My First 24 Hours: Cairo

Article by: Dan Austin, March 2006

Apparently, all the cut-price flights to Egypt's capital land at 2am, an arrangement which conveniently allows an army of galabiyya-clad taxi drivers access and elbow room to the bewildered mobs stumbling off each plane. Hoisting my pack, I did what any seasoned traveller would do when confronted by a swarm of clutching hands and come-with-me smiles - I cowered and ran the other way. Finding a quiet spot inside the concrete arrivals lounge I shed my long-sleeved top - even at that time the heat begged a single layer - brought out a book, and waited for the sun to show me the bus stand.

Hoisting my pack, I did what any seasoned traveller would do ... I cowered and ran the other way

Bouncing into town that first morning, my Sudanese bus driver spoke of the westerly winds blowing fine brown dust in from the desert. The gazillion cars and motorbikes and fires from the garbage of 16 million people added a constant soupiness to the skies. It's a dirty place, but my jetlagged eyes still managed to revel in the colours found in the streets around my hotel. Gold-trimmed sheesha cafes book-ended the hanging reds and blues of an open-air butcher; orange and yellow spice piles competed with gem-dealers and shoe shops spilling their wares out onto the pavement; old men played backgammon while a boy cut mangos on a tray for them; and women in brilliant blue robes shopped and chatted, eating melon seeds from small paper cones.

Awe-struck by the buzz of the city, I decided to chance my bargaining hand at the Khan al-Khalili bazaar. I bargained hard that first day. I was in The Zone. I believed transactions the world over should be this bold and honest and theatrical. Little did I know I was experiencing something of a haggling honeymoon. I skipped away, chest out, bearing ceramic scarab beetles, authentic papyrus and a set of concertinaed postcards. I genuinely believed I had cracked an eons-old code through a tricky mixture of innocence and guile. That was until I boasted to some fellow travellers, only to find that everyone else had mysteriously bargained their way down to the very same, 'exclusive' prices.

Like a glutton for Egyptology, I had to go see the pyramids that same first day

I decided to investigate the Cairo Museum next. To be fiddling with a DVD remote in London one day, and staring up the nose of a first-century ruler named Ramses the next, is amazing in itself. But the Cairo Museum plays metaphor for a complexity that begins to explain just how curious Egypt can be. Where else could a rumoured one hundred crates full of mummies, carvings and jewelled treasures be 'forgotten' for eighty years, simply because someone neglected to stocktake a section of the lower floor? Which other country could haemorrhage national treasures - enough to fill the coffers of museums in London, Paris and Washington - and still have over 120,000 pieces to display? The sheer volume of Egypt's antiquities feels farcical at times. I felt like if I didn't watch my step I was likely to stub my toe on a statue of Ahhenaten or bang my head on the stone beak of Thoth.

Like a glutton for Egyptology, I had to go see the pyramids that same first day. They really are one of the handful of top-drawer 'wait-til-you-sees' that exceed expectation. If it weren't for the lousy touts and their mind-numbing persistence, and the bald, blistering heat of the Egyptian sun, most visitors to Cheops, Micerinus and Cephren would still be there now, gazing up, dumbfounded.

Little did I know I was experiencing something of a haggling honeymoon.

Now home, lurking outside the travel agent window and wondering where to go next, I notice brochures for Cairo promoting belly dancers and Tutankhamen's tomb. I wonder if that's selling Cairo short. Of course Cairo is about monuments marking history, but it's also about shotgun-toting guards strolling hand-in-hand; it's about waking up at 5am to the Mussien calls to prayer, then waking up at 7am to the Mussien calls to prayer. It's about ducking into Cairo University for a fake student card. It's about donkeys and traffic and hunching over a game of dominoes, smoking ma'assil from a sheesha pipe as tall as your second cousin.