Amma at Egypt – Part 4 – Cairo
Our first day in Cairo.
Our wake up call was at 5:30….S called us in the morning from US. I decided not to go back to sleep…but to start getting ready. But suddenly I developed a severe one sided headache. I also threw up 2-3 times. I felt very tired. I was not able to do anything. I told my husband that I may not be able to go out and so he should go and see the pyramids. He refused to do so. He said “you wanted to see pyramids in the first place….so I won’t go without you.”
We took bath and got ready for breakfast. I was not able to eat anything. I took little cornflakes and a small bun. Then I thought if I had some coffee, it might help. The waiter came and he poured coffee decoction for me. But they don’t keep hot milk. We dint have a choice. So I added some sugar and cold milk and had the coffee. Coffee tasted good….but was not hot. We had enough time to go out. So we returned to the room.
The headache was too much. My husband told me to take a tablet. I did so. After sometime we went to bus. Once the bus started to move I felt better.
After a while we reached the pyramids. Our tour manager warned us saying “If you have back pain, spondilitis, BP, knee pain etc please think it over…because you have to pay some money for entrance and if you are unable to climb then it’s a waste”. We had knee pain already. Still we decided that we won’t go without seeing pyramids. There are a lot of pyramids in Egypt. But not all are for public entry. So they took us to the great pyramid of khufu, one of the pyramids in seven wonders of the world where public was allowed to go. We went in. They had built some steps in wooden planks. In some places we had to bend a lot. We could stand straight only after some distance. But the bending was not for too long…it was only for a short stretch.
There was a lot of crowd for both going and coming back. The walking stretch is not very broad. They were regulating the crowd. They were not allowing everyone together inside. Anyhow, we managed to reach the top of the pyramid. They have one big room on top where they have the coffin. Now the coffin is empty. There is no mummy inside.
Now, they keep all the mummies in museum and only one mummy, the very famous king Tutankhaman’s mummy is kept in Luxor. After seeing the empty coffin we got down very slowly and came to our bus.
Again we started our journey. On the way we saw the other 5 pyramids and one small pyramid. Then we visited a sphinx carved from natural bedrock at the bottom of the cause way to Khafry’s pyramid.
Next we went to papyrus institute. They showed us the live demo of how they make paper for the great Egyptian paintings from papyrus plant. The plant stalk has pyramid shaped bottom. They keep the plant stalk on a board and press the stem. It becomes very soft. Then they soak it for a week. They make paper from this. This paper won’t lose colour for its lifetime…..It is just a yellowish colour. In this yellow coloured paper they do paintings. It was very nice and interesting. We took 2 snaps there.
We were then told not to take photos inside the institution. We apologized and came out after seeing all the paintings.
Next was the museum; there we saw many statues, things used, treasure golden boxes, golden face of Tutankhaman and Egyptian jewellery. We did’nt see the mummy because oflack of time.
At night we went to the Nile river cruising restaurant where we had our dinner. It was a cruise boat on which they had arranged dinner for us. While serving dinner we had some entertainment. The cruise was very beautiful. The decoration was too good. I wanted to take photo. I thought I would click some photos after dinner.
There was singing program. After that there was a dance. One man did a dance for 10 to 15 minutes. He kept turning round and round continuously throughout the dance. It was very nice. He was holding a ring like thing…7 of them. He kept changing the position of all the seven while he was rotating. Then he did some tricks with his umbrella like dress which had lights on it. He kept rotating when he was doing all this. The dance was extremely amazing. I have never seen anything like that before.
After this was the belly dance program.
Then we wanted to take some photos on the cruise. But I think the next batch of people had to come in. So we were almost pushed us out of the cruise. We could not take many photos. We only took a few on the dinner table.
After this we went back to the hotel and slept.
