Day 2 Giza/Cairo

Personally, I'd love to have risen early and watched Cairo rise. Like Bill Bryson says, there's nothing quite like watching a new city wake up. There's a springy, irrational feeling that you've got the upper hand and that you're no longer a stranger in a strange town. Watching a city shake sleep off is to catch it at its most vulnerable. Maybe the next time round. We had breakfast instead at the hotel. When I realised that hummus bi tahina was an addition to all three meals of the typical Egyptian day, I remember thinking I could get well used to this. Suddenly, everything was deeply, deeply agreeable. We checked out of Hotel Zoser.

At nine, we stepped out from Giza and followed the Nile to the Egyptian Antiquities Museum, nestled beautifully on the river promenade in full view of Cairo's largest luxury hotels. There are throngs of policemen and pink foreigners everywhere at the museum. We buy our tickets and head in. In a pond in front of the museum, Melek indicates lotuses to us. I step up and look at my reflection. I am beaming a little stupidly, so I join the rest of the group as we enter the museum. I've got the metallic taste of anticipation in my mouth -- the Antiquities Museum holds pretty much everything there is worth seeing (apart from the looted, stolen pieces in a scattering of European museums), a total of 1,32,000 meticulously catalogued pieces and about 40,000 pieces lying in boxes in a dungeon, unclassified and pretty much left in history's lurch. The Rough Guide had an arresting nugget: some of the boxes in the dungeon have sunk into the soft ground beneath and have therefore required the government to excavate below the museum itself to recover the priceless pieces. If the harshest punishment in Egypt is reserved for drug-peddlers, I cannot see why the same cannot be applied to those whose carelessness -- no, abject stupidity -- thrusts into peril priceless and innumerable pieces of national history.

The first piece we see, coincidentally is a granite statue of the pharaoh Zoser from 2670 BC, and then move onto a sixth dynasty funerary chamber, full with alabaster canopic jars that once contained the "vital organs" of deceased kings. Sadly, none of this royal offal is visible anymore. It might have been fun browsing through 4,000-year-old gall bladders, but hey. Then we get to the pharaoh Chefren, which was discovered upside down in a wishing well near the Sphinx (which bears Chefren's own visage). Chefren, undoubtedly one of the most prolific builders, has a falcon -- Horus, the god of protection -- on his head. In front of him, a much reproduced and well-preserved piece of Rahotep, the priest of Heliopolis and his wife Nofret from the fourth dynasty. What is startling is the quality of the preservation. This piece could have been turned out at a stonery in Cairo any day of the season and you wouldn't know it. These ancients obviously knew a thing or two about thrusting their art well into posterity. They just didn't let in on how, the cunning chaps. Next, and here's one of my favourite ladies from history, Maatkare Hatshepsut, Egypt's first female pharaoh, who claimed she was a man and had sphinxes of hers fitted with a ceremonial beard just to be sure -- a few days later, we would visit her magnificent temple near the Valley of the Kings. She was eulogised this century by feminist Evelyn Wells as "the first great woman in History".

The we came upon an androgynous demi-colossus of King Akhenaton, man-faced but with a woman's figure. The plaque described the sculptor's style as "naturalism bordering on the grotesque" and they couldn't have been more right. Father of Tutankhamun and husband of Queen Nefertiti (who is widely considered history's first female psycho). King Tut, the boy king, ruled for just nine years, but his life -- and more importantly, death -- fill a whole wing of the museum's first floor, including the famous 11-kg beaten gold funerary mask (which has a pony tail at the back, incidentally). The loot from his tomb fills a whole room as does another with his jewellery. Vulture collars, braces and amulets, sarcophagi with Osiris, the protector of the dead, Anubis, the jackal-headed god of mummification and his daughter Kebhut, goddess of freshness incarnated as a jewelled cobra. Stunning, everywhere you look.

We walk through the rest of the floor, filled with boomerangs, furniture and staffs from his rule and wind out to a part of the museum I have been waiting to see for most of my adult life. The Hall of Mummies costs an additional 100 Egyptian Pounds to enter. I would happily have forked out ten times as much to see half of the Hall. It is, to say the least, one of the most important things to see in this vast and befuddling ountry. At first, like most great things, it doesn't seem like much -- just a bunch of glass cases with dead guys. My mother and I are the only ones who decide to go, and we do.

It begins with a case holding the body of King Seqenenre (Tao II The Brave, 1539 BC), one of the last rulers of Egypt's Thebes region. A disturbing visage, the King the plaque tells you, almost certainly died from battle wounds. You nod to yourself as you notice an ugly gash across his forehead which, if it hadn't killed him instantly, must at least have caused him some discomfort. You can see the old man's gums, the mummy is so well preserved. Fifteen seconds inside the Hall and every single hair on the back of my neck was on end. Next was King Amenhotep from 1525 BC. A female mummy of Princess Meritamun, though the plaque isn't sure. Meritamun was daughter of Ramses and later his wife, and best loved of the queen Nefertari. She was buried in the Valley of Queens. I do hope it was she I was looking at for three whole minutes, so I cannot imagine why. King Tuthmosis I, who died ripe and old, was next. But his arms are not crossed, so the plaque says he may not have been a royal. When you look closely, it's hard to miss his perfectly preserved eye-lashes. By now, I can tell you I was shaking, though stone walls do pack in the cold rather efficiently. King Tuthmosis II was next, a man with an overbite and superbly preserved nails, white teeth and -- the best part -- wisps of matted orange hair. This here was a human being, 3,500 years old, but here, in the flesh, an expression on his face. I remember thinking that if this mummy stirred and sat up, I would only be mildly horrified -- this thing was the King. The warrior king Tuthmosis III, 1.7-metres tall, was next. Then came the tallest new kingdom pharaoh Amenhotep II, and in my opinion, the most enthralling in the Hall. His head is thrown back almost in agony or sorrow, his mouth slightly open. A sportsman, he died at 45. The mummy of Tuthmosis IV followed, manicured fingers, perfectly preserved hair, looking perfectly asleep. And then the real mccoy, the guy who takes it all home -- Ramses II (see picture). Sily wisps of white hair on his bald head, a prominent adams apple, high cheek bones, arched eyebrows as though in pain and large slender hands. The Hall finishes up with finely preserved King Seti II (his mouth, unlike the rest, is pursed shut) and King Merenptah, the 13th son of Ramses, who died of teeth problems, arthritis and arteriosclorosis (how did they figure this!?). Talking inside the Hall of Mummies is frowned upon, but I can tell you I had no problem holding my tongue inside. It was the easiest thing I've ever done.

My mother and I finally exhaled only once we were out. We went down to join the others and tried to persuade them about what they were missing, but I realised there could be no words to fully describe the Hall. As we walked away, my hair was still on end.

We bought postcards, posters and stuff in a giftstore opposite the museum and when the bus came, repaired to Fish Boat on the Nile for a surprisingly mediocre lunch, though with the usual side-spread, I was the last one complaining. It was also here that I noticed for first time the positive profusion of stray cats in Egypt, a facet amplified to bizarre proportions a few days later in Alexandria. The cats here are brave and large -- they seem to know, at any rate, that back in the good days, they were worshipped and plied with vulgar amounts of cream and fish-heads. That myth lives on now in Bastet, the cat-headed goddess of protection, and her violent other Sekhmet, the lioness-headed goddess of war, both ladies that no pharaoh ever messed with.

Next, we started out -- and I had to keep assuring myself that this was all real -- for the pyramids of Giza. The bus tore out of Cairo and through a little suburban hamlet sprinked with brightly coloured vegetable stalls, into the stony arid desert of the Giza Plateau. Through two buildings, we first caught sight of Cheops, the largest of the three. Again, as with much that was to follow, there were few words. Driving upto the vista point, we caught sight of all three pyramids in a row -- Cheops (Khufu), Chefren (Khafra) and Mycerinos (Menkara). Humility is a cliche now in front of monumental mass, but if any single group of stuctures perpetuated the cliche, it would have to be the Pyramids of Giza. Of course, the jury is still well out on how the ancients built these colossally large tombs, and none of the theories put forth even near satisfactorily answering questions of how they were constructed. The Rough Guide, which did not quite match up for the pyramids, superscribes its chapter on the pyramids with the quote "Everything fears time, but time fears the pyramids." Damn straight.

I was eager to take the supposedly rewardless sojourn through the inner chambers of Chefren, but was persuaded not to -- something I will regret until I visit Egypt the next time. Instead, after following route right uptil Chefren, being overhwhelmed at its base, we drove downroad towards the Sphinx, which sprang into view to the right when we hardly expected it. All through, the arid moon-like landscape lay strewn with Pepsi cans and empty cigarette packs. The police strode around on camels and hid their faces when I tried to photograph them. The Egyptian government has thrown prudence and taste to the wind and is meticulously destroying the area around the pyramids. A horrendous open-air opera theatre sits on the desert mauling the endless desert scape and simply ruining any real panorama of the pyramids, and an unspeakable monstrosity of a Boat-shaped building -- the boat's been shifted elsewhere -- sit at the very feet of Cheops. Therefore, from two sides, you'll have to put that darn thing in your frame if you want to capture the structure at all. Up front, they're now building a grand stage for carnivals and theatre. Right there next to Third Millenium BC structures. There is much in common with how we treat our monuments here.

We walked through surprisingly well-preserved alleyed stone passages to the bowl of earth that contains the Sphinx. The Sphinx, an absolute joy from afar but a vandalised remnant from up close is the single largest statue in the world, hewn 20 metres high and 57 metres long from the limestone bedrock, the body of a lion and the head of Khafra, the pharaoh whose tomb it guards with menacing outstretched paws. Scaffolding ruined the view, but in profile, he's still quite amazing. Legend has it that the Sphinx's famously missing nose was blasted off its face by Napoleon's artillery practice (if that's true, I would now encourage Egyptians to go to Paris, defacate on the Arc de Triomphe and then take it apart with icepicks). For now, it's being carefully restored. On the outside, the government is constructing a grand stage. The Tourism Bureau in Egypt is one of the country's most powerful and influential agencies. Which is probably why, after being free of human colonisation for decades, the modern day Sphinx, in addition to the Sun, stares right at a Pizza Hut not 500 metres in front of it.

From the Sphinx, which I turn to look at as much as I possible can, we're driven to the Al Fayed Perfumery (see picture) right there in the Pyramid market. Our guide Melek obviously gets a commission from bringing us to these sharply tourist-driven enterprises. Loosely apparently related to the Mohamed Al Fayed family of Princess Diana fame, our group is hosted with hibiscus tea, turkish coffee and a lot of talk by Hassan, the firm's Nubian pitch-man, and damn is he good at his job. After an extended presentation on how mixers in their workshops created Hugo Bosses and Calvin Kleins every day only to find them sold for top dollar in the rest of the world, he invited us to buy our own. It was clearly a very impactful pitch, because everyone bought some. We settled for CK-One, Bulgari and something else I cannot now remember. All in all, it must have been a sweet $150 or more. Not bad for a half-hour of hot air.

Next, we were driven to a Papyrus Institute -- this is hilarious. All across Egypt, we found shops (they really are just shops) selling varieties of stuff from papyrus to perfume to alabaster, but calling themselves "institutes". Maybe it means something entirely here in the desert. A large Egyptian woman took us -- a little hurriedly I thought -- through the making of papyrus before practically ordering us to write down which pieces we wanted to buy on a provided form, and yes, they took dollars, euros and pounds sterling, thanks. I imagine everyone was a little embarassed by the quietly aggressive nature of Egyptian enterprise. I mean, we were handed our order forms before we'd even entered the shop. I found this distasteful immediately. It seemed to nibble away at everthing that I thought was nice about this country even though I'd seen nothing at all. As with the perfumery, everyone bought some papyrus art. From the shop, we proceeded to what is supposedly Cairo's "in" clothing chain, called Funky Bros, its logo a camel with sun glasses and a palm-tree motif shirt with a speech bubble that says "time 2 get funky", in the backdrop, the pyramids in cartoon-hand.

We then went to the Giza train station. After loading up all the bags on a hand-drawn cart and settling everyone inside the station on the platform, I went off with my uncle in search of fruit, but returned with peanuts from a chap on the street selling infinitely more interesting looking nuts, but I decided I would try them later. The platform was very Indian -- bustling, street stalls for quick food of baguettes and eggs with spinach and meat, a tiny cafe. The train was a special luxury train for tourists like us. I would have loved to be in an ordinary train instead, but after a long emotionally and physically draining day, I was happy with some rail comfort, even though it wasn't up to much. As our train pulled out, we were served tray-dinners of rice and meat (very, very mediocre), though before that we took the edge off our weariness with glasses of scotch in one of the cabins. I think I fell asleep as soon as I climbed into my bunk bed.