Exploring Cairo's Citadel and Giza's Pyramids
A birds eye view of Egypt — long walks by the Nile, learning pharaoh's names, peering at pyramids and snorkelling in the Red Sea.
In Egypt, Arthur Eddington’s “arrow of time" flies in both directions. Within an hour of arriving in Cairo, we negotiate the mayhem of the city’s traffic, and time travel back to Giza where pyramids cast long shadows on the sand, like stretched out hands on a cosmic clock. “Cleopatra…" announces Mohammed, our guide and driver for the day, dramatically, “…is closer to the 21st century than she was to the pyramids in her time."
You have to admit—it is an effective opener. It’s hard to get a sense of the antiquity in Egypt without a reference point. Technically, both—the pyramids, and Cleopatra—are considered ancient: but the Giza Pyramids were already ancient—at least 2,200 years old—during Cleopatra’s reign in 70-30 BCE. And yet, here they are, four-and-a-half millennia after they were built, still standing after snoozing through most of recorded history, rise and fall of empires, natural catastrophes, and now, in the 21st century, the ignominy of millions of selfie sticks.
Mohammed rattles off dates and names of pharaohs by rote but can only speculate when it comes to how these geometric behemoths were built—well before man invented the wheel (or discovered caffeine for that matter). He might have a point you think, Elon Musk might: all those fantastic theories about helpful aliens pitching in suddenly don’t seem that far-fetched. That first experience—looking up at these architectural absurdities—sets the tone for our trip. In Egypt, you stand in awe, in front of all that you do not know. You’ll be doing a lot of that here.
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It’s April, the region is seeing an unseasonably long winter; and that means long walks along the Nile in hip Zamalek, or to the famous shopping streets of Khan el-Khalili in the Old City are entirely possible. From chaotic downtown where we are staying, it’s an hour’s drive to Saqqara, the necropolis of Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt. The Step Pyramid of Djoser, the world’s oldest stone building, rises from the desert sands, its stepped design a precursor to the smooth-sided pyramids of Giza. Many weeks later after returning to India, we’ll watch the Netflix documentary on Saqqara and realise that if there’s one pyramid you can enter in Egypt, it should be Djoser.
In retrospect, we should have spent more time acquiring a stronger grasp on the timeline of Egypt’s ancient history. With so many dynasties, pharaohs, mummies and all kind of relics from across a few thousand years, it can be a bit hard to keep track of it all. And it’s when you begin to understand that the incredibly lifelike mummies in the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities are at least three millennia old—from before the dawn of Christianity or for that matter organised religion—that the magnitude of what these civilisations achieved really begins to dawn on you.
A Luxor-ious Time
From Cairo it’s a short flight to Luxor—the ancient city of Thebes—that sprawls across the banks of the Nile, a living museum of Egypt’s history. On the east bank lies the sprawling temple complex of Karnak with its towering columns and colossal statues. Exploring the Valley of the Kings on the West bank—where pharaohs were laid to rest in elaborate tombs—is a labyrinthine journey into the afterlife. This is where the boy king—Tutankhamen’s tomb—was found. We saw the ornaments, the sarcophagus, and other bric-a-brac found in this tomb at the museum in Cairo. We decide not to go down to the tomb itself: the curse of Tutankhamun is probably just lore, but why test fate?
From Luxor it’s a day trip south to Aswan. The waters of the Nile, that deluged parts of Egypt every year for millennia have been harnessed and tamed. Peering down from a hot air balloon, Aswan straddles the Nile like a sun-baked crocodile. Once these creatures had the run of the Nile; now they’re contained upstream by the concrete bulk of the Aswan High Dam—as much a monument to human hubris as to its ingenuity. The Abu Simbel Temple, carved into a rock face was famously moved to a different location before the dam was built in 1970.
Back in Luxor, we hop aboard a felucca—a sail boat—and drift down the Nile. As the sun dips below the horizon, it lights the sky in a kaleidoscope of colours. On the east bank, the lights come on at the Luxor Temple, illuminating larger-than-life statues of pharaohs framed against the sky. But we have seen enough.
It’s easy to get history fatigue in Egypt. Cairo, Luxor and Aswan are old romantic cities. Where, if you close your eyes, and let your imagination wander, you can almost hear the sound of hooves and smell the frankincense in the air. But unless you’re extremely well versed with or a student of Egypt’s history, 10 days of wandering through ancient monuments and looking at relics can be exhausting. It’s time for something less academic.
Located on Egypt’s Red Sea coast, Hurghada charms aren’t obvious. It’s when you take a snorkel and peer under the surface of the Red Sea that Hurghada’s unique landscape comes into view. A coral city teeming with finned and tentacled denizens. Schools of fish go shimmering past, moray eels, all teeth and attitude glare from crevices. The Red Sea is widely considered one of the clearest in the world when it comes to visibility and the reefs around Hurghada have long shallow shelves that lend to exploration by novices or even non-swimmers. Dolphins love these waters too and they’re easy to spot. You’ll find plenty of operators that’ll take you for day trips to some of the popular snorkelling spots. The town isn’t as flashy as, say Sharm El Shaikh, but the marina has the requisite mix of shops, bars and restaurants doling out overpriced cocktails and shisha to warrant a few trips.
Suitably restored, we head back to Cairo and decide to spend our last day at The Citadel—a collection of fortifications, mosques and forts built in the 12th century—that towers over the eastern edge of the city. In the evening, quaffing sundowners from a hotel rooftop in Giza seems like the perfect exit line for our trip. The Sphinx—with its cryptic half-smile—gazing out over the desert sands, looks like a sentinel framed against the pyramids of Giza standing in stoic silence.
Egypt is a journey of juxtapositions: the sacred and the profane, the timeless and the tacky, the awe-inspiring and the absurd. A couple of weeks are barely enough to get a brief glimpse of this land. But even a bird’s-eye view reveals fragments that hint at its profound depths. Travelling to Egypt is to embark on a journey through the ages, where the secrets of time slowly unravel.
Meraj Shah is a writer and television presenter based in Delhi.
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