Egypt - really, really old news

About 8 months late, I realized that I did not finish writing about the rest of my study trip to Egypt in January.

Cairo is a crazy big city that is impossible to get around. Most of my memories of Cairo are of being stuck in traffic in a cramped, hot bus in a suit. We had some cool meetings though in addition to the one with Orascom that I have already written about - a few government ministers, a non-profit, some energy companies, and a tech startup. But the cultural sites were what really stood out in Egypt.

The pyramids, though their size was impressive, were a bit of a disappointment. We saw them once during the day and once at a hoky light and laser show at night.

Luxor, a few hundred miles south of Cairo along the Nile, was really amazing though. We took a sunrise hot air balloon ride over the valley, and had amazing views of all of the temples, tombs, and ruins. I also found the Nile really interesting. While I guess I learned this in high school, the entire country of Egypt is desert, except for a stretch about 1-2 miles wide on either side of the Nile, which stretches all the way from its delta in the north of the country to southern Egypt. While this makes sense, it was still shocking to see firsthand how green the area around the Nile is, and how it instantly drops off to extreme desert just a few minutes walk away from the river.

During my travels through 33 countries over the past two years, I have seen a lot of really old stuff. But the sights in Egypt are staggeringly old. Many of the ruins that we saw were 4,000 to 4,500 years old! All of the ancient ruins that I saw in South America, India, China, Thailand, Japan, the Middle East, and Europe - none of them were more than 2,500 years old. And the Egyptian ruins including King Tut's tomb, Hatshepshut's tomb, the pyramids, and the many statues of pharoahs and sphinxes were as impressive as any of them. It puts the rest of the historical sights I have seen around the world in a different perspective, and also really challenges the American worldview where remembering things from 40 years ago seems like ancient history.

So while Cairo is not high on my list of places that I would go back to, I would love to spend more time exploring more of Luxor and Aswan, and explore the rest of the areas along along the Nile south of Cairo. Here are a number of Egyptian photo highlights.

Street market - Cairo

Boy carrying flatbread

Camels and pyramids

More Great Pyramids, Giza

Old building facade, Cairo

Hot air ballooning in desert over Luxor
Mosque in Egyptian desert Hot Air ballooning, fields by the Nile quickly become desert
Sphinxes, Luxor

Massive ancient columns
Hatshepset's tomb
Google satellite map showing the green by the Nile and the surrounding desert