WHile i was wondering what to write …struggling hard to gather my thoughts..Taxing my brains to pull back the memories in the chronological order of their existence in my life…and that’s when I realised..how my life in the last 44 days(April 30th-july 6) had taken unknown paths…paths from the presence of reality to those of the dead…from blocks of stones 5000 years ago..to concrete jungles of today…from cute little felucca rides to the jazz and the glamour of a cruise that sails across the Nile…which has been flowing gracefully through Egypt, watching it grow..watching it fall!Digging in to my bag trying to find the evidences to my memories and visits I stumbled across the entry tickets to the sites we visited. Hence m blogging this way..
First places and then people and the cultures I was immersed in to during the days that went like a lifetime.Leaving Boston was simply hard. My friends were here and I was a reluctant rather scared to leave them and go to a place completely alien. The excitement had started to die down, but when I saw the group of people I was travelling with and most importantly the known face of Dr Sullivan I knew I wasn’t alone. None
of us were. Sleeping through the flight wasn’t difficult! Cairo airport was interesting..and so was the warmth of the strong sun! We reached the hotel, walked around to get acquainted with the place(“Zamalek Island”), expressed genuine surprises at seeing places like cinnabon, pizza hut, hardee’s , Mc Donald’s and pulled our laptops out to do the one pending thing…change the city in “Facebook” to Cairo!!The Giza Pyramids: The sole purpose of my visit to Egypt…well of course later on I realised that there are places that bewitch you more than the ones you know…and that the more you explore the more you react and your reactions are so priceless that not alone the cameras capture it but also do people!. The pyramids were spectacular…they were huge and brown and did not fit in my cyber shot camera screen! Zoom in Zoom out…move back move front..all the hassle to get the 9 pyramids in my memory card! I did get them eventually one after the other…but the highlight of the journey to the pyramids was the camel ride…in all its glory and my bones! Abool-hol “The father of Terror” popularly known as “The Sphinx” looked majestic even without the nose! I had the pleasure and the privilege to see all the pyramids in this life! The bent pyramid, the step pyramid, the red pyramid…and the Great Pyramid! The dusty , old and moist smell of the Red pyramid…the steep down slope as we walked…the soft lights just illuminating our shadows…and a whole some workout finally brought us IN TO the pyramid where I experienced inexplicable and extreme emotions…from isolation to claustrophobia literally in the same breath! The Importance of life and oxygen suddenly fell in place! As the journey to the pyramids came to a tiring end, our travel continued to the Valley of the Kings and the breathtaking Philae Temple.Aswan and Luxor was humid, we were a band of 35 kids and places to visit were in multiples of 2!The valley of the kings was where I saw “A Mummy” for the first time ever and more over it was King Tut’s Mummy! King Tut was the youngest pharaoh who died at 19! In its presence I realised, I was there amidst a boy pharaoh, a ruler, an era, an age! King Tutankhamen’s mummy and the tombs of all the other kings was the POA for the Valley of the Kings. Moving on to see the “Obelisk”, Heptshepsut’s temple, Luxor temple , Aswan dam, Philae temple and a peaceful yet entertaining felucca ride on the Nile, the day ended with us
boarding the train to head back to Cairo, which was to be our home away from home..Shopping at Aswan/ Luxor sookh or at the Khan-il-Khalili pretty much decided our worth!!People were ready to offer 100-200 camels for each of us! The man who walked with us was considered so lucky that the shop persons were ready to give the guy all he wanted just in return of us! As interesting and flattering that was, for some reason it angered me because I questioned of course my self and not them “who are they to decide the worth of a woman or anybody for that matter??!Is this how everybody thinks? Is that the status of a respectful woman in the Egyptian/Arab world?”Dinner at Abduh and Hayams place was our getaway from the hectic life that we led in those 44 days in Cairo. The spread was awesome and so were our de-brief sessions. This was the occasion I actually found time to get all dolled up!Arabic Classes began with full gust and vigour and I learnt as much as I was taught and more! Language writing, conversations as well as cultural insights were the ingredients of our everyday classes. Lunch at the Cairo’s best Koshery (Egyptian traditional food) place with our teacher and our visit to her home were like our mini field trips!