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  Cairo, Egypt
Thursday, November 1, 2007

Dear reader,

Please excuse the weeks of delay since my last entry - time has just flown by since I first arrived in Cairo!

The course here is really good, and in fact next week will be the last-but-one before I hed off to Ethiopia. In the meantime, Giulia and I have managed to visit a wealth of interesting locations here in Egypt, as well as exploring Cairo itself, which is more a conglomeration of cities than a single metropolis with a single history.

One of our first expeditions out of Cairo was to the Sinai peninsula. This was still in Ramadan, so the '8-hour' bus journey lasted for more like 12, and we arrived at the foot of Mt Sinai late at night, beginning our climb almost immediately. It was a silent, star-studded and chilly night, and we were immediately struck by the silence (a drastic contrast to Cairo). Most tourists start their climb at about 3 am, getting to the summit in time for sunrise, so we were completely alone during our climb, with the exception of several Bedouin camel-herders sleeping out under the stars. We finally got to the summit, and spent the rest of the night freezing but enjoying the stars and the silence, aware that we were in the exact spot were Moses is believed by each of the monotheisms to have received the Ten Commandments, and having replenished our morale a bit with tea and biscuits.

We woke to find several other hundred people had joined us on the mountain, so after enjoying the wonderful sunrise, we quickl;y made our way off the mountain using the '1000 steps of penitance', craved out by some crazed monk several hundred years ago and linking the summit with the monastery of St Katharine far below, which we visited next. It was very pretty and interesting, and incorporates within its walls some scraggly old tree which is supposed to be the bush which caught fire and emitted the voice of God to Moses. However, any impact this might have had was a bit marred by the number of Orthodox Russians elbowing us out of the way so the could grab the leaves of the bush, and the unhappy-looking monks shooing everyone along and looking thoroughly bored of the daily invasion of tourists. Nothing like the far more impressive (and spiritual!) Deir Mar Musa where I once stayed for a coupld of days in Syria.

Next we made our way to the very touristy but equally fun Red Sea resort of Dahab, where we snorkelled amongst incredibly beautiful reefs, home to thousands of colourful fish. From there, we caught the night bus back to 'The Smoke' (Cairo is one of the top three most polluted cities in the world) and got back just in time for lessons. That same day, we moved out of our rather grotty flat in Agouza, having had a great opportunity to practice our very limited colloquial Arabic with our landlord, who did not see fit to hand over our deposit until we'd talked the whole thing through at high decibels and a compromise was reached! We then moved into our current place in Mohandiseen, which is really nice.

Well, I will finish the update as soon as I can - now we are off to get ready for a trip down the Nile Valley to Aswan and Luxor. As ever, best wishes to everyone. Tom

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