Working for the Pharoah: Upper Egypt

 

Trains heading out of major cities never show that city's best face. This train out of Cairo was no exception, paralleling a rubbish-strewn canal.  It wasn't long before rural scenes opened up, rear projection for the next ten hours. Fishermen resting under the palms. Donkeys, squatting farmers. Villages again and again, and the fellaheen in the spaces between.  Fellaheen, a word that always reminds me of Kerouac, but Jack's idea about the "fellaheen feeling about life, that timeless gayety of people not involved in great cultural and civilization issues," didn't necessarily jibe with the hard labors I saw from the window, tending to the endless green. I knew from the map that the Nile was on the left side of the train, but I only saw it for a brief few moments, as we pottered along this fertile strip that she had midwifed.  

 

 

Luxor Temple sat impressively on the banks of the Nile. Napoleon's theft of its obelisk gave birth to Europe's fascination with things Egyptian, was the initial catalyst for all of us coming to stand here and gawp. From this vantage point there was somewhat of a theme park feel, partly due to the fact that it was surrounded completely by the city.  But upon entry, the details began to wow you.  The whole place was a study in the history of architecture, as subsequent dynasties kept adding to the place, the ultimate DIY hand-me-down.  Though they never fail to impress me, I tend to find heiroglyphic art to be like the simple drawings of children, an innocent being coming into maturity.  But these parallel walls served as terrific example the contrast between the high level of carving that the Egyptians could do, with the less skilled Greeks of a millennium later. And it wasn't until later that I found that I'd missed Rimbaud's graffiti altogether, carved here during his rambles. Another problem with group tours, as I like to go beyond the schoolbooks to lateral history, how these places played out in music, literature, cinema.  A reminder to read ahead, seek those details on my own.

 

 

Had I been on my own I'd have been tempted to walk the boulevard flanked by sphinxes, which had recently been unearthed beneath centuries of habitation. But I know that in being over three kilometers long, it would grow rather tedious after a while. Yet Karnak at the far end would have proved sufficient reward.  I was taken with it immediately, for unlike Luxor, it stood alone at the edge of town, backed by the desert.  A place to stumble upon rather than being led to by coaches moving along tidy roads.  Pillar after pillar was ornately decorated, a delight to wander beneath as you explored the labyrinth of her pathways and open courtyards.  The softening of the evening light and the call to prayer completed the mise-en-scene. 

 

The Valley of the Kings across the Nile was of bucket list material, but luckily we got there before the full rush of crowd.  Tut's tomb was of course a must visit, but it was relatively spartan as most of its decorations now rested in the museum in Cairo.  Seti I was the real stunner, the wall paintings alive with color, the most beautiful I saw in Egypt.  We popped into a few other tombs,  including the Tomb of Merenptah, which was real Indiana Jones material.  Most tombs open into multiple side chambers, but this one bore steeply and diagonally toward the center of the earth, its length measure by the sweat and labored breathing of visitors coming back up.  

 

 

There were other visits on the West Bank.  Hatshepsut, whose 1997 massacre never left my mind.  The Valley of the Queens which I loved for its quiet, near absence of visitors.  This must be how the Victorians experienced things, empty but for a few others.  Nefertari's tomb is supposedly the best in Egypt, but has been sadly off-limits for a number of years.  And the Amenhotep III Sun Temple, looking like a film set at the edge of the desert.  

 

 

Sailing the Nile in a convoy of cruise ships.  It was comedic somewhat, like Wacky Racers, each ship honking and jockeying for position.  After things thinned out a bit, it was wonderful to sit and read under the canopy, riverside scenes pulling attention from the page again and again.   There was one lunch out on deck, and a pair of visits to riverside temples. Yet despite the impressiveness of Edfu and Kom Ombo,  I'd have preferred more time just to sit quietly with life on the Nile.   

 

 

Aswan and its Isis Temple island of Philae, her squared windows perfectly framing the adjacent islands, the small craft cutting the most upper waters of the Nile.  (Yet again my attention being pulled from the surroundings of man-made glory to the natural world outside.)  A shopping spree spontaneously opening up on our small water-craft, followed quickly by a slower Felucca cruise.  The design on our sail proved our teenage Nubian crew's affinity for Bob Marley.  But they were no sailors, skilled more in the art of tack.  Again and again we'd race toward the steel wall of a moored cruise ship, to zig away at the last moment. Two boys on surfboards latched themselves to our boat, offering a Frère Jacques serenade for tips.  Kichener Island wasn't much, and how I longed to climb the dunes up to the towering ruins across the water.  The ride back was better, the current pulling us steadily through a lesser cataract, upon whose banks grazed water fowl, under the haunting gaze of the Aga Khan Mausoleum.  The setting sun again perfecting the scene.       

 

 

As expected, Abu Simbel was the jewel of the Nile.  Its grandeur made it easy to forget that it had been relocated here, and I wondered why more Egyptians aren't set designers for films.  It must have been incredible to stumble across such places accidentally, from the back of a horse.  In that spirit, I wish we'd sailed here, jumping another ship the other side of the dam.  I'm glad we didn't undertake the monotonous four-hour drive like the pair of Australian guys I'd had beers with on board a couple of evenings, but there was something absurd about flying down for 20 minutes, visiting for an hour or so, then jetting back.  

 

 

The latter flight eventually led back to Cairo, tracing the green strip of land that marked the Nile.  This aero-technology was a direct result her life-giving waters, which shaped her people, her culture, her civilization, and by extension, Western civilization itself.  

 

On the turntable:  Bob Dylan, "Desire"

 

Working for the Pharoah: North Coast

 

The Corniche of Alexandria reminds one of seafront Havana, all those crumbling, weathered facades of past glory.  This must have been a beautiful city in the colonial days.  But now all I see is the scrum of traffic roaring at their bases, a constant pulse that makes a bane of our waterfront hotel, as it cuts us off from the inviting beaches, betraying our sleep.  The symphonic honk at white vans that slow and stop to add more to innards already swelling with passengers, then the swerve across lanes that serve as mere suggestion. A sticker of Bart Simpson stares at me from one window, mockingly.

Daytime takes us away from this, to the glory of the past, albeit occupied.  The Roman amphitheater is tucked into a small park between newish apartment blocks, shocking white under a flawless blue sky.  Roman heads of stone line one fence.  The catacombs are a short drive away, a cornucopia of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman influences. Its the first real Egyptian tomb I've seen, but it harkens back to past trips, connects me with familiar context.  A trio of sarcophagi, empty chambers with shelving where the bodies once were, but generally pretty bare.  The same can be said for Pompei's pillar nearby, rising from a patch of earth bare but for a pair of small sphinxes.  (To be fair, a major excavation appears to be going on.). I had wanted to walk between the two sites, figuring that feet would move more quickly than our big bus, but the streets look pretty beat up, a state of dereliction usually seen in war zones.     

 

I think that Alexandria's glory is in her British colonial past, as this city thrived a century ago, a city filled with artists and writers.  I would have loved to have seen Lawrence Durrell's house, where we wrote much of his Alexandria Quartet.  And an overnight, or at least a beer, at the Hotel Cecil, just across the water from the most recent incarnation of the Alexandria Lighthouse, and beside Saad Zaghloul Park, from where Cleopatra's Needles were liberated in order to serve the good people of London and New York.  We do drive past the hotel, which holds pride of place in a rather nice part of town filled with green spaces and cafes, a neighborhood ready-made for a walk. But our itinerary doesn't allow for it, and our noisy hotel is too far away for a stroll at dawn.   

 

 

One thing with organized trips is you don't really get a sense for a town. In Morocco, we made that happen, bailing out on the group midday in order to explore.  Ping-ponging between tourist sites doesn't allow one to feel a place. I never really get a sense of Alexandria; my feet never pace off the length of her city blocks, my nose never fills with her scent.  In our self-exploration, Lai Yong and I
 got some idea of Cairo, but that place seemed to sprawl, and sprawl makes it impossible to befriend a place in a short time.  The same can be said about cities like Seoul or Taipei.
  Where is their heart?

 

 

In the morning, the road toward El-Alamein bisects a massive marsh. Apparently, this is what the Nile did during its annual flood, nurturing crops and creating fishing grounds.  In that spirit, today I spy a number of white-capped fishermen in skiffs, testing the waters in the shadows of massive petroleum factories.

This stretch is known as the North Coast.  Development stretches for dozens of kilometers along the shores of the Mediterranean.  Much of this is already inhabited, but large sections are developing simultaneously, which reminds me of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan, a city clean and tidy, but with little scenes of life or humanity. One billboard promises, "Summer season '26 planned here." Which, from the current state of development, is not very lightly. 

 

 

Being a British group, our purpose here is to visit the military cemetery.  I'm breathless at the sheer number of crosses here, a sensation I felt with all the names etched into the granite of the Vietnam memorial in DC.  So many men. And this is just the British.  Other allies are buried elsewhere. Identical crosses fill this narrow little valley, sunk in dry earth, though well-irrigated to bring color, life, into the flowering shrubs randomly spaced between the graves.  Backing the cemetery is a large rubbish tip. It seems an app metaphor for what old politicians and generals do with young men such as these.  We'll later pass the Italian cemetery a few miles out of town. Which got me wondering, of course, where are the Germans?

 

 

The drive back to Cairo cuts across a featureless landscape.  This is real desolation, unlike any desert I've ever seen, and I've traveled in many, lived in a few. With no mountains as waypoints, the emptiness feels infinite. And this is what they were all fighting for. Beside the highway is a scorched block of asphalt, rectangular, the size of a sedan.
 I hate to think of what would happen if you were stranded out here.

 

 

The world begins to take on a hint of green again, then all is pastoral. This is Wadi Natrum.  We detour to St. Macarius, a monastery fortified like a castle, with solid defensive structures 
and self-sufficent agriculture.  The earth-colored rounded structures remind one of Tatooine. I knew of Coptic Christianity, but wasn't aware that they make up 10 percent of Egypt's population.   The head priest leads us around, seemingly at ease with himself, but also quick to scold, a rebuke immediately followed by a warm smile.  I've encountered many such men in my travels, and their radiant calm tempts me into leading a similar self-reflective life spent surrounded by the natural world.   But the outside world inevitably calls me back.  In this particular case, it is in the form of Cairene traffic.   

  

On the turntable:  Kate Bush, "Never for Ever"

 

Working for the Pharaoh: Cairo

 

 

Jetting in through the dust, which I first take to be a sand storm, until realizing that it's Cairo smog.  Whatever the case, it robs me of a desired view of the Gizan pyramids from the air.  We've been on the move since dawn, but before long we come to a complete halt, sitting in horrendous traffic beneath a sign saying,  "Cairo in Motion."  But the humor quickly wears off, as each journey in the city is at triple the map time.  I don't know how the locals can handle it, how they can plan anything.

The traffic also invades my dreams, pouring in through the windows of my first two hotels.  On the third night, seeing that our room overlooks a busy roundabout by only four stories, I immediately request another.  The manager claims that rooms in the back are potentially noisy due to their overhanging an outdoor mall. In any case, the place is fully booked up.  With the white noise of the air con cranked, I do get a decent sleep for the first time in Egypt, plus an apology in the form of a basket of fruit and some cookies in a nice souvenir tin.    

 

 

The Sphinx is much smaller than expected, and surprisingly tamed in a stone pen.  I remember it as being out on its own, free-ranging amongst the sands.  There are relatively few people here at the early hour, as most beeline quickly for the pyramids.  One Korean tourist gets photographed over and over by her friend,  going through an array of Tik-Tok poses such as mimicking the Sphinx's drinking from a straw, or giving its pouty mouth a kiss. 

Amazing to see the pyramids from afar, but closer in they don't slay me in the way that the Taj Mahal did, or the way Nara's Tōdai-ji never fails to.  I look up at the apex of Cheops, wishing that climbing were still allowed, though the blocks are much more massive than I'd thought.  (A theme!). Rather than like the stair-master from hell, it would be all upper-body, a perpetual push-up contest.   An ample consolation prize is following the habitrail passages to the inner chamber, the angles at a slippery 45 degrees.  Back outside again, Lai Yong and I do one clockwise round the perimeter, as the tourist numbers build, most going through their own photographic poses which in timelapse would cumulatively resemble the heiroglyphic poses on the walls of the temples too come.  (There are no hieroglyphs in any of pyramids of Giza.)  The locals don't appear to find any of this offensive, but I do get told off by a guard for photographing a pair of workmen slaving away at the pyramid's base.   

 

The new GEM museum just up the road dazzles, opened just six weeks before.  I somehow wish they'd mocked the Louvre in putting a faux Arc de Triomphe beneath the hanging obelisk out front.  The towering statue of Ramses II in the annex welcomes me back, for it was his exhibition I'd seen at Vancouver Expo in 1986.  We of course immediately head to the top floors for the Tutankhamen exhibition, past large windows overlooking the pyramids out in the sand.  It gives the expected feeling one gets when confronted by a renowned work of art, and things inevitably appear smaller.  The death mask dazzles, and I spend a long moment simply looking, etching it onto memory.  From there we zig-zag down through the terraced exhibits, taken with their age and their beauty, but a personal lack of context and familiarity make things blend after awhile.  Incredible how the mind compresses history, as if ancient Egypt happened over a long weekend.  How to take in 3000 years?  Best to engage a museum in small doses, over multiple visits. All museums should offer lifetime passes.  

Another day, ten days later, we visit the Saqqara, which surprisingly is not spelled like the homonymic beer.  By now, the culture and history have grown more familiar, so I could resonate more with the mastaba tombs, and the symbols within.  Entry to Djoser's Step Pyramid isn't as dramatic as the Great Pyramid, but the sheer drop into the inner chamber was like the lair of a Bond villain.  The real Indiana Jones moment comes at the Mastaba of Ti, spiraling down through the entrance to a low tunnel extending within.  That tomb's real treasures are in a side chamber just below ground level, armies of heiroglyphs popping with color.  As we have a flight that evening, there is no time to visit the nearby Dahshur area, but I am happy to see the Bent Pyramid out in the haze, its pitch narrowing dramatically to resemble a Hersey's kiss.  

 

 A full day in Cairo, the morning cool spent in the labyrinthian old city, popping in and out of Coptic churches.  We reconnect again with the ancients in a plate of koshari, my main takeaway dish from the country.  We then visit the ancients themselves in the new National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, meandering through the basement maze to go eye-to eye with the twenty mummies there.  I lean in again and again to get a better look at the contours of their faces, the texture of their hair, feeling pity that their eternities are being spent far from where they'd anticipated.  At any moment I expect one to suddenly turn toward me, hissing angrily beneath the glass.  

Out front, we grab a passing taxi for the short ride over to Khan el-Khalili.  In his near incomprehensible English, our driver tells us that he lived a few years in Miami (Florida, not Egypt), and asks if we want to keep him for the day, which we do.  His sense of direction is about as bad as his linguistic skills, but he is nice and friendly and we admire his ambition.  He takes the latter a little too far in claiming we were a note short when paying him at the end.  Lai Yong had counted the bills twice before handing them over, so he possibly dropped one deftly to the floor as he counted them back.  No real harm, getting conned for three bucks. By by this, my last full day in Egypt, I'd come to discover that everyone had some kind of side-hustle.  Not to say that they were duplicitous or sneaky, but that people even in the most honest professions seemed to have some other adjacent means of making money.   

 

 

Khan el-Khalili is the old Muslim bazaar, and Naguib Mahfouz country.  His Cairo trilogy was set here, and we follow a walking course of its fictionalized locations, along narrow lanes crowded with stalls, and ruined lanes lined with debris, perhaps off the ruins of buildings molting above.  A mint tea at his El Fishawy Cafe is de rigueur, albeit growing touristy.  One final detour to Midaq Alley, the title of another of his books.  A shopkeeper at the corner of this little stub of an alley smiles at me as I pass, saying only, "Naguib Mahfouz."  This is one of my favorite memories of Cairo. 

 

 

Another terrific memory is smoking shisha on a terrace overlooking the river. As I partook of the fruit-flavored tobacco, I remember the last time I smoked anything, around a campfire on the banks of the Laotian Mekong on Christmas night in 2009, with a bottle of red taking the edge of the burn.  I hadn't smoked since, nor had any desire too,  and although shisha is more benign, I think I'll leave behind smoking altogether, here, on the backs of the river Nile.   

But the greatest memory is dinner with an old friend, with whom I'd shared dormitory space in pre-handover Hong Kong for a few months in 1997, before we both individually disappeared into China for the summer. In those pre-digital, guidebook as bible days, we kept leaving one another notes at various hostels and cafes across the country, constantly missing one another by days, constantly leap-frogging.  As such it was terrific to catch up on near 30 years of history, with many unasked questions remaining for next time.  His own history proved to be as rambling as my own, yet with more tethers, in the form of far-flung university degrees and extended postings as an expat.  He still gave good story, about being stuck in pandemic Yemen during warlike conditions, and sharing a western diplomat's quip on colonialism as being like a three day bender on rot-gut tequila, followed by a fortnight-long hangover.

 

 

There was a side trip to the north, and of course, a week on the Nile down south.  But for now, some hindsight.  With some countries, my explorations felt so thorough that I see no need to go back.  Egypt is one of these, and to be frank, Cairo traffic has forever curbed any desire to return to that bloated city.  If I were to return, I'd try to arrive by ship in Alexandria to spend a day walking its colonial past (see next post), then fly to Sinai to climb that peninsula's famous mountain.  Good enough for Moses, but I like to think I have a better sense of inner navigation.  And no burning of bushes, or anything else.

 

On the turntable:  The Cure, "Three Imaginary Boys"   

Sunday Papers: Shaun Grant

 

"In my experience, those relying on God's intervention, soon find themselves joining him."

 

On the turntable:  The Thompson Twins, "Here's to Future Days"

 

The origin of the Mackerel Road

 

 

My latest for The Japan Times... 

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2026/01/17/travel/obama-kyoto-travel-history-saba-kaido/

On the turntable: Talking Heads, "Talking Heads"

 

Walking the Iseji

 

A week on the Kumano Kodo Iseji, broken into four parts. Over at Heartland...

https://heartlandjapan.com/%e3%80%90vol-1%e3%80%91explore-kumano-kodo-iseji-guided-walk-the-pilgrimage-begins-at-ise-jingu-shrine/

https://heartlandjapan.com/%e3%80%90vol-2%e3%80%91explore-kumano-kodo-iseji-guided-walk-iconic-stone-steps-of-tsuzurato-magose-toge-passes/ 

https://heartlandjapan.com/%e3%80%90vol-3%e3%80%91explore-kumano-kodo-iseji-guided-walk-owase-and-conquering-the-rugged-yakiyama-toge-pass/

https://heartlandjapan.com/%e3%80%90vol-4%e3%80%91explore-kumano-kodo-iseji-guided-walk-seaside-beauty-from-matsumoto-toge-to-shingu/ 

 

On the turntable:  The Tubes, "Outside Inside"

 

Happy New Year!