The Final Leg in Egypt – Cairo, Nile Valley, Luxor and the Red Sea

(Originally published January 2011)

The final leg of my journey through the African continent required a little ‘reverse travel’. I was flying into Cairo from Addis Ababa as it’s the only direct route between Ethiopia and Egypt, but I wasn’t going to finish off with a flight, so I decided to head down the Nile, effectively doing the route i would have done up the country in reverse.

I arrived during the night (2am) on Friday 14th and headed straight to the hotel… A stones-throw from the Great Pyramids of Giza.

Cairo is sprawling, dirty, chaotic and overcrowded yet strangely alluring. This is a crossroad between Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

After a late morning, I spent the afternoon wandering around the old town having bought my train ticket. My map was so high level and inaccurate that all I had were key tourist landmarks to help with orientation. I spent a few hours wandering along the streets taking in the atmosphere and admiring mosques one after another. Following a local recommendation I headed up the minaret of a nearby mosque for sunset and suddenly had the whole of Cairo spread out before me. Followed a very atmospheric walk through the souks of the old town before I decided to head back to Giza. The evening was spent relaxing at the hotel and making the most of the view from the bar, pool and my room… The pyramids of Giza. Saturday was spent relaxing before taking the evening train to Luxor.

Sunset across the rooftops

Cairo souks at night

I arrived in Luxor on Sunday morning and having checked in (and sneaked a breakfast in) I headed off for Luxor temple. This is one of the most well known and best conserved temples and therefore dully popular with hordes of tourists. It holds a central position in town on the bank of the Nile. It’s also neighbour to a McDs… The first i’ve seen since Cape Town!

On Monday i rented a ‘bike’ and headed over to the west bank for the day. I visited (with thousands of others but only a few of us had cycled there) the Valley of the kings, taking in 4 tombs in what is essentially a large graveyard (Ramses IX, Seti II, Merenptah and Tut Ankh Amun). I also visited two temples on the west bank; Habu temple and Ramasseum Temple, both very quiet and atmospheric and the former containing some of the best preserved inscriptions and paintings of all temples. Impressive and exquisite detail which is incredible given it’s 4000 years old! An enjoyable but long day primarily due to the pretty poor bike which made riding even on the flat hard work!

The following day I visited Karnak temple. Huge and magnificent but not too well preserved and too many people compared to the quiet temples of the day before. I then enjoyed sunset on the banks of the Nile and some evening photography of Luxor temple.

On Wednesday I took the bus to Hurghada, 300km or 6 hours drive from Luxor, on the Red Sea for a couple of days before heading home. Hurghada is not a very nice place, overdeveloped as a result of package tourism (and full of Russians these days), but the diving offshore is still first class. I had a good day out with Seafari divers with a couple of dives after a check dive (due to the fact that I hadn’t dived for so long) and saw several rays and some beautiful coral in beautiful clear waters.

The Red Sea

 Tomorrow, Saturday 22nd January, I will leave Africa and fly back to the UK. My journey is over and with a heavy heart I will bid this fantastic continent farewell… Until next time!