Magical Expeditions

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):

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?:)

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.

I leave for Egypt with 2 other friends on the 10th of April. Stuff left to be done as yet are my travel insurance and deciding whether to buy Lonely Planet – Egypt or the National Geographic Traveler- Egypt. I was talking to a friend the other day and he mentioned that he was not a big fan of Lonely Planet as it gives you a lot of information and little experience. Lonely Planet is less intimate. National Geographic Traveler on the other hand is drenched with colour and history, but has less information. I guess there should be a happy medium which  I haven’t stumbled across as yet.

So this is how our itinerary is going to look:

1. Friday -Reach Cairo Friday afternoon. Check in at the hostel. Roam around Cairo.
2. Saturday – Day trip to the Pyramids
3. Sunday-  Day trip to  Alexandria
4. Monday Tuesday- Jeep Safari to the Bahariya desert
5. Tuesday night- Train to Aswan
6. Wednesday-  Aswan site seeing.
7. Thursday – Beginning of the 3 day 2 night felucca trip down the Nile.
8. Saturday afternoon – Reach  Luxor.
9. Sunday- Luxor
10. Sunday night train to Cairo
11. Monday- See Cairo
12. Tuesday early morning leave Cairo for Mumbai.

We  are not going to Dahab (area around the red sea) and hence will miss Mt. Sinai where Moses received the 10 commandments. It was a tough decision but we decided in favour of the White desert. We didn’t have the time to visit both of them.

The itinerary looks good  right now. Hopefully it will not be too hectic. I am counting on the felucca ride to unwind sit back and relax. Another thing I am counting on is that the hostels would have internet access so I will be able to update this blog as I experience Egypt.

It is falling into place. We just wired money to Eric, who is the proprietor of Backpacker Concierge. His company is arranging for our 2 day 1 night trip to the Bahariya Oasis in the White desert and the 3 day felucca cruise on the Nile. I found his company by chance while trawling Thorntree for travel information and cheap cruises on the Nile.

Any trip to Egypt is incomplete without sailing down the Nile over 2 to 3 days. There were two options in front of me when deciding on the Nile Cruise -the 5 Start luxury cruise or the more authentic but less luxurious felucca cruise. The cheapest 5 Start luxury cruise was turning out to be 500$ and considering that one of the primary concerns of a backpacking trip is money, I definitely veered towards the felucca ride.

However the one big stumbling block towards a felucca ride was that almost all entries on thorntree advised that you should be careful while choosing your felucca. You should talk to the felucca captain, find out about who are the other passengers on the felucca and check out the felucca before booking it. The point is to ascertain how hygienic the environment is and to ensure that you do not get conned. You book your felucca trip once you reach Aswan in Egypt. All this made me a little apprehensive about the entire felucca experience, when I stumbled across Backpacker.

This concierge service is said to be the beginning of honest tourism in Egypt aimed at a shoestring budget. They arrange felucca trips down the Nile and other excursions. I quickly posted on Thorntree inquiring about them and in 2 days time got first hand glowing reviews of the company.

Getting in touch with them was easy and Eric has been quick to reply to my queries and things have been going smoothly. Final review on Backpacker of course after my trip!

If you are planning on going to Egypt and have a little more money to spare, then you can look at the Sun Boat IV 5 Start luxury cruise. It has good recommendations from both Lonely Planet and National Geographic.

I am hoping to finish this trip in 50,000 rupees inclusive of everything. Let’s see how successful I am.

Note to self: Watch Lawrence of Arabia.