We arrived in Cairo at midnight. Got our visa, went through
the custom, and the driver is already waiting outside to take us to the hostel.
First impression of Cairo – this looks like China, or rather my hometown back
in the 90s. Dusty, chaotic, mysterious.
At 1am, we made it to our hostel, and met up with our friend
Florian. Since 2011, our last backpacking trip to Middle East, we have really
missed the backpacking culture. It is too easy these days to travel by private
tours, stay in 5 star hotels and overpay for every service you get. So for this
trip, we decided to go back to our roots – that means backpacking style.
The hostel is in on the 7th floor of an 1874
building. It’s got a nice terrace, root top area, but no towels in the room. We
had to borrow pillow cases from the front desk instead.
After some late night snack and catching up with our friend,
and some friendly fellow backpackers, we went to sleep.
The next morning, we woke up early to go to the Giza
pyramids. The pyramids is about 20 kilometers outside of Cairo. Our driver took
us directly to one of those camel ride tours places. After some haggling (which
involves the tour operator pretending to be mad at us), we agreed on a price,
and set for our pyramid tour.
The first challenge is to get on to the camel. It is quite
funny when you get on the camel and wait for it to stand up. These beasts are
huge. When it suddenly stands up, you go from ground level to be on top of the
world. And when the camel moves, you cannot help but move your hips with it. It
feels like you are dancing with your hips.
We walked along some sand dune and got a very nice panoramic
view of the three pyramids (Khufu, Khafre, Menkaure). Together with the smaller
pyramids for the Queens. The view is trulye impressive. We also manage to get
there in a good time, there is almost no other tourists expect us. The guide
made us do some funny poses (they are all very good at that).
We walked down the dune and visited each of the pyramids. The
Pyramid of Khafre still has part of its original casting cap. It also appears
to be the tallest because it stands on a higher plateau. We made an attempt to climb, but it is much
more difficult than I had imagined. The stones are massive at the bottom, some
of them are 2/3 of my height. We tried and went up several levels and stopped. Near
the Pyramid of Khufu, there are five pits with boats inside. 2 of them are in
the Egyptian museum, one on display near the pyramids and two not yet
excavated.
We then walked down to visit Sphinx. We saw the small
template surrounding it, and then got closer. Unluckily, you cannot walk
directly in front of the Sphinx. So we are not able to capture a good view of
it with the pyramids. In any case, it appears to be quite well preserved. You
can still see the stones layered out one by one along its body and its long
tail.
We finished the pyramids tour, and then visited a few more
ancient sites nearby.
In the Darshur, we saw the Red pyramids and the Bent
pyramids. The Red pyramid is the first pyramid built and it belongs to the
father of Khufu, and it is possible to get inside. The entrance of the pyramid
is in the middle of its north side (all pyramid entrances open that way). You
have to climb quite high to get there. Once you are there, you need to bend
down and go through a 60 meters long tunnel going down to the very bottom of
the pyramids. It is quite challenging to go through the tunnel, especially
since you have to bend your knees the entire way. Once inside, you will see two
linked chambers; those are the hollow part of the pyramids where the coffins
and sacrifices were stored. I had initially thought pyramids are just a bunch
big stones piled together to make a pyramid shape. But once inside of it, I
truly appreciated the engineering / architectural beauty of this. You can
clearly see in those chambers that each stone is cut and arranged very
precisely to give you the shape of the chamber, and each chamber stretch so
tall. In the last chamber, there is a stairs you can walk up which leads to a
third chamber. The bottom of that chamber is at the ceiling level of the
previous two chambers. I’m quite curious how it is designed and why it has been
done that way.
After climbing back and exiting the red pyramids, you can
really feel the two legs are shaking very hard. From there, we made a quick
tour to the bent pyramids. It has an interesting shape as it is not straight up
but the angel of the top portion flattens out a little bit. We cannot get too
close to the pyramids so we took some pictures and left.
We then moved to Saqqara and stopped by the step pyramids,
which is the oldest pyramids-like structure. We didn’t get too close since the
ticket price is too high. We then went to Memphis to see the open air museum.
In the museum you will see a massive piece of status of Ramses II (apparently
the biggest). It seems the entire statue was carved out from one piece of
stone. To get a good view, you have to go to the second floor of the building.
The open air museum is quite small. We walked around and saw
an older version of the Sphinx, and many other statues of Ramses.
We stopped a restaurant and had a lunch, very good food by
the way, and afterwards we went back to the sand dunes near Giza to see the
sunset near the pyramids.
We took a horse cart this time, and moved on to the top of
the sand dune. It is a pity because it is cloudy that day, and the sun is
already half set. We are not able to see much, but the view of the three
pyramids in the far side, and red sky on the other is still very nice. Not so
far away there is a big riding school nearby, many people are riding horses. It
feels like a big ski resort, but you move around on horses instead of snowboards.
I can appreciate why people would ride horses in the sand dune. The feeling must
remind you of your nomadic ancestry.
We were tired after the sunset tour and passed out in the
car.
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