December 19, 2006 by zankbennett.

More bullets from the land that I just can’t seem to be able to describe any other way!  Pictures are all from Cairo, the first time there.
-Saw a truck on fire, from the engine.  Men were jumping out of the cabin while the truck kept on moving.  Told my taxi driver.  He just smiled like it was a normal occurance.
-Dust.  EVERYWHERE.
-Cab driver had this a capella song playing for like 35 minutes straight.  It was sung in Arabic.  About 20 minutes into the song, the singer, actually, starts to cry.  The song crashes to a halt, the singer regains himself and continues until, 10 minutes later, I get out of the cab.  For all I know, this song could still be going on!!! wow.
-I’m looking at this piece of bread for sale by a ferry-side vendor in Aswan.  I point to one in the middle of a huge pile of bread just at one of the pieces in front falls on the (so disgusting I cannot describe it) ground.  A guy picks it up, tosses it back up to the middle of the pile and smiles at me as he prepares to serve me the piece I was oggling originally.  I walk off with a look like I’d just seen Jesus and the guy has the nerve to give me a death-stare for not buying the piece of bread I originally pointed at.  Mmmmm!
-Pulling into Cairo at end of overnight train ride.  We were stopped just shy of the station for 45 minutes. The conductor, sadly, had a heart attack.  I hope he is well.
-Bikes there have foot brakes.  Isn’t that a yo-mamma joke…?
-One of the taxis I took had a rear-view mirror made of a regular piece of cut mirror…the edges of this thing were sharper than razors!  Unbelievable…and if you think there’s a seatbelt that works in the whole country…. lol!

This is THE tourist shot.

I’m about 175 meters up in this picture…Ha ha!

Me and Mohamad, my taxi driver with the Giza pyramids in the background.

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December 19, 2006 by zankbennett.

Aswan:

Easy, quick Train ride to Aswan.  Easily found the nice hotel room.  They had folded a towel into a cobra snake and left that on the bed.  Apparently, someone thought this was a good idea.  I looked under the bed like 50 times making sure the cloth snake didn’t have any cold-blooded friends…

The markets in Aswan were more of the same…impossible to walk by without endless hastling.
First day in Aswan…the most impressive part of Egypt..the Karnak Temple.  Amazing pillars there.  A forest of 158 pillars, so tall and mighty greeted me just 100 metres into the temple and proved the most impressive part of the whole trip, as far as sights went.

I spent the second day exploring the west bank of the Nile and the toumbs found there, then rode a Camel over to a nearby monestary and an unfinished obelinsk.  The camel was real unhappy, so I just walked most of the way.  I felt like I was in one of those movies where the actors are stranded out in the middle of nowhere and the sand-combed dunes extend as far as sight allows.  It was beautiful.

The overnight train was easy and, on my last half-day in Cairo, wandered around a couple churches and markets I’d wanted to see…well, not really, but people told me not to miss them!  ;)  so, after begging a hotel manager to allow me to store my bag and guitar for a day…I was off on foot.  I’m still surprised I didn’t get hit by a car or that I wasn’t in a car accident.  Driving there is an art.  Truly.

Left Egypt, en route to Bangkok, Thailand.

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December 19, 2006 by zankbennett.

Another day.  Another loss of words.
-Luxor-

Spent the morning at the Temples of Karnak.  The columns at hypostyle hall were enough to reduce me to a giggling child.

They were so tall.  And there were 158 of them, all in one area.  I just started laughing as I looked up at their height.  There are no descriptive words, so maybe a quote written about Karnak is apt,
By Amelia Edwards:

**
It is a place that has been much written about and often painted; but of which no writing and no art can convey more than a dwarfed and pallid impression…The scale is too vast; the effect too tremendous; the sense of one’s own dumbness, and littleness, and incapacity, too complete and crushing.
**

Met a group of school children there today.  All about 10. They wanted to take a picture with me so I could go home and show everyone what the Egyptian children look like.  I was ready to engage in some sort of mass adoption.  Beautiful children!

A woman just walked by the café where I’m having lunch.  She had a massive bag balanced on her head.  Walking.  There’s another with a huge pan of something.  Balanced.

Just crunched into the Egyptian bread (like a cross between naan and pita) than came with lunch.  It’s not supposed to crunch…that’s the sand…baked in…let’s you know it’s made here and not like Wonder Egyption Bread or something!!!  It kinda brings a smile.

Last night, walking along main drag here in town, was invited into a place where the Egyptian bread is made.  Very cool!  For a small tip, the guys working there let me try the hot bread and take a look at the whole process from the giant mixer to the conveyor belt oven where these guys turned out maybe a hundred pieces per minute.
…..

Luxor 3:
Took a sunset felucca ride last night along the Nile.  It was ok, but there was hardly any wind so the boat made no headway against the current. In an hour we’d gone only about 30 meters upstream.  And after haggling with 563,242 other boat captains before getting a ride I really didn’t want it at all.  The badgering here is unprecidented anywhere I have ever been.  If you’re outside, anywhere, you can expect to have al least two people talking at you, or yelling if you don’t respond.  ”No, thank you”, quickly became my first Arabic phrase!

Then, after a nap, I took a nice walk around the central Luxor Monument.  I heard a band playing and walked up to the window and was quickly beconed in.  They were filming a music show for TV. I listened for a while and when the last song was over, met the guys in the band who let me play a rababa, which is the instrument that gives Egyptian music its unique sound and atmosphere.  I love it, but couldn’t do much useful on the rababa.  It was a great experience off the well worn tourist path.
This morning (01 DEC) off to Aswan, a three-hour train ride south.  Tomorrow night, it’s an overnight trip back to Cairo…then a LONG flight to Bangkok.

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November 29, 2006 by zankbennett.

Luxor.  Arrived by overnight train…it was only 2 hours late…unusually on-time apparently.

Hiked all around the West Bank’s Valley of the Kings.  Amazing.  More taxis and donkeys and camels…

View from the top of the Valley of the Kings!  Lunch break!  I challenged a local guide who just wouldn’t leave me alone to a race to the top…these guys just don’t give up.  It’s simply amazing.  He declined…then gave me a guilt trip for free.

 
Can’t remember where this was…but it was my favorite spot…will update name.

I just can’t find myself in the picture among the hieroglyphs…

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November 28, 2006 by zankbennett.

First stop in Egypt and first time ever in Africa. It’s impossible yo use adjectives to describe this city. Instead, I’ll just list a few observations/thoughts:

-population, bearing 20,000,000
-dinner first night here, $0.95. Was stuffed afterwards.
-the Egyptions…among the nicest people on the face of the earth.
-learned how to make paper today from a sacred egyption reed.
-taxis. Well, there are no road rules here…some examples: no lanes exist. Traffic goes BOTH ways around any rotary. Seatbelts? J-walking is a necessary artform…and you’d better be good, FAST.
-horns, they go all the time. I was mildly annoyed…The cab driver called the incessant horns “music” and suddenly…I understood; it’s how they communicate…and it’s art. They drive nearly as much with ears as eyes.
-ran a 4:30 lap around the second largest pyramid of Giza.
-smog is so thick, breaths are shallow and short, by necessity. Visibility is never > 1 mi.
-everyone has a service to sell you and to the Egyptions, “no” is an unequivocal “maybe”.
-i took the time to learn all the Egyption numbers. o7V is 567, believe it or not!
-written Arabic flows beautifully!
-buildings are constructed from the (finished) ground floor up. When the early floors are done, renters move in as the builders (most of the time) keep building higher.
-i have seen goats grazing in giant trash/rock/dirt pits between buildings. 80 m x 100 m.
-in similar spaces I have seen soccer goals set and the trash pushed to massive sideline piles.

 
The “Sound and Lights” show, my first night in Cairo.  A   L O N G taxi ride to get there.

My Taxi!  Peugeot 504 (i think)

Possibly my favorite picture of the trip.  Just to the left of his chin, barely visible, the barrel of his automatic weapon creeps out of the window.  Scary as hell!  This was the locomotive car of the overnight train to Luxor.  They’re there to make us all feel safer.  Hmmm.

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