My Travel Adventures

Narmer: Early Dynastic Period, First Dynasty, Reign: circa 3150 BCE. Commonly credited with the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, Narmer is considered the founder of the First Dynasty. Narmer is also identified with a ruler named “Menes” who founded Memphis, but archaeological evidence suggests the city already existed in pre-dynastic times. Narmer ruled from Thinis, a city in Upper Egypt, downstream from Thebes.  

On my last full day in Egypt, I went on a guided tour of Giza, Saqqara, Dahshur, and Memphis. Despite booking my tour with the same tour company that took me to Alexandria, we had a repeat of our morning mishap: the driver arrived at the wrong hotel. It occurred to me that something like this may happen, but I decided against being a patronising know-it-all and giving the tour company the same directions a second time.

I began the day with an Uber ride to the Coptic part of Cairo. As much of this area is pedestrianised, my driver could not take me all the way to the Hanging Church, but he explained that all I needed to do was to walk straight once I had made it past the entrance to the quarter. He seemed quite bemused when I gave him a fifty-pound note for his helpfulness and almost looked as though he hesitated to take the money.

Today I went on a day trip to Alexandria, which I reserved online a few days ago. I was picked up at seven in the morning at my hotel in Cairo and returned almost exactly twelve hours later at the same. Despite sending a message to the tour agency to alert them that there were several hotels with the same name and despite showing them my hotel on a map, the driver still arrived at the wrong one. He was a competent man, so I assume my message was simply never passed on to him. He also had a quite eclectic taste in music: we started the day with some instrumental Egyptian pieces and then transitioned to Armenian pop.

Today was the day I feared on my big trip to Egypt: the journey to Cairo. I had arranged everything beforehand but still worried something might go wrong, as I never got around to purchasing a SIM card and would be without any internet for much of the day. In the morning, I took a cab from the ship to Aswan Airport. The rest of the group had left by van to Hurghada, and my guide offered to book the car for me before he journeyed with them. I found the car and driver exactly where the guide said I would. Without communicating very much, he dutifully deposited me at the entrance to the airport within half an hour.

We started our last full day on the Nile with a three o’clock departure for Abu Simbel. After the quick transfer from ship to bus, I nodded off and awoke again as day began to break over the desert. The ride took three and a half hours, towards the tail end of which we were properly in the desert; even the hardy round clumps of grey grass gave way to a uniform barrenness overseen by the occasional stern cliff. On the way back, we saw these cliffs more clearly. The shorter ones were beige with splashes of black, while the taller ones had warmer colours, and a few were shaped like pyramids.

We left our ship at half past seven to board the tour bus to the nearby temple of Edfu. While the site’s history dates to the third millennium BCE, the famous ruins visited today were built under the Ptolemies: The work began in 237 BCE and was only completed one hundred and eighty years later. As pointed out by the introduction of Cavafy’s Collected Poems, the Ptolemies were in fact the longest-reigning dynasty of Egypt, which I find quite remarkable. This dating makes the temple comparatively young but in no way detracts from its splendour. Buried in the sand for centuries, Edfu retains its hieroglyphs, Horus statues, and some of its colour as well as the ceiling atop its massive pillars.

We began our itinerary at a leisurely eight o’clock in the morning. While the ship remained moored by the pier under Luxor Temple, a small boat took our group to the opposite bank. Imbued with symbolic importance, the western bank of the Nile is home to the Theban Necropolis, a vast collection of royal mortuary temples and necropoleis. This is where, especially during the New Kingdom, pharaohs were laid to rest in ornate tombs covered in carvings and paintings of scenes from sacred funerary texts. Many of the tombs were looted, some of them by subsequent pharaohs looking for extra funds to line their coffers, and their long exposure to the outside atmosphere is why most paintings appear heavily bleached.

I have always wanted to go to Egypt. Cairo, Alexandria, Giza, the Nile – I’ve known these names for as long as I can remember. In fourth or fifth grade, our history curriculum focussed on Ancient Egypt: one day we dressed up as Ancient Egyptians and baked what the teachers believed to be the closest approximation of Ancient Egyptian bread. I do not remember what I wore, but I distinctly remember some children arriving wrapped in toilet paper and claiming they were mummies. In the years when we studied Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, my bedsheets made for a splendid toga.

My breakfast, just like the breakfast yesterday, was a hearty one, and I spent almost an hour cramming one item after another in my mouth: an omelette, a vegetable platter, slices of local anise-flavoured bread, yoghurt, dates, and a toast with cheese, figs, and honey. I told myself I would not have time to eat lunch, so I need not worry about having too much. The prolonged breakfast threatened to put me behind schedule, but I was forced to change this schedule anyway as soon as I walked outside: it was cold, windy, and cloudy – a disinviting combination for a stroll around the city.

Since breakfast at my hotel began at eight o’clock, I started the day later than I usually do. The day before, I asked the receptionist whether there was a bus to Kairouan, but she recommended I take the louage instead. “Louage” (which simply means “rent” in French) is the most popular form of intercity public transport in Tunisia and functions a bit like a shared taxi. The system works like this: A person buys the ticket to their destination at the corresponding counter at the louage station – usually a separate station from the bus station and the train station. Then, they go outside to find their van, where the driver usually stands ready to begin ushering them in. The van departs when it is fully occupied, which means there are no fixed schedules for louages, but the vehicles take little time to fill up on high-demand routes.

I woke up at five o’clock in the morning as I bought a 6:05 train ticket yesterday to El Jem. Since I packed up faster than I expected and checked out quickly as well, I arrived at the Tunis train station at half past five. The train did not, in fact, leave at 6:05 but instead arrived at 6:05, at which point the amassed crowd thronged the doors and rushed into the two wagons, paying no heed to the seats written on their tickets. I managed to board quite early and participated in the general chaos by sitting down one row behind my original seat to get a better view from the window. The train did not leave for another fifteen minutes, during which time several people passed in and out of the cab for a friendly chat with the conductor. At one point, the cab held at least four people, two of whom left the train before it even departed.

When I arrived in Tunis two nights ago, I greeted the receptionist at my hotel in French. She was a young lady with dark hair and bright green eyes, a striking feature that was tempered with the shyness of someone who does not like to call more attention to herself than she already receives. She responded to my greeting with embarrassment, saying – in English – that while she understood French, she would only be able to respond in English. She explained that unlike the older Francophone generations, most people in their twenties and thirties speak English better than French, which was a lesson that have carried with me throughout my travels.

On my first day in Tunisia, I visited Carthage. The highlight of my preparation for this trip was the night before when – at my hotel in Tunis – I revisited the Aeneid with its description of the city and Dido’s famous suicide scene. On a practical level, however, I had already done my logistical research several days earlier. The train to Carthage was supposed to run from the eastern end of central Tunis every half an hour, but recent reviews of the station said the train was out of order. Since I did not want to walk all the way to the station only to find out for myself, I decided to call a Bolt cab from my hotel and rode to Carthage directly.