Arrival in Cairo was immediately an adventure. We got out of the airport and decided to be brave and take the bus to our hotel, instead of a taxi or careem. It was fun to say the least. First we had to figure out how to get to the bus terminal. We asked a lady working there and she showed us the way. After some searching we got on the shuttle bus there. Then we arrived at the terminal there were about 8 stinky worn out busses waiting there, destinations only showing in Arabic. So we asked a local guy and he pointed us to a bus and off we went. A guy came for our tickets and we had to pay for 2 tickets each because of our big bags occupying an extra seat. The Cairo traffic is the busiest in the whole country and everywhere you look are traffic jams. The busses drive like mad men, at one point 3 of them were racing to get to the stop first so they could pick up more customers. It was a great experience.
After 45 minutes of bus were were dropped off on the side of a highway and had to cross it to get to the metro. Just follow a local and pray it’ll be okay. Once at the metro we also had to buy tickets, there were some long lines at the counter, women and men separated. So I waited for a while, got my tickets and we got on the metro, again, women in a different part of the train, but they didn’t seem to care much. There were some women in the men’s section, but no men in the womens section. The metro is crowded in Cairo but quite fast, so we got to the last stop pretty quick. The hostel we first wanted to go to ended up being fully booked aside from one room, but it was too expensive for our taste. We searched for a new hotel and found one across the street, really cheap, but we got what we paid for. It was quite dirty and people were smoking inside, but the owner was helpful.
In the afternoon we went to walk around for a bit, walked across what I like to call the Instagram bridge. Everyone was posing and taking pictures there. There are some really nice parks on the island in the Nile in the centre. Next we went to the Cairo tower. It was quite a touristic ordeal, after waiting for 1+ hour we were able to go up. It has really good views over the whole city. You can walk around the whole balcony level and take pictures from every side We were cold, there was a fair bit of wind and it was going to be only 10 degrees that night.
The next day we found out neither of our simcards were working anymore, we went to the WE shop in our street and apparently there was a signature missing from when we registered them. It took us hours to get it fixed, we went to the Cairo museum, it still wasn’t fixed. At 9 pm we went back to the shop and after waiting until 11pm it was finally fixed and we could use our data again. Whew.
The Cairo museum is one of the top attractions. Most of the important tombs from all around Egypt have their contents and mummies on display at the museum. It became sort of a joke when you entered an empty tomb and asked the guide where the sarcophagus or mummy was. The answer was always: “In the Egyptian museum of course!”
It’s a huge museum, it takes a full day if you want to see everything. I was excited to see more about the origins and beginning of the Egyptian civilization. They really have an enormous amount of history. Most of the information and excavations are from the latest dynasties and the Greek period, but the beginning of the Egyptian kingdom was 3000 years before that!
The most famous object in the museum is the funerary mask of King Tutanchamon. Sadly you aren’t allowed to make pictures in that room. There was ton of other cool stuff though! Statues, sarcophagi and more than a dozen mummies taken from tombs to preserve them. If you’re in Cairo you have to go see it. I especially liked the figurines and wooden boats they made as tomb gifts. They believed when a person died he would go to the afterlife, and they buried everything the person needed there together with him. In the tombs of the pharaohs they found slaves, mummyfied food, a horse carriage, models of boats, jewelry, even pets were mummyfied. No wonder so many graves got robbed.
The last day in Cairo we wanted to visit the pyramids, since they were on the otherside of the city and we couldn’t see them through all the smog. The pyramids of Gizeh are quite crowded though, and just walking in the area alone already costs 240 Egp (8 euro). I wanted to visit the older and more interesting pyramids of Saqqara and Dashur. We hired a careem driver for 4 hours and ended up paying him for the whole day. It was such a great experience. First we drove to Saqqara, to the step pyramid of king Djoser. This one is the oldest pyramid we have found. It’s build in a complex that was completely surrounded by high walls to protect it.
The whole area is littered with other small pyramids, mastabas and valley temples. The Saqqara necropolis stretches out for kilometres. Kings would be buried in pyramids, but once they were put inside of them, the tombs would be sealed and the families or public wouldn’t be able to acces it. To keep their heritage alive they would connect their pyramids with a long road leading to a temple in the Nile valley, where sacrifices for them could be made and they could still be worshipped and remembered.
Royals would be buried under pyramids, but rich nobles would bury themselves under mastabas: Flat boxes with some rooms inside for offerings, covering the shallow tomb of the deceased.
Djoser got the idea to stack mastabas on top of eachother to create the first step pyramid, this later evolved into a true pyramid shape.
First we went to the nearby pyramid of King Unas. It’s a small one, but being the first pyramid I ever entered it was exciting. The shaft to enter the area below it is on the right side of the pyramid. It had a lot of decorations and was pretty crowded with people. One shaft going down ending with 2 small rooms on either side. You’re also able to enter the Djoser pyramid itself, but we didn’t since it was fairly pricey.
After Saqqara we drove a little bit more south to Dashur, to see the white and red pyramid. They don’t get a lot of visits. For being one of the oldest and biggest pyramids, we only paid a very small entrance fee of 2 euros, this included going inside both of them. First we did the red pyramid. It’s a ‘normal’ pyramid, ‘only’ being 100 metres high, while the biggest pyramid, Khufu’s, is 140 metres high. Not so bad aye? We clambered inside and descended 60 metres down the narrow shaft with tiny steps. A healthy level of fitness is definitely required but it’s totally worth it. They are very fun to explore. Once you reach the bottom you enter the main hall area. It’s a really big open space, about 20 metres high. There are some stairs you take to continue, and they bring you along the wall, all the way up to the top, where there’s a another shaft leading to the second room. There’s a pretty unpleasant smell inside, reminding me of ammonium, but it’s bearable. They say there’s bats inside aswell but we didn’t see any.
Next we did the white or bend pyramid. It has steep walls at the bottom, but halfway up they change into a 45 degree angle. They realised they made a mistake and had to correct it to able to finish the pyramid. This change in incline gave it the name bend pyramid, and also makes it quite distinct from the rest. It’s also slightly taller than the red pyramid, being 104 metres high. The inside of it makes it even more special. It’s the most interesting and fun pyramid to explore. The shaft goes down steeper and deeper. The main room has stairs in the middle, going up all the way until it reaches a later shaft dug into the walls. I had to crawl through this shaft on hands and knees, as it was quite small, until I reached the old shaft, walking in the dark for 20 metres until reaching the last big room. There was barely any light but using my phone’s flashlight I looked around and saw bats hanging everywhere. I could hear their high pitched squeeks from all sides. The room also had a weird form, instead of being rectangular and the walls sloping up in a pyramid pattern it was round and didn’t have a clear shape.
After we visited the last 2 pyramids it was time to head back to Cairo. We had booked ourselves a nice hotel in Giza with a beautiful view of the Great Pyramids, so we could still see them from a distance before we left Egypt the day after. I was afraid we weren’t going to see a lot of them since there’s a lot of hotels in that area claiming to have great views but using pictures from other places. Looked at reviews and picked the one with the best ones. The view was as promised, it was the highest hotel in the area and we watched the sun set over the ancient world wonder. I was overjoyed.
After a short night it was time to head to the airport for our flights. My mom was flying home and I was flying to Dubai alone. Now the adventure really begins.
