Copyright © Tanya Piejus, 1998

My (now ex-)boyfriend, Scott, and I spent two weeks in Egypt in November 1998. We only had time to see the Nile Valley and started our quest, alone, in Cairo. Then we went with a semi-organised tour to Aswan and Luxor, finishing our holiday on our own again in Cairo. Below is my account of our travels in the Land of the Pharaohs and my impressions of Egypt past and present.

Saturday 7th November

Scott enjoyed his first ever plane flight. Swiss Air was clean and confident, much as expected, and we arrived in Cairo bang on time at 6 pm. We changed up some money at the airport and breezed through passport control, baggage reclaim and customs, then the fun began. 'Taxi? Taxi?' greeted us as we left the terminal and a crowd of about fifty Egyptians swarmed towards us. We'd already gone for the easy option and booked a taxi at a desk inside the airport so that, as we left the building, we could go straight to a waiting car. It probably cost us over the odds but we had a nice driver who pointed things out on the way, although he did try to convince us that the hotel we'd chosen wasn't good enough and that we should go to the one he suggested. The place we'd picked on the recommendation of the Rough Guide (well, we had to start somewhere) was the Pensione Roma. The entrance hall to the building that housed it was distinctly less than promising, but once we'd ridden up in the death-trap that passed for a lift, the fourth-floor reception was very welcoming. We booked in for four nights and were taken to a room at the front overlooking the main road, Sharia Mohammed Farid. It didn't take long for us to realise that we'd spend all night awake listening to the sound of hands perpetually jammed on car horns, shouting and barking dogs. We asked if we could change to a quieter room which the urbanely smiling man on reception was happy to let us do. The ride to the hotel had been hot and frantic so it was a relief to cool down and relax for a while. This was Cairo for £8 a night.

When we were feeling a little more normal, we decided to go for a stroll to find one of the famed juice bars for a much-needed drink and to check out our new surroundings. All-in-all, Cairo is much more Westernised and affluent than either of us had been lead to believe. The Egyptians are all immaculately dressed, the shops stock Calvin Klein jeans (real or fake we're not sure, but the ridiculously low prices suggest fake) and Caterpillar boots, and big Mercedes cars tear along the roads with surprising frequency. There are even less beggars than in London. We did a few round-the-blocks, had a lovely freshly-squeezed orange juice then headed back to the pension. The scary lift wouldn't come, so we hiked up the four flights to bed.

Sunday 8th November

Today was the day we'd pencilled in as a rendezvous with King Tut. Breakfast consisted of bread rolls with processed cheese spread and fig jam with tea or coffee. The antiquities museum isn't too far so we decided to walk. The city looks quite different in the daylight. Everything is covered in a thick layer of dust. Is it from the desert or just city filth? The pollution is bad so I suspect it's the latter. The Cairenes also seem to have a strange attitude to rubbish. As long as it's out of sight, it's out of mind, even if that means dumping it on the balcony of the person below or on the roof of their caravan. Every rooftop is therefore littered with broken furniture, discarded electrical equipment and every kind of domestic trash, but it's all invisible from street level. Only by leaning out of a hotel window does this detritus, all powdered with the ubiquitous layer of mucky grey dust, become apparent. Before setting off for the museum, we went to look at the Windsor Hotel which I'd had an eye on in the Rough Guide for its faded 1940s colonial charm, and that's exactly what it had. We fell in love. As we're only paying £4 each at the Roma, we decided to splurge and pay £10 each and stay at the Windsor for two nights.

When we arrived at the museum, we were accosted by a chatty man who said he had lived in England and indeed spoke good English. We chatted about the UK for a while, then the inevitable happened: 'I have a shop for perfume essence. Come to my shop.' So we went to his shop on the pretext that the museum was closed for half an hour during prayer time. He gave us Egytian-style tea, told us all about the family business, showed us press cuttings about his perfume empire and described the range of exotic essences that he had for our delectation. I gave in to his charming pressurising and splashed out a not inconsiderable wad of sterling for a 3 oz. bottle of 'Nefertiti' pure essence, no added alcohol, that I know Mum will like. We eventually managed to extricate ourselves, despite offers of free gifts and 'special discount for my English friends', and tried again to get to the museum. We managed to get half way up the road before we met another nice man who had lived in England and, this time, married a Liverpudlian. He allegedly works at the museum but is also an artist and paints pictures using natural pigments onto hand-made papyrus. Naturally, he wanted to take us to his 'gallery' until prayers were over, but he was a genuinely pleasant chap and showed us how papyrus was made, to the accompaniment of more tea. His pictures were actually lovely and seemed as far as we could tell like the real McCoy, so we both ended up buying two and he did make us what seemed like a good offer.

We finally managed to get through the doors of the museum via Tourist Police toting Kalashnikovs, bag searches and a E£20 (c. £4) entrance fee plus E£10 for my cameras. We made straight for the first floor in order to see Tutankhamun's gold before the crowds arrived. It was pretty busy already but we got in before they started letting people in in batches. The artefacts were quite as spectacular as I'd imagined, if not more so. The death mask seems to have a spiritual essence of its own and glows serenely under a low light in the middle of the room. Even after thousands of years away from living human eyes, the boy king's ideal effigy has an inestimable power to command your attention. The gold, lapis, jade and carnelian stones have held their magnificent lustre and have all the power of wonder that I'm sure they must have had for Howard Carter in 1922 and for the Pharaoh's legions of subjects when his young body was first laid to rest. The lighting was quite poor and I took what pictures I could, but nothing on celluloid will do these treasures justice. They have to be seen.

The rest of the museum was chock-full of statues, carvings, jewellery, mummy cases and all manner of preserved bits and pieces from pre-Dynastic times through to the arrival of Islam in Egypt. The scale of it all, both in time and space, is quite staggering. After some humming and hah-ing, we eventually decided not to go into the Mummy Room as we baulked at paying the £8 extra for the privilege. That's outrageous even by British standards and the same price as a night in our hotel! When we'd had enough of the museum, we had a look at the tacky souvenirs in the gift shop but were disappointed in the lack of genuine tat. They did have a Memphis snow globe with glitter instead of white bits, but it was E£25 which seemed to defeat the object. I got a large vinyl camel with biro eyes for E£10 which represented much better value for money.

We had intended to head for Groppi's for lunch, a well known short chain of Cairo cafe cum delis, but were diverted by a man who said that lunch wasn't till 2.30. We thought this rather bizarre but as we weren't ravenous we took up his suggestion of having a look at some more of the government-registered shops nearby first. Having already been lured into two emporia and parted with more cash than we'd planned to, we really didn't want to go into a third but were enticed in anyway to look at the glass bottles as an excuse for getting out of the midday heat. Scott was quite keen to buy some essence and the staff weren't pushy, unlike our earlier perfume magnate. The owner obviously liked to chat. It's amazing how all three shop-owners we met today all have been to Yorkshire and have friends or do business there. Is this because we said we came from London? Anyway, whether he was spinning us a line or not, he was a very nice man and made some incisive comments about people and politics. Scott bought some citron essence for the correct price of a pound per gramme. I'm sure I paid much more for mine as I shelled out E£65 per ounce, but it's too late now.

Two people today mentioned Felfela as a good place to have lunch and, as it was just round the corner from where we were, we decided to go there instead of Groppi's. We had a very tasty meat shwarma (a doner kebab in a bun, basically) and a big bottle of water for under £1. We spent the afternoon pottering about by the Nile, drinking 7 Up in a cheesy 'pub' on the waterside, getting mugged by cats and taking photos.

Crossing the road here is an entertaining game. We've been hooted at several times now so feel like pros. Piccadilly Circus will never be the same again. It has nothing on downtown Cairo. We changed some more cash at the Nile Hilton after our morning's financial haemorrhage in readiness for pyramiding tomorrow. After our second showers of the day and being screamed at by several amplified muezzins, we headed for Restaurant Alfi Bey just up the road and had a yummy kebab and kofta meal for £3.50 each, with delicious mint tea to finish. We then went to the bar at the Windsor for a G&T each which cost us more than we'd just spent on our entire meal and drinks. Getting used to the relative values of things here is going to be one of the most difficult things, I think!

Monday 9th November

Today was hard work both physically and mentally. We got up early in order to have breakfast, move our gear to the Windsor and find us a taxi to take us to Giza before the tour buses started arriving. We got a taxi outside the Windsor and argued the driver down to E£20 from his original E£40, although the real fare was E£10 according to the Rough Guide. Prices generally seem to have doubled from when the Rough Guide was written so maybe E£20 was about right.

The drive out took about half an hour. When we got to Giza village, we stopped at a junction and a man who was obviously a friend of the driver's got in and started to talk us into going to the pyramids by horse or camel. We'd read about this ruse in the Guide and I was remembering what else it said. Before we got near the pyramids, I thought 'I bet he takes us straight to the stables and says that this is the entrance to the pyramids and, if we don't take a horse or camel, we'll have to walk miles across the desert.' And, lo and behold, that was exactly what happened. We politely refused the horse/camel offer and asked to be taken to the ticket office, which they duly did after one attempt at denying its existence, without much resentment. For E£20 we got our ticket to the Giza pyramids and walked towards the Sphinx, but someone who said he was a ticket-checker showed us round to a bizarre side route and started talking about the monuments. That sinking feeling struck again. We didn't want a guide who knew less than we did about the antiquities so paid him off with some baksheesh and a lot of no thank-yous. Having made our way back to the real entrance, we were able to begin to take in what the pyramids were actually like. The Sphinx was unfortunately somewhat underwhelming. It's a lot smaller than either of us had been lead to believe and is in a pretty bad state of repair. You also can't get very close to it to get any feeling of its true scale. I'd always assumed from the photos I'd seen that it was the same sort of size as the pyramids, which are pretty damn big, but in comparison it's tiddly.

As we walked around the pyramid complex remarking on the generally unkempt nature of the site, a young Bedouin on a camel started to talk to us, telling us about the pyramids and asking questions. He was pleasant enough, but was one of an army of hawkers plying their trade of horse or camel rides across the desert, postcards, scarabs, etc. and assorted attempts at guiding. Some small baksheesh to a member of the Tourist Police got us a look at a vizier's tomb which was decorated with some worn hieroglyphs and each time we emerged from the darkness, we were bombarded again from all sides. The camel boy promised to wait for us while we went into a pyramid. Cheops' pyramid, the biggest, was closed but we got tickets to go into the middle-sized one with its alabaster tip. There was a back-breaking, muscle-wrenching climb down a steep, low passageway into the hot, sticky burial chamber. The second major disappointment of the day came when we realised that the inside isn't decorated as we'd expected but was totally plain, and all that's left in there is an empty sarcophagus which you have to pay baksheesh to a bloke to wave a torch at. There wasn't much to see but the feeling of being inside such an ancient, colossal structure with an immense weight of rock over your head was one worth the climb.

When we got out, the young man and his camel were indeed still there and he offered to take us across the desert to Abu Sir and Saqqara by camel from his father's stable. Knowing that this was a minimum six-hour journey in a bum-crunching saddle in the heat of the desert, we politely declined but, as it was still only 10.30, agreed to a short journey up to a higher part of the desert escarpment behind the pyramids from which we would be able to see and photograph all nine pyramids - three kings, six queens - and get a real feel for the magnitude of the Giza creations. The camel boy's name was Ali and he was 23, though looked younger. He spoke excellent English, although he'd never been to school, and had learnt the tourist camel-ride trade from his father since the age of 11. He was bright and interested enough in us to make chatting with him a pleasure and we plodded along for half and hour or so on his urbane camel, Moses. Once up on the escarpment, we could indeed see all the pyramids. From there, they looked suitably impressive and much more so than they do close up from where they just look like a big pile of rocks. Considering when they were built - when the ancient Britons were still eating dung and grunting - they are a towering achievement and I'm glad that I've finally seen the only surviving Wonder of the Ancient World. The hassle, constant as it was, did however mar my enjoyment of one of humankind's oldest creations. I've long thought that I'd like to see the pyramids before I die but, as is so often the case when I finally catch up with ancient history, I wish I could have encountered it 50 years ago when it wasn't over-hyped, screened off and sanitised for public consumption. I'd love to have come to Giza in the war years when you could still climb to the top of the Great Pyramid without having to step over crisp packets and Coke cans or be constantly harangued to buy worthless tat from the locals (although I strongly suspect that, in this respect, nothing's changed). I suppose modern Egyptians have little reverence for something that was built by a civilisation entirely removed from their own in time, and in their culture, beliefs and lifestyle. I'm still trying to get to grips with the Egyptian mind set. It seems so different from our own.

Ali and Moses dropped us, almost literally, back at the Sphinx and we gave him the agreed E£25 but he wangled and extra E£5 out of me which I said was for Moses for being such a good camel and I got a musky, ruminant's kiss from Moses in return. I also changed three English pound coins for Ali as the banks won't take them. A taxi driver then offered to take us on to Saqqara then back to Giza if we wanted, so we agreed to his outrageous price of E£55 as Scott was feeling too stressed to haggle over it and I didn't want to make matters worse. Renegotiation was still an option after all.

The pressure didn't let up at Saqqara either as we had a look at the Step Pyramid of King Djoser. It is the oldest surviving stone-built structure and was the forerunner to the pyramids we'd just seen. It's a sizeable thing and benefits from being isolated. I could tell that Scott would soon crack from the endless 'You like postcards?' and requests for baksheesh, so we didn't linger to look at the tombs, much as I'd have liked to.

The taxi driver took us on to the rest of the tomb complex and dozed while we went in. We saw inside the Pyramid of Teti after being unnecessarily rude to the old man outside but he wanted money for doing absolutely nothing which we thought was a bit rich considering that we'd had to fork out yet another E£20 to be there at all. The tomb of Mene-Ruka was the most interesting and was a rambling complex of 32 carving-filled rooms depicting various well preserved scenes of farming, fishing, and the beating of tax evaders and other heinous criminals.

It was still only lunchtime, although we felt like we'd been there for several years, so we negotiated what seemed like a reasonable price with the taxi driver to go on to Dahshur then back into downtown Cairo. Realising that we couldn't kill another five hours until the Sound and Light Show, we decided to give it a miss and save our money for the one in Karnak which is much more highly rated by people we've spoken to.

As we drove between sites, we saw more of ordinary life outside the big city. Small, often mud-built, houses clung to the banks of the irrigation canals which doubled as toilets, clothes-washing facilities and, somewhat dubiously considering their other functions, as a source of food. Traffic was less, pedestrianism more and the people were distinctly poorer-looking and less Westernised than their city slicker cousins. This was the Egypt I was expecting to see and the egrets stalking about amongst the groves of date palms reminded me even more strongly of Morocco. Small children waved and shouted 'Hallo!' from the roadside and juggled oranges. A dead horse floated in the canal, bloated and fly-blown.

Dahshur is a strange set-up. The four pyramids that make up the complex are on military property and its only very recently that the army has moved back the boundary of its training camp to allow tourists to see them. The only pyramid you can get to, though, is the so-called Red Pyramid, the first proper pyramid-shaped pyramid. Sneferu was responsible for its creation but wasn't actually buried there. A short distance away is the Bent Pyramid, and intermediate stage between the Step Pyramid and the Giza and Red Pyramids. All you're allowed to do is go halfway up the Red Pyramid and inside it and go round the side of it to photograph the Bent Pyramid. We gave over yet another E£10 for our pyramid ticket.

Just as we were reading the information board, an unusual presence at these sites, we were approached by a young Tourist Policeman with atrocious teeth and a Kalashnikov. He beckoned to us to go with him for 'five moments'. As he was carrying a gun, we didn't feel like we were in a position to argue. As it was a military zone and the area round the pyramids restricted, I thought that maybe he had to escort us round the side to take our photos. His English was limited and not good and it seemed like a reasonable supposition. But, as we got further round and he had finished the usual banal enquiries about were we married and where did we come from, I began to worry despite his constant assurance that he was Tourist Police. His official armband was tatty and worn and didn't look like the ones we'd seen at the museum. We were miles from anywhere, no-one could see us and he had a gun. When he said 'Russian rifle!' and yanked out the clip to show us the live ammo, I really began to feel like I'd rather be anywhere but there. As he walked away, the first thing that went through my head was 'Oh my God, he's going to shoot us!'. All sorts of ideas were going through my head about him being a terrorist in disguise, and Scott said 'He's going to shoot it into the desert.' Neither option had much appeal and we remained rooted where we were. But he kept beckoning us on, saying 'It OK. Come!' Having persuaded myself that we weren't experiencing our last few seconds on Earth, we tentatively followed him to a miniature pyramid, which he said had been brought there from Aswan, and then thrust the Kalashnikov into Scott's hands. Scott was very shocked by this unexpected manoeuvre and I was taken aback also. The policeman took the clip out when he realised that we really didn't like it. I said 'No guns in England' which he seemed to appreciate. He then gave me his radio and put his grubby beret on Scott's head. Still not quite understanding what he was doing because he wasn't offering any sort of explanation, we went along with it. Then he asked for my camera and it all became clear. He photographed us with his macho, pseudo-military paraphernalia standing like lemons in front of the mini-pyramid, then cajoled us over to stand where he could take a picture of us with the 'Benty Pyramid' behind. He held the camera askew and snapped away as we stood there still feeling scared and also rather foolish. Then we said 'OK. Enough, thank you very much' and gave him his stuff back. Of course, he wanted money for the photos which was then obviously his main objective of getting us round there. He asked for E£10 but we pleaded lack of cash and gave him E£5, following it by saying firmly that we wanted to go back to the front of the pyramid, at which point he began saying that we mustn't tell anyone what he'd done. We assured him that we wouldn't shop him to the military but we really had to go back. He kept putting his fingers to his lips and asking 'OK? OK?' until we made it clear that his secret was safe. It wasn't till the evening that we fully realised the implications of his little scam. He obviously meant no harm and just wanted some extra cash to clothe and feed his alleged three babies and wife, but it was a frightening and irresponsible abuse of his position of power and trust that could potentially go horribly wrong in more ways than I'm sure he realised. That's not the sort of encounter I'd want to have again in a hurry, but it'll certainly be a good story to tell at home!

After this bizarre incident, it was a relief to climb up to the door in the pyramid and descend into the inner chambers. Being so inaccessible and only for the real pyramid enthusiasts, Dahshur is visited by few hardy souls and ignored by the average tour party. Consequently, when we got inside only three other people, all apparently French archaeologists of some sort, were our only companions. It was also quite badly lit and we needed a torch to see up into the high recesses of the stepped ceiling which gave an odd feeling of space. A wooden staircase took us up to the claggy, ammoniac second chamber which never held the embalmed body of the king for whom it was meant. The whole place had a eerie, untouched atmosphere about it that brought home some of the excitement that must have been felt by the men who daubed their names on the walls of the first chamber after breaking it open over 70 years ago. It's easy to believe in curses in that sweaty, clinging, deathly silent grave that never was.

The steep, bent-double climb back out was agonising and the air outside felt cold even though the temperature was in the high 20s. We had to sit and recover our breath and muscle power before trudging back down to the taxi. If the air had been clearer, we would have been able to see all the pyramids at Saqqara, Abu Sir and Giza, but the haze blocked out everything except the army base and the horizon wobbled in the heat haze. Our taxi driver took us back along the main Cairo-Luxor mad 'dual carriageway' which in reality had about six lanes, depending on where the traffic was coming from and how much of it there was. The Egyptians drive like lunatics and pedestrians seem to have a death wish but, in a bizarre sort of way, the chaos actually works and no-one gets hurt.

Our driver had five children, Mohammed being his favourite. He dug out a picture of his family from the glove compartment and showed it to us with a big, cheesy grin of unusually well-kept teeth and talked a bit about them. When we got back to Cairo, we gave him an extra E£5 on top of the E£85 that he'd asked for his day's driving and I gave him a couple of biros for his kids.

The Windsor Hotel is great. We have a period room with a shower in the corner, a bakelite phone for room service, big, heavy furniture including a hat-stand and a large, solid sink with an art deco shape and plug mechanism. The bar has seats made from barrels and pointed, arched windows opening to the street on three sides, and a fez-wearing, towel-toting man patrols the bar with his silver tray and discreetly slides the bill onto your table in a little pot. Everything in the hotel is original, even down to the leviathan manual telephone switchboard behind reception and the electric fans on the wall. I wouldn't be surprised if the aspidistras in the lobby have been there since 1930 too. It's a real slice of pre-Revolution Egypt when the officers of the British Army downed gin in the bar and conducted their extra-marital affairs in the softly gloomy bedrooms to the sound of the melancholy wails of the muezzin.

We'd decided to eat in and after a much-needed, post-desert shower, we adjourned to the restaurant. Our asking for a menu had caused great, but mysterious, hilarity earlier in the evening and when we got to our table, we realised why. Basically, you get what you're given. We knew it was 'Egyptian evening' but beyond that we had no idea what we'd be eating or how much it would cost. We ended up with a four-course scoff-fest consisting of lentil soup to start, a mixture of macaroni, rice and fried onions (kushari) followed by spicy beanburger-type vegetable patties with that traditional Egyptian favourite, chips, and fuul (bean mush) which is foul. Lastly, came a nutty, honey-covered pastry dessert like baklava but I was too stuffed by that time to really enjoy it even though it was small. Apparently, a set four-course meal happens every evening, with a limited choice of main course, for E£33.

Earlier in the day, we'd been to Groppi's as we'd missed lunch. We went to try some Egyptian cake and drink mint tea. We got the cake after a strange pointing session with the woman behind the counter, but they didn't serve mint tea. I suppose, as we'd wanted home-grown fare, we shouldn't have gone to a pseudo-American cafe! The locals were busy tucking into ice cream sundaes and chocolate sponge cake.

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