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Posts Tagged ‘Egypt’

From Cairo and with a different crew we took a 7 hour bus ride to St Catherine. On the ride we took the tunnel under the Suez Canal. The Suez Canal runs through Egypt separating Egypt from the Sinai Peninsula. It links the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea and is big business in Egypt. The canal is big enough to support the largest ships in the world. It is a short cut and ships pay large tolls to get through there, but it would save days of travel time than having to go around Africa. On arrival to our gorgeous little hostel we had dinner and sat around drinking tea and telling stories before going to bed in a Beduin tent. We had an early rise in the morning 1:30am to climb Mt Sinai.
We arrived at the bottom of the mountain and started our climb around 2:30am. We were met by a local guide who climbeb up with us, his name was also Mohammad. There are two ways to climb Mt Sinai, the camel trail, and the steps of redemption. Just by the name we decided on taking the camel trail. On the camel trail there are many stops along the way with little huts serving tea, coffee, chocolate, water and soft drinks. They were great resting places. Also along the way there are many camels you can take almost to the top. There were 800 steps that took us to the summit once you reached the end of the trail at 2100 mtrs above sea level.
One step at a time, 2400m and 3 hours later we made it to the top to view the most wonderful sunrise ever. At the top there were heaps of people, even some African’s singing harmonious religious tunes. It was an uplifting experience.
Mt Sinai has a huge religious history. This is the mountain that Moses climbed to receive the 10 commandments from God. At the top of the mountain there is a small chapel. After watching the spectacular sunrise and resting our limbs we started the trek back down the mountain, only this time it took around an hour and a half.
Feeling exhausted we returned to our rooms, had breakfast then had a nap before heading to our next destination, Jordan……………………

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Cairo is the capital of Egypt; it is hot, dusty, full of crazy driver s and home to the famous Giza Pyramids.  On our arrival to Egypt we stayed at the Hilton and was upgraded to a 3 bedroom suite.  It had 4 bathrooms, maids’ quarter and a kitchen.  We would lose each other in the place that’s how big it was.  It was nice staying there and hanging by the pool for some R&R after Europe and before starting our tour.  One evening on our stay we headed out to the sound and light show at the pyramids.  After several misunderstandings with our taxi driver we finally made it to Giza just to have a man jump into our taxi and sell us a camel ride.  After telling us the prices we agreed to join him, then once on the camel he upped the price by about 2000%.   After screaming at him telling him we want to leave, he then agreed to his original price.  We made it to the sound and light show, although it was pretty tacky it was nice to see the pyramids at night.  After that adventure we decided to stay in the comfort of the Hilton until our tour.

On our 4^th day we met our tour group.  We had a nice mixed bag of Aussies, American’s and Canadian’s.  The first day of the tour we went back to the pyramids, this time actually going into them.  There are 6 pyramids in Giza which are the sole survivors of the ancient wonders of the world.  The largest pyramid is called the Great Pyramid which was tomb for Cheops; it’s absolutely huge at 146m high.  The tip of this pyramid had a gold top but past rulers removed them for other buildings and monuments so a stick stands in its place so you can visualize the actual height of it.  Beside the great pyramid is a smaller pyramid which was built for Cheops` mother.  Although she also had another pyramid in another part of Egypt beside his father’s tomb.  Since these pyramids held personal possessions of the deceased the mother had 2 separate tombs so that she cannot be found.  The second largest pyramid is also in Giza is that of Khafre, and on this pyramid you can still see part of the limestone casing.  All the pyramids had a lime stone casing on it, however over time it has eroded and also stolen.

We then went to the Egyptian Museum where we saw the treasures found in the tomb of King Tutankhamen, along with many other sculptures and mummies.

That evening we got on the night train for a very cold and uncomfortable ride to Aswan in Upper Egypt……………………

We came back to Cairo from the overnight train from Luxor.  Our last day in Cairo we got on some Jeeps and headed to the Western Dessert.  We traveled for about an hour on the road, then 3 hours off road.  We stopped along the way to see some old tree fossils.  We headed out to a very remote place, to an open air museum called the Valley of the Wales.  Here we saw fossils of very old Wales back from about 40million years ago.  It has been discovered that the whole of the dessert was once an ocean, ancient mangroves, tree fossils and shells have been found along with bones from large sea creatures.  It was a very long day and a very bumpy ride, we were glad to get back.  That evening was the last evening as a group as we were meeting new members of the group on our way to Jordan and we were losing some members who were heading in another direction.  We had a lovely evening, and watched a local make bread.  I even had a go at throwing the bread in the oven.  First shot was pretty bad but second shot went well.

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Egypt is split into three areas upper and lower based on the direction of the flow of the River Nile, however upper does not mean North but actually Southern Egypt so of course it was a little confusing at first. The third area is the Sinai Peninsula.

The River Nile is the longest river in the world running 6675Km and shared across 10 countries, and about 1500km of it runs through Egypt.  It runs through the whole country ending in the Mediterranean Sea.  The whole country is a dessert and if it weren’t for the Nile supplying water there would be no life.  This historical country does not experience rain.

Mt Sinai is a peninsula that is not part of Upper and Lower Egypt.  Sinai is actually on another continent, its part of Asia while the Egypt main land is part of Africa.

I don’t want to give you an ancient Egypt lesson but I do want to show you what a remarkable  history Egypt has.

Basically there are 3 kingdoms in Ancient Egypt with intermediate periods between and a total of around 21 dynasties.  Dynasties mean the number of different families that ruled in that period.

Just to give you a guide on how it fits together is as follows:

 Then there are all the Gods, there were some kings that tried to make themselves a God but here is the detail of all the main Gods.  Inead of Heliopolis means of group of nine gods in the living land.  Of course there were more Gods however these were the main Inead.

Enead of Heliopolis

 Stay tuned for our updates on Lower, Upper Egypt & The Sinai Penninsula.