Downtown Cairo & Felucca Ride
23 July 2008: Egypt needs some getting used to.
We hadn’t been to Egypt before, and from what we heard, many travelers have a love-hate attitude towards this country in North Africa. Crossing the roads here is a very perilous activity. There’s hardly any traffic lights for pedestrians to cross the road; people drive crazily with no regard to traffic rules! Locals cross the roads at any point they like; buses stop suddenly to pick up passengers from anywhere along their route.
It’s so chaotic you won’t believe it till you are there. To get to downtown of Cairo, we had to cross dash with fear across so many wide roads that were congested with cars and buses. Running for life has real meaning here. Even a local told us the traffic rule in Egypt is that there are no rules. Drivers are aggressive; roads are overcrowded and you are almost certain to hear honking every second of every minute.
Cairo is an extremely polluted city. Besides exhaust fumes from decade-old cars and buses, there is so much sand and dirt in the air. This sand comes from the desert which pretty much surrounds Cairo. It’s HOT there, with temperature ranging between 40-45 degC. We were told that it hadn’t rained even once in the city for the past year! At the end of each day, we found sand in our hair and our skin felt very dry and sandy. Tip: Don’t go out without a bottle of water in your bag. It can be difficult to find bottled water even in downtown.
People smoke everywhere. Even in our hotel room (which is non-smoking), there would be wafts of cigarette smoke coming in through the room ventilation from other rooms.
Still, we couldn’t wait to see the Great Pyramids.
Cairo has a population of about 12 million people, and is the most populous city in Africa.
A road sign near our hotel
Our first day in Cairo
The distinctive pink building of the Cairo Museum is behind
Motorised felucca line the banks of the famous Nile River
We chose a traditional sailing felucca to ‘cruise’ along the Nile river. It turned out to be a really slow, directionless ride instead of a ‘cruise’ as there wasn’t any wind that afternoon to propel our felucca.
A floating restaurant behind
That’s the guy who sailed our felucca. He spoke almost no English.
The Nile is the longest river in the world. The Egyptian civilization has depended on this river since ancient times, and nearly all the cultural and historical sites are found along the banks of Nile.
The Cairo Tower is a free-standing concrete TV tower in Cairo. It stands in the Zamalek district on Gezira Island in the Nile River, in the city centre. At 187 meters, it is 43 meters higher than the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Trying a hand in sailing the felucca
Where’s the wind???
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