"Nile: Where the time even goes for a... " a Cairo Travel Page by nicedudeuk

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Cairo from my hotel

Precursor to Cairo

On 7th March, 2005 when I went to Egyptian embassy for visa the real Egyptian experience started. The Egyptian embassy is in a house in London and in the lower ground floor of that house is the visa office. The office is in the central London. In the morning when I went there I had my passport, a very simple visa form of one page not even asking some very important details which a country would love to know about a person it is allowing to visit. There was not a real queue there. I was worried that I was late and might not get a chance to even submit my application. Having the experience of British embassy in India will make one feared of all those things, is not it? Luckily, there was not queue at all. I gave the lady at the cabin my documents and she asked me purpose (I told business and multiple trips). The lady asked me to pay £91 which is the price a UK citizen has to pay for the visa to Egypt. I told her that as an Indian citizen I will have to £18 as per mentioned on their website but she did not listen to me and just kept on speaking one thing, £91 please. With a fear to not to lose a visa to Egypt I thought let me just give her what she wants as I was to go to Egypt within the next 6 days.

After getting off to that I was just sitting at a sit provided nearby adjusting my beg and again this lady says come at 2:30pm. In embassies world around it seems they have forgotten the art of being human.

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First experiences of Cairo

If you call the drivers of Ahmedabad rash, than here the drivers are rashest. At 24:20 in the night the traffic was like what we have at 10 and drivers were driving like they were the only people on the road. The roads in Cairo are rather nice but just the sense of direction is missing. Anyway, we drove and drove for approximately 45 minutes and suddenly the co-pilot of the driver said Sir, Sadat Academy and I saw the building for the first time. The next to the SAMS is Sofital and I was quite excited that will I be staying there or what. Remember, this does not happen in academic’s normal life. We went to the next door hotel of SAMS called CAIROTEL. It is a nice hotel having 10 floors and approximately 200 rooms. I have got a nice room with a view of the Nile and the Pyramids from my large window.

You can clearly feel the difference between a developed country and a developing country by watching how Thames (overmarketed) and Nile (undermarketed) are marketed. Nile still looks natural and river like. Not more than 4 boats I have observed at a single point of time even from a window from where I can see approximately 2 kilometre long bank of Nile.

I was so excited that could not sleep for one hour or so (remember I reached at approximately 01:30 in my room) and got up very early (even by my standards). Had a breakfast in this cosmopolitan hotel.

Looking into the cultural side if you are from India, Cairo does not surprise you much. The same friendliness, similar coloured faces, similar smiles, similar attitude towards life (chalta hey), inconsistency of time, the road (pedestrian as well as driver) behaviour everything looks similar. The only difference is that it as large number mini buses instead of ‘Chhakdas’ and taxies instead of rickshaws.

You have to keep tremendous awareness of the road as anybody can cross anytime and any car ahead of you can stop without notice, though I have not seen any accidents still. One of the most interesting things is that yesterday I could see a traffic police at around 1pm even on the road. Today I asked one of the colleagues here and he told me that because it is a posh area it is so.

Cairo’s infrastructure is similar to what any Indian metro or submetro’s structure would be.