Egypt is hard: some practicalities

Egypt is a country that either makes your life as a traveller too easy by half, or really quite difficult. That is, there are lots of day trips and cruises and all inclusive tours. And then there are places that are almost impossible to get to on public transport, where you'll end up with a police escort, that no one goes to...

So here are a few practicalities.

Darshur and Saqqara

Darshur has three pyramids. (Four if you include the small one appended to the 'bent pyramid'.) It's one of the most evocative sites, with views over the Nile Valley and its rich vegetation, all the way to the skyscrapers of modern Cairo.

From time to time a bus turns up with tourists. They stay for about 15 minutes. While I was there, one guy didn't even bother to get out of the bus, just took a photo from the door and sat back down again.

But you can get there by public transport and while it's a bit tricky, it's not all that difficult. First, the Metro to El Moneib. That's really easy.

At El Moneib, exit the metro and ask for a bus to El Badrasheen. This minibus will be on the same side of the road as the metro exit. It should cost 3 or 3 1/2 Egyptian pounds.

At El Badrasheen you get off near a little tea stand, on a road with the canal to your right. Keep on down the road to the crossing. Take a right turn; the road crosses over the canal. Once over the canal, take a left, and when this road reaches the flyovers, you'll see a load of minibuses under the flyovers. Ask there for Darshur village. From the village, find a tuktuk going to the entrance of the archaeological site (ask for al-haram, the pyramids).

Coming back, we didn't find a tuktuk at the entrance, but walked a couple of minutes along the road back to the village (it's a total of 2km), and one came along. 20 pounds should suffice to get to either Darshur or Saqqara village from the site, and 40 to get to Saqqara archaeological site's north entrance. (That's about one or two euros.)

The way to get to Saqqara is pretty much the same; just take a Saqqara bus from El Badrasheen. Again, that will get you into the village, and you then need Shanks's Pony or a tuktuk to get to the archaeological site entrance.

WARNING: no one knows how to get to the south entrance of the Saqqara site. We tried.

Trains

You're supposed to get your tickets in advance and only use certain trains. Don't bother. Get on the train; it costs 6 pounds extra to buy your ticket on the train, that's about 25 cents. The conductor may well look after you - I was told to join the conductors and police on board one train, offered smokes and tea, and even had my bag carried to the platform for me when I got off.

Abydos

Abydos is a little way off the track. You need to get to Al Balyani station - most trains from Luxor (or in the other direction, from Cairo) stop there. From there, it's a short tuktuk or taxi trip to Abydos which will cost, probably, 40 Egyptian pounds on the way out but 100 back (because you have to reserve a car from Abydos, whereas there are loads of tuktuks waiting at the station).

I did get a little worried about things at Al Balyani. A riot broke out as tuktuk drivers fought each other for my business and tried to grab my bag off me. But c'est pas grave. I stepped back into the station, the stationmaster let me wait things out for ten minutes in his cool and spacious office, and a policeman sorted things out and organised my transport for me. And I got a cup of tea, too.

At Abydos, there is only one hotel that pops up on Tripadvisor, the expensive (60 euros a night) House of Life. But if you ask any of the guards at the temple, they all know Ameer Kareem, who runs a fine guesthouse called 'Flower of Life' near the Ramesses II temple. He charged me 500 EL for dinner (a very good piece of roast chicken with plenty of salad and veg and sauce) and breakfast (the best I had in Egypt) as well as a huge room with a choice of three beds. He also runs the Flower of Life shop opposite the temple entrance, so you can ask there.

You may be offered a police escort from the temple to the guesthouse. I suspect that's a bit over the top, but it does have the advantage of keeping the over-insistent baksheesh-seeking little boys away.

Kudos to the director of the archaeological site, by the way. This is one of the friendliest places I've visited in Egypt.

Kom Ombo and Edfu

Another pair of stunning temples that are relatively easy to get to by train from Luxor. Rather than looking for a tuktuk or taxi outside the station at Kom Ombo, go to the tea shop and ask the owner. That secured me a better price!

Don't bother having anyone wait for you. At Kom Ombo there are almost always tuktuks waiting at the exit. They'll quote you 100 EL for the trip to the station, but it should be 20-30; I walked, and after a hundred yards heard a tuktuk coming up behind me. Yes, he'd take me for 20. At Edfu, walk back into town (there's a cemetery wall on your left, the temple grounds on your right), and at the big crossroads, you'll find a minibus for the station.

I actually did rather well out of taking the minibus, as he decided to drop me at the microbus station and find me a bus going to Luxor, which left within five minutes, so I didn't have to wait an hour for the next train. The Microbus stand in Luxor is about a ten minute walk (if you walk briskly) from the level crossing that you need to cross to get to the railway station.

Should travel have an objective?

We're used to think of going somewhere as an end in itself. The travelling itself becomes its own objective.

But that's a consumerist idea. Livingstone, Stanley, Amundsen, Columbus didn't just set out to see what happened. They had objectives: find the source of the Nile, get to the Pole, find the Indies and the source of indescribable wealth. Marco Polo was a typical Venetian, looking for trade deals; Alexandra David-Neel sought the wisdom of Tibetan lamas; and Rimbaud.... well, he was really running away from something, not trying to find it.

Yet most of us go on a trip without an objective. (Of course, if you're off to the beach or the countryside just wanting to relax or recharge your batteries. that's an objective. But if you're just going somewhere to tick it off the bucket list, that's not.)

 I was thinking about this on the plane home from Egypt. I had a feeling that for once, I had met all my objectives. I had a whole list of things I hadn't done; I hadn't sailed on a felucca, visited Philae, gone to Dendera or the western desert or the White and Red Monasteries. But I didn't care; I had a feeling I'd achieved my objectives. A feeling of satisfaction.

I was intrigued that I felt so satisifed despite the huge gaps, the unvisited things. I decided I needed to unpack that a bit. What had I gone to Egypt to do?

Now: a bit of background. When I was young, I was really into Egyptology. I learned a few hieroglyphs (and I can still manage to distinguish User-maat-re, or Ramesses II, from his father Men-maat-re or Seti I, from their cartouches), I drew Tutankhamen's mask in every exercise book, I made pyramids out of cardboard. And then, later on, I drifted away from it, as we mainly do from our childhood crazes.

Then came a time when I discovered Islamic architecture. In Spain, in Oman, in Mughal India. I saw one great city, Istanbul, as full of mosques as of great Greek churches (most of which, of course, were turned into mosques). I discovered the Arab streetscapes of Muscat souk, and tried, and failed, to map it; later, I discovered that Seville was just as impenetrable, and just as typically Arab in its ground plan.

So my objectives in visiting Egypt were to get a feel for ancient Egypt - to orientate myself in it, to understand its context, to take it out of the museum, as it were, and see it in its original richness. And to see Islamic Cairo, which had been one of the great cities of the world in the middle ages.

Did I succeed? Yes, and sometimes in unexpected ways. For instance, rather than visiting the Valley of the Kings, I got my feel for ancient tombs in the Tombs of the Nobles at Aswan. Here I could wander about, spend time getting the feel of how these tombs were excavated, how they were decorated, how they related to the landscape. I probably wouldn't have got so much from just visiting one of the jewel box tombs, like Nefertari's or Tutankhamun's.

I had only three days to see Islamic Cairo. I was disappointed by Ibn Tulun's mosque. But I was intrigued to find Fatimid elements in Coptic Cairo - one of the churches is the tall, narrow main hall of a Fatimid era house, and the beautiful, complex carpentry of the screenwork in the shrines is exactly the same as work in the mosques and mausoleums. Again, an unexpected way to meet that objective. (I did later find the lovely Qalawun mausoleum, mosque and hospital, and the fine house of al-Harawi near al-Azhar mosque, and the immense and powerful Sultan Hassan mosque - all highly recommended for visitors.)

So in future, when I'm taking a trip, I'm going to think about my objectives. Which might be as simple as to walk from A to B. Or as tricky as investigating the traditional music scene. Or just to visit all the microbreweries I can.  It beats ticking off 'sights' in a copy of Lonely Planet.