Egypt: Day 3 - Around Cairo, and the Mysterious 2 Girls

G'morning mate! 7.15 am. We pack up and shower and have the usual MH breakfast of bread and cheese and butter and jam and coffee. Today's plan is to visit Islamic Cairo and the Heliopolis area, and we leave tonight for Nuweiba.

We leave our backpacks down at the reception and take a train from Sadat [the Metro station in Midan Tahrir] to Attaba, and walk towards yesterday's Mausoleum of Al Ghouri. Things look very different in the day and we get a bit lost. We ask a couple of chaps for directions. Strangely we get directions in Arabic, but by watching the hand motions we are able to locate the general area we want to go. Right next to the Mausoleum is a 'souq' [market] which was very active last night. But now it looks rather dead. Later we realise it's because today is Sunday, and it's quite early - 10 am only.

Islamic Cairo

We walk down the narrow road and after a while reach the Mosque of al-Mu'ayyad. The mosque itself is very old and is finished with a lot of wood inlaid with ivory. Badly maintained though. We climb up to the roof, where we are treated to a spectacular view of the surrounding ramshackle huts. Climb back down and continue our walk. I wander into a carpet shop with grandiose dreams of bringing back an Egyptian carpet to adorn my living room. In fact I even start negotiating with the owner in a mixture of English words and Arabic numbers. Then Satya brings me back to ground zero by asking, "Hey, you sure you want to lug that thing all over the place today, and all through Egypt???" Makes sense and I beat a hasty retreat. We walk on down to the Mosque of Sultan Hussain. This is beautiful! There are so many lovely carvings in wood and stone here, that I might just come back to Cairo to visit Islamic Cairo alone. The mosque has a serene mausoleum inside which is very eerie in the morning. The bottom part is dark, while the top glows a radiant golden with a couple of shafts of fresh sunlight peeping in through the air vents at the top. I suspect that the inside of the top of the dome is inlaid with gold or bronze, giving the colour I see. The whole mosque is so quiet as I pen my thoughts down - just the 2 of us along with about 6 - 7 other tourists and a couple of locals in an area the size of a cricket ground! I could sit here all day...

Instead, we move on to the next mosque - that of Qijmas-al-Ishaqi. There's no admission fee, unless we want to climb up to the minaret. There's also a guide here, a local chap, very personable and very smart. We later find out that he's an Economics undergrad at the local Cairo University. Takes us around the mosque and we climb up to the top, via a very rickety old spiral staircase, which groans under our weight. Still we make it up and back and after a short chat with Ahmed, leave for Midan Tahrir. We decide to take the minibus again and cram ourselves into a 10 seater bus that contains about 30 people. This place reminds me again and again of home... The narrow alleys and the smell that I remember from the Bismillah hotel and Radio hotel behind Camp Market in Pune.

Heliopolis

Search around in Tahrir for the bus to Nuweiba [we haven't bought the tickets as yet], and decide we'll go to Heliopolis first and then find the Sinai bus terminus later. Waiting for the bus, we buy a couple of 'buttas' [corn on the cob, roasted over a charcoal flame, and liberally smothered with lime and spices]. Take number 356 [yes, this is the airport bus that we so famously got screwed over on Day 1] and realise a while later that we don't know where to get off. We ask the driver and he can't understand Eenglees. A couple of girls look up at us and say, "Oh it's another 20-25 minutes more." So, clutching a 'butta' each, we walk to the back of the bus. The two girls follow and we get to chatting, and discover their names are Gigi and Rania. After a short while, a 3rd girl taps Satya on the shoulder and asks, "You wanted Heliopolis? This is it - you get off here." We get up, and the two original girls tell us, "Come with us if you want to see the Baron's palace, we're going there too." And about 5 minutes later, we alight and climb into a taxi [all 4 of us]. Another 5 minutes later, the taxi stops and there in front of us in all its ugly but adorable majesty is the Baron's Palace. Quite a spectacle, but it's been fenced off. As Rania explains, some people used to come here in the middle of the night and carry out strange rituals to the accompaniment of satanic music [the word 'Metallica' is mentioned here, ha!]. The place is modelled after Angkor Vat of Cambodia, and is covered with massive to small carvings of elephants, tigers, plants, flowers, and of course, the omnipresent Cairo dust. What is even more cool, is a rumour that the palace is built on a rotating platform that apparently could rotate one degree every day, so that the Baron had a different view each day of the year. Hmm..

Rania and Gigi are still with us. We take a couple of snaps. Our minds are now shouting, "Watch out!!! You're about to get screwed again!", and we're continuously assessing the likelihood that we *are* being taken for a ride of sorts. 50-50? 40-60? 60-40? Then they ask us when we return to Cairo after the rest of our trip, as they want to make us some home-cooked Egyptian food. By now, our alarm bells are screaming, and we try to make excuses to opt out. "We don't know when we're returning, perhaps on the 16th... Maybe on the 17th, but we're leaving for home on the 17th." Then they ask us for dinner that evening, but we need to get our Nuweiba tickets. Again they come to our rescue and we take a loooong walk to the bus terminal, and interpret for us as we buy the tickets for the night Superjet us to Nuweiba. After that they take us to a place where we can get a bus back to Tahrir. We exchange email addresses and get Gigi's phone number. And they leave. And we are left speechless and wondering *why* two people would go through all this trouble and expense [they paid for the cabs] to help a couple of strangers. If this is the real hospitality of the Egyptian, and not the nonsense we encountered on day 1, then I am going to return here for more. Today, we have had the pleasure of meeting three wonderful people, and it negates our experiences of Day 1.

We take the bus number 791 all the way from Sheraton to Tahrir, and have our usual shot of fruit juice there. We still have some time to kill so we walk over to the Cairo Tower for a spectacular night view from 60 storeys up [as the liftman proudly tells us - 60 storeys in 45 seconds. and 50 pt. for that nugget]. I fancy I can see the pyramids from up here. We return downstairs and head for a satisfying dinner at the Felfela Restaurant. We have Koshary, which is a mixture of rice, macaroni, chick peas and moong-dal, with a spicy tomato puree sauce. Very tasty. Top that off with a helping of Mahlabia, a dessert which is essentially vanilla custard. I call home and have a short chat with the parents. Mom reminds me that today's Diwali. After the call, Satya and I solemnly wish each other.

We then return to MH, collect our bags and walk to Sadat station and head to Ghamra. From there it's a longish cab ride to the Al Maaza bus station [aka Soberjed (Superjet!)]. We wait for an hour, and surprisingly, the bus leaves at 11 pm sharp. 7 hours to Nuweiba.

Happy Diwali!