No Smoking

Bit hard to say you're not a smoker in Cairo - as soon as you step outside you're hit by a myriad of smoky smells. Car exhaust, cigarette smoke, fumes from... whatever it was that I passed in the street. It's a polluted and busy city to be sure but it's also a pretty good place. Unlike Cuzco, you can't feel the history here, it's more a feeling that there's some history just a little way away, you just have to go look for it.

Day 1 in Cairo was spent getting accustomed to the surroundings and threatening touts with physical violence. I'm a calm guy, everyone knows that, but it sure was fun getting amped up with anger for a brief period. My scary face was a good one.
On the evening of day 1 I contacted Rose and Linda, a couple of Aussie girls I met at Amman airport, and sorted out a tour to the Pyramids at Giza, Saqqara and Dashur the next day. Dinner was a bottle of whisky I shared with a Swiss bloke here at the hostel. 500mL bottle of Glenfiddich (sp?) only cost $30 AUD Duty Free in Amman - bargain.

The tour of the pyramids at Giza was top notch - real dreams come true stuff. It seems I've had that alot this trip, and it makes me smile. I think we got ripped off as far as Giza went, purely because we took the horse riding option. Rose's bargaining skills are stellar - it helps that she's worked in Jordan for a year, and we got our entrance fee and horse ride + guide for 210 EGP instead of 390 EGP. So... $50 AUD instead of $100. Rode the horses from a side entrance to Menkaure's pyramid (the small one). It's funny; from a distance the pyramids look huge, but from close up you don't appreciate how big they are because they fill the sky. We left the guides and walked to the Second Pyramid, Khafre's (or Chephren's) and just chilled. I climbed some large rock thing with Rose and we sat above all the souvenir sellers and tourists and just soaked it all in. There we were, sitting on a 6,000 year old stone structure, in front of a Pyramid that seemed to fill the world. On the right sat the Great Pyramid of Khufu (or Cheops), on the left sat Menkaure's pyramid, and in the middle was our little rock in a sea of people.

I'm not exaggerating when I say it fills the world. Mountains are supposed to be big - that's their purpose. Pyramids are built by men, and they seem too big, too huge, too immense, too good to be true. The thing is, there is a truth about them which is irrefutable. It's not tangible and it's not logical. Or maybe it is. Maybe it's the purest distillation of logic and tangibility that humans have ever created; it's a big pile of stones which have been ordered in a certain way according to a specific plan, and their construction is as close to mathematically perfect as doesn't matter (since it was created without all the modern conveniences that we enjoy today). It's also really really tall, really really wide and really really heavy. There is a peace about them which I enjoy. I'll have to go back there later anyway because I MUST get inside the Great Pyramid, but I think I'll just hang out too.

If anyone has read Terry Pratchett's Pyramids then you'll have an understanding of the energy which surrounds the place. Granted, these Pyramids don't flare Time off their apex like in Pratchett's book, but when you stand next to them, you almost believe that it could happen (or does happen when nobody is looking. It's the world's biggest Shroedinger's Cat experiment).

From Giza's Sphinx and Pyramids we headed for Dashur, site of the Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid. Cheap entry and hardly any tourists. It's slightly off the beaten track, although we did go on a prayer day, so there wasn't as much traffic around. Halfway up the structure is a door about 1.2m square. Extending down from the door at a 45 degree angle runs a passage lined with red granite. This passage would have to extend for 70 metres. I could be wrong because the angle and the darkness messed with my perceptions a bit. At the base is a room of smooth unmarked granite. Completely unremarkable were it not in the middle of a pyramid built 6,000 years prior to my visit. The next room has a ceiling at least 20 metres high. It's stepped to alleviate pressure on the surrounding stone. The apex is lost in darkness. The next room smells like ammonia and is empty save for a rickety wooden staircase which is maybe 8 metres high. Rose and Linda stayed at the bottom while I climbed up. The top smelled like a freshly-cleaned oven. The coolest part was the fact that that the staircase led to an unlit tunnel. The sight of a pitch black tunnel was exciting to me, so I whipped out my mobile phone (a really ineffective torch) and strolled off into the darkness. At the 6 metre mark the passage stopped. In front was rock, to the left was rock, behind me was the passage, and on the right was a strange handrail with open air on the other side. I turned my camera's flash on and took pictures forwards, left, right, up and down. Even though thousands of people had been there before me, I really felt like I was the one exploring it for the first time. The pictures showed an empty room with a vaulted ceiling and bare rock floor, but it was the experience that mattered. Cue Indiana Jones music.

I walked out of the chamber, down the stairs and back to the red granite passage. The light of the entrance far above put me in mind of a train coming down a tunnel. I ran to the top and met the girls. We rested a bit then headed back to the car and left for Saqqara - home of the first stone pyramid, as designed by Imhotep for the Pharoah Djoser. Again, Rose's bargaining came into play. She went to the ticket office and told the clerk that she was a student in Jordan and had left her student card in the car (Truth). She then told him that she was travelling with her student sister (Lie) and a classmate, me (Lie). We got in for half price. Two wrongs don't make a right, but two wrongs and a right make a right. Important to know. Did a brief museum tour and discovered that 2,000 years after Imhotep died, the priests made him a god. That's a pretty good reference letter.

As it was near closing time we moved fast. First stop was a hieroglyph-covered tomb. Really beautiful and detailed, but it was nothing compared to what happened next. At Saqqara is an unimpressive pile of sand and stones. It's the remains of the very VERY old Teti Pyramid. To enter you must walk down a narrow corridor much like the Red Pyramid, but much shorter. At the base is a room with limestone walls that are covered in thousands of hieroglyphs. There are etched deep in the stone and look just like that would have millenia ago. The lines they are written between are dead straight, just like a school exercise book, but vertical. The spectacular part of the complex is the burial chamber. It's small and contains four things of interest: The vaulted ceiling, the colossal granite sarcophagus, the hieroglyphs on the walls... and the stars on the ceiling. I couldn't help but feel touched by the thought that went into the ceiling.

Someone seven thousand years ago must have looked at the burial chamber and said, 'The Pharoah will be mummified and placed in this room. He will have no brain, no eyes, and his organs will sit in jars beside him. He will reside inside a black granite sarcophagus, and the lid will be placed over him. It will be dark, but here there will be stars and they will shine for eternity.' I like the thought of that. He may be dead, and he may be under a 5 tonne slab of granite, but he will still have the stars in the sky.

From the Teti Pyramid we took the car to the Step Pyramid and did the photo and tourist thing. It wasn't anywhere near as important a place, at least to me, as the inside of the Teti structure. I also got ripped off by a tourist policeman of all people, but I didn't care about the 0.5 EGP I gave him (about 15 cents AUD), I was still dreaming of a starry sky. We went back to Cairo and set up a time to meet for dinner. I got thoroughly lost walking to meet Rose. Most people here are quite helpful, but they get 'Left' and 'Right' confused and they often give incorrect directions, just to show that they want to help. I eventually turned up at the square where Rose was waiting about 45 minutes after I was due. Was fun getting there though - I got well and truly lost and discovered that Cairo has many different squares and midans (roundabouts) that look very similar. As I waited for Rose I got hassled by a guy who clearly wanted to 'very helpfully' give me directions or assistance in exchange for cash. I kept the conversation away from assistance while I waited. He was polite but had a greedy look in his eye which he transferred to Rose when she arrived. Apparently he'd hassled her before I arrived so she went for a walk somewhere else. There are sleazes everywhere in the world, but they seem to operate on a different level here. Still, no real harm done, so we walked off to the Nile.

The smog was thick and it hid the sky, but that didn't matter; I still had a starry sky spinning inside my head.