Cairo Off the Beaten Path Tips by leigh767

Cairo has two main "City of the Dead", and the Northern Cemetery is recommended.

This place offers an escape to those who need a break from the endless bustle of the city, for the streets are quiet and the area on the whole seems to live at its own pace. There is an unsual sort of charm here that is enchanting simply because it's so different from the rest of Cairo that stepping into it is akin to discovering another world altogether.

According to my well-travelled Iraqi friend, however, it resembles many other slums in the middle east.

EXTRA TIP: Go with a local and see if he can talk to the swarms of children there and have one of them guide you to a house for a peek at the tombs behind the closed doors.

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Far, far less crowded but still worthy of your time-- don't miss out on the Saqqara step pyramids, which are an earlier form of pyramids before those your see at Giza were built. Camel rides here will only cost about LE 20 (you have to bargain, like everything else in this country) but still good fun and much more value for money.

If you let a guide take your around inside the temples and tombs, make sure you have spare cash for tips.

Bottom line: Saqqara was a gem of a place, relatively unpolluted by tourist traffic, though Memphis on the whole felt much more like a tourist trap.

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The Northern Cemetery is to the rest of Cairo what black is to white. Honeycombed with tombs, the narrow streets are car-less and empty. The air here acts as a sponge, soaking up the din that the rest of city is engulfed in. The result is an arid desert silence, clinging onto in each street and corner like mildew on clothes.

Yet here life still finds a way. The homeless and the impoverished make a living for themselves as tomb keepers. The women wash pots and pans with their bare leathery palms; kids patter around in slippers 6 sizes too large for their feet. But say what you will-- this is still their makeshift home, their little patch of the world. It doesn't take a pauper to know Despair, but neither does it take a monarch to rule a land.

The secret to their troubles isn't graffittied in Arabic on the walls; it's written on their faces and you don't need to travel to the backalleys of Cairo to learn it. And though it's untaught in any classroom, it's a familiar sight on any playground. You've most likely seen it in the office pantry, heard it bounce off the walls of a long corridor and been part of it yourself.

It is the language of laughter, and it may be one of the most empowering things we will ever have.

Please FULL VIEW photo.

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