Wadi Degla Camping

Wadi Degla is the only nature preserve reasonably accessible from Cairo. We did not know this the first semester we were in Egypt, but as it turns out, the Wadi is actually just passed the borders of Maadi, the section of town where we live. The discovery of Wadi Degla is the reason why I went through so much effort to drag my bike out to Egypt, as it boasts the only noteworthy trail system in the country. I had also heard that the preserve allows camping in two designated areas. For quite some time, Jaehee and I have been threatening to go search out these areas and enjoy a night under the stars, just kilometers from the edge of Africa’s largest and most populous metropolis. Last weekend, we finally made good on our word.

We had mentioned the idea in of camping there in several circles, and gotten good verbal feedback, but when push came to shove, no one was really that committed to going except Nacia, whose participation in just about everything is a given. It is understandable, though, as we mostly talked with our YSA group, who are all dirt poor and aren’t zealous enough to have brought outdoor gear as the bulk of their luggage for their stay in Egypt the way we did. Then while having dinner with Josh and Jill Smith, we raised the topic again. The Smiths jumped at the idea and invited the Heisses as well. A week later we were finally making long-overdue use of our pile of camping equipment.

Because I already go the WD several times a week for biking, I went out early in the day to make sure the campsite would be available, and also to haul down some of the stockpile of wood I had gathered to build freeride biking features. My wood stash was behind a plateau, about three miles from the campsite. The spot was inaccessible to vehicles, so I made a couple of shuttle runs carrying the wood down to the dirt road by bike. I got a few good, confused stares from other riders (wood isn’t a very common thing out there). Later, when the Smiths arrived they drive the wood the other two miles to camp. After setting up our tent, I decided we probably should have one more load of wood. So Jaehee and I hiked back three miles, filled my hiking pack with 35 lbs of wood, turned around and marched back again just as the last light of day faded out.

Down in camp a fire was already burning and everyone was beginning to eat. The meal was tinfoil dinners with loads of fresh veggies, hotdog chunks, and mushroom soup base for flavor, followed by roasted marshmallows and melted chocolate-marshmallow on bananas, and it was all washed down with Cherry Coke and root beer (thanks to the US Commissary). I was nominated to provide after dinner entertainment with my torches, which had also sat unused in our closet for far too long. After the kids were put in bed, the adults all joined in playing with fire for a while. Nacia had found a shop selling steel wool by the kilo and bought a big bag of it for 2 or 3 LE, which kept us occupied for some time. Maybe next time we can rig up a Middle Eastern Sobé bomb or try to get the trashcan full of popcorn to pop right one last time.

Eventually we all settled in around the fire and chatted, slowly closing the circle to keep warm as the air cooled and the fire waned.

The next morning the Rachel, Mo and Tuesday were up at 6AM. At least that’s when we became aware that they were up. We all had a breakfast of fruit and yogurt, disassembled camp and hiked around for a couple of hours before heading out. I rode back home while the others packed into the Smiths SUV – with Jaehee pressed against the rear window in the last remaining nook. I can’t express how satisfied I was returning home in my dirty, sweaty, smoky clothes.

Trip to the Camel Market

Until about 15 years ago, the biggest camel market in Egypt was just past the border of Cairo proper in Imbaaba. Due to urban sprawl, the market was moved out to a new location 35 kilometers northwest, near the village of Birqash.

Joey, a friend of ours who works as a freelance photographer and is staying in Egypt while earning a few dollars and waiting for a visa to the Sudan, had wanted to get to the market with his camera. Jaehee, Nacia and I joined with him one weekend in early January for the trip. The way to the camel market is described in our Lonely Planet guide books. But it is pretty obvious that the writer had either never gone and just relied on second hand information, or was just not that good at giving directions. Luckily, we had four experienced world travelers in our party. Just as with any trip taken on the cheap here in Egypt, the traveling was an adventure in and of itself. Actually, in many cases the travel is the adventure and the destination just an excuse for the excitement of getting around. In this regard, the camel market was an especially good experience, as the destination was as cool as the means of getting there.

Our first step was taking the metro to Ramses, the hub of travel in Cairo. In Ramses we asked and wandered about for some time searching for the direct minibus to Birqash without any luck. It was at this point already that we realized Lonely Planet would not be of too much assistance. In time we found our way to a minibus depot a few blocks from Ramses. Here we boarded a minibus to Imbaaba, where the market used to be. We got out at a large bus station in a filthy part of town. There was more trash strewn about the streets than in Garbage City, where most of the trash is at least arranged into piles according to type. Joey and Jaehee both got chided for trying to take pictures in Imbaaba. I find it ironic that people here are so quick to reprimand us for having the gall to photograph the chaos and filth, yet never seem to do anything to remedy the situation and preclude the possibility of us documenting it. Then again, maybe they do care and it’s just a question of structural violence that I can’t appreciate completely. Either way, Imbaaba is dirty.

We were unable to find a direct bus from here to the market. But we did find a helpful man who was going the direction we needed to go. We boarded a bus along with him and rode for half an hour. When he got out, he let the driver and us know where we should get out. There is a direct correlation between the increasing friendliness of strangers and as we move farther from the tourist venues. It is too bad that most travelers don’t ever see this side of Egyptian mentality.

Before getting off, we crossed a set of locks on the Nile. We had driven far enough north to enter the delta region, where there is a lot more variation in weather than Cairo. There was a cold, heavy fog as we arrived – the kind you would expect over an English marsh. When we got out, we asked around and learned we still weren’t in the right place. After some time searching, we found another minibus that took us to a bridge market. We crossed the bridge through the lively produce market and found no minibuses to the camel market. But we were able to hire a pickup truck for 15 LE to take us down the final 20 minutes stretch. Up to this point, most of our fares had been 1 LE at most, so the 15 LE seemed like a lot, despite the fact that it was only .70 USD per person to go 15 kilometers. It’s funny how prices become so relative when traveling.

The camel market itself was absolutely everything it was cracked up to be. Jaehee and I shot 4 GB of photos, and Joey filled his memory up as well. When we arrived it was still hazy and cold, but by midday the sky was blue and it was hot. There were hundreds of camels being sold. As I understand, most of them came from Sudan on the 40 Days Road to Upper Egypt (in the south). From there they were either sold or traded or taken on to this market in trucks. Rather than describing what we saw, I will just show it. We have created an entire album for this one day alone. I also shot a few videos of the action, which are available here.

Our trip back home was in many ways the same as our trip there. It was made in four or five stages with one stop in a crowded little village called Nigla where we grabbed some koushary in a grubby little shop (the best kind of place to go for koushary). There was one big difference, though, between the trip there and the trip back. The very first leg of the journey was to get from the camel market back to the area of the bridge market. There was a man at the front gate who offered us a ride for some amount that we laughed at. It was probably something like 5 USD. We conferred briefly and settled on beginning to walk back. Either the driver would lower his asking price and pick us up, or we would eventually be able to hitch our way back. The driver stuck to his word and stayed at the gate while we walked. Several vehicles passed, but none stopped, mostly because they were already packed to capacity. We had not walked 10 minutes we a truck did pull over for us. At first I think we were all a little incredulous. But the men in the cab motioned for us to hop aboard in back. Our incredulity was not because they had stopped, as it is pretty easy to hitch in Egypt, but rather because the only place for us was in the truck bed, which we would be sharing with two camels! When we realized that it was for real, we quickly climbed in. Who gets to hitch a ride with a couple of camels?! There wasn’t much room for us, so Joey, Jaehee, and I sat on a side rail while Nacia wedged herself between the back window and a camel butt. Joey was closest to the head and nervous about being in biting range. Nacia was nervous about getting camel pooh all over her feet and legs. Jaehee and I had a great location. All four of us were smiling for the whole ride. It was pretty obvious that we were extremely pleased with the day at the camel market, and especially with our decision to hitchhike back.

Battle at Manshiat Nasr

Among Cairenes, the quarter of Cairo known as Manshiat Nasr is commonly regarded as the absolute dregs of the social order. I have personally been privy to easily 20 separate conversations in which the area was referred to under highly disparaging terms, above all as unsafe and dangerous. The thing that I repeatedly found interesting, though, is that none of the Egyptians I have every questioned about it have actually been there. How exactly the common understanding concerning the malevolent nature of Manshiat Nasr came to be, I can’t say. But I do have some guesses. The assertions concerning uncleanness are easy enough to get to the bottom of. It is after all commonly called Garbage City and the inhabitants the zaballeen, or “trash people”. These appellations stem from the use of the land they inhabit as a massive recycling center where the garbage from the largest city in Africa is brought to be sorted by hand. The other accusations could easily be seen as derivatives of the trash collection industry. Or they could have somewhat to do with the fact that the zaballeen are doubly marginalized, because of both their profession and because they are Coptic Christians. Whatever the reasons, there is a definite stigma over Manshiat Nasr.

Jaehee and Nacia had both been to the area twice before me. Despite it being just of the main freeway through Cairo, it is not an easy place to get to. Jaehee and Nacia encountered several obstacles, including taxi drivers who flat out refused to enter the area, and tried to take them to other, “safer” places instead. They ended up walking, and one of the times hitching a ride with a 14 year old Coptic boy driving a pickup. They thoroughly enjoyed their experience there and Jaehee returned very excited about her great day in her new favorite part of Cairo, Garbage City. Since hearing Jaehee’s stories, I have also wanted to get out and see this amazing place.

My chance came on January 7^th, the day Copts celebrate Christmas and New Years. Kindra had stayed in for one extra day in Cairo without her family and wanted to see some of the less touristy side of Cairo. So Jaehee, Nacia, Kindra, and I headed out to see how the Copts celebrate the holidays. Because of the difficulties of the previous trips, we decided to follow a new route. We took the metro to al-Zahraa and then jumped on a minibus that seemed to be going the right way. When it stopped going the way we wanted, we hopped back out. We were under an overpass for the freeway that led to Garbage City and figured the best way to go from there would be to get up onto the freeway and hail a minibus from there. Once we made it up to the freeway, we realized it would be a little harder than we pictured. The traffic was pretty thick and moving fast. And we didn’t seem to be able to catch the attention of any minibuses. As we stood contemplating our strategy, a car pulled up and a middle aged man asked if we needed help. We let him know we were making our way to Manshiat Nasr. He seemed a little taken back by that, but told us was passing by there on the way to work at his furniture factory in Giza. We all climbed in and he drove us to the turn off, mentioning several times that it was a dangerous place we were going. From the highway where we alighted, we had to walk a kilometer or so to get to Manshiat Nasr, and then another kilometer to get to the Coptic monasteries, churches, and monuments that are above and overlooking Garbage City.

The walk left absolutely no question in my mind as to why this is called a dirty place. The ground is covered in refuse and dead things. The streets are dirt, but in many places it looked like they could have been paved with trash. I’ve never seen such big rats – even when squished and dead they were huge. We passed half of a cat in the middle if the road as well. There were swarms of flies everywhere. And all about the trash and grime were happy little bear-footed kids running and laughing and playing (and gathering around us to ask the token phrase, “What’s your name”). It was very hard to be inconspicuous among the surroundings. We were obviously out of place and I personally felt a little self-conscious about my clean clothes, name brand shoes and expensive camera that likely cost a year’s income for many families there.

We continued our walk upwards toward the religious sites and in less than thirty minutes had arrived at a gate which separated the piles of rubbish and road kill plastered streets from the beautiful, green, well-kept grounds of the religious sites. As one enters through the gate, there is a carving in the mountainside that serves as a map depicting the various monuments located there. Farther back and much higher up on the cliff are massive carving of biblical scenes, the Holy Family in Egypt, and of versus from the Bible in both Arabic and English. We spent some time wandering about and chatting with the kids. We were disappointed to learn that no mass was being held in observation of the holidays. Instead, the churches were closed. Still, we enjoyed the incredible hilltop view of Garbage City and beyond it the City of the Dead and Islamic Cairo with the Citadel looming from the haze to the southeast.

When we finished our sightseeing and photo shooting we passed through the gate back into the trash and began to descend. The kids in the streets were again swarming around us. Many of them had airsoft rifles, fireworks or cans of fake snow that highly resembled shaving cream and were going at each other with their motley arsenals. We decided this must be in celebration of Christmas. I’m pretty sure that all four of us were shot in the back with rubber pellets from the rifles, which really stung. We also had several Black Cat style fireworks thrown at us. But for the most part the kids kept the battles among themselves.

All of us were getting very thirsty as we walked, so we began looking out for a kiosk with some sodas. While looking out for sodas, our attention fell upon another item for sale at the kiosks, cases of fake snow. The cans were going for only 2 LE each. We quickly deliberated the possible ramifications of us purchasing cans of snow and concluded that it was a good idea. With the can in my hand, I suddenly felt a lot of inhibition falling away. And it appears that the sentiment was mutual not only among Jaehee, Nacia, and Kindra, but also all of the kids who caught sight of us arming ourselves. Our presence was no longer quite so incongruous. It was apparent that the kids were curious as to our motives for purchasing the snow, but they were a little hesitant to make the first move. So, we made it for them. When they saw us drawing first blood, it was mere seconds before retaliation began. For about fifteen minutes both sides fought viciously with no holds barred. The most common shot was directly into the eyes or mouth. As the fighting proceeded from street to street, we could see the horror in the eyes of the adults who didn’t realize we had instigated everything. They shouted from the sides for the kids to stop, the kids were far too busy calling out to “get the foreigners” to hear their parents. As the battle continued, new recruits were flowing into their side and their adrenaline was surging. Things began to get a little more physical as kids hung around our necks and held back out arms while others shot snow in our faces. We knew it was time to get out, so we called for a truce. This didn’t work at all, so we began to flee. We ran several blocks shouting that it was enough eventually they got the idea. We were covered in snow at this point and probably looked pretty funny, but we couldn’t stop without getting attacked again. We continued walking briskly as we wiped off the signs of battle and laughed at our own naiveté in starting a battle we knew would end in us fleeing. We agreed, though, that it had been a very good idea and well worth the 2 LE and handful of battle wounds.

Black and White Desert, Islamic Cairo, and Luxor

During the first week of 2010 we hosted the Clemence family here in Egypt. We had an absolutely packed schedule during the week to ensure that they would get the most out of their stay. Of course we got in a lot of new adventures as well on the way. For the sake of my own sanity, I am going to forgo the ten page blog entry that would be necessary to do justice to our manifold activities and allow a longer than usual slideshow of photos taken with our newly acquired cameras to recount the escapades. A lot of details and nuances will be omitted, such as the half-week long hassle of buying sleeper-car train tickets to Luxor and the exasperating, endless argument during the Banana Island entry ticket scam, or the hours and hours of off roading through the Black and White Deserts while listening to the same fours songs full blast over and over and over. Hopefully, though, the pictures will do the trip some justice, and even express aspects of the experiences that would have been lost in words alone.

Just to give a quick overview of what the slide show covers, here is the schedule we followed during the week with the Clemences:

Dec 31 – Cairo Airport, Ramses Train Station, Al-Azhar Park, Felucca on the Nile

Jan 1 – Church, Giza Pyramids and horse/camelback riding, Dar el-Salaam Souq, Game night

Jan 2 – Bahariyya Oasis, Off-roading in Black and White Deserts, Desert camping

Jan 3 – Return from Oasis, Coptic Cairo, Road 9 shopping, Overnight train to Luxor

Jan 4 – Valley of the Kings, Hatshipsut Temple, Habu Temple, Alabaster Factory, Banana Island

Jan 5 – Karnak, Luxor Souq

Jan 6 – Islamic Cairo, Bab Zuweila, Khan al Khalili, Fatiir

Click here for the photos

Monster Monkeys and Kissing Bears

The Cairo Zoo has long been on our long list of must-see sites in Egypt. Each time we heard another round of stories told by past visitors of the zoo - of emaciated lions, sludge-filled ponds, tipping guards to hold the monkeys, and getting sucked up by an elephant – the zoo priority level rose at least a few notches. Between my last final and Christmas Eve, Jaehee and I found the time to go.

The trip to the zoo is done via metro to the Cairo University station and then a 20 minute walk around to the backside of the CU campus. We choose to enter via the Egyptian Gate, as opposed to the Foreigner Gate. I think the only difference is that we were not pestered with as many faux guides because we came in with the locals. The entrance fee was a whopping 1 LE, or about 18 cents. Not that I am complaining about a low entrance fee for once, but it seems that if the zoo is struggling so much to keep the animals fed and cared for, a couple of extra LE from each visitor might go a long way. But then again, the place has been open for 115 years so I guess they must have some sort of sustainable business model.

Inside, the zoo was actually a little better than I had imagined based on descriptions heard and read. There were no overflowing trash piles or packs of feral dogs. That isn’t to say that it was particularly impressive either. Many of the animal pens were empty. Others had signs indicating gazelles or water buffalo, but instead were full of peacocks and other birds – a sort of filler animal I guess. We wandered about for a while looking at the zebras, camels (not so special here as in North America), and horses. Then we came to the lion house and things began to get a little more exciting. There is a row of small, cages in the building and a irritated, restless lion in each. The lions were pacing and circling inside their cramped spaces, roaring and growling and glaring with eyes filled with death at the crowds laughing and yelling and throwing things back at them. The guard immediately spotted Jaehee and me as foreigners, and thus as a source of good ba’sheesh, and beckoned us into a little room off to the side. We entered hesitantly, feeling a little self-conscious at being so conspicuously singled out for the special treatment. Through the door, we found ourselves face-to-face with the mangiest lion of all in a cramped, dingy, dimly lit room that allowed us almost no space to back away from the cage. The worked took our cameras and pushed us up against the cage, instructing us to reach in a give the beast a nice pet on the head and paw. We were both a bit freaked out, since at any moment the lion could have reached through the bars to maul us, or eaten our arm as we reached in to “pet” him. But the worker was very insistent, so we went ahead and did what he said. The lion had had almost all life beaten and starved out of it long before we arrived, so we ended up making it through unharmed, except that the lion’s mane was coated in a nasty layer of ooze that got all over our hands. We gave the worker one or two pounds tip, which he looked at with utter disdain. Apparently, other foreigners who don’t understand the local economy show up and pay 50 or 100 LE, which always ruins things for the rest of us.

At the other side of the lion house, we were again ushered into the small side room. This time, though, the inhabitant was not a has-been lion, but a ferocious black panther that stared fixedly from the shadows of his cage with eyes of pure evil as foamy drool dripped over its lips and a low growl reverberated against the cement walls. The worker did not try to coerce us to pet the panther, or even go near the cage. We took a couple of poorly exposed photos and got out, leaving behind another unsatisfactory tip.

Our next eventful stop involved the monkeys. We watched a few of them swinging around their dirty, undersized pen until a worker spotted us. The worker brought us to the back of the monkey house and then disappeared for a few minutes. When he returned, he had the keys to the back door. We were ushered into a large room full of empty monkey cages and covered in straw. The worker again disappeared. This time he returned with a baby chimpanzee in his arms, which he immediately handed off to me for a round of photos. After holding the chimp and various ways and letting her sit on my head for a while, Jaehee took over for her chimp photo shoot. We left a slightly larger unsatisfactory tip this time, and walked off discussing how great it would be to get a monkey pet. A chimpanzee would probably be a little beyond our means, but a little later we came across another monkey that we decided would be perfect. It was about a foot tall, short brownish gray fur with a long sleek tail, and the face of a monster. Its face was kind of a wolf-man/Frankenstein mix with a large sloping brow, deep-set eyes and a massive underbite with two big teeth sticking up. We stared at the monkey for a long time, unsure whether to laugh or cower. The little troll monkey stared back through the cage bars the whole time, obviously plotting out its nightly terrorizing rounds among the monkey community. Someday we will find out what kind of monkey he was and get one of our own.

Our last close encounter at the zoo was just around down the way from the primate house where we found a big huge black bear sitting on its haunches and being spoon fed some white pasty mixture through the bars by a worker. We wandered over and found out that the bear was having some sweetened milk. The worker let us know we could feed her a couple of spoons full if we wanted. Of course, it would be crazy to pass up the chance to spoon feed a bear, so we gave it a shot. After a few amusing bites of sweet milk, the worker got an idea. How about letting her eat a date – right out of our mouth? Again, it would be lunacy to let such an experience slip through our fingers. I stuck the date between my teeth, stuck my head up to the bars and prepared for my face to be eaten by a bear. But the bear was very gracious and bit only the date, although she did slather my face a bit with her lips. Jaehee and I took turns giving the bear a handful of dates in this wise and trying to get a decent shot of the act on film. When done, we gave the worker the least unsatisfactory tip of the day and strolled off very pleased with the bragging rights we had secured through the experience.

When it came time to leave, we were very content with our day at the zoo. We were happier discover that we had not done everything, and would eventually get to come back for round two, which will hopefully consist of holding a lion cub, seeing the alligators, and letting elephants and giraffes eat food off of our heads.

The Shower: Thinking Like an Egyptian

A little over two weeks ago Jaehee and I were cleaning the apartment in preparation for the imminent visit of our friends, the Clemence family. One of my assigned tasks was the bathroom. I took it upon myself to give the whole place a good scrubbing. While I was in the tub working on some hard-water stains, I pulled the little knob on the faucet fixture down in order to close of the water supply to the shower head and let it run out of the faucet to rinse out the tub. After rinsing out all of the scum I’d scrubbed loose, I pushed the knob back up to reroute the water back to the shower head. But it didn’t go back up. So I pushed a little harder. Still no success. I tried another dozen times coming from different angles, twisting the knob, and applying as much pressure as I could muster. It didn’t budge.

At this point, I was a little frustrated. We were about to host our friends for a week and now had no shower. I told Jaehee about the issue and went to my tool closet for pliers and a hammer. I attempted to make use of the pliers in various ways, but they were too small for the job. So I pulled out the hammer and started smacking the knob upwards to get it back into shower position. Jaehee offered some advice and a few tries at the knob as well. Eventually, we gave up. We just took a bowl into the bathroom and figured that would have to do until we had some time to call a plumber to fix the stupid thing.

Now fast forward through more than two weeks of showering by bowl and occasionally fiddling with the knob in hopes that it would go back up. Jaehee had finally had it with the bowl, so she and Nacia approached our bowab about the problem. He said he would come up and take a look a little later. Back in the apartment Nacia decided to examine the problematic knob herself. She went over to it, gave it a little pull down and voila – water from the shower head. Strange, I swear that I had pulled it down for water in the tub and it needed to go back up for water from the shower. So, there you have it. We spent two weeks without a shower because of some horrible short term memory on my part, and a complete inability to break out of the “it is down, it needs to go up” paradigm. I can’t help but feel a little retarded when I think of myself pounding upwards with the hammer on a knob that just needed a little tiny pull the opposite direction. Especially because that inability to step back, analyze and rethink one’s approach to a task, and proceed in a manner different to the one that has repeatedly failed is one of my biggest qualms about the prevalent Egyptian thought process. Maybe I’ve had too much koushary and foul lately.

Journey to Bird Mountain

Four years ago in the fall of 2006 I made the initial draft of “Things I Will Do During My Lifetime”. Since then, the list has expanded almost four-fold, with a dozen or so goals being discarded as well. One of the goals on the original list which had proved quite elusive for some time was to go on a pilgrimage. My intent was to plan a trip to a well-known pilgrimage destination. The trip had to be specifically for the purpose of visiting a holy site, with an emphasis on the journey and the single, predetermined destination; I did not want to desecrate my pilgrimage by combined with any ulterior motive. When I wrote this goal down, I was under the impression that it would be one of the easier ones to achieve. I was living in Germany at the time, and quickly picked out several European pilgrimage destinations and possibilities. Aachen Germany, where Charlemagne and 600 years of kings after him were coronated, was the most accessible site. Then there was also Santiago de la Compostela in Spain, where the remains of St James the Great may or may not be located, among many others. But somehow, as I made plans to visit each of these places, they were superseded by other trips based on associated cost or priority of the goal to be completed. At the end of my stay in Germany, I had still not completed my pilgrimage. Over the next four years, I kept a watchful eye out during travels in North and South America, but still couldn’t manage to get the goal checked off.

Imagine my delight, then, when Nacia announced that she wanted to make a day-trip excursion to one of the most holy sites of all Coptic Christendom – Gebel al-Teir, or “Bird Mountain”. At Gebel al-Teir there is a monastery called Deir al-Adhra, or the “Monastary of the Virgin”, which built built upon a limestone cliff overlooking the east bank of the Nile, about three hours south of Cairo by minibus. In the 300s or so, a Coptic Pope or some such person of importance in the religion had a vision of the Holy Family’s travels through Egypt during their flight from Herodotus to save the young Jesus. In this vision, this site on Gebel al-Teir was revealed as a point where the Family took brief refuge in a cave. A church/monastery was constructed over that cave in the 4^th century AD. The site is now filled with relics and frescos depicting the Family’s journey. Most importantly, this site is a common destination for Copt pilgrimages, and not for tourists.

On the day of our travel to Gebel al-Teir we were up at 5am and underway before 6am to catch the metro to the al-Moneib station, from where minibuses head south. We quickly located a minibus heading to Minya, the larger city just past where we wanted to go. Minibuses only leave when they are packed full, and when the driver has finished chatting, smoking and drinking his tea or coffee. We had to wait some 30 minutes before our driver had performed these important tasks. We then spent an hour driving in circles around the vicinity of the minibus station. Jaehee, Nacia and I tried in vain to make sense of the seemingly pointless driving about, the picking up and dropping off of the same man in various locations, and the heated arguments that repeated broke out between the passengers and the driver. When we finally broke free of the looping pattern, nothing that we could tell had been gained or lost by the actions.

The drive south is marked in my memory by two things: my painfully awkward position in the van and the continuation of the most ardent of the previous arguments, this time between a woman in the very back and the driver. I worked hard to pull some meaning from the angry words being shouted at full volume back and forth between the two, and was at a total loss for some time. Luckily, the argument went on for basically the entire duration of the trip. Nacia began to point out to me a couple of the words she had made out, and slowly we pieced together something to the effect that the driver was threatening to charge her for an extra seat because bags from her party were occupying a seat that could have been taken by another passenger. She vehemently denied that her bags should be charged the price of the trip, because she could have moved them had another passenger been found. Of course, they could also have been debating the cost of milk on Mars (or something like that), but this is more or less what we concluded. The most bizarre aspect of the altercation was the brief lulls when everyone went back to being normal, happy travelers. Even the woman and the driver exchanged a few pleasantries or a humorous remark during the intermissions. But when they decided it was arguing time, the sparks really flew.

We alighted from the minibus in the town of Samalut, just north of Minya. Our first order of business was to find food. We began wandering about the streets and quickly recognized that we were a exceptional sight in this part of Egypt. As we walked along the rutted dirt roads in search of a restaurant, we gathered various followings. In half an hour of searching we hadn’t really found anything, so we turned back to a spot where we’d seen a man selling sweet potatoes. On the way there we also stopped for some delicious 1.5 LE persimmon ice cream. At the sweet potato cart, a flock of veiled school girls surrounded us, throwing out a constant stream of “what’s your name” and “welcome to Egypt”, from the only English lesson that schools seem to teach. Nacia and I retreated as their numbers grew, but Jaehee wanted to make a video. She stood recorded as they surrounded her trying to get in the picture.

With a little bit in our stomach, we were ready to move on towards our goal. The next move was to get to a boat landing on the bank of the Nile. We asked about and found which direction to go. We crossed the main road to catch a tok-tok (the little three wheel motorized rickshaws from India). A military officer saw us crossing and quickly stopped traffic for us. He came over to inquire what in the world we were doing so far from the tourist world. We explained our goal, and although he obviously didn’t understand why we would go through so much trouble to see a building, he saw it as his duty to assist. He flagged a tok-tok for us and took the driver into the police booth for questioning and to verify his license – all for our safety, he assured us. When the driver was cleared, we squeezed in and putted 4 or 4 kilometers down the road and then into a smaller village and finally out to the Nile.

We had to cross from the east to west bank of the Nile. There was a sailboat about to take off, so we hopped onboard. There was a boy on board who was munching on sugar cane. He chopped off a few pieces for us to munch on as well. Across the Nile we found a pickup truck that took us 5 kilometers to the top of Gebel al-Teir. A local man showed us where to get off and how to get to the church. He also paid our fare for the truck ride. Between us and the church was a .5 kilometer walk through an abandoned section of a little village and cemetery located on the cliff side. On the walls of the vacant dwellings and tombs were beautiful Christian paintings and carvings.

Just before we arrived at the church, we were intercepted by a pleasant police officer who was, like just about everyone else, curious about our presence there. He verified with both me and Nacia repeatedly that we were only there to visit the church, and wouldn’t be traveling elsewhere in the area. The Egyptian government doesn’t like foreigners on traveling alone non-tourism approved areas for whatever reason, and I could see the officer was a bit worried about us being there without an entourage of tourism police or a registered guide. But he believed us, and let us finish our little pilgrimage in peace.

The church was empty but for one monk, who quietly showed us about. He pointed out a few frescos, let us light candles, and lead us to a little cave carved by hand into the rocks behind the apse. In the cave was a shrine to the Holy Family; it was here that the Holy Family had hidden during their flight.

After seeing the church, we descended from the cliff and wandered about the tranquil, green farmland fed by Nile irrigation where bananas, sugarcane, and other smaller crops were growing. Slowly we made our way back to the river crossing and began the journey back home. We were hoping to arrive in time for institute that night, but a strange detour and a flat tire knocked our arrival time back a couple of hours. As we were traveled home, Jaehee and I realized that our day’s journey had occurred in 10 different stages, requiring eight forms of transportation: walking, taxi, metro, minibus, tok-tok, sailboat, pickup truck, and ferry. I felt that observation alone was enough to validate my claim of having achieved my pilgrimage goal.