In 2014, I took what I thought was going to be a once in a lifetime trip. I was living in Hong Kong, in between jobs and waiting for my new work visa to be processed. Rather than sitting there for 8 weeks, I decided to take a “bucket list” trip which included southern Africa, Egypt, and Malta. I arrived in Cairo late one night and was picked up at the airport for a transfer to my hotel in Giza. I arrived at the hotel, got checked in and was super excited to finally collapse into bed after a long day of traveling. As I dozed off to sleep, I was awoken by the call to prayer. If anyone has travelled through a Muslim country, you know that the call to prayer is pervasive, extremely loud and nearly impossible to sleep through.
With that in mind, I decided that it would be the perfect opportunity to beat the tourist crowds and be one of the first people to get to the pyramids in the morning. When the prayer finally stopped, I snuck in a power nap, a shower and was on my way. Except……there were no crowds of tourists that I had heard so much about. In fact, besides a few Egyptian families, I was one of the only tourists there. The pyramids are huge, like amazingly big and when you are up close, you realize that it is a series of steps leading up to the top, not smooth like so many images lead you to believe. I got talked into renting a horse ( I put my foot down at the thought of riding a camel – they are mean and way too tall for my fear of heights to handle) and made my way through the grounds. The sphinx was an amazing site to see and after getting the obligatory shot of it kissing me and a quick snooze in the shade, I had finished with Giza.
DISCLAIMER FOR FEMALE TRAVELLERS : A trip through Egypt as a solo female traveler can sometimes feel like walking into a dragon’s den. Like other parts of North Africa, Egyptian men will routinely ask you to have sex with them and I had men screaming that they liked my tits and they liked my ass. Unsurprisingly, their come-hither (aka lecherous) stares and their tender caresses (aka trying to touch me when walking through markets) did not win my affections.
However, horny men aside, Egypt obviously has amazing wonders to offer a tourist. History abounds with ancient Egyptian ruins popping out of the banks of the Nile like something that you would see in a children’s adventure story. The legend of Tutankhamen and the curse that was placed upon anyone that was to enter a Pharaoh’s grave elicit memories of video games that were popular when I was a teenager. But these weren’t stories to help sell video games. This was real life, all around you. The ruins appear larger than life and you have to force yourself to remember that these have existed for thousands of years.
For more recent history, just look around yourself while walking down the streets of Cairo and see the French architecture nestled shoulder to shoulder with Ottoman structures and the ramshackle, broken-down buildings of later years. The city is crumbling and the streets are chocked with cars but the grandeur of the 19th century Cairo is still there. The center of the city lies at Tahir Square which features the amazing Egyptian Museum, which houses on of the world’s most important collections of antiquities. There you can see the treasures that Tutankhamun took to his grave alongside a disturbingly large selection of mummied Pharaohs, complete with hair and teeth still intact.
While the cities were intriguing, the best thing I did in Egypt was take a Nile River Cruise between the cities of Aswan and Luxor. The cruise offered an escape from the endless stares and sexual requests and since I went during a very slow period, I was lucky (or crazy) enough to go during a very slow period when Egypt was politically unstable, I was one of the few tourists around. The cruise was only about 20% full and you basically were allocated a private tour guide. Since I was a solo travel, I was paired up with an Egyptian woman and her American born and raised son. From that point on, if a man tried to sexually harass me, the teenage son would puff up his chest and “protect” me and if a man tried to sell me something i didn’t want, the woman would scream at them in Arabic to leave me alone. I could finally enjoy Egypt.
And enjoy Egypt, I did. The ruins are amazing and it is gob stopping to think that they were built thousands of years ago. How did they do it without any modern equipment? How did they manage to build up one of the most advanced civilizations in history? The sheer size and scale of everything makes it nearly impossible to feel that it is real. At times, I found myself touching the stone to make sure that it wasn’t really my imagination.
My cruise itinerary included stops at the Aswan High Dam, the Temple of Philae and the Unfinished Obelisk, which is a partially carved obelisk imbedded in stone, Edfu Temple, Horus Temple, Luxor Temple, Karnak Temple and lastly, the Valley of the Kings. Karnak Temple and the Valley of the Kings were just as jaw-dropping as you would imagine them to be with larger than life statues and narrow passage ways that you could get lost in. It really was an unforgettable experience that everyone who is interested in history or architecture!
