Cairo holidays

Cairo in Egypt is a massive, chaotic and clattering city steeped in religous history, thronged with people and reverberating to the sound of car horns, ghetto-blasters and muezzins summoning the faithful to prayer.

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Cairo has been the heart of Egypt for 1000 years and is an amalgam of the medieval and modern worlds, a confusing cluster of earthen houses and modern office towers.

A myriad alleyways will greet you, as will a shamble of food hawkers, goats, camels, donkeys, mosques and temples within an atmosphere of turmeric and cumin.

Nobody really knows how many people are living in Cairo but it's believed to be between 18 and 22 million. It's worth noting that Egypt's overall population is increasing by about one and a half million each year.

Cairo has many squalid squatter camps and the 1985 photograph above of the old quarter shows an area containing crypts for the dead where people had moved in to live.

Cairo is essentially a rubbish-strewn city where the suburbs meet the desert. There is dust everywhere and car fumes permeate the air. A Cairo holiday can be a bit grimy but it's an adventure and it's great fun.

The city suffers a severe housing shortage, with plenty of outlying slums built mostly by migrants from the countryside looking for work in Cairo. Quite a few apartment buildings in Cairo appear not to be completely built on their top floor, mostly because of a 10% tax on finished buildings.

Backpacker tourists can usually find cheap hotels in downtown Cairo within an area conveniently close to the Egyptian Museum and near both Islamic Cairo and Coptic (old) Cairo.

Transport links are well established in downtown Cairo for most Egypt holiday travel needs, airline tickets and for day tours to pharaonic sites such as Memphis, Giza, Sakkara and Dahshur.

Tourists will find most hotels have air conditioning and telephones. Televisions and private baths cost a little extra.

It's possible to find cheap hotels in Cairo for around US$5 per night but they are mostly very rough and occupied by poor Arabs rather than tourists. Be cautious.

When you change your currency or travel cheques, make sure you get plenty of small Egyptian notes because they are handy for cheap tipping and are a defence against taxi drivers and other tourist operators who are often unable to find change for larger notes.

It's worth getting information from a local about the true average cost and route of a taxi ride to your planned destination in Cairo.

You can try to agree on a set price with the cab driver before you travel to your destination, but keep in mind that traffic jams are frequent in Cairo and the driver has a fair argument about the consequent travel delays.

With taxis and various other situations during your Egypt holiday travel, it's smart not to look wealthy. If you look well heeled, somebody poor might try to overcharge, cheat or rob you.

Provide a tip to the cab driver in Egypt only if you're happy with the fare charged and the service delivered.

As long as you know how not to be conned, taxis are good value around the city of Cairo. However, taxi journeys can be hair-raising encounters as few road rules are observed by the drivers.

If you're planning a half day or full day tour outside Cairo to an historic tourist destination such as Memphis, it's usually cheaper to join a tour bus.

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The great pyramids, built 4,500 years ago, are 13 kilometres west of the city.

Domestic airfares are reasonably priced and cheap airline tickets can be found, but it's a lot cheaper and more adventurous to travel by train or bus.

Egypt Air flies daily from Cairo to Egypt tourist holiday destinations such as Abu Simbel, Alexandria, Aswan, Hurghada, Luxor and New Valley.

For a tranquil Egypt holiday adventure about which you can boast when you get back home, you can hire a river boat (known as a felucca) for an afternoon on the Nile or, at a negotiated price, for a trip of several days to upriver tourist attractions such as Aswan.

Egyptians drive on the right side but cars aren't recommended as the roads in Egypt are poor and medical facilities are limited outside Cairo.

It's well worth noting that medieval Cairo (in the north and south of the city) has plenty of fascinating sites to explore if you can get yourself away from the pyramids, pharaohs and possibly even the holiday tour organisers who often think it's too dangerous to stray off the beaten path.

The architectural heritage of Cairo is unmatched in the Middle East due to the city's history of occupation by the Romans, Mamluks, Ottomans, French and English.

Mosques in the city date back to the 9th Century. Coptic churches boast intricate stained glass windows and boulevards are built in the Napoleonic tradition.

A "must see" during any travel through Egypt is the Cairo Museum, which houses one of the world's greatest collections of ancient antiquities.

Another great place to experience during your holiday is the ancient Khan Al-Khalili bazaar in the east of Cairo.

It's worth noting that the colossal statues of Ramses II was moved in August 2006 from its heavily polluted base outside the main Cairo train station since 1954 to a new new location 35 km away at the Grand Egyptian Museum near the Giza Pyramids.

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Pyramids of Egypt

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