Dear Egypt,
Long before I felt your wind on my face, I had heard hymns sung to your pyramids, your temples, and your river that has outlived empires. And without a surprise they were every bit as staggering as promised…
Yet it wasn’t the weight of your history that caught me off-guard, it was something far more, one could ironically say, unguarded. The man who wouldn’t let me leave his shop without tea, the boatman who spoke of the Nile as if it were an old friend, or the woman who laughed when I mispronounced her name (and taught me to say it properly).
To stand before monuments I had only seen in textbooks was my simple intention. To trace hieroglyphs with my eyes, to finally understand how something built 5000 years ago could still feel so stubbornly alive. I never realised I was coming to truly meet you. This was supposed to be a simple entry in my Egypt travel blog. It has become something else entirely.
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Cairo, you are often treated as a start; to Egypt, to Africa, to everything that came before us. Long before I arrived, I had reduced you to an image, of dunes, pyramids, a silhouette against the sun. I thought that would define my travel to Egypt experience.
Yes, the desert line your edges and yes, the pyramids rise within sight. But I figured sooner or later, that you were not a backdrop to them, but a city of millions, restless, articulate, and unabashedly present. Some travellers shy away from cities your size in search of something they call authentic. But you never pretended to be any of that. You asked to be engaged with, to be crossed carefully, bargained within, listened to. And somewhere in that negotiation, I found a different kind of Egypt.
The first time I stood before the Great Pyramid of Giza, I expected spectacle. Instead it felt as if it had always known I would arrive eventually, and that it would outlast me just the same. As I circled it slowly, a guide beside me shrugged and said, “Take it slow, they’re not going anywhere. They’ve been here longer than anyone remembers. They’ll be here long after we’re gone.” Was it that simple for him? I had flown halfway across the world for what he barely glanced at twice?
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On a felucca along the Nile River, I couldn't reach out for my phone for some reason, was that you, Thoth? The captain poured tea from a dented metal pot and pointed to the banks where palm trees leaned toward the water. “The river has seen everything,” he said. Well, I believe him.
Further south, in Luxor, you changed again. I wasn’t prepared for the scale of your temples, larger than it was portrayed in any Egypt travel guide. I tried to imagine the hands that built them, and gave up halfway through the thought. The scale makes that kind of imagining feel inadequate...
In the Valley of the Kings, I stepped down into tombs that felt really close. The ceilings were low in places, felt the air being so still and the colours of the burial chambers unsurrendered.
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If this were just another Egypt travel blog, I’d probably be listing timings, tickets, and tips here. I could go on about monuments, but I say again, that wouldn’t be the whole truth about you. It was always the simpler things for me, like how this shopkeeper who insisted I sit for mint tea before even glancing at what I might buy, a driver who spoke about his children’s dreams with a softness that had nothing to do with ancient glory or that woman on the train who shared her homemade bread without a word...
Somewhere between the shadow of a pyramid and the hush of the Nile at sunset, I understood; you are not a relic, but a living memory. And to be welcomed into that memory, even briefly, felt like a privilege.
I highly suspect this isn’t the last time I’ll write about my travel to Egypt, but I’ll let this rest for now. The rest will find its way here soon enough…
Until next time,
Kindly keep a little corner of the desert warm for me.
