After twenty years of an honourable career, I started travelling in 1990, at 18, and for the first time I made the choice to take part in an organised trip. I'd like to be able to say I was convinced by Daniela, but that's not true. The idea was mine, and she merely endorsed it, and not even that convincingly. I had thought that, contrary to usual, the organised tour might let us spend a little less and save a little time: we had only one week to get around Egypt, we needed a couple of internal flights, then the Nile cruise, the various entries to the archaeological sites, as well as the hotels, of course. In short, the thousand euros and change the tour operator was asking seemed a very appealing figure to us, even if for once we would have to sacrifice our usual independence. But we would soon realise we had made a huge mistake.
Day 110 May 2010
CAIRO IN TWO DAYS
We arrive in Cairo on Monday night, after an eternal journey, begun at noon and finished ten hours later. The fault of the volcanic dust cloud and a few other delays. Our first night in Cairo ends early: a quick dinner at the Holiday Inn and then everyone off to bed, since tomorrow morning the alarm is at dawn. And indeed it's still very early when we set off, strictly with bus number 19, the one reserved for us, for a first visit of Cairo. So we get to know our guide Abdoul, an Egyptian of about 60, with fluent Italian and an encyclopedic knowledge of his country's history. Kind and friendly, he represents the only real added value of this kind of trip. In the morning he takes us to see the Citadel and the most famous mosques, then we move on to the Egyptian Museum for a marathon visit.
After lunch at a restaurant, in the afternoon they give us some free time to let us wander around the Khan el Khalili market. Around 5 p.m. we return to the hotel, where I treat myself to a bit of pool before dinner. The next program, at least ours, is skipped when Daniela starts feeling unwell: diarrhea, vomiting and fever will be her faithful companions for about 24 hours and will prevent her, the next day (and after yet another early wake-up), from taking part in the excursion to Giza, where I enjoy the Pyramids and the Sphinx. In the afternoon we go to Memphis, where there's the enormous statue of Ramses II, then to Saqqara to see the step pyramids. Our time in Cairo is about to end; the next morning we wake up at 5 and set off, by plane, for Abu Simbel.
White-sailed felucca glides on sparkling Nile waters, sandy hills beyond
Day 213 May 2010
ABU SIMBEL AND ASWAN
The flight that takes us to the far south of Egypt, near the border with Sudan, arrives in Abu Simbel at 10 in the morning. The visit to the temple of Ramses II (this pharaoh seems to have been a bit of a jerk, but he left us a lot of stuff to admire...) is alone worth the price of the trip. In the early afternoon we set off again for Aswan, where our ship awaits us, the Grand Princess. Quite beautiful, elegant, with a spacious and clean cabin. After a bit of rest we take a small boat that takes us along the Nile; we pass Elephantine Island and disembark to see a Nubian village. We're on an excursion, and there are many of us, but the experience finally seems authentic. The next morning, strangely without an early wake-up, we go to see the temple of Philae, the Aswan Dam, then the navigation begins that takes us back north.
The Great Sphinx before the Cheops pyramid at Giza, tourists walking
Day 314 May 2010
FANTASTIC NILE AND LUXOR
Of all this trip, apart from the archaeological sites, the thing I appreciated most was the landscape offered by the banks of the Nile. It was incredibly hot, well above 40°, and practically all our 70 fellow travelers preferred to stay shut in their cabins with the air conditioning, so I was able to spend much of the placid time of navigation on deck, sitting in the shade, losing myself in watching the extraordinary scenery that showed itself on the sides of the river. A thin strip of very green land, adorned with palms and lush vegetation, interspersed with a few small villages. How much life along the banks of the Nile: children bathing, farmers working in the fields with their buffalo, women washing clothes. A truly stupendous sight. Our first stop is Kom Ombo, where we stop just long enough to visit the temple of Sobek. In the evening we set off again and the landing is at Edfu.
There, the next morning, another visit to the temples, before setting off toward Luxor, where we arrive after a long navigation. In the evening, the ritual Egyptian-style party on board: if I could have, I would have avoided it, but I couldn't. The next morning a real tour de force begins: 8 consecutive hours of visits to the various sites of Luxor and surroundings, starting with the alarm ringing at 5. We go to Karnak, then to the Valley of the Kings, to the temple of Medinet, that of Luxor, to see the Colossi of Memnon. All very beautiful, although, like that, without a break, it wasn't a walk in the park. In the late afternoon we unload our luggage from the ship and take it to the hotel, to the Sheraton. We spend our last Egyptian night there; the next morning, one last early wake-up: the plane to Italy awaits us.
It would be pointless to explain how much this country has to offer, but the method of travel we chose turned out to be a bit of a disaster. Certainly not because of the tour operator, which does its job and does it very well, but because we just didn't click with this way of approaching a foreign country. Apart from the feeling of a school trip (there were about 70 of us, all grown-ups, but too often the level of comments, questions, and behavior was truly infantile), this way of moving around a foreign country doesn't let you appreciate and understand almost anything about the reality you're immersing yourself in.
The tour operator traps you in a world alien to the context, cushioned, where you almost never come up against reality: in fact almost all the people you interact with speak Italian, everything is so organized that you practically don't need to change money into local currency. Of course, not even they have the power to eliminate the "annoyance" of the street vendors, the heat and the smells, but a large part of our fellow travelers, if they could have, would have done without even these minimal discomforts. Too many of them couldn't manage to immerse themselves in the reality around them in the slightest, partly out of bad will, and probably also partly because, accustomed to this type of vacation, they're not programmed to live different experiences.
So we're left with a pretty big regret, but Daniela's misfortune, who missed the Pyramids while she was sick, provides us with a succulent assist to plan a new trip to Egypt, which might even include the oases. But this time we'll go back to the old way: backpack on our shoulders, plane ticket in our pocket and "pedaling."
Colossus of Ramesses II lying at Memphis museum, tourists around
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