Magical Expeditions

Got back from Egypt a month back and have a truckload of information to share. To begin with it was one helluva experience. We covered a LOT of Egypt. For the first time I saw the sea, the desert and sailed on a river, all in one trip.

Egypt at almost all levels reminded me of India.

The streets, the bazaars, the haggling and the people. Egyptians are a friendly group of people. They shout out “Indian” when they see you walking down the bazaar and greet you by saying “Amitabh Bachachan ” when you stop at their shops. Egyptian taxi drivers are more reckless than their Bangalore counterparts, which is saying something. Their food however, is fabulous and their cheese divine. I traveled with 2 vegetarians and we always had good veggie food to eat. It is the one country where I did not have to worry about food!

There were touts everywhere but thanks to Lonely Planet we managed to not get conned most of the times. We did get ripped off once ( not too badly though)- but I guess, having a story to tell when you get back home, somewhat made up for it!

Eric from backpacker’s concierge was wonderful. The moment we reached Cairo, he met us and gave us a local mobile phone so that we could keep in touch with him and his agents. All we had to do was get a recharge card and we were connected all the time. He called us regularly during our trips to know whether everything was satisfactory or not. The most important thing was that the trips he organized for us proved to be the highlights of our Egyptian travels. Do get in touch with him, if you are going to Egypt. His is one of the best concierge services available for the independent traveler.

The one thing that I would like to stress here is that do not go to Egypt as a part of a packaged tour. There are many such tour operators, who will show you all there is to see but you will miss out a lot in just getting on to a bus and sleeping till you reach your destination.

We met quite a few independent travelers all through out our journey. Swapped stories with a Brazilian (who was on a world tour, and whose next destination was India ) under the stars in the White desert and kept on bumping into an Indian-Chinese couple from the US who were also following the Lonely Planet and hence were either being followed by or were following us!

I have a lot more to share and as I get in the flow of writing, I guess more stories and experiences will come out in my following posts. Also, do post me a comment if you want to know something specific about organizing a trip to Egypt.