To the Pyramids and Back: What Guidebooks Don't Tell You

Two days ago, I left Cairo at dawn under a crescent moon. For two weeks, my husband and I had traveled up and down the eternal Nile like all conquerors and tourists. We learned that our three travel books were an imperfect guide to this complex country with a known history of nearly 6,000 years and a population of more than 83 million. There are many important subjects guidebooks do not cover, which we didn’t understand until we were actually there.

We began our trip in Cairo the night that the Egyptian national soccer team beat rival Algeria for the continental championship called the Africa Cup. All roads were jammed with celebratory traffic. Cars were honking, fans were waving Egyptian flags, and fireworks and flames appeared sporadically among the crowds assembled on the side of the roads.

My husband started coughing immediately — he’s a canary when it comes to air quality. According to a recent World Bank study that ranked the air quality of cities, Cairo is the most polluted city in the world — almost twice as polluted as Beijing with 169 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic liter. Compare this to Millerton’s and New York City’s PM readings Friday morning of 2.5. Tourists with allergies and asthma should limit their exposure to Cairo’s air. No guidebooks mention the severity of this problem.

Neither did any guidebooks mention that visiting many of Egypt’s fabulous, historic sites is physically demanding. One needs to get up at 3 a.m. and travel by bus convoy for four hours to visit Abu Simbel, the New Kingdom temple built by Ramses II around 1250 BC. This is the complex that was moved in its entirety to higher ground to save it from being submerged by Lake Nasser when the Aswan Dam was built.

Tourists have one hour to visit and then another three hours by bus to return to Aswan, exhausted and sleepy. Walking under the brilliant sun across parking lots and barren desert sand, climbing long flights of stairs, and descending steep ramps into the tombs should not be attempted by anyone who is not in good physical condition.

Nature abounds in Egypt, but visitors must discover it themselves. Guidebooks steer tourists to major monuments, not quiet, green gardens.

In Aswan, we negotiated a ride on a felucca, a wooden sail boat, and crossed the Nile to spend a peaceful morning on Elephantine Island. We walked among the specimen trees that Lord Kitchener had imported from all over the world.

In Luxor, we strolled in the gardens behind the Old Winter Palace Hotel, with neatly dated trees from the British era. We imagined Noel Coward and Agatha Christie having tea by the pool. We bought a slender bird guide to identify local species like the cartoonish hoopoe, with his crazy crest and long drill-like beak, and the menacing, large grey-and-black Egyptian crows.

The presence of Christianity was another surprise to us. St. Mark made his first convert in Alexandria in AD 46, and most Egyptians remained Christian until the time of the Crusades. One can spot crosses on steeples in villages along the Nile, and major cathedrals in the big cities.

There are 6 million Christian Copts in Egypt and guests at their churches are welcome. We spent an afternoon in Mari Girgis, originally known as Babylon, the Christian neighborhood of Cairo with its early stone churches, the Coptic Museum, old synagogue and peaceful cemetery.

Any traveler should carefully analyze the “When to Go†section of guidebooks. “Winter is mild, but the nights do get cool,†states one of our books. The Rough Guide observes, “The Nile Valley is balmy throughout the winter season.†Remember, January is winter in Egypt. It gets cold. Ski parkas would come in handy on a Nile cruise ship deck. The tiny swimming pools are filled with frigid water. Bring layers of clothing, take a warm jacket and forget sandals if traveling in the winter’s high season. In the summer, it’s hot to scorching.

We also were unprepared for the scale of the tourism industry, which produces more than 11 percent of Egypt’s total gross domestic product and is a major foreign currency earner. Egypt’s goal this year is 14 million tourists contributing $11.5 billion in revenue.

Most of the foreign visitors travel in large tour groups, which are herded from tour bus to temple to hotel. My husband and I are independent travelers. We don’t like tours and timetables or making plans far in advance. We like to explore on our own. This is very difficult to do in Egypt.

The positive side of this global travelers’ destination is the opportunity to talk with people from everywhere. We had conversations and exchanged e-mails with Malaysian, Chinese, Japanese, British and Australian fellow travelers.

The presence of military security everywhere surprised and concerned us. There are metal detectors at the main gate of the Kan al-Khali Bazaar, where a bomb killed a French teenager in 2009, and bomb-sniffing dogs at the Marriott. The Egyptian Museum has squads of armed tourist police. Tourists traveling by road from Luxor to Aswan must assemble in convoys. Traveling by rail, tourists must use trains designated for tourists, which have armed, plain-clothes guards.

Much of this security seems ineffective. Bags are put through scanners but no one is looking at the monitor. Guards seem less than alert and are usually chatting with each other. Yet one will not find “terrorism†listed in the Frommer’s or Fodor’s index. For a realistic take on the security situation, check out the Australian government traveler’s alert at smartraveller.gov.au.

“We advise you to reconsider your need to travel to the Sinai at this time because of the very high threat of terrorist attack, including kidnapping,†it states.

Until we arrived, we could not understand the overwhelming impact of incessant haggling. It’s not just taxicabs and souvenirs, but we had to bargain for everything, including hotel rooms that had already been paid for. Fodor’s guide blithely suggests, “Keep smiling, and if the price isn’t suitable, simply walk away.â€

Want a can of Coke at the Luxor Temple but don’t want to pay $5? The trick may be to walk away.

“OK mister. How much you pay? It’s 25 Egyptian pounds only. OK, OK 20 Egyptian pounds [$4].†The vendor followed us yelling and then getting angry. “Scottish, Scottish, what you pay? American politics bad.â€

The concept of a fair price for buyer and seller does not exist. Every transaction is an argument. It’s not just about money, it’s an endless game. It got old really quickly.

But the monuments awed us — no book could have prepared us for the size and solidity of the Pyramids, Karnak’s hall of 145 giant columns or the beauty of sugar cane fields and palms seen from the window of the overnight sleeper train. It made us wonder where all the water in the Nile comes from. We reflected on development economics, Islamist politics and foreign policy. It is a vacation that made us think and wonder about time and empire.

 There is much that we did not see: the Siwa oasis, Alexandria, Sinai and the Red Sea. When we return to Egypt, we will be better prepared to experience this ancient and modern civilization.