Planning after 2800 years

The previous post in this series is here..

Our second morning in Egypt started at 3:30 AM to get ready to hit the Cairo airport from Giza. We were flying to Aswan. Once we landed and got the bags, we saw that they broke the wheels on my big suitcase. We were talking to the AirCairo rep at the small Aswan airport to complain that the brand new bag was damaged and he said "this is just a small thing. if you go to the main street in Aswan you can get it fixed!". He didn't even want to accept a complaint. Just bought the suitcase last month. Our guide, a patient softspoken man by the name of Walid, was already waiting and he just shook his head. At that point decided to lift it as much as possible or readjust the weight to be able to drag it with the wheels on the front side! So we loaded it into the large van and started off towards the first stop of the day. 

Aswan dam!

Egypt, the land of the Pharoh's and pyramids gets to go through successive invasions and takeovers from Romans, Greeks, Brits, and Ra knows how many other strifes between the North and South. Every now and then someone comes and unifies the place and claims a throne. 

By the time the military takes over from the monarchy and General Naser leads the country post World War II, he is inheriting a huge population, a developing economy that is hungry for resources and development, which all relies on one thing. Water! A country that is 90% desert needs water. 

As a kid in India we learn a lot about Nehru, Nasser and Tito from Yugoslavia coming up with the concept of Non-Aligned nations that don't want to take sides in the US vs. USSR arms race. They push for economic development over the cold war. That was our history books. 

All these countries got help in some form from the USSR. There is a monument to symbolize the early work.

Egypt did in its early days but when the terms were not favorable, they went to the world bank with even worse terms to get teh Aswan dam built. However, after starting the project, they realized that a lot of old temples were going to be flooded. 

Guess a few old temples in ruins going underwater was not a big deal initially. Given they were relocating so many villages to the other side of the dam, it was understandable. 

Then they literally got international help from the archeology community and chopped up temples block by block and moved them to higher ground. The effort is extremely commendable!

The dam itself is a massive undertaking. We walked on it and took pictures. Got a history and engineering lesson from the display boards on the dam. While all this was going on, I realized Arabic is a beautiful language in Aswan area compared to Cairo. In Cairo, it came across as staccatto and a rude tone. In Aswan the syllables were all blending together and there was a softness to most of the words. 

There is an old Aswan dam which is now more of a sluice gate that is generating minimal electricity. That itself is massive. The new dam is a game changer. Still Egypt has its own version of the "Cauvery water issue" with Ethiopia as they have built a dam as well and that brings in less water into Lake Nasser. 

This is the largest manmade freshwater lake in the world !! No wonder it drowned out so many temples!

After seeing the dam, we went to see the Philae temple. There was a boat ride to the temple, an hour and a half spent at the temple and a ride back. This temple is only 2800 years old. A young temple by Egyptian standards. It was a small but beautiful temple. It had many chambers for the different gods and the offerings. At one point there were gold statues at the altar for every deity. The early Christians came and defaced every face of the old gods to force Christianity on the population. Felt sad seeing those beautiful carvings all faceless. Someone spent so much time and effort into creating those works of art. Kings, queens and military rulers come and go as do religions.. we see leaders statues being pulled down today after revolutions. So our guide explained, it is what time does to this world. He said it is amazing that at least this much is left after a few thousand years. Normally they take the giant stones and make smaller blocks out of it to build houses!

The walkways on the side with the massive pillars have faces on top that gradually increase the smile from the first pillar to the last! That was incredible art work! We had a lot of fun taking pictures around the pillars. There were also a lot of cats in the temple!

Most of these giant stones were quarried 100's of kilometers away and brought here by special boats a few thousand years ago. Even the stones were a resouce for a newly developing country. 

There was a separate complex to the side that was built later in Roman times. 

One thing we were exposed to at the temple was the stores on either side of the walkway to the temple. These are street vendors who try to sell trinkets to the tourists. You cannot walk to any temple without crossing these stores and the kids trying to get you to come to their parents store! It is like the strategic stores at the exit of every ride at Disneyland or the walk out of the airports through duty free shops! Guess they learned that from the Egyptians! Temples were economic centers. In most of the temples you have to pay to use the restrooms. So having local currency in change is recommended! The ladies decided to buy "masala nuts" of the Egyptian variety after sampling a few of them. 

Saw these Egyptian doves and took a picture.. 

We enjoyed the temple visit but were tired and hungry. It was time to go to the hotel. That is when we were told that we were to stay in the cruise , not a hotel. Our next stop was a Nile river cruise that started the following morning. So we expected a hotel stay in the night. Turned out we were staying in the docked cruise ship for the rest of the day as the cruise was supposed to be 3 nights minimum. We were dreading small claustrophobic spaces and tiny bathrooms (after our Mexico cruise experience from years ago).. but found this one to be better than the Giza hotel room! 

We had enough time to put our stuff in the room and have lunch on the cruise. The plan was just to chill out till the next morning or try some optional activities for the evening. 

Video highlights of the dam visit, the Philae temple and the cruise ship room!

To be continued when my jet lag gives me a break..

A billion dollar GEM!!

The previous post in this series is here..

After eating lunch in a moving van, we crossed the Nile again with the ladies singing "Nile nadiya" song.. which I thought was hilarious.

There was a soft opening of the new Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) which we were lucky to visit. The entry ticket was 60 bucks but it was totally worth it. 

They spent a Billion dollars on this museum so far and we were told it might be 3 Billion by the time all the exhibits move in. There were already 15000 pieces in display with entire sections being worked on.

If the Egyptian museum in Cairo blew us away, I have no words to describe what we saw here. The tracks on the museum all radiate from a central point at the bottom of the valley and the museum literally climbs the hill to be level with the Giza plateau. When you reach the top of the escalators, you see the pyramids! 

The museum sections weave across society, kings and power and culture while time is the vertical track. You can trace things in sections horizontally or vertically. For a modern museum, extremely well thought out and organized.

It would take a person like me at least a week in this museum. We had 2  1/2 hours. So we had a bright history student who guided us through this expertly in 2 hours! 

There is a reflective pool of shallow water around this giant statue that is so amazing that some of us didn't realize it was water.. Indraprastha came to mind!

the facade of the museum gives you a Louvre reminder, inside and out..

usually I post pictures before video.. this time it is video before pictures.

We saw a lot of intersting displays.. the women were drawn to the jewelry.. the kids to the lunch boxes, dice and play toys from 3000 years ago..

while we keep hearing about the Romans in Egypt, I did not know Alexander's influence here.

Then we became fans of queen Hutshepsut !! 

The best ruler of Egypt was a woman who prefered trade based relationship with neighbors instead of wars and provocation. Yet after her rule, most of her statues were defaced and she was not on many records (as King Tut) in subequent historic accounts of the king's lineages and lists. 

Now we don't see women outside in Egypt! The world turns.. hopefully it gets better.. but after going to all these museums, I have lost hope on what humanity can do with or without technology. As a collective we are just animals wearing pants and shirts.. Maybe if women took over the world, it will be a better place. As long as men are in charge, we are doomed in the long run! That is the thought that keeps resonating after the multiple museum visits (Same story in Austria in the 1800's with Maria Teresa from another recent trip to a European museum!)

You should absolutely not miss this museum if you visit Egypt. Just fantastic. 

We had 45 minutes before we were to be dropped off at our hotel.  We stopped by a Papyrus place where a Mr. Khan gave us a demo of how papyrus was made today still the same way it was 3500 years ago and how it is stil being painted the same way.  Unfortunately I was so engrossed in his demo (and tired) that it was not recorded. We did buy a tree of life on Papyrus and got our names written in Heiroglyph's (you can see it in the end of the video). 

We decided to spend as much time at this place and there was no dinner stop. Decided to eat the leftovers from lunch for dinner. We were already told that pickup for the next day will be at 4:15AM to go to the airport! There was a collective sigh from everyone. So we literally went up, packed and crashed. 

It has taken 4 blog posts, going over ~400 photos and videos just to cover day 1 in Egypt. When we travel we cover as much as possible in as short a time. No wonder our kids decided they would rather stay home than do these 3:30 AM wake ups and going to airports at 4:30AM etc.. 

We were still jet lagged. So it was lights out as soon as we hit the bed!

Narasimha' at the Egyptian Museum Cairo

Read that title as Narasimha Prime...

The previous post in this series is here..

One of the avatars of god Vishnu is Narasimha (Nar - human, Simha - lion) and has the head of a lion and body of a human.. 

In Egypt, we have the "prime" version.. the head of a human on the body of a lion.. everywhere! Two ancient cultures, just flip the part of the body that is animal. When I told the group  "get your blessings from the Egyptian Narasimhar!" there was a lot of eye rolling. They did appreciate the way my weird brain connects things.

After visiting the Pyramids and Sphinx, we drove across the Nile river into downtown Cairo in peak traffic to reach the Egyptian Museum. It is an old and amazing place. Still without a tourguide, we would have been lost. Ibrahim was upfront and said "I am going to hit the highlgihts and keep moving. So please keep up with me!" and we did.. 

There were a few amazing pieces here like the first steele of North and South Unification , the only statue of the first ruler (a very small figurine), some lifesize statutes of the kings and queens as well as giant statues of Anubis and the pharohs. 

Posting select photos here ..

 

The highlight of the museum of course was the King Tut section. There is a part of this section where photos and videos are allowed.. 

In a relatively small chamber they found so much!!

A fan with ivory handle and ostrich feathers that was miraculously preserved for 3000+ years

Jars with heads that screw on made of alabaster where king Tut's internal organs were separately mummified..

Jackals seem to be another commonality between the dead, spirit world and life after death. The Tantric worshipers who do penence sitting on dead bodies in a cemetary in India also wait for a Jackal to show up as part of the success of their ritual. Just thought it was an interesting parallel..

 

King Tut ruled for ~10 years and he was a kid. His tomb had treasures like this. Just imagine the larger empty tombs we visited earlier ! Rameses II was 93 when he passed on to his afterlife.. One can only imagine how much got looted from there...

We did get to see the golden mask and the actual coffins of king Tut. However there was no photos or videos allowed in that section. There were many guards continuosly following folks and making them delete photos. I just respected their rule and put my cameras away. That golden mask with blue black and gold is a few thousand years old made me think a lot. How can something that great just disappear ? No matter how impregnable they thought their tombs were, it just took less than 10 generations for folks to loot it all. Nothing is sacred. It just goes to show how insignificant and arrogant we are in todays age knowing what happened in the past. 

The rest of the photos are in this slideshow..

we walked past another section of large statues.. 

We then walked out of the musem through the place where the famous Egyptologist Auguste Mariette is buried right outside the museum. 

A video highlight of this visit..

After this we got back into the van and drove towards Giza again. Given the time constraint and the hunger levels, we had to eat in the van. Ibrahim picked up some vegetarian food for us. Sadly he realized there was not much I could have given everything there had sesame seeds. So I was given white rice cooked with vermiceli. It was plain rice but the vermicelli added a flavor to it and I gobbled it up. The rest of the group were very happy with the food and ganna (sugarcane juice) that was given. 

Our next stop in the next post!

The grandeur of Giza

The first post in this series is here..

Our group met at the roof of the Hayat Pyramid View hotel for breakfast. It was cold outside and all the breakfast items were cold given it was in a room with open doors. We made the most of it and saw the run rise to face the pyramids. Caught the first light hit the great pyramids! It was fantastic.

When we first walked up to the roof, it was hazy! The moon was still up.

We took pictures before and after the sun came out..

Had a feeling this trip will be a good one just by the way she was smiling!!! 

The sun comes out and the clouds roll in and "magic"!

Then it was time to meet our guide for the day, Ibrahim. At first glance if you are not used to Arabic nations, the tone comes across as rude and our guides way of saying "excuse me!" everytime he wanted to grab our attention was interesting. He was a really sweet and caring dude!

The language and accents make up for an intersting social study! He was dealing with desis .. from US. So he was a bit flummoxed on how to deal with us. Should he be proud that we bargained for everything like Egyptians? Or should he be upset that being Americans who can afford things, we are still bargaining.. he literally was telling us that in a very roundabout way. He wanted us to tip the locals wherever possible. Tipping, how much and when was the topic of most of our group discussions! 

Ibrahim gave us the rundown and told us he was not allowed inside. He also told us that the big pyramid and the pyramid of the grandson had entrances to go in but it is the same experience. One was 20 USD and a longer line and one was 4 USD and a much smaller line. We opted for the shorter line given the interest of time! We went in and out through a narrow tunnel at a steep angle to see the bottom of an empty chamber and come back up. It was an intersting experience. How they moved things around in these angles and got giant granite boxes in and out is just mindboggling.

Everything about this place is just amazing. This was 3000+ years ago and they still stand inspite of all the regime changes and looting over the decades. Everything thas been stripped off including the stones over the years but what took them a few hundred years to build has lasted a few thousand.

One side has all the drama.. other side is bland ..

 

We as a species don't build anything this lasting anymore. All our glass, steel and sheetrock stuff won't last anything compared to this! 

At some point the room would have had a large granite box with the mummy and all its treasures. They were looted a long time back! What little things the locals and invading cultures didn't take, the Brits and French took to their museums! 

now there is an empty chamber with graffitti over a few thousand years! We suck as a species is what I kept thinking!

After we went in and out of the pyramid, some of us got to go on a camel ride around the pyramids. Our camels were named Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, Alex, Mickey mouse and Charlie!

Once the camel ride was done, we visited the Sphinx which was right across from our hotel. There was already a big crowd at the Sphinx thanks to some school excursions. We were lucky to get some photos without too many people around. We also got to see the place where they did the mummification near the Sphinx. 

There is a steele in front of the Sphinx which talks about the Pharoh's dream to clean the sand around it.. we learned that the sphinx probably predates the pyramids. That was a special ticket and given time we were just happy to walk around it and get a view! I cannot write enough words to make you realize how amazing this place is. You have to see it for youself. Do it while you can still walk long distances every day, do a little climbing on tall stones. In another 10-15 years this trip might be difficult for me! 

Was wearing my uniform BYSJ 60 day challenge shirt on multiple days. Surprisingly no one asked me what a 60 day challenge was in Egypt or Jordan and that is a first! 

A video highlight of our first morning in Egypt!

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After this it was time to drive off to our next stop across the Nile into Cario!

From Rameshwaram to Rameseswaram

Our first trip of 2024 was to Rameshwaram in India. Our last trip for 2024 was to the land of Rameses.. 

We have made three big trips this year (including the 25th anniversary trip to Europe in the summer) and they have all been with just the two of us. At this point I am slowly getting used to traveling with San without the kids. Miss them everytime the camera is pointed anywhere but time will bring them back to my photos.  This trip was a success given it could have been canceled at any minute. Our flights changed so many times since we booked it. 

As usual all credit to San for taking me along on this trip. All I did was take pictures, haul luggage and irritate her at times with my being overly concerned about anything and everything. 

We did go with friends and family and that made it special.  

Having learned the lesson from summer(never blogged about that trip), will write about this one before my memory fades. 

We went on Lufthansa from SFO to Cairo with a 2+  hour halt in Frankfurt. It was nice flights and we had fun walking around Frankfurt airport and window shopping!

Watched a sunset on the way from Frankfurt to Cairo..this was somewhere above Greece..

Once we got to Cairo airport we got a Visa at Entry for 25 USD per person. Paid cash at the counter right before immigration check and  they give us a sticker. You hand that to the immigration officer who sticks it on to the passport and stamps it. First time I saw this procedure! 

We were out very quick. The trip was organized by Latif aka George in Cairo. He had folks meet us as soon as we came out of the plane and was waiting for us outside the airport parking lot. We drove straight to Giza. 

Our hotel was literally facing the pyramids. At first I thought we were staying at the Grand Hyatt.. then learned it is a hotel called Hayat ! Every house on that road became a hotel or airbnb apparently. Ours was a decent hotel and the folks were nice.  As soon as we drove and checked in, they asked us to go to the roof of the hotel right away to check out the view.

What a view it was!! 

This was pretty much what is was in the reflected city lights! Have always wanted to see the great pyramids. It is always surreal when you see them like this!

We were given some fruit drinks to enjoy while watching the view... 

Then it was time to hit the bed. We were told to be back on the roof for a sunrise breakfast to watch the sun light up the pyramid face. Folks here seemed to be all about getitng the right photos and that was music to my ears!

A warning to folks who read this blog and make vacation plans.. 

The thing that hit us as soon as we went out of the airport in Caior was the cigarette smell. It is everywhere. Even the non smoking room in the hotel has smoke coming in from the drain pipes. The rooftops, the cars we drive in.. seems to be unavoidable. Every adult male we saw who looked like a local was smoking! 

If you are averse to smoking, wear an N95 mask the entire time. All of us had a tough time with that throughout the trip. I lost my appetite after smelling all that smoke. Also you don't see any women outside the airport. When we went into Giza the thing that struck us was we did not see any females on the miles of road we drove around. so many shops and folks on the street.. all men! The women in our car noticed it right way. 

More on the next post..