Memories

Journal: Friday 28 November 2003

Cairo is quiet today, especially for a Friday, but the three-day Feast of Eid is almost over and this is a holy day for many Egyptians. Sam had stuff to do today, our last day in Egypt and she was going off on her own. Once more I was drawn down towards Midan Tahrir wandering through the (comparatively) deserted streets to the always-busy square, I’m even getting braver at crossing the roads there. Stopping in the Nile Hilton for a cup of coffee, I sat on the terrace watching passers-by for a while, an occupation I always enjoy.

Later in the morning I went into the Egyptian Museum, hoping the morning rush would have subsided by now, but it was still very crowded. I did manage to get a few more photographs in the smaller galleries upstairs, but as usual the light here wasn’t very good and the glass on the cases was dusty and smeared with fingerprints, so frustrating.

From here I took a taxi to the Citadel. This was the only area of ‘Islamic Cairo’ that we hadn’t visited on this trip and I wanted to visit the mosques there. I have already been in Mohammed Ali’s mosque – which is a bit ornate for my taste – and so I wanted to see what other monuments there were. But I had forgotten it was a special Friday and the whole of the Citadel was closed to tourists when I got there.

I decided to walk back to the Victoria Hotel, which seemed to be much further than it looked on my street map, but I enjoyed the walk and thought about all the things I had seen in Cairo. The whole trip this time has felt like several separate holidays and it’s hard to believe I have only been in Egypt for a month. It seems a lifetime ago I flew into Luxor with half a dozen friends from England.

We had spent a few days in Luxor and then Abydos before beginning our adventure in the Western Desert, visiting sites in the oases of Kharga, Dakhla, Farafra and Bahariya. As these were all new sites for me it was very exciting. Still with the group we had visited the most important pharaonic monuments in Cairo, the fabulous pyramids and tombs of Giza and Saqqara before they left to go home. A couple more days mooching about Cairo on my own and I felt like I was getting to know the real city and not just the tourist spots.

Then Sam and I left Cairo in a hire car for our own adventure, staying in the lovely little laid-back town of Dahab in Sinai. It was on our long drive to St Catherine’s Monastery that I truly fell in love with the desert – at least from the comfort of a car. I wouldn’t want to be lost or marooned out there in the wide expanse of parched sands and strangely carved and colourful mountains. But it is so beautiful and the scenery is truly captivating.

Back in Cairo another vista of the city had opened up for us in the form of the wonderful medieval monuments that told the story of Cairo’s later dynasties of Sultans and Amirs, Pashas and Beys. I was transfixed by the narrow ancient streets and the grand domes and minarets, intermingled with fabulous houses of centuries past.

It’s going to be very hard to leave, but early tomorrow morning Sam and I will be on our flight home to London. We will have a huge amount of really great memories and an even bigger amount of photographs to sort out that will keep us busy until we return again next year.

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No Room at the Inn

Journal: Saturday 22 November 2003

I was up early this morning and before breakfast I walked along the sea front to a small fenced-in archaeological site with a notice board stating that it was a Nabatean port dating from the first to second centuries BC. Named el-Mashraba Hill, the site was excavated by the SCA in 1989 when it was discovered that there had been a lighthouse to guide ships through the Arabian Gulf.

After quite a lazy morning in Dahab, I was sad to be leaving this lovely little town to drive to Sharm el-Sheikh at the southern tip of Sinai, where we had planned to stay for three more days. There is only one problem with Dahab and that is the fact that the majority of the hotels don’t have fresh water, relying on sea water for washing facilities. Sam had warned me about this, claiming that she can only stand salty showers for two or three days. You can’t get clothes clean either and by the time we left we were both itching with the salt. The road to Sharm once more wound through a gorgeous mountainous landscape with occasional glimpses of the glittering Red Sea and I sat back to enjoy the scenery with Sam driving again. In two hours we arrived in Sharm and I immediately wished we had stayed in Dahab. Sharm el-Sheikh is a paradise for those who like beach holidays. The coast, consisting of Naama Bay, Shark Bay and Sharm Bay, is a continuous stretch of beautiful white beaches lined with hundreds of high-rise hotels interspersed with bars and nightclubs. Most people are attracted to Sharm by the beaches and the diving and water sports as well as the wide range of leisure activities loved by tourists, but this is not my kind of holiday. Give me temples any day!

Sam has stayed here before and we headed to her favourite hotel, the Sharm Reef. Unfortunately the room price has risen from 170 LE earlier this year to 480 LE a night. A little out of our price range, even with Abdul negotiating Egyptian prices for us all. We next called at the Uni Sharm, a large hotel situated high on a hill right next to Egypt’s ‘Disneyland’ – ‘Alf Leila wa Leila (1001 Nights), which looked intriguing. It is a huge complex of colourful oriental domes and towers, mixed with pseudo ancient Egyptian temples. There are many restaurants, clubs and oriental shows to entertain the tourists, but it looked to me like a copy of Las Vegas built on a low budget. I was not too disappointed that the Uni Sharm, though less expensive, could not give us the accommodation we needed. The rest of the afternoon was spent driving around dozens of hotels, some nice and some less salubrious, but there was no room for us anywhere. Because the Feast of Eid which signifies the end of Ramadan, is only three days away, it would seem that half of Egypt had come to spend the holiday in Sharm. We even had a look at a couple of apartments but decided against them for various reasons.

By late afternoon we were sitting despondently in a cafe in Naama Bay wondering what to do next. Everywhere we looked brighly-lit signs beckoned tourists into shops to buy pirate CDs, gaudy printed T-shirts and postcards galore. Loud music issued from every store-front in a cacophany of sound. This was an Egypt I hadn’t seen before and didn’t like. After a much-needed meal and a couple of cups of coffee, Sam voted to drive back to Cairo tonight and I readily agreed. I really hadn’t taken to Sharm at all and in preference would have rather gone back to Dahab, but we knew that the Sphinx hotel where we had been staying  had no rooms vacant either. Leaving Sharm el-Sheikh around 8.00pm we set off for the long and uneventful drive up the west coast of Sinai, through the Ahmed Hamdy Tunnel and on towards Cairo. This was where the fun started. Around 1.00am we hit very dense fog and Sam could see nothing but whiteness through the car windscreen. She missed the turning off to the city and ended up on the 26th July corridor – not realising her mistake until we were half way to Alexandria. By the time we got back to Cairo and checked into the hotel we’d  booked earlier this evening, it was 4.30am and Sam was exhausted. Sleep came easily for us all!

St Catherine’s Monastery

Journal: Friday 21 November 2003

The route through the desert to the Monastery of Saint Katerina must be one of the most spectacular roads in the whole of the Sinai Peninsula. Sam and I set off this morning to drive 130km to the famous monastery, though we knew it would be closed on a Friday.

Leaving the main coast road a little north of Dahab, just past a police checkpoint, Sam and I turned off into the desert. At the top of a steep hill we stopped to admire the view and take some pictures. A Bedu man sat at the side of the road selling rocks and polished stones and we spent some time talking to him and bought some of his lovely minerals. The road is long and fairly straight but the passing scenery of jagged pointed mountains and shallow wadis leading away from the road is indescribably beautiful. There was hardly any traffic today and every now and then the tarmac became very rough and in need of repair. We spotted a couple of camel trains led by solitary tribesmen and one or two Bedouin camps with brightly coloured canvas awnings and I wondered where they got their water from. About half way to St Catherine’s we came upon a tree – not the only tree but certainly the biggest – standing alone in the sand and we stopped to photograph it. The lone tree was a large old Acacia, sculpted into shape by years of desert winds. Mushroom-shaped rocks of limestone sprang up out of the sand at intervals and an occasional herd of roaming camels grazed on patches of dry sparse grass they found in the wadis. This was an entirely different world to the Western desert we had left a week ago.

After three hours we came to St Katerina ‘City’, which is actually a small community made up of block-built Bedouin homes and a modern tourist hotel. The road leads straight to the monastery gates. Stopping at a cafeteria for coffee and a sandwich, we sat on the terrace in the sun looking out onto the almost deserted town. I guess it was siesta time. After a while we drove up to the monastery entrance, passing a little shrine called the ‘Setting of the Prophet Nabi Salah’. We saw the terraces that were once ancient gardens and the Chapel of the prophet Aaron on the slopes of Gebel Musa. But we couldn’t get even a glimpse of the monastery itself.

The monastery has a long history. The biblical story relates how Moses led the Hebrews for 50 days through the mountains to the plain of el-Raha, where he received the Ten Commandments. The mountain where the tablets were supposed to be found was named Mount Horeb, later to become in Arabic, Gebel Musa, a holy mountain and place of pilgrimage for early Christians. Religious communities sprang up around the mountain and a small church was founded in the name of St Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine who had ended Christian persecution with his edict of 313 AD. Later the Emperor Justinian founded a monastery with a large basilica to be built on the site. This was enclosed within protective walls to safeguard the monks from raiding Bedouin tribes. Between the 8th and 9th centuries the monks found the body of St Katerina, a young martyr from Alexandria who by legend had been transported by angels to Gebel Katerina and subsequently disappeared. The saint’s presumed body still lies in a sarcophagus inside the basilica and the monastery became known as St Katerina or St Catherine. Today the monastery is still home to many of the Eastern Orthodox monks who live and work there. The Prophet Mohammed himself is said to have issued a decree of protection for the monastery and it subsequently survived the conquest of Sinai by Muslim Arabs and was undisturbed by the Crusader wars and the Napoleonic Expedition. Today as it has always done, the monastery’s heritage, rich in architecture and art, draws pilgrims from all over the world.

The leisurely drive back to Dahab into the setting sun was every bit, if not more magical than the journey to St Catherine’s had been earlier in the day. It was wonderful to be able to stop at will without the police escort we had become accustomed to in the Western Desert and the day lodged itself in my memory as a day of absolute freedom. Back in Dahab, Sam and I ended the day with dinner, a short walk to the touristy area of Assila Bay and finally settled down on mats on the beach with a bottle of wine beneath a velvet, star-studded sky. A heavenly day!

Red Sea Coast

Journal: Thursday 20 November 2003

All through the trip so far we had been getting up very early, so this morning was a real treat to sleep late and meet up at 9.00am for breakfast in the hotel’s rooftop restaurant overlooking the beach. A wonderful array of food waited for us as well as very good coffee. This was followed by quite a leisurely day, at least for me.

We decided to drive from Dahab up the coast road as far as Taba on the Israeli border and Sam was happy to drive the hire car on the quiet roads here. The road winds around between cliffs of  limestone and sandstone in many colours of pink, orange and gold, streaked now and then by thick black lines of basalt-like rock. One minute we were in bright sunlight, the next in deep shade. The road through the mountains comes out on the coast approaching Nuweiba, and follows a steep hill that gave us a spectacular view of the port from its crest and we could see the big ferry ready to depart for Jordan. The sea that is the Gulf of Aqaba was the deepest blue-green, with lakes of jagged turquoise that stretched across to the shore of Saudi Arabia. We went into Nuweiba and drove around the town, but it seemed to consist mostly of part-built hotels. On the main road there were many beach camps that offered the cheap accommodation favoured by back-packers and mini-towns of timeshare villas, painted in warm Mediterranean colours. All seemed totally deserted.

Driving north and after once more climbing through mountains, we came down again to a deep inlet on the coast, known as ‘The Fjord’, a spectacular idyllic spot with a lonely beach of perfect unmarked sand. A little further on there was an island, about a hundred metres off-shore, which for some reason is called ‘Pharaoh’s Island’, in Arbic Geziret Faraun. It is believed to be the site of an ancient Phoenician port, Eziongaber, founded by King Hiram of Tyre in the 10th Century BC. The island is dominated by a large stone castle, built by Crusaders at the beginning of the twelfth century and enlarged by the Sultan Salah el-Din. I would have loved to take the little ferry over to explore the island, but there was not enough time today.

Then suddenly we were approaching the town of Taba, 133km from Dahab. The road led straight to the border post and there were guards everywhere so we were not allowed to stop. From here we could see the Israeli border, its flag flying over the customs post, the Jordanian town of Aqaba, just a little way across the gulf and the factories and oil refineries of Saudi Arabia a little to the south on the other shore. Sam decided to turn around and we didn’t venture into the town, which is just another holiday destination with large hotels.

It has been a really lovely day and the spectacular coastal scenery took my breath away several times. We arrived back in Dahab in the late afternoon and went to eat this evening at a local fish restaurant. Dahab is famous for its fish, which unfortunately I don’t eat, so once more it was rice and vegetables for me. Sitting outside a coffee shop until almost midnight, Sam and I played Jenga and watched the tourists meandering around town. It’s a very relaxing place to be.

Another Day Another Desert

Journal: Wednesday 19 November 2003

Yesterday was uneventful, a lazy day which Sam and I spent wandering the streets of Cairo. In the evening we went to collect the hire car from Mohandesin, a Hyundai, that Sam had chosen because it looked a little more beaten up than the brand new Dawoo that was also available. The car was booked to Sam for 8 or 9 days and is costing us LE750 each – £75 English.

This morning we were up early and ready to set off on the next stage of our journey, to Dahab on the Red Sea coast of the Sinai Peninsula. As we left the Ciao Hotel several ladies were setting up a market in the street opposite, selling eggs and locally made soft cheese. It all looked very colourful and the ladies were enjoying each others’ company as little children scampered around the bowls, crates and boxes laid out on rugs on the ground. As we left the city huge dark rain clouds gathered over the suburbs – an ominous sign.

Abdul drove out of Cairo, past the airport at Heliopolis and as far as the mile-long Ahmed Hamdi Tunnel that drops down under the Suez Canal. The tunnel, which took five years to build, was named after an Egyptian officer who was killed during the 1973 October War. It seemed odd to be under the canal when there had been no visible sign of it above ground. Sam hadn’t felt confident enough to brave the busy Cairo traffic just yet, especially in the morning rush hour when commuters were driving fast and furious towards the city and I certainly had no intention of driving anywhere in Egypt. On the other side of the tunnel we stopped and Sam took the wheel. We were in Sinai at last.

The Sinai Peninsula is bisected across the central plain by a road running from just south of the Ahmed Hamdi Tunnel, all the way across to the Israel border at the top of the Gulf of Aqabah and this was the route we took, rather than the longer road running down the West coast. The first part of our trip was interesting as we drove up onto the high ground through the Mitla Pass, between steep sided cliffs. But from then on it was just flat and rather boring with nothing to see on either side of the road for 250km. Half way, there is a small town called Nakhl and I found it hard to imagine anyone wanting to live there. At the other end of the road we stopped for coffee at a tiny place with a block-built cafe called el-Nakab. The coffee was very welcome but the toilets were the worst I’d yet come across in Egypt (and I’ve seen some bad ones). Rather than carrying on to the border and driving along the East Coast road, we took a short-cut, dropping steeply down from the plateau on a road that wound backwards and forwards between towering cliffs and along the edge of the Coloured Canyon, where limestone and sandstone rocks blend into a hundred different warm-toned hues. By this time Abdul was driving again and after a while he looked exhausted as he negotiated the continuous steep bends and twists in the road for another 100 or more kilometres. The scenery here was magnificent and nothing like I’d ever seen before in Egypt.

We joined the coast road near Nuweiba and before long caught our first glimpse of the sea – the Gulf of Aqaba. On the eastern side of the narrow waterway we could see the mountains of Jordan, then Saudi Arabia, both looking very close, but soon we were back among the cliffs as the road veered inland. By late afternoon we arrived in Dahab and found a beautiful small hotel called the Sphinx, right by the beach, that boasted hot showers and even a fridge in the rooms. Luxury! We all went out and had dinner in a local restaurant followed by a short walk during which I decided that I really like Dahab. But being chauffeured all day is very tiring and I was glad for once to get an early night.