Egypt Expenditure
One of the challenges of traveling for me is budgeting. I love the concept of a shoestring travel – living in hostels, meeting fellow backpackers, going through the lonely planet and figuring out cheap and good food places to eat. Sigh.. it is an adventure. Someday I will want the 5 star experience. Probably.
So we tabulated our Egypt expenditures and here it is (all numbers are in rupees):
|
1. Visa Fees including fees to the travel agent |
2080 |
|
2. Flight ticket from Bangalore to Mumbai and back |
5165(Yes! those were the days) |
|
3. Flight tickets from Mumbai to Cairo and back |
24,310 |
|
4. Felucca+desert safari+ First Class train ride from Cairo To Aswan +Ride from Kom Ombo+ One night stay at the a swank hotel in Luxor through the Backpacker Concierge. |
14,866 |
|
5. Money spent in Egypt on stuff like food, entry tickets (these were steep), baksheesh taxis, and at the 2 places we got conned:) |
13,480 |
|
6. Total |
59,901 |
Not bad! 5k over my budget. I had estimated and hoped that we would manage it around 50-55k. All these expenditures are per person. Also this total does not include any shopping that I did for souveniers. Never a shopper on my backpacker trips, I did manage to buy some beautiful papyrus from Egypt though.
Comments on point 4 and 5 :
4:We paid Backpackers’ Concierge half the money through wire transfer before we left for Egypt and the other half when we reached Cairo. We paid them in dollars.
5:We were able to keep a track of how much we spent in Egypt by withdrawing LE(Egyptian pounds) from the ATMs there. Saved us the hassleof buying dollars and converting them into egyptian pounds in Egypt.
I guess it was a job well done. What do you guys think?:)
December 15th, 2008 at 2:43 am
What an adventure! Can you share more about your Felucca trip (including cost)? Thank you!!
December 15th, 2008 at 10:33 am
@Isha: The felucca that we took was from Aswan to Kom Ombo. 3 day , 2 nights. A large part of the third day comprised of a car journey from Kom Ombo to Luxor. As we were 3 people we rented the entire felucca and that came up to 118$ per person. This included the car journey to Luxor and a one night stay at a really swank hotel in Luxor. We got the felucca arranged through Backpackers. I hope that helps!
December 17th, 2008 at 1:07 am
That does help! Thank you so much!! Best wishes for your future adventures!!
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