For the last two weeks I’ve been living in a bubble – a five star bubble, isolated from news, internet, email and phones.
I’ve been on a five star tour of Egypt with QC Seminars. (Special note – QC Seminars run NLP and other mindset training programs. The Egypt trip is a special event they put on each year.)
From the moment I arrived everything was taken care of, from being met at the airport, special private tours of the major tourist sites and accommodation in AMAZING hotels.
I have had the time of my life. (Great song but don’t read too much into it.)
The first few days were at Mena House – a spectacular hotel in Giza right next to the Pyramids. I was told I’d be able to see them from my room, but as I arrived at night I couldn’t see them and doubted they’d be visible from my room.
When I woke up the first morning and opened my window I was awestruck – there they were – the last remaining member of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Here’s what I saw:
That left me breathless and overcome with emotion – “I was actually here, at the site of the Pyramids”. Had that been the entire trip it would have been worth it, but it was just the beginning.
Mena House is a fascinating location. While it’s a stunning hotel, it’s also the place where much of the negotiation and the final signing of the Israel-Egypt peace agreement took place. Being Jewish and having a special connection to Israel, that held a great deal of significance for me.
The low-light (is that the opposite of a highlight?) of Mena House was when a woman, who was at a Pan-African conference of senior government people, said to me I looked like Yasser Arafat – not exactly what I would consider a complement. Being a Jew in Egypt and somewhat paranoid about that, I wasn’t sure how to respond to that comment – she did seem to be a nice lady when we spoke (about other things).
And here’s my photo of dawn at Mena House:
The program started with a trip to Saqqara, the location of the Step Pyramid of Djoser, built by Imhotep. This is believed to be the first pyramid ever built. As you’d expect, it was fascinating and interesting.
However, the mind blowing part came next – a visit to the Serapeum Tomb. This tomb is filled with sarcophagi which are enormous – each sarcophagus, carved from a single block of granite, measures 4m long, 2.30m wide and 3m30 tall and weighs about 80 tons.
The general view is that these were used to bury the Apis sacred bulls. However, the size casts some doubt on that. Another view is they were built by and for aliens (heard a lot of that in Egypt).
How it does challenge your thinking isn’t so much the question of who built them and for what purpose, even though those are big enough issues which leads to all sorts of speculation, but HOW they were built.
The technology available at some point in the very remote past is astounding.
According to an article by Antoine Gigal “We also know that the huge granite sarcophagi are impossible to move or to transport. Someone has already tried it with a big team and heavy equipment, and the sarcophagus, slightly smaller than the others, is sitting right in the middle of the return corridor, abandoned there because it could not be dragged any further.”
So, the first couple of days resulted in emotional overwhelm and a serious case of blown mind.
And that was just the beginning.
The next day began with a talk by Dr Zahi Hawass, a very prominent and powerful person in the world of Egyptology and Egyptian antiquities.
As I’m no fan of Dr Hawass (I didn’t even collect the photo of me taken with him) anything I’m likely to say is probably libelous. For a background about him see this Wikipedia article.
After a rather poor start to the day (did I mention I wasn’t happy being in the same room as Zahi Hawass?) things picked up dramatically with a visit to the Sphinx, a camel ride and then a tour of the great Pyramid.
Most people see the Sphinx from a walkway above.
Because of the connections the QC organisers have, we had a private tour and had access directly.
Here’s me at the base of the Sphinx, between the paws (everything in Egypt is BIG) and doing my Lawrence of Arabia impersonation (got that a lot – can’t understand why??):
After our camel ride, which freaked out quite a few people but I thoroughly enjoyed, we visited the weaving factory.
It’s very easy to spend lots of money on quality goods in Egypt, and quite a few people in our group ended up buying extra suitcases and working out the best way to get their purchases back home (excess baggage vs shipping).
As an urban nomad, with no regular home, it was easy not to buy stuff – but it’s still very tempting.
That completed our second day.
Coming up is Alexandria, a visit to the Ben Ezra synagogue, private tours of Luxor, Karnak and Komombo, Abu Simbel, Sharm El Sheikh and a private tour of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo but we’ll keep those for next week’s post.