Egypt: The Best of Giza & Cairo in 8 Hours

Back to business travel and I am beyond happy about it. There’s pluses and minuses to traveling for work, but after a 2 year hard stop, getting to meet colleagues and customers in person is a pleasure. And I kicked it off with my first trip to Egypt, which was a thrilling way to begin.

I had, honestly, next to no free time. I arrived in the evening and started meetings the next morning, and this is how it went for multiple days. But Thursday afternoon came and we had no more customer meetings. The late afternoon and evening were free, so my colleagues planned a truly incredible afternoon trip to Giza so I could see the pyramids. But not just see them, see them on horseback!

This was not exactly the easiest horseback riding experience. You can ride slow, but there are many other riders zooming along past you and it made me a little nervous. And the terrain is uneven (its sand, after all) so you feel a bit unbalanced. But if you’ve ridden before and feel relatively comfortable on horseback, it’s really no trouble. Others were riding in horse-drawn carriages or on ATVs, and some via camel, all perfectly great alternatives.

The horse back riding trip started at Safins Horses where we first relaxed a bit, had a cold drink, chatted, and watched horses, carriages, and camels meandering past us. We were waiting for the sunset, so we’d have great views and a little less intense heat. Then we met the horses, mostly rescues, all calm and tacked up ready for some exercise. Starting off, I was nervous, it’s been a few years since I’ve ridden, and I’m rusty. Luckily I have a good 5 years of lessons lodged deep in the back of my mind somewhere, and that gave me more confidence going in.

We started off, and parts of the road were congested with those same horses, carriages, and camels from earlier. Once on the sand, the space opened up, and the horses were excited to get moving. The trip out towards the pyramids was a fun one, with a little trotting and even maybe a gallop in there for a very short time. It felt great, and very freeing.

The three pyramids are Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure, and the names correspond to the kings for whom they were built. Khufu is northernmost, largest, and oldest of the group. The middle pyramid was built for Khafre, and the southernmost and smallest is Menkaure. They are smaller than their original heights because they have been almost entirely stripped of their outer limestone by plundering through the ages.

While viewing the pyramids I also had a little ride around on a camel, so that made things even more perfectly Egyptian.

After a very fun but very sweaty pyramid viewing, we headed into Cairo to El Moez, proper name El Moez Li-Deen Allah Al-Fatimi Street, the most famous street in Old Cairo.

As we walked around the market on Thursday night the place was brimming with people (Friday starts the weekend in Egypt, so Thursday night is like Friday night in Europe or the US). We saw families out shopping and eating, the markets open for business and selling all sorts of trinkets, some authentically local, others imported. We tried roasted pumpkin and watermelon seeds and people watched. The one thing I didn’t do was shop, simply because it was so busy I couldn’t decide what I really wanted.

During our visit to in the old town we had the opportunity to walk inside one old mosque, Mosque Sabil Kuttab Aly El-Mutahhir, with bats flying around and really spectacular decoration everywhere. There are many mosques in the area, and the nightlife was humming around them. I saw the Mosque Qalawun, Al-Azhar, and Al-Hussein, amongst others, but only from the outside because it was late and they were not open to visitors.

Experiencing Egypt for the first time and in particular Cairo was really fascinating. Its been many years since I’ve been anywhere in Africa and never before to Northern Africa. The rich cultural heritage was so present everywhere, and in some ways seemingly at war with the new. For instance, the government is in the process of building a “new capital” for Egypt, and thus, once ready, the daily goings-on will presumably shift from Cairo to this new place. The idea of simply moving a capital was nothing I’d ever considered. Everywhere around Cairo seemed to be under construction, with huge roads and monorails and bridges going up. With this construction, there’s a lot of focus on modernization, yet this feels at odds with the day to day in the current Cairo.

A lot of my time was spent in the car going from meeting to meeting, and so that is how I experienced this seemingly infinite re-building of Egypt. Here’s my views from the car:

Donkeys in the street, mosques and fortresses, cows, oranges for sale at night, white VW bus that is a mini bus, and apparently one of the most dangerous forms of transport you can take in Cairo.

Riding around in taxis taught me that I never want to drive in Egypt myself. Never. Cars are simply everywhere, and I spent my week breathing in exhaust fumes laced with the cigarettes all the men seemed to smoke. Here nobody uses lanes, many of which aren’t even marked anymore, and they use their horn as a means of constant communication – “here I am, here I am, now I’m over here!”, tooting away as they drift along the huge highways (and talking on the cell or texting).

I ate so well, and so many fantastic foods, that I could never recount all of it. It’s not often I take photos of food, but on this trip I made an exception, simply to help myself remember it all. Fava beans are used for nearly every meal in Egyptian cooking, and kohary is the national food of Egypt. Additionally, grilled meats and fish, hummus, tahini, and aish baladi, an Egyptian flat bread, were seen at almost every meal.

There was no time to go inside any pyramids, so I’ll save that for another time, but at the Cairo airport there is a small (1 room) museum with some artifacts. I had some time before my flight, so I paid the small fee (about $2.00) and checked it out.