with.

Between the paws of the Sphinx.

The classic I went to Egypt photo. Had to have it.

The obligatory camel shot.

Sphinx follies.

The Queen's chamber, inside the Great Pyramid.

A Day at Giza Plateau

We had an early wake up call and a directive to be on the bus at 8 at the latest, lest our plan to see the Sphinx without other tourists be disrupted. Ruth and Ehab’s plan was to go to the Sphinx while the rest of the tourists were at Giza, and for us to head to Giza once the other tourists started coming to the Sphinx. The other special event of the day was that our permit for permission to be inside the Great Pyramid by ourselves had been approved. It cost $800, but since everyone wanted to join in, the cost for us was only about $50 more each. We were scheduled to be in there from 12-1, but they were going to try to get us in early.

As we boarded the bus, Diane presented everyone with a little Valentine’s day package with candy hearts and a heart necklace.

The bus ride over to Giza from the hotel was, of course, short, and it was about 8:15 when we filed out of the mini-bus and towards the Sphinx area. Of course, that scene – the Sphinx with the pyramids in the background – has to be one of the world’s most photographed. It was definitely one of those, “Hey, you’re in Egypt” moments. There was a brief stop at the entrance, when some of the guards apparently were trying to extract more money – or something – but Ehab waved us in to Chephren’s Valley Temple adjacent to the Sphinx itself. An initial anteroom formed from large slabs of rock featured a pit in the ground where people have been throwing money and making wishes. The rocks in the wall were fascinating once I took the time to look at the details – they were cut and fitted together in such a way as to provide for maximum strength. Beyond this initial room stood a temple structure lined on either side with massive square granite columns. Ehab said that granite like this can only be found in Aswan and floated down the Nile to this location. Along each wall of the temple stood empty niches once filled with statues, and at the far end a small niche for a main statue was all that remained.

To the right and up a rather steep corridor, the path led to an area above the temple that afforded good views of the Sphinx itself. We played around up there for a while, and then sat for a long lecture by Ehab about the history of the Sphinx. Unfortunately, my attention span for lectures was already waning dramatically, and I zoned out. I think Ruth interjected a new age or feminist interpretation of the history Ehab was trying to share, which caused a rather amusing reaction from him.

By the time the lecture ended the tourist throngs were beginning to arrive; we headed back down into the temple, and Ruth began to tell us that we could experience something interesting if we stood in the slot where the great statue once stood. Once by one people would stand in the spot and then go over to Ruth to explain in hushed tones what they experienced. Everyone seemed to be experiencing something. I stood there briefly but was so distracted by the hoards of people (some in very inappropriate clothing!) heading our way that all I could experience was that. Jane had the same experience, but said that she thought she could have gained some points with the leader had she said, “I felt the presence of a great goddess just coming right at me.” Of course this made me laugh really loud; I liked Jane a lot already.
We reboarded the bus and took a short drive over to the solar boat museum. The relatively new glass structure stands at the foot of the Great Pyramid, and to enter, we had to put cloth slippers on over our shoes, which took some time. It was also a good opportunity for a bathroom visit, which all of us took – creating a long line. As soon as I finished and got out of line, Ruth approached and let me know that, indeed, we would be allowed early admittance to our time alone in the Great Pyramid, so we should hurry through the museum and wait outside. It would mean we’d have nearly two hours in the pyramid.

I asked someone in the group what exactly the solar boat was – somehow in my zoning out that day I’d missed the description of what we were seeing. It was basically a boat, more than 120 feet long, pulled from a pit near the great pyramid. Whether these boats were used to bring items to the site, or for the pharaoh’s travels in the afterlife, or whatever is not apparently known, but the chance to see a boat reconstructed from several thousand year old wood was pretty exciting.

We met outside and walked as a group around to the front of the massive great pyramid. During our walk I had a great talk with Jane about having kids (and not necessarily having husbands). Soon we were at the entry way -- we’d have a lot of time in there, and we’d be the only visitors. I’d glanced at the diagram in my book and knew that there were several chambers to explore, including a subterranean pit that frightened me just looking at the schematic in the Rough Guide. The book said that this, the oldest and largest of the pyramids at Giza (and the largest pyramid in Egypt) was the resting place of Cheops (or Khufu) who reigned between 2589 and 2566 BCE. Before I could even think much about the experience to come we were climbing up the outside of the pyramid and were congregating in the gloomy foyer, with one shaft leading up and another down. Ruth said that our first stop would be going into the pit – the subterranean chamber, and that we don’t really know what the pit was for, but that from a metaphysical perspective it represents entering into the subconscious. Ehab went first and one by one the group started to descend.

Before I go on, let me fill you in on the stats about the Great Pyramid that I had in fact paid attention to: it’s about 480 feet high, almost 700 feet along the base. And, the one that really caught my attention: weighs 6 million tons and contains over 2,300,000 blocks each with an average weight of 2.5 tons (but some way as much as 15 tons each). Do I want to descend in a narrow dark shaft meter upon meter and crawl into an unfinished chamber buried in the bedrock completely underneath a 6 million ton megastructure? The thought of all that stone over top of me made me begin to gasp just thinking about it. No way.

“This will be the only time in your life you will get to do this – it’s a once in a lifetime!” chirped Ruth. Jane and Joyce passed on the experience quickly and headed up to the rest of the pyramid. Ross and I lingered as our group one by one began to descend. I looked down the shaft, wondering, “Which will I regret more, doing it or not doing it?” Peering into the steep darkness I thought, “I’m going to freak if I go down there, and then I won’t see any of the rest of the pyramid.” “Ruth, how steep is it?” I expected her to downplay it a bit, but she shrugged and said, “I’m not going to lie to you. It’s a really long steep shaft.”

Ok. With a little bit of regret I thought better to see the rest of the pyramid than to risk spazzing out down so deep below the surface. Ross decided to skip it too. So, as Ruth headed into the shaft, Ross and I went up the ascending corridor (similar to the one we’d done at the Red Pyramid, but going up instead of down). It was fairly rigorous and both of us were gasping a bit for breath by the end of it. The ascending corridor opened up into a wide, long, angled passage-way – the Great Gallery. Nearly 150 feet long, the passageway narrows into a corbelled roof about 25 feet deep. The expanse of space is extraordinary – but the air itself was dank and stale, and the heat was thick. As I looked up, I saw Jane and Joyce working their way down the steep passageway, heading back towards where I stood. They’d had their fill of the King’s Chamber up above. I decided to head up there, although Ross stayed below to catch his breath.

The climb up to the King’s chamber made my legs burn – though not as steep as the Red Pyramid or the ascending corridor, and much less claustrophobic, climbing up an incline for 150 feet will surely be felt deep in the legs. Inside, the room was rectangular – a fair size – but completely smooth walls and empty but for the granite sarcophagas on the far end of the room. My guidebook said the space enclosed as the “king’s chamber” is large enough to hold a double decker bus; it’s nestled near the pyramid’s core, about 95 yards from the peak, and nearly 50 yards from the outside wall on either side – yards of solid stone. The Rough Guide says that many strange prophecies have been based on the rooms measurements, and apparently Hitler had a replica of the room built underneath the Nuremburg Stadium, where he gathered his thoughts before rallies. And, because I’d skipped the pit, I was in there completely and utterly alone. Though I was physically spent from the climb up, I felt inspired to do some headstands in there, although I have to admit that it felt strange. The pressure of all that stone around me – something I didn’t particularly notice while standing upright – became obvious once I was standing on my head, and after a few minutes I felt I should get out. I sat on the floor a while and looked around just thinking. Then I heard someone making their way up the stairs. It was Ross, and by the time he got into the room he was doubled over and pretty winded. I stayed up there with him for a while, and then decided that since I’d had the chance to be alone in there he should have the same opportunity. I headed back down.

At the bottom of the Great Gallery I talked with Jane and Joyce for a while, until they decided to head on out of the pyramid. The others were still down in the pit. I decided to climb back up into the king’s chamber – another long climb – and spent some time up there with Ross. He took my photo standing in the sarcophagus and we both sat on the floor for a while, wondering when the others would come up. Finally we heard some footsteps, and as folks started filtering into the room I realized I wanted to preserve my experience with fewer people so I headed out. Someone said that the Queen’s chamber had been unlocked down below, so I made my way back down the shaft and crawled through the short passageway into the smaller room. Though it is called the Queen’s chamber, it’s not clear that the room ever held the queen’s remains. It was very different from the King’s chamber – smaller in scale and with a peaked roof – and featuring a lovely little niche on one side shaped stepped like the great gallery and other corbelled interiors we’d seen. I took an immediate liking to it. Something about the proportions felt very homey to me, and isolated from the rest of the Gallery by the passageway I had to crawl through, I felt as if I was the only person in the whole pyramid. I must have been in there myself for nearly a half an hour, feeling contemplative and thinking about my life and future plans.

I began to hear voices chanting and singing drifting down from the king’s chamber – very faint and ethereal. After listening from the queen’s room a while longer, I decided I’d head back up the long shaft to see what they were doing.

My decision was a good one – a few minutes after I got up to the room, the guards shut off the lights so that we could experience complete darkness, and if I’d been alone and unaware of the plan in the queen’s chamber, there may have been panic. Maybe not, but let’s just say it was good that I’d gone upstairs. Before the lights went out, however, I got to see what they were doing. Several of the group stood around the sarcophagus while others sat or stood at the room’s margins. Tina, an avid meditator, was fully reclined on the floor in one corner. The ones standing around the sarcophagus were chanting melodically, their voices harmonizing. I watched and listened. They stopped, and there was an extended silence. And then, to my absolute surprise, someone arose from the sarcophagus! It startled the heck out of me. But it was just Lynn – she’d been lying in there while they sung. But I certainly gasped out loud when I saw her pop up.

Ruth saw me and looked very pleased that I’d joined them. She beckoned me over and they had me climb into the sarcophagus and lie down. I didn’t know what to expect – especially since the lights flickered off shortly after I reclined inside the cold granite walls. Their voices began, their cadences intermingling, intertwining, harmonizing – all echoing within the sarcophagus. Especially in the dark, it felt as if the voices weren’t coming from people at all – let alone people I knew. From inside the sarcophagus, it seemed that they were reverberating from the stone walls themselves. They seemed to get louder and louder, and I found myself becoming more deeply attuned to the experience. The intensity increased. Even though I opened my eyes, all I could see was total darkness, and I felt as if I were floating, with the voices buoying me from underneath and all around. With a wave of intense, disarming emotion -- but one with strangely matter-of-fact underpinnings – I thought, this is what it must feel like to be dead. I’ve never had a thought – or experience – so curiously unsettling and comforting at the same time. The voices began to recede and the lights soon flicked back on. In the light I felt suddenly vulnerable and wanted to get up. But Ruth – with her voice and her hand – guided me back down and said to wait a minute. She took my hand and had my rub a finger on my solar plexus while she whispered, “If you need to remember this in the future, do this.” I nodded and sat a few minutes longer. Then I got up and climbed out of the granite box.

Next they took Sid into the sarcophagus. And that was went the lights went out for good. I sat there listening to their singing from across the room, and feeling a bit disoriented, even teary. As the voices began to recede, there was a sudden low rumbling – what is it, I thought. And then I realized it was Sid’s low, gravely hum radiating from inside the sarcophagus. The sound waves were reverberating off the walls of the box and shooting up to the ceiling, then coming back down all over the room. It sounded as if the voice was coming from above rather than inside. The whole space seemed to tremble in the darkness. And then it was quiet. All I could hear were people’s breaths in the darkness.

Soon though, a familiar sound – snoring. Tina must have fallen asleep in the corner. Then, after a few more minutes, shouting in Arabic from the guards down below. With a hum and a crackle the lights were back on, and there we all were. I looked at my watch – time to leave the pyramid.

Ruth gathered us all into a circle holding hands to “take a moment to feel the group energy, because there are individual experiences and group experiences, and it is important to take part in both.” Which I had, and I was glad for it. I grasped Tina’s hand of red, white and gold painted nails with my left, and Sid with my right, and we stood there for a second (there may have been some chanting then too.) Then when we broke, Sid and I shared a squeeze and it was over. In the dim light we looked around the room to make sure no one had left anything. I saw a dark area in the corner – a perfect round disk – and pointed to it. Tina looked over and said, “Oh, that’s where I was sleeping. That’s my sweat! I’m leaving my sweat in the great pyramid.” Laughter. Then we began to make our way down the Great Gallery.

Already the afternoon session of public guests were beginning to trickle up the ascending corridor and arriving in the Great Gallery. By the time we got down to the corridor shaft, there was already a steady stream of tourists working their way up the tight, narrow passageway to the entrance. We started down in a line – there was a man who worked there nipping closely at my heels, and I began to feel very packed in as we had a stream heading up and another heading down in the tiny space. Some teenage boys made way for us to pass by putting their whole legs up on the handrail. But other tourists didn’t seem to make much effort to clear some room for us. One guy looked a bit panicked and asked me how much further it was to go – I reassured him that it wasn’t much longer. I realized what an absolute blessing it had been for us to be in there alone, spending some quality time. Looking at what the other tourists were doing – I would have hated that.

When I finally made it out, I saw Ehab standing at the exit, looking a bit stressed out. He pointed out the bus and I headed over there, feeling suddenly invigorated in the fresh air. Breathing that dank stale air for a couple hours had been a little bit more intense than I’d realized. I looked back at the mammoth structure I’d just been inside, and somehow it seemed hard to connect the inside experience to the outside one. The rocky surface looked pebbly and shadowy in the midday sun. I saw Valerie, who had gone into the pit, and asked her how it was. She said there wasn’t anything down there, but the climb down had been rigorous and steep, ending in a section where they had to crawl, from darkness into darkness, through a narrow passageway. She said she kept thinking that she was glad we hadn’t tried it because it might have been a bit much, and she considered it an accomplishment that she’d made it. I felt no regret – had I gone to the pit I wouldn’t have had my memorable experiences alone in the two chambers.

Our next stop with our special pass was to get admittance into the inside of the Sphinx enclosure which usually is not open to the public any more. But first, they served us a lunch of falafel and other pita sandwiches on the bus. I munched a falafel, and then took second, suddenly ravenously hungry from all my climbing around inside the pyramid. But this one was potato – and though when I took it I expected spicy broiled potatoes on the inside this turned out not to be the case. Instead, it was cold mashed potatoes. I was hungry so I ate it, but from the first bite I kept thinking, do I really want to eat this? Then I finished off lunch with an orange I’d picked up at breakfast.

They drove us over to the bathroom trailer nearby and then we maneuvered back past the pyramid and over towards the sphinx again. Somewhere along that short ride, I began to feel ill. Very ill. I tried drinking some water, but that only made me feel worse. When we arrived at the Sphinx enclosure, I felt very happy to get out of the van. Motion sickness, I hoped.

Off the bus, the guy escorting us around opened a locked gate and we walked down the stairs into the sphinx enclosure. I couldn’t get a good sense of its size until I was standing between the beast’s paws. I felt tiny next to his feet alone! The huge head loomed above us, and we spent a lot of time just sitting, wandering, baking in the sun, looking up at the tourists gaping down at us from the typical tourist spot. You could see them wondering, how’d they get in there? Even Ehab, who has been a guide for 10 years and lived in Cairo his whole life, had never before been inside the Sphinx enclosure.

Unfortunately, my supposed motion sickness did not seem to be abating. In fact, I felt worse. I sat off to one side trying to drink water and get control of myself. Then I went for a walk around the Sphinx. No go. They gathered us into a group shot, and I lingered on the side as the gang raved about the VIP treatment we were getting and the special experience of being between the paws of the Sphinx. And all I could think was, “please please please don’t throw up inside the sphinx enclosure. Please.”

After the group shots I moved off to one side, and Ehab followed and struck up a conversation. I asked if he’d ever been inside the pit before and he said no. Then he explained that his experience there had given him a lot to think about. While he was down there, he thought he was dying. He said he felt like he had never before felt in his life, and he really thought that it was over for him down there. “I will need to think about many things in my life,” he said. The intensity of his experience distracted me from my nausea momentarily. Jane approached after the conversation with Ehab ended, and we got into a talk about feeling mortal and confronting our own lifespans.

But when we got back on the bus and started to drive towards the Giza plateau for camel rides, I asked to sit near the door. Ruth asked if I was OK and I said no. She suggested I try to take an anti-diarheal medicine that she gave each of us in our welcome packs, and then also had me suck on some “homeopathic” anti-diarrhea beads. (Later in the week I asked, “What are these?” They’re homeopathic, she said. But what are they? Umm. The scientific name is on there. So I really don’t know what they were.) Anyway, everyone had advice or other things to give me (such as candied ginger), but soon after I took the pill medicine (I had taken one of those before I went into the pyramid as a precaution) I felt really bad. We’d arrived at the parking lot and I couldn’t wait any longer. I jumped up and waved Ehab out of the way and he shouted for the driver to open the door. Our security guard tried to scramble out in front of me because he’s supposed to get out of the van before any of us, but I blew past him.

I tried to get away from the bus so I started kind of running, kind of staggering through the parking lot, but soon the throwups had begun. I stopped for a bit then tried to get further away, since I felt so public in the middle of the gravel lot surrounded by drivers in vans waiting for tourists, but I kept having to stop. A little way further I tripped and ended up down on my knees, violently ill with everything spinning around me. I sensed movement to one side and glanced up – it was a bus, a full size tour bus wheeling around, and it clearly had not until just that moment seen me, as the sudden hit on its breaks suggested. The driver and I looked at each other, both surprised, and I got sick again. Great. Vomiting on the Giza plateau overlook and nearly squashed by a bus. That’s real VIP treatment for you right there.

I finally managed to work my way off to a piece of wood tossed to one side of the lot, and I sat down. A few minutes later Diane and Jane strolled over to see how I was. Jane bought me a coke, and we all just stood there. Ready for a camel ride? Jane asked. Amazingly, I felt considerably better. Maybe that’s all it is, I said. So off we went.

Most of the group took a longer camel ride off into a stretch of desert, but others stayed back and asked to just sit on the camel and go for a short circle jaunt. Ehab was urging me to do it; although the last thing I wanted at that point was to puke on a camel, I did take a short spin, which was a surreal experience having just been ill. My body felt overwrought from the series of unusual experiences. But, I do have the obligatory photo of me on a camel in front of the pyramids.

After everyone was through, they put us back on the bus and I told Ruth I needed to go back to the hotel. That’s where we’re going, she said. But first we had to drop off potential shoppers to a perfume shop. By the time we got back to the hotel, I was feeling really bad again. I curled up in bed and tried to drink water. Deb nursed me a bit and then went off to dinner and the Sufi dancing show that I really had wanted to attend. I laid in bed and after a while felt a little bit better. Actually good enough to eat, maybe.

I decided to head down to try to check my email, feeling a bit awkward wandering the glamorous Mena House dressed in sweatpants and a grubby shirt. I stopped by the dining room to look at the menu, and the risotto actually appealed. Across the way I went to the bar and asked if they had ginger ale. First the guy said no, but then the bartender said he had one last one, the only one in the hotel. After months in Turkey without my beloved ginger ale, it feels like drinking gold to me. I brightened up immediately and decided to try to eat.

When I got back to the dining room, I spotted Jane and Ruth sitting at a table across the room. I went over to greet them and they urged me to join and try to eat. We ordered the risotto, which they brought a few minutes later in an enormous bowl that made me look like a little child. Ruth offered me her theory on my illness – that she sensed something in my stomach when I was in the sarcophagus and that part of my Egypt journey was a purging ritual that would help me to get to the place where I need to be. Or else, she offered, I shouldn’t have drunk the hibiscus juice at breakfast.

She also told me to take another one of those pills, which I did, but soon after I swallowed it I felt a wave of nausea again. I’d better go upstairs, I said, and ran off. Thus began a really bad night. Diane – a retired nurse – came up at some point and took my temperature just to make sure there was no fever, which there wasn’t. She had excellent bedside manner. I told her that my stomach hadn’t been upset at all – only the nausea. At that point it occurred to me that the homeopathic and other anti-diarrheal medications might not be the best idea. I was up most of the night sick, spent time dozing on the cold marble floor of our lovely tiled bathroom, and ordered a 7 up from room service at 3 a.m. As I fumbled for my wallet, avowed “know it all” Deb awakened and told me that I should just charge it to the room. I teased her about that the next day, and she said it was good to know that her know-it-all tendencies were in full operation even when half asleep. I’d already taken off the morning activities, so when I finally got to sleep around 4 a.m. I did manage to get a bit of rest.

Another view of the Bent Pyramid

More Egypt pictures at http://trippics.blogspot.com
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

The walk across the desert.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005

The shaft to enter the Red Pyramid.
© Kris Nesbitt 2005