{"id":652,"date":"2011-02-18T13:30:05","date_gmt":"2011-02-18T13:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.movinghouse.ws:81\/wordpress\/?p=652"},"modified":"2011-02-18T13:30:05","modified_gmt":"2011-02-18T13:30:05","slug":"egypt-staying-out-of-trouble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.movinghouse.ws\/?p=652","title":{"rendered":"Egypt – Staying out of trouble"},"content":{"rendered":"

Egypt<\/strong> Due to various revolutions, our posts have been somewhat erratic.
\nStill, it’s worth saying that in between dodging demonstrations and
\ntear gas, we did actually get to see and do some interesting things in
\nEgypt.<\/p>\n

The first of which was to learn a few words of Arabic at the border
\ncrossing. After all, we were there for 6 hours… what else would you
\ndo?!? The Libyan side took about an hour and some nice friendly
\npolicemen waved us on our way. Another hour was spent waiting for the
\nbank to re-open so we could buy our entry visas for Egypt. And another
\n4 hours was spent doing the paperwork for our vehicle to enter Egypt.<\/p>\n

The Egyptian border crossings are notorious amongst overlanders. In
\nessence, the process involves walking a total of 2km back and forth
\nfrom 3 buildings, generating a tree of paperwork at each stop and
\nadding it to the folder you have acquired, occassionally paying some
\nmoney, often trying not to get fleeced, having a rubbing taken of your
\nvehicle’s chassis number (yep, the kind you usually do at St Paul’s
\nCathedral when you’re five years old), shaking 20 people’s hands an
\nhour, smiling for four hours non-stop, and at no point questioning
\nwhether this is sane. At the end of this circus performance your
\ncarnet (vehicle’s passport) is stamped and you acquire a local driving
\nlicence and Egyptian number plates. All your paperwork is added to the
\nBilly bookshelf marked ‘2011’ in the last office as you leave.<\/p>\n

After that experience, we spent a few days relaxing in Zamelek, a tree
\nlined Cairo suburb with cool restaurants and trendy bars. Every day
\nthe old men would ask if we wanted a taxi ride. Every day we would
\nshrug them off and go to our vehicle parked around the corner. They
\nfell about laughing the last day when we brought our vehicle round to
\nload up. “Ahh, big taxi! Good!”<\/p>\n

And when we did get into a taxi, the internal decor was very amusing!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We also wandered around a less visited area of Cairo, Qaitbey, where
\nwe saw a mosque with a beautiful dome and stunning mosaic windows.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As the tanks rolled into Cairo, we rolled out, heading towards Siwa, a
\ndesert oasis that Ven has wanted to visit for 20 years! The views
\nacross the palmeries from the top of the old fort are beautiful and
\nthere are some nice trips into the desert from here to the hot and
\ncold springs. But more than that, thanks to its compact size and
\nrelaxed Siwan vibe, it’s the sort of place you can spend days just
\nhanging around getting to know people, drinking mango juice and
\nsmoking shisha. It’s perhaps how Pokhara or Cuzco may once have been when they first became part of the tourist circuit. As the internet
\nhad been shut down in Egypt by this stage, people got to know each
\nother well in Siwa, exchanging news at Abdu’s restaurant with
\ntravellers newly arrived from other cities before the roads got
\nblocked off, or huddled around a shortwave radio listening to the BBC
\nWorld Service at Mustafa’s cafe. Mustafa and Mona, cool young
\nAlexandrians, who grew shitake mushrooms and ran a relaxed cafe, were ever helpful with inside information. This included the top tip of
\nfilling up our tank. That evening, queues built up at the petrol
\nstation and the next day the army took it over and started rationing
\nfuel via a coupon system.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As lovely as Siwa was, the unpredictability of the situation in Egypt meant we were keen to hit the road to Aswan and get onto the ferry to Sudan. The road out of Siwa needed a permit and you either had to travel in convoy or have a local with you. “You can rent a boy if there’s no other cars going” said the permit man. Fortunately Mahmood, a desert guide, was leading a group of cars the next day so we joined them. No rented boy needed.<\/p>\n

Mahmood rebuilds his 4x4s every 2 years. When you follow him in convoy, you can understand why. His speed on a UK motorway would warrant a court appearance. Yet he thought it perfectly normal to drive at this speed along 240km of gravel roads, desert pistes and sand dunes. “Hey India!” (No one can pronounce even the shortest
\nversion of Ven’s name). “You drive too slow!” What we had to explain to him when we caught up at the third checkpoint is that our car weighed three times as much as his as it had our home in it, not just two tourists like his.<\/p>\n

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We left Mahmood at Bahariya and followed the oases route through the
\ndesert, camping next to various hot springs. En route we drove through
\nthe Black Desert, with its sandy ground covered in eroded rock from
\nthe black mountains; and then through the White Desert with Dali-esque
\nlimestone rock formations. We also stopped off at Al-Qasr, a restored
\nmedieval\/Ottoman town made of mud bricks.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Arriving in Aswan, with protests in Cairo reaching their peak, our
\nvehicle raised some concern when it was parked near the local police
\nstation. A detailed rifle through the spice box (“yes, that’s dukkah
\nfrom Egypt!”) and washing box seemed to help, but I think they still
\nwent away wandering if the spare tyre on top was a satellite dish and
\nthe roof tent was a communications hub!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The next couple of days were spent with exit admin… Traffic court,
\nferry tickets, traffic police to return licence and plates. It all
\ninvolves a lot of hanging around.<\/p>\n

Currently, the only crossing from Egypt into Sudan is by ferry from
\nAswan to Wadi Halfa. Passengers go in a boat, and cargo and vehicles
\ngo in an open barge which usually arrives a day later. It was
\nreassuring to see our car being strapped down, but unnerving to see it
\nsail off into the distance. I’d be happier when we see it at the other
\nend!<\/p>\n

The passenger ferry is a great place to meet other travellers and also
\na first experience of the incredibly friendly Sudanese. From camel
\ntraders to mobile phone battery dealers, we met them all!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Egypt Due to various revolutions, our posts have been somewhat erratic. Still, it’s worth saying that in between dodging demonstrations and tear gas, we did actually get to see and do some interesting things in Egypt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egypt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.movinghouse.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.movinghouse.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.movinghouse.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.movinghouse.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.movinghouse.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=652"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.movinghouse.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":706,"href":"https:\/\/www.movinghouse.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions\/706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.movinghouse.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.movinghouse.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.movinghouse.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}