It starts...

We arrive in Cairo at 0.30 and by 0.31 we’re confused. We’ve hardly slept all week and we left home 18 hours ago, coming here via Tampere, Bremen and Köln. It’s stiflingly hot, the airport looks like a refugee camp, we have to fill in forms without a pen and the officials want to go home. We’re trying to work out how to get out of the airport to meet Ruben’s friend Natalie who’s arriving from Prague. Eventually, having worked out that we need to buy our visas from a bank instead of the immigration desk, we are escorted to our bags by some guy who promptly demands a tip. Welcome to Egypt ! A quick glance at the arrivals screen lets us know that there is no flight from Prague and more confusion follows until we are told to try Terminal 1. We barge our way out of the dimly lit airport, crawling with people like a termite mound after heavy rain, and get a free shuttle bus to Terminal 1, where Natalie’s flight has just landed. We’re relieved not to have missed her….

…and an hour and a half later she finally emerges. We find a taxi and the handler demands a tip. We find the hotel and the taxi driver demands a tip as well. Really, welcome to Egypt !
It’s not so bad though – the welcome at the Dahab Hostel is warm, and I’m relieved to finally see a bed. Apart from a small interesting accident where Maaka’s face lotion has exploded in her bag and alcohol has seeped through her bag and her clothes, forcing an hour-long clean-up operation, the night is uneventful and we get to bed at 5am. By 10, we’re up again.
Cairo is a big, loud, dirty, crowded, hot city with action on every street corner and everywhere in between, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Everywhere you go, someone is either grabbing your attention to greet you and welcome you to Egypt, or to sell you something or other. I’d usually be quite interested by a city like this but after the week I’ve just had, it’s overwhelming and exhausting. A trip to the Sudanese embassy for our visa application is unsuccessful as we’re too late and don’t have a letter of recommendation from our own embassies (and finally, I suppose, we will see our rewards from not living a life of crime – we can be recommended ! Hurrah !). We resolve to come back in a few weeks when we are next in Cairo. The train station gives us a little more success despite having to queue at several booths to get our tickets for tomorrow night to Aswan. Our lucky break comes when a guy in front of us in the queue starts chatting to me about football and then helps us out, asking around and pointing us toward the right ticket desk before leaving on his way, no bakchich required ! We end up walking around Cairo aimlessly but I’m getting increasingly impatient with constant stops to check out the guidebook or the map or take pictures for half an hour and realize that I just need to get some sleep and get my normal let-it-go attitude back. Cairo definitely isn’t a city to be impatient in and I don’t really want to push it so I eventually niggle my way back to the hostel and for once, at 11pm, I’m in bed and writing and aiming to be asleep soon ! Tomorrow : Pyramids, usual other touristy crap, night train to Aswan, better mood…..

Despite it all I’m happy to be out here, excited about the trip ahead and sure I just need to catch up on all the sleep I missed out on recently to get back into the swing of things. Maybe a stay in a smaller, quieter town like Aswan will help me with that too.