Mystical Misr – Egypt (Part 1)

( Day 1 and 2 of the Itinerary)

EGYPT (MISR) – The land of Pyramids and Pharaohs, always gave us goosebumps whenever we thought of visiting it as a tourist. We being civil engineers and history freaks, needed no other reason to visit this mesmerizing country. Also we would credit to the movie “Mummy” for its impact on us, it fuelled our desire to make this tour a reality.

VISA

For Indian passport holders, there is no provision for E-visa or Visa on arrival for Indians (i.e. As on March 2019).The details to obtain visa for Indians is in link below. We were residing in Doha, Qatar and applied Visa through Embassy of Greece, (Egyptian Embassy operated under Greece Embassy  in Qatar from 2017). Qatar Id, Photograph & Travel ticket are the only necessary documents required. It was 160 QAR each as visa charges.

<https://www.touristhelpline.com/egypt-visa-indians/>

BEST TIME TO VISIT

The best time to visit Egypt is during September to November or February to April. The weather is pleasant with warm days and cool nights. We travelled during second week of February.

COMMUNICATION

English works in most parts of the country except in very remote and rural areas, even broken Arabic is a gift, but if you are with a guide, it’s a cake walk.

CURRENCY

Credit cards/Debit cards are accepted in most parts of the country – as it is a tourist oriented country. 4000 Egyptian pounds (approx. 18k INR/1k QAR) cash was more than sufficient for us to meet the miscellaneous expenses. (4 People and 11 Days).

LOCAL TRANSPORT

We had booked a cab for the entire tour, so could not get an opportunity to experience the local means of transport. What we could observe was a decent network of roadways, railways and Nile river waterways both within city and rural connectivity.

TOUR GUIDE

Visiting the archeological monuments of Egypt means you have opportunity to know tons of interesting historical facts, we would strongly recommend to take a tour guide to make the tour exciting & informative. We booked with an agency called “Nile Cruisers Egypt” who arranged Egyptologist (Tour Guide), Cab & helped us booking for Cruise in Nile River. There are many agencies available, make a thorough research – check for the ratings and reviews and finalize so as not to get disappointed later.

ITINERARY

Day 1 – Cairo – (Mohammed Ali Mosque, Evening Light Show-Pyramids, Coptic Museum, Hanging Church)

Day 2 – Cairo Tour (Sultan Hassan Mosque)- Travel to Aswan

Day 3 – Abusimbel trip

Day 4 – Aswan Day Tour

Day 5 – Nile Cruise Ship – (Aswan)

Day 6 – Nile Cruise Ship – (Kom Ombo & Edfu).

Day 7 – Nile Cruise Ship-(Luxor & Karnak).

Day 8 – Luxor- (Hatshepsut)

Day 9 – Luxor – (Medinat Habu, Colossi of Memnon and Ramsseum temple)

Day 10 – Cairo – (Giza Pyramids, Sphinx, Memphis & Sakkara)

Day 11 – Cairo- National Museum – And back to Airport

WHY THIS ITINERARY

Egypt is all about Nile River & Desert, We covered attractions all along Nile River (Cairo, Luxor and Aswan).This stretch houses the major historical & archeological attractions of Egypt.

As a tried and tested plan, we always try to visit the capital city or point of return as the last part of tour. (For us this helps to manage stress of not losing flight back home :), and we strongly recommend this approach to people travelling with kids).

Due to security issues during our time of visit, we avoided eastern and western parts of the desert, missed out beautiful places of White Desert, Siwa Oasis, sharm el sheikh. Alexandria was another attraction which we could not manage to visit to adjust time for other attractions.

Special thanks to our Egyptian colleagues Mohamed Elwan & Abdelrahim for providing their valuable inputs in fine tuning this itinerary.

DAY 1 – DOHA TO CAIRO

After getting a customary picture in Hamad International Airport, we headed towards Cairo and landed late night at 12 AM. Immigration was a bit of hassle as the airport was too crowded and non-English speaking airport staff , somehow we made it out of airport after a 3 hour  long effort.

We met our tourist guide and moved into our pre-booked hotel at “Pyramisa Suites Hotel”. Got a Nice river view room and the hotel was reasonably good, although the furniture was old but it was offset by polite and friendly staff. We rested well, had our breakfast and moved to our first destination Mohammed Ali Mosque.

Mohammed Ali Mosque

This Ottoman style Mosque has a beautiful architectural dome. Interiors of the domes are a delight to watch and is complimented well with a pleasant lighting, it also offers a good view of the city of Cairo. In fact is one of the first features to be seen when approaching the city any direction. There is an entrance fee (180 GBP) and to maintain cleanliness all tourists need to wear plastic covers to their footwear. Our guide explained us about all the features of mosque and informed that it was built in memory of Tusun Pasha, Muhammad Ali’s eldest son. (Muhammed Ali is regarded as the founder of modern Egypt).

After completing the tour to Mohammad Ali mosque we headed towards Coptic Cairo, This area is part of the Historic Cairo and a UNESCO World Heritage Site consisting of various churches and Roman remains. We visited Hanging Church, Church of St George and Coptic Museum.

Hanging Church

It is one of the oldest Egyptian churches with a rich history, cultural significance, and magnificent architecture, it gets its name from the fact that its nave is suspended over a passageway.

Church of St George

This a Greek orthodox church located within Babylon Fortress of Coptic Cairo. The church dates back to the 10th century (or earlier). Inside is a large area surrounded by mural paintings everywhere with in the middle a glass floor where you can see older remains below. Unfortunately there is no entry for tourists in this area.

Coptic Museum

This Museum has the largest collection Coptic objects in the world and all of them refers to the unusual mixture of Greek, Romanian and Egyptian art. The museum houses items of stone works, woodworks, and metal works distributed in chronological order.

Once you walk around the Babylon walls a number of book stalls on road sides can be seen selling high quality books of different genres at a very affordable rates. If you love books, we suggest not to miss this part of Coptic Cairo. We finished our tour by afternoon and headed back to our hotel for rest and of course were super excited to watch Pyramid Show in the late evening.

Sound & Light Show – Giza Pyramid Complex

We reached the Complex site and the Joy of watching these majestic structures for the first time could not be explained in words.

It was quite chilly in the evening as the show was outdoor, extra clothing helped us a lot. The show provided us with a rare chance to sit beneath the stars and adore the Engineering spectacles of ancient world.

Here the Sphinx is the narrator of Egyptian History and it’s about an hour of entertainment and education, it gave us the unique view to the entire history of Giza and Ancient Egypt through amazing modern sound and light technology.

With the mesmerizing image and walk to the history of Egyptian history we headed back to hotel top prepare for next day adventures.

DAY 2 – CAIRO & TRAVEL TO ASWAN

We got up to a beautiful Thursday morning with a perfect weather for roaming around. The Plan was to travel to Aswan; however, we had enough time to visit the magnificent mosque of Sultan Hassan in the morning.

Mosque of Sultan Hassan

We were explained by our guide in detail about the various aspects of the mosque such as its utility as a fort in different times. Due to our visit early in the day there were hardly any other visitors, the Mosque opens at 9 am and we were the first visitors for the day. There is an entry fee of 10$ for adults. Kids loved the place as they had plenty of space to roam around and play.

This Mosque was built during the reign of Al -Nasir Hasan (Ruler), it occupies a huge area around 8000m², close to the citadel of Cairo. It is oriented towards southeast to the direction to Mecca which is a common feature for all the mosques. The entrance portal is 38 Meters high which is the major highlight of the mosque. The Central Courtyard is a huge peaceful space used as Friday Mosque accessible to the public earlier. On all the four sides of the courtyard there are vaulted halls which are used as madrassas (education centers).

After Spending 2 Hours in exploring the Mosque it was time to go to Airport, we had our tickets booked with “Egypt Air” Airlines to Aswan. The Airlines had all the facilities that one would expect in an economy class, before even we know we had completed 90mins of journey and had landed in ancient city of Aswan.

We met our local tour guide in Aswan Airport who drove us to prebooked hotel named Pyramissa ISIS, the hotel was on an island in the middle of the Nile positioned near the center of Aswan. We travelled on a motorboat meandering all along the river  to reach the destination. The Hotel offered some fantastic views of the river Nile and surrounding villages (Nubian).

We roamed all around the property to explore the hotel facilities, The food ordered was good, the hotel staff were amazingly friendly and only thing that was not so great was again the outdated hotel furniture.

Next day was the early morning trip to Abu Simbel for which we were very excited; so, had to go to bed early. With all the images of the beautiful Nile River rewinding in our eyes, we were in the arms of sleeping angel in no time.

(To be continued…..)