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..

30 pages a day

Since the beginning of this year, have been reading 30 pages a day before bedtime or first thing after waking up while making and drinking morning tea. It has become a good habit.

On days this is not possible, just going with the flow. Most of the days manage more than 30 pages. Then there are long flights and airport waits. Always have the book handy to just read when possible. 

Usually there is a topic or a recommendation from a friend. If the topic interests me, then one book leads to another, a series of books sometimes. Have become a "chain booker", for lack of a better term. One book finishes and the next one gets picked up. The latest topic is books on mental aspects of yoga, concentration, and Tantra. A lot of my friends have branded me "nuts" for even trying to read up on a topic that is considered "taboo" or "humbug" or a range of other words. 

One thing was certain as I am going through this topic. It is misunderstood. A lot of patience and persistence is required to try and even scratch the surface of this subject. A lot of basic terminology has to be learned in a step by step fashion. Picking up books in the wrong sequence can significantly slow you down with constant references to other books. 

The first books I read are the ones by Robert Svoboda. The first book made me want to throw up at the halfway point. Kept ploughing through it 10 pages a day at times and managed to finish it. Then there was a lot of youtube video watching, research articles etc. while reading the second and third books. 

My first thought while going through these books was a sense of deja vu while reading select paragraphs which reminded me of recent books by Sadhguru that I read during the pandemic. Good thing is I still have those books. Sadhguru (or his ghost writers) literally dumbed down Svobodas books 30 years later. That is my perception. Sadhguru did do a great job of summarizing the 1980's books in nicer easily readable fonts, in simpler language with smaller sidebar stories and analogies. My thought was "the audience for books has probably reduced in IQ over 30 years that he is dumbing down so much".  

While reading through Svoboda's books, there were references to another set of books 60 years older! This was fascinating. Sir John Woodroffe aka Arthur Avalon stumbles upon Tantra and becomes an expert in the early 1900's. If you have not read about him, please do. He had access to Sanskrit texts which most fokls did not have and translated them to the best of his ability word by word. While reading two of his three books, felt that Indian's have had a lot of greatness lost over the years. My Sanskrit is not that great so I am being patient and read the transliterated texts. The third book is in a ridiculous font. Thinking of returning it to Amazon and asking for a reprint in a larger font! 

Reading Arthur Avalon's books gave me yet another sense of deja vu from the previous month. A lot of the Svoboda books are literally 1980's dumb down versions of the 1919 books! 

To think that the 1919 books are a translated, interpreted versions of original Sanskrit texts from ~600 AD is interesting in itself. Those texts are said to be the first written down versions (writing them was supposed to be blashpemous and given the nature of some of what I read, it makes sense that this was taught by oral tradition from teacher to student with the teacher overseeing the student closely as they did the practical exams!). 

While posting snippets of these books on FB with friends, a classmate recommended I read Shri M's autobiography. It was an easy and intersting read and it was easy because of all the other books that had been read recently. Terminology and vocubulary was already there. No need to keep going to other references or googling! Then another friend recommended a series of books by another later day "mystic" called Om Swami. Read his bio book in a day. The other two books are intersting and slow. Alternating between them. The 2014 books seem to be over simplifications of all earlier books. 

At this rate in 5 years I can write "Tantra for dummies" and chances are it will be a best seller. Still there are points being crystallized to bullets that are reinforcing certain ideas from more complex reads and that is "refreshing" quite literally.

A few thoughts after reading these books..

1. We know so little of our own bodies, our minds and what we can do with this equipment we have been given.

2. There are ways to fast track certain performance aspects of the body and mind

3. there are things beyond the body and the mind that have been consistantly observed by multiple folks and they try to explain it to people like me who simply cannot comprehend it. Why they have to try and explain these things to the general populace instead of fokls who are willing to put in the time and effort seriously, baffles me. Glad though that there are some markers these folks are leaving for aspirants. At least you know you are not nuts.

4. Our body is electro mechannical. Doing yoga over the years has taught me that things within the body are connected in ways that I did not know. It is a question of time before western scientists figure out exactly how to stretch a body, hold it still and put electrodes in the right places and turn on the voltage just right to make your physical and mental facutlies increase exponentially.  

5. Given we are also full of materials and materials are just molecules and atoms and those are vibrations with mass, it should not be a surprise that external vibrations have an impact on us. Be it light of different colors or waves of radiation across the spectrum. It is possible to recite certain sounds and press certain nerve endings to help the body do things using sound engineering. Somehow folks had figured this out a long time ago. How much experimentation went into it, is difficult to comprehend. This is also transferred word of mouth and taught teacher to student. This can be tricky as the side effects of doing this wrong are pretty bad. It is like jumping across the rooftops of two close sky scrapers. Know how to train and do it right, you land. Fall and you are dead. 

6. It is important to have a good teacher. If anything, reading books is fine. Do not try to replicate things mentioned in these books.. results vary! Reading them and moving on for now. No practical tests. 

There are a few other books that are still incomplete. One of them is to read sheet music in 30 says. It is stuck in Day 19 (when I went to India). Have to get back to it next month. 

Have not been feeling well since evening. Feeling randomly hot and cold. Dozed off in the evening and wide awake now. Disappointed and surprised my music teacher as I was off tune today. Will figure it out tomorrow morning. Have this weird uneasiness that I haven't felt in recent times. 

Books are amazing. You get to learn something new every day. The news and most of TV watching on the other hand, seems to be a waste of time. 

Wrote this post so people can start from 1920's and come to the 2017 books instead of going back and forth. All these books are good in their own way. They are targeting different audiences over different times. 

On a side note, if you are a newly minted self proclaimed "mystic" and would like a ghost writer for your biography, look no further. Can LCM and GCF all these biographies and write one for you. 

At this point ChatGPT should be able to write a generic mystic's memoir! 

There are somethings that I really want to learn. The Sri Yantra and tantra have definitely piqued my interest. If I am destined to find a teacher in this lifetime, would definitely pursue it. 

Good night!