Well if this is first class I would hate to see Second or Third! This was our disappointed reaction as our overnight train to Cairo pulled into Luxor station after 11pm last night. Instead of the rather swish train we came down from Aswan on - where our second class reclining seats had buisness class legroom and comfort - our supposed first class train pulled in dark and dusty and without lighting. As we were led down the corridor we realised that the carriage was simply a series of dark boxes (as it turned out the lighting was only temporarilly off) each with six seats which at first sight looked comfortable with lots of space between them but the whole carriage was dark and tatty in the extreme. We had a compartment with two young Koreans (who wondered why we were not on the very expensive sleeper train with normal grown ups) and a couple of young Eqyption guys and after that initial feeling that these seats were OK we actually tried to relax and even sleep in them - oh dear why oh why did we not take the day train!
By dawn and after some intermittent sleep gained sometimes at the expense of the back or neck or some other part of the body we were looking forward to reaching Cairo. After a tantalising glimpse of a distant pyramid (which turned out to be far south of Cairo) we took ages to crawl into this city of 27 million people - think of it, London is only 7m! We finally reached Cairo about 10am, rang the hotel contact we had been given in Luxor and got the cab driver to telephone for instructions. The Cairo traffic has to be seen to be believed - as the guide book says its the chariot race out of Ben Hur played with ageing Peugeots and Fiats, no car is unscathed.
We have however quickly understood how to cross the road, the local people just drift across the lines of traffic (which is generally slow moving as rush hour starts about 8am and finishes by midnight) so what you do is place some local person between yourself and the oncoming traffic and kind of hug close to them without seeming too rude and tripping them up - they after all have some mysterious ability to avoid death whilst we know that being hit by a car will hurt!
Been to the Cairo Museum, Tess has travellers' tummy, bound to happen and she is dealing with it personfully.
Brian
2 comments:
Crikey. I remember to have a look at the blog every now and again and it takes ages to catch up. You must be spending a fair while typing!
I think the "glum man" at the train station the first time you tried to buy rickets to Cairo, was trying to tell you something!
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