Egpyt --an affair to remember

The dust from Cairo has still not been washed off my shoes. Or my mind. The warmth of the people still lingers in my heart. I can close my eyes and still feel the pulse of Egypt and hear the gentle sound of the ship on the waters of the Nile.

The experience can only be described , to use a cliché, as a dream come true.

Where do I begin? How can a journey of a 5000 years be contained in a single blog post? How can I describe something that was so awe inspiring, moving, and so completely humbling? As I walked into the great monuments at Luxor, Karnak,Kom-ombo and Edfu, I could imagine the grandeur of those imposing, towering, massive structures, where pharaohs and high-priests, Queens and princes once walked, conferred and worshipped. How they would have taken the same path that I was now walking on, and how they would have sailed on the waters of the Nile.

We took a flight from Mumbai to Cairo.My mom too came with us. After a day in Cairo, we flew to Aswan. Then we were on a cruise. We sailed on the Nile for four days and three nights, stopping at komombo, Edfu and finally at Luxor. Each place had monuments, each one better than the other. The carvings on the walls of the temples and the hieroglyphics were detailed, intricate and so beautiful. Each one told a story or depicted a scene. I learnt about Upper and Lower Egypt, (being so designated not due to its altitude but because of the origin of Nile river.The place where in originates is called Upper Egypt which is basically in the south) the Cartouches with the names of the royalty inscribed in them, the pantheon of powerful Gods and Goddesses—Horus, Hathor, Isis, Amon-ra and many more. They reminded me a lot of our own Indian Hindu Gods—especially Hathor who is a Goddess with the head of a cow.

Egypt is an Islamic nation and there are more than a 1000 mosques in Cairo alone. The language spoken is Arabic. English is hardly spoken or understood. We had to learn basic Arabic to manage on our own. The people are so charming, friendly and warm. The women are gorgeous. They have to wear clothes that fully cover every part of their body. Yet, women being women, have found a way around this. They wear figure hugging body suits which emphasizes each and every curve of their body. Over this, they wear a stylish T-shirt and jeans or trousers. Some wear long skirts and others wear long dresses. They also wear a head scarf that covers their hair and dark sunglasses. Almost all of them look super sexy with perfectly manicured hands and stylish high heels. It is only the women who are tourists show some skin in Egypt—never the Egyptian women. Just two days there and I was beginning to feel very under dressed in my T-shirts and jeans (That too, I had not worn any sleeveless ones, respecting the culture there), and so mostly I wore a cotton jacket too.

Some of the Arab men wear ‘galabia’—But most of the stylish ones wear designer t-shirts, jeans, trousers, shirts. Almost all of them look really handsome. Egyptians pride themselves on being more open minded than the other Islamic nations as the women are allowed to work, drive and even to not wear the head scarf if they choose not to. (I found very few women without it.(98 percent of the women I saw had covered their hair)

The young people in Egypt were like the youth everywhere. There were lovers in Malls, meeting secretly, young guys hanging out together and staring at attractive women who passed by and making comments and lusting after them.

Sex before marriage is absolutely taboo and for a man to get married, he has to pay a ‘bride-price’ to the girl’s father.(A dowry system that we have in our country but in reverse) The minimum I was told is 2,00,000 Egyptian pounds, which is a large sum of money. Earning such a large sum of money is beyond the means of many young men, and so they get married at later and later ages, maybe even in their late thirties and forties. Maybe it is all this high sexual energy in the air, I found the atmosphere highly charged. I was also told that the Arabic language is full of sexual innuendos and it richness lends a naughty bawdiness to daily talk.

I loved the Egyptian food too. I don’t eat meat and there were a variety of choices for me. I loved almost all of it.

Egypt mesmerizes. It charms, it enthralls and spins a web over you. It is hard to not get caught. It seems to cast a spell on you, and I was telling Satish that you can waste your entire life in Egypt, sipping bitter sweet tea, smoking a Hookah (The place is strewn with Cafes and women too frequent them. Some are only for men. I loved them.) , watching the world go by, and be very content about it. There is something about this place that seems to make time stand still.

I wanted to remember every moment of it.Ended up taking LOTS of pictures and I am sharing a few here. Satish and I are great fans of Wilbur Smith, and for us, it was the very scenes described in his well researched books coming to life. We could almost see the great Magus and Queen Lostiris as we imagined Ancient Egypt in all its splendour and glory as we visited each monument in reverence and awe ,apart from all the touristy things we did.

They say there are some things that you have in your mind that you just have to do in your lifetime. For us, visiting Egypt was one such.

It really seems to have a sprinkle of the magic of memories now and the dust still lingers.