Egypt 2012–2013: pyramids, one dollar and a little freedom

A man walks around near the pyramids with little figurines, repeating: “One dollar, one dollar.”

All around him is Giza: enormous stones, thousands of years of history. His proposition is much more specific. One dollar. To me, he remained the one dollar man. You might mix up a pharaoh’s name, but his advertising campaign is hard to forget.

We arrived in Egypt in late December. Our base was Sharm el-Sheikh, from where we took an excursion to the pyramids. This trip managed to fit in the sea, the desert, Dahab, and a visit to Israel followed by a return to Egypt. But I’ll start with Giza. Even a souvenir seller has to work against the backdrop of a wonder of the world there.

Sharm before New Year

On the coast, everything begins with the usual resort range of possibilities. A beach brochure from 30 December offers catamarans, windsurfing, a glass-bottomed boat and parasailing. This isn’t a list of my achievements yet. For now, it’s just a menu: choose what to do by the sea.

In the evening, signs light up along the street, and cars pass the shops. People sit in wicker chairs beside the road. Ordinary resort life, with somewhere to go after the beach. And alongside all of this, the pyramids make their way into our itinerary.

A morning with a view of the pyramids

In Giza, we stayed at a hotel with a view of the pyramids. Our tour began first thing in the morning. A good hotel view is a pleasure. When that view includes pyramids, you can lower your expectations for the rest of the scenery a little.

We travel between them, go closer, and make our way over the big stones at their feet. Beside these structures, you really feel the scale. The pyramids have long been familiar from photographs; you’ve seen them more times than you can count. Now they’re right in front of you. And you’re there beside them, small and thoroughly modern.

The pyramids at Giza are about four and a half thousand years old. The three main ones are associated with Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure. The largest, the Pyramid of Khufu, is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still standing today. Its surface was once covered with smooth limestone casing. So even this enormous mass of stone isn’t the whole of the original design.

The age of these structures gives me goosebumps. You stand beside them and try to imagine everything that has happened in all that time. One of the oldest civilizations developed here; people built things like this, and now I can come and see them up close. It’s an incredible feeling.

During the tour, we also went inside somewhere, climbing up and down among the stones. You feel the scale here both from a distance and right up close.

We also ride camels near the pyramids. For scenery like this, it’s an entirely appropriate form of transport. That same souvenir seller stays in my memory too. You’re trying to get your head around four and a half thousand years, and someone reminds you about one dollar. In Giza, the two subjects coexist perfectly well.

The Sphinx and its nose

The Sphinx makes an impression of its own. It seems enormous. A familiar figure from pictures suddenly has a real size, and that size is nothing like a souvenir.

The Sphinx was carved out of natural rock: a lion’s body, a human head, about twenty metres tall. Its creation is most often associated with the pharaoh Khafre. Beside it, you have the same feeling about its age as you do beside the pyramids: you look at it and can barely grasp how long it has been standing here.

There’s a well-known story that Napoleon’s soldiers knocked the Sphinx’s nose off. But it’s a myth: the nose was already missing before they arrived. It makes a good story, but this time the French soldiers had nothing to do with it.

During the tour, we heard a lot about both the pyramids and the Sphinx. Not all those stories stayed in my head. The impression of the place itself did, though. You can forget the details of an explanation but remember standing in front of something so old and so big.

Juice, papyrus and a completely different scale

After the enormous monuments, Egypt has simple pleasures too. Pomegranate juice, for example. They make it right there on the street: squeeze the pomegranates, and your juice is ready. I really liked that.

There were paintings on papyrus too. I even bought some papyri as souvenirs. Something small to take away after encountering this whole monumental world. You can’t take a pyramid home, after all. Not even for one dollar.

At the same time, the contrast was very noticeable. On one side, such an ancient civilization, such structures, such scale. On the other, the poverty you see around you. That struck me. You look at the country’s immense history and at how the people beside it live, and the two pictures aren’t easy to fit together.

In Cairo, I also remember the burned-out building behind the Egyptian Museum. It wasn’t the parliament building, but the former headquarters of Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party, which burned during the 2011 revolution. History here doesn’t end with the pharaohs.

A head in a crocodile’s mouth

On 2 January in Sharm el-Sheikh, we went to a crocodile show. It was already a few days after our arrival. Somewhere nearby, in Sharm itself, an easy option for an evening out. The name doesn’t quite convey the full experience, though.

A man puts his head in a crocodile’s mouth.

The crocodile doesn’t close it.

For the performer, that is clearly an important part of the programme. For me as a spectator, too. It’s interesting to watch, but a little unnerving. The head is real, and so is the crocodile. It all happens right in front of you.

The performer also jumped onto the crocodile, did things with a stick, and hit the animal with it. There were other crocodiles too, and some lights. It was a striking spectacle, even rather harsh in places. At the time, I thought they understood these animals’ reflexes well and were taking advantage of them. But that was a spectator’s impression, not an explanation of why the trick was supposedly safe.

I enjoyed the show, and it certainly stayed with me. Afterwards, an ordinary walk by the sea seems like an especially peaceful activity.

A mesh fence separates the spectators from the pool, with palm trees and pale buildings behind it. The next morning, 3 January, it’s the harbour. White boats are packed tightly along the pier; beyond them are blue water and low mountains. People have gathered by the gangway. After the crocodile’s mouth, it’s a fairly peaceful scene.

Leaving and returning

In the middle of our Egyptian trip, we went to Israel: Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and then back to Egypt.

After we returned, the Egyptian part continued. The sea again, the shore, a different pace. I also place Dahab after our return from Israel in my memory, though I can’t vouch for the exact sequence. I liked its atmosphere.

Dahab and the wind

The beach, the wind, lots of kites. Dahab has a kind of nomadic atmosphere. All this life by the sea, where you can find something unusual nearby and give it a try. What I like here is how accessible that sort of experience is, the sense of freedom.

Kitesurfing is hard to miss. There are plenty of kites above the beach; the wind is clearly keeping busy. What drew me in was the atmosphere of the place itself. There were plenty of other things for my own adventures.

We rode camels both near the pyramids and here. Even several rides don’t make this way of getting around feel ordinary. Now there’s the shore, the water, a completely different landscape. In the photo, I’m sitting in the saddle wearing a checked shirt and a black-and-white scarf. The pebbly shore stretches alongside. It’s all quite convincing: a camel is now part of my transport history.

The road runs between a rocky slope and the sea. Riders move one behind another along the water, tyre tracks mark the ground, and the sun breaks through the clouds above the mountains. In another shot, the camel is lying on the sand and I’m sitting on it with my thumb up. Behind me are water and distant mountains. Apparently, I thoroughly approve of this way of spending a day.

We also rode quad bikes around the desert, back and forth. After excursions and looking at ancient structures, sometimes you can simply go for a ride. Camels, quad bikes: there’s plenty to choose from in Sinai.

The sea and the country on the other shore

There was snorkelling too, and some islands; I think that was near Dahab as well. After the desert and the camels, you can switch to the sea and see what’s underwater.

I think we even saw Saudi Arabia somewhere across the sea. That’s how I remember it. At the time, it was a very mysterious country to me: strict Islamic laws, a closed-off place, the feeling that you couldn’t just go there. The very thought of it inspired a kind of awe. Something unknown, unexplored.

That was my perception at the time, not knowledge of the country from within. It seemed like an entirely different world on the other side of the water. Even the thought that you could see it from here added another dimension to this sea.

Egypt showed me very different sides of itself on this trip. In Giza, I was struck by the size and age of the structures. In Sharm, by a man who, for some reason, decided to put his head in a crocodile’s mouth. In Dahab, I liked being by the sea, feeling the wind and finding my next small adventure.

And the one dollar man stayed with me too, of course. The pyramids are big, but good advertising knows its job.