the Desert
I will begin at the beginning.
I decided to go to Bahariya Oasis from Cairo. So I needed to take a bus. It was unclear from my travel sources which bus station in Cairo I needed. So I took a bus station tour of Cairo before making it to the El-Mouneeb bus station in the borough of Giza, which is to Cairo as the Bronx is to New York. Also, for the rest of the story when I say an Arabic name you should say it aloud and try to imagine yourself telling a non-english-speaking cab driver.
So anyway, Turgoman bus station (Mahattit Turgoman), El-Azar bus station, and finaly El-mouneeb. I end up on a desert-bound minibus with a dozen Egyptian people staring at me the whole time. They stare here a lot actually, especially kids. So it's about a 4-5 hour ride from Cairo to Bawiti, the "capitol" of Bahariya Oasis. We stop on the way at a "rest stop." So I went to Burger King and got a veggie burger and fries. No, not really. It was actually a bombed out husk of a building in the middle of the desert with a bunch of snacks and drinks, but no doors, no windows, and nobody behind the counter. Everybody from the bus headed into the mosque to have their mid-day prayer. After maybe 10-15 we reboard the bus and the driver decides to pop in his favorite CD. He fast-forwards to his favorite track, muslim hymn/affirmation #whatever, and then continues to select tracks for the next hour or so at high volume while the passengers who aren't sleeping bang their heads to the beat. I think I have some video footage of this moment.
We finally arrive and I am picked up by the errand boy of the Old Oasis Hotel who took me up to the hotel. The grounds of the hotel were surprisingly beautiful. I spent the rest of the day sitting among the palm groves and marveling at how fantastically quiet and peaceful this place was compared to Cairo. I arranged a trip into the desert and that evening helped aforementioned errand boy make a website to help him promote himself as a tourguide in the area. I am not going to post the website cause the dude totally ripped me off, but that was more or less resolved later and not worth getting into for now until I write a separate entry specifically about scams and rip-offs in Egypt.
Anyway, the next day I walked around the town/village a bit. It was early and the paths between crumbling buildings are small so the only traffic was the occasional donkey. It's a scenic town although it still suffers from the unfortunate lack of care of people with regard to garbage in the street.
The real adventure starts in the afternoon. I ride over to another house where the driver who will take me/us into the desert lives with his korean wife. Here I meet the other people who will come along on the trip, all of whom arrived that morning from Cairo. I was the only one who slept in Bahariya that evening. In fact, I'm pretty confident that I was the only tourist in Bahariya the night before. So the Korean lady makes me a "vegetarian" lunch which was actually pretty good. Some kind of noodlish creation in soup, but I did not get sick so perhaps the soup was really vegetarian after all. We get to know each other a bit and then we make one more stop to pick up a few more people, and here is the scene:
There's me. Then Alex is a girl from Korea traveling for about a year around the world. A Korean couple who chartered their own separate vehicle but who camped with us at the same site. Two Japanese folks who had met that day, a guy named Max who had lived in Taiwan for 5 years and spoke Chinese really well. He was on a long trip too, something like 5 months. Then a Japanese girl the details of whose trip I did not retain. Finally Ray and Giulianna who both live in Madrid, though she is originally from Peru. We made friends quick and set out into the desert where we stopped at various places over the next few hours to take photographs and explore scenic spots eventually making our way to the White Desert around sunset to make camp and eat dinner. It was already mostly dark by the time we arrived in the White Desert, so we sat and ate dinner as the stars came out around us. As some of you know, I'm not much of a camper, but once we'd finished eating dinner and talking, people dragged their thin mattresses to wherever they liked and the lights on the van went off and it was just us under the stars and I must say, it was pretty incredible. I laid awake for a while just enjoying the view and checking once in a while to see if any of the desert foxes were anywhere near me. They are kind of all over there and though harmless, they are not really afraid of people since it seems like every trip out there feeds them. When I woke up in the morning, there were tracks a few inches from my head, but I guess better that than a scarab on my face, like the one I found the next day in the sand that although also probably not dangerous, is not something with which I wish to be better friends.
I woke at dawn to the sun rising over the strange mushroom-shaped rock formations in the White Desert which look not unlike a road-runner cartoon. We walked around the desert for a while as the sun slowly came up and the temperature began to increase. On the drive back we stopped first at the "Crystal Mountain" area which looked less like the wizard's castle in Conan the Destroyer than I'd hoped, but is in fact an area with tons of large pieces of quartz littered everywhere which was actually pretty interesting to walk around a bit. Lastly, we stopped at a sand dune which was less impressive than the Great Sand Sea I'd hoped to visit given more time, but was memorable since they brought along what look like snowboards so we could sandboard down the dune. It's a good thing there is no video of me doing that because Deb would probably laugh herself to death if she saw. I would've stayed longer to perfect my technique but it was getting pretty darned hot at that point so we bailed back to Bahariya.
Originally it was my intention to do the full desert circuit of oases and make my way to Luxor that way. I had explored an off-road option to an oasis called Dhakla which sounded like an amazing trip, but the prices being asked were very high and as it turns out the combination of summer and Ramadan does not make for an easy time of traveling in the hot desert. Most people I was told don't really even want to work. People who are fasting for Ramadan don't drink water, so going out in the desert isn't high on their list of priorities. Also, given the utter lack of travelers, I'd have nobody to share costs with me. This also made the prospect less than appealing. I decided to cut my losses and be happy with my two days in the desert which were fantastic, and head back to Cairo and down to Luxor the traditional route, saving the desert circuit for a non-summer, non-Ramadan trip.
So I went back to Zamalek in Cairo. I'm flying to Luxor tomorrow one-way for $55. The sleeper car on the train was comparably expensive and though the daytime ride was only $20 or so, it was 12 hours or something and this seemed more appealing. I did some research this time and found two budget hotels in Luxor and Aswan about which I am cautiously optimistic. There are some significant sites down in southern Egypt that I do want to see before I leave, specifically Karnak and Abu Simbel, and a number of other interesting things to do so I am hoping with the knowledge I have accumulated so far I will be able to avoid the hassles and focus on the good things.
In general, all of the sites, history, culture, museums, and other assorted experiences have been great here. It is anything related to hotels or tours or people wanting to sell you things that is difficult and wearing. I now have a much better idea of what I'm dealing with and I think I know how more effectively to book tours, something I had no previous experience doing since in China and southeast Asia I primarily traveled independently and had little use for organized tours. This is the first place I have been where a tour helps insulate you from the torrent of scam artists looking to part you from your money.
A few other random thoughts about the last few days:
The oases are notorious for mosquitos. The first night I spent some time trying to kill the ones in my room before I went to bed in the hopes that I'd do better overnight. We can say that I fought valiantly, but for every head that I chopped off, three more regrew. Aloe vera works wonders on mosquito bites though, I must say.
I noticed religion much more in Bahariya. Not that I haven't noticed it almost constantly in Cairo, but whereas in the big cities I saw women not dressed conservatively, in the desert I felt like every woman I saw was almost entirely or entirely covered up. Also, in Bahariya, I was sitting in the hotel relaxing in the evening and the call to prayer came which in a place like Bahariya is something everyone answers. So then I sat in the courtyard while some sort of sermon was given over a loundspeaker. Of course I didn't understand it, but it sounded seriously fire & brimstone to me. Another interesting religious experience which I enjoyed was being on the bus from Bahariya to Cairo when the sunset, at which point everybody breaks out food to break the fast and passed around dates. It was pretty festive.
Sleeping in the desert was my favorite thing from the trip so far. I was minorly concerned when our 4x4 broke down for 10 minutes, but we're not so far out that there isn't cell service so it's not like we were in real danger. It just feels like it wouldn't take much to die in the desert. But the stars and the camping and the people I met, that was all the best thing I have done since being here.
The only thing I'd want to come back to Egypt to do is a real desert safari where I could spend a week or two in the desert. There are some amazing sites out there that just aren't reachable at this time of the year or any time really unless you have a whole bunch of money to put into it, and doing it alone wouldn't be as fun as doing it with a bunch of people. Also splitting the cost would really be necessary. Besides the real desert way out in the south and west of the country, I wouldn't come back to Egypt. I have had so many difficulties as an independent traveler here and so many people have been dishonest and tried to take advantage of me that it outweighs the amazing sites I have seen. It is a shame the Egyptian government doesn't make more of an effort to crack down on the thousands upon thousands of people who I think are ultimately damaging the tourist industry, but apparently the mindset is hey, we've got the pyramids, they're gonna come no matter what, probably only once, so we have to get what we can while they are here. So now I'm going to Luxor, supposedly the worst of all in terms of tourist hassles. I found a hostel to stay at run by a Spanish couchsurfer who I hope will be straight with me.
Until I leave Egypt, I will have to follow the advice I'd give to others which is to try and find places to stay that are through personal recommendations, try to hook up with Couchsurfers as much as possible who will take care of you and be honest with you, try to shop around for tours and get many prices before you do any of them. Especially ask other tourists what they paid for tours. Finally and most unfortunately, don't trust what anybody says at face value if they work in the hotels or are tour guides. Every person who has been my "friend" has tried to take or taken more money from me than is fair. To be sure, there have been a few nice people, but they are far outweighed by the hordes. If anybody was going to come here, I'd say book everything in advance so you are completely insulated and don't have to deal with any money hassles while you're here, unless you have thicker skin than I do.
So, tomorrow off to Luxor, Aswan, and Abu Simbel. Apparently the boat from Hurghada no longer runs, so I will probably have to catch a puddle jumper to Sharm el Sheikh and a bus to Dahab, my final stop in Egypt which I hope will be the relaxed beach-front backpacker destination it is purported to be before I escape to Israel or Jordan.
I decided to go to Bahariya Oasis from Cairo. So I needed to take a bus. It was unclear from my travel sources which bus station in Cairo I needed. So I took a bus station tour of Cairo before making it to the El-Mouneeb bus station in the borough of Giza, which is to Cairo as the Bronx is to New York. Also, for the rest of the story when I say an Arabic name you should say it aloud and try to imagine yourself telling a non-english-speaking cab driver.
So anyway, Turgoman bus station (Mahattit Turgoman), El-Azar bus station, and finaly El-mouneeb. I end up on a desert-bound minibus with a dozen Egyptian people staring at me the whole time. They stare here a lot actually, especially kids. So it's about a 4-5 hour ride from Cairo to Bawiti, the "capitol" of Bahariya Oasis. We stop on the way at a "rest stop." So I went to Burger King and got a veggie burger and fries. No, not really. It was actually a bombed out husk of a building in the middle of the desert with a bunch of snacks and drinks, but no doors, no windows, and nobody behind the counter. Everybody from the bus headed into the mosque to have their mid-day prayer. After maybe 10-15 we reboard the bus and the driver decides to pop in his favorite CD. He fast-forwards to his favorite track, muslim hymn/affirmation #whatever, and then continues to select tracks for the next hour or so at high volume while the passengers who aren't sleeping bang their heads to the beat. I think I have some video footage of this moment.
We finally arrive and I am picked up by the errand boy of the Old Oasis Hotel who took me up to the hotel. The grounds of the hotel were surprisingly beautiful. I spent the rest of the day sitting among the palm groves and marveling at how fantastically quiet and peaceful this place was compared to Cairo. I arranged a trip into the desert and that evening helped aforementioned errand boy make a website to help him promote himself as a tourguide in the area. I am not going to post the website cause the dude totally ripped me off, but that was more or less resolved later and not worth getting into for now until I write a separate entry specifically about scams and rip-offs in Egypt.
Anyway, the next day I walked around the town/village a bit. It was early and the paths between crumbling buildings are small so the only traffic was the occasional donkey. It's a scenic town although it still suffers from the unfortunate lack of care of people with regard to garbage in the street.
The real adventure starts in the afternoon. I ride over to another house where the driver who will take me/us into the desert lives with his korean wife. Here I meet the other people who will come along on the trip, all of whom arrived that morning from Cairo. I was the only one who slept in Bahariya that evening. In fact, I'm pretty confident that I was the only tourist in Bahariya the night before. So the Korean lady makes me a "vegetarian" lunch which was actually pretty good. Some kind of noodlish creation in soup, but I did not get sick so perhaps the soup was really vegetarian after all. We get to know each other a bit and then we make one more stop to pick up a few more people, and here is the scene:
There's me. Then Alex is a girl from Korea traveling for about a year around the world. A Korean couple who chartered their own separate vehicle but who camped with us at the same site. Two Japanese folks who had met that day, a guy named Max who had lived in Taiwan for 5 years and spoke Chinese really well. He was on a long trip too, something like 5 months. Then a Japanese girl the details of whose trip I did not retain. Finally Ray and Giulianna who both live in Madrid, though she is originally from Peru. We made friends quick and set out into the desert where we stopped at various places over the next few hours to take photographs and explore scenic spots eventually making our way to the White Desert around sunset to make camp and eat dinner. It was already mostly dark by the time we arrived in the White Desert, so we sat and ate dinner as the stars came out around us. As some of you know, I'm not much of a camper, but once we'd finished eating dinner and talking, people dragged their thin mattresses to wherever they liked and the lights on the van went off and it was just us under the stars and I must say, it was pretty incredible. I laid awake for a while just enjoying the view and checking once in a while to see if any of the desert foxes were anywhere near me. They are kind of all over there and though harmless, they are not really afraid of people since it seems like every trip out there feeds them. When I woke up in the morning, there were tracks a few inches from my head, but I guess better that than a scarab on my face, like the one I found the next day in the sand that although also probably not dangerous, is not something with which I wish to be better friends.
I woke at dawn to the sun rising over the strange mushroom-shaped rock formations in the White Desert which look not unlike a road-runner cartoon. We walked around the desert for a while as the sun slowly came up and the temperature began to increase. On the drive back we stopped first at the "Crystal Mountain" area which looked less like the wizard's castle in Conan the Destroyer than I'd hoped, but is in fact an area with tons of large pieces of quartz littered everywhere which was actually pretty interesting to walk around a bit. Lastly, we stopped at a sand dune which was less impressive than the Great Sand Sea I'd hoped to visit given more time, but was memorable since they brought along what look like snowboards so we could sandboard down the dune. It's a good thing there is no video of me doing that because Deb would probably laugh herself to death if she saw. I would've stayed longer to perfect my technique but it was getting pretty darned hot at that point so we bailed back to Bahariya.
Originally it was my intention to do the full desert circuit of oases and make my way to Luxor that way. I had explored an off-road option to an oasis called Dhakla which sounded like an amazing trip, but the prices being asked were very high and as it turns out the combination of summer and Ramadan does not make for an easy time of traveling in the hot desert. Most people I was told don't really even want to work. People who are fasting for Ramadan don't drink water, so going out in the desert isn't high on their list of priorities. Also, given the utter lack of travelers, I'd have nobody to share costs with me. This also made the prospect less than appealing. I decided to cut my losses and be happy with my two days in the desert which were fantastic, and head back to Cairo and down to Luxor the traditional route, saving the desert circuit for a non-summer, non-Ramadan trip.
So I went back to Zamalek in Cairo. I'm flying to Luxor tomorrow one-way for $55. The sleeper car on the train was comparably expensive and though the daytime ride was only $20 or so, it was 12 hours or something and this seemed more appealing. I did some research this time and found two budget hotels in Luxor and Aswan about which I am cautiously optimistic. There are some significant sites down in southern Egypt that I do want to see before I leave, specifically Karnak and Abu Simbel, and a number of other interesting things to do so I am hoping with the knowledge I have accumulated so far I will be able to avoid the hassles and focus on the good things.
In general, all of the sites, history, culture, museums, and other assorted experiences have been great here. It is anything related to hotels or tours or people wanting to sell you things that is difficult and wearing. I now have a much better idea of what I'm dealing with and I think I know how more effectively to book tours, something I had no previous experience doing since in China and southeast Asia I primarily traveled independently and had little use for organized tours. This is the first place I have been where a tour helps insulate you from the torrent of scam artists looking to part you from your money.
A few other random thoughts about the last few days:
The oases are notorious for mosquitos. The first night I spent some time trying to kill the ones in my room before I went to bed in the hopes that I'd do better overnight. We can say that I fought valiantly, but for every head that I chopped off, three more regrew. Aloe vera works wonders on mosquito bites though, I must say.
I noticed religion much more in Bahariya. Not that I haven't noticed it almost constantly in Cairo, but whereas in the big cities I saw women not dressed conservatively, in the desert I felt like every woman I saw was almost entirely or entirely covered up. Also, in Bahariya, I was sitting in the hotel relaxing in the evening and the call to prayer came which in a place like Bahariya is something everyone answers. So then I sat in the courtyard while some sort of sermon was given over a loundspeaker. Of course I didn't understand it, but it sounded seriously fire & brimstone to me. Another interesting religious experience which I enjoyed was being on the bus from Bahariya to Cairo when the sunset, at which point everybody breaks out food to break the fast and passed around dates. It was pretty festive.
Sleeping in the desert was my favorite thing from the trip so far. I was minorly concerned when our 4x4 broke down for 10 minutes, but we're not so far out that there isn't cell service so it's not like we were in real danger. It just feels like it wouldn't take much to die in the desert. But the stars and the camping and the people I met, that was all the best thing I have done since being here.
The only thing I'd want to come back to Egypt to do is a real desert safari where I could spend a week or two in the desert. There are some amazing sites out there that just aren't reachable at this time of the year or any time really unless you have a whole bunch of money to put into it, and doing it alone wouldn't be as fun as doing it with a bunch of people. Also splitting the cost would really be necessary. Besides the real desert way out in the south and west of the country, I wouldn't come back to Egypt. I have had so many difficulties as an independent traveler here and so many people have been dishonest and tried to take advantage of me that it outweighs the amazing sites I have seen. It is a shame the Egyptian government doesn't make more of an effort to crack down on the thousands upon thousands of people who I think are ultimately damaging the tourist industry, but apparently the mindset is hey, we've got the pyramids, they're gonna come no matter what, probably only once, so we have to get what we can while they are here. So now I'm going to Luxor, supposedly the worst of all in terms of tourist hassles. I found a hostel to stay at run by a Spanish couchsurfer who I hope will be straight with me.
Until I leave Egypt, I will have to follow the advice I'd give to others which is to try and find places to stay that are through personal recommendations, try to hook up with Couchsurfers as much as possible who will take care of you and be honest with you, try to shop around for tours and get many prices before you do any of them. Especially ask other tourists what they paid for tours. Finally and most unfortunately, don't trust what anybody says at face value if they work in the hotels or are tour guides. Every person who has been my "friend" has tried to take or taken more money from me than is fair. To be sure, there have been a few nice people, but they are far outweighed by the hordes. If anybody was going to come here, I'd say book everything in advance so you are completely insulated and don't have to deal with any money hassles while you're here, unless you have thicker skin than I do.
So, tomorrow off to Luxor, Aswan, and Abu Simbel. Apparently the boat from Hurghada no longer runs, so I will probably have to catch a puddle jumper to Sharm el Sheikh and a bus to Dahab, my final stop in Egypt which I hope will be the relaxed beach-front backpacker destination it is purported to be before I escape to Israel or Jordan.
posted by Dan at 10:34 AM
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