rihla: famous triangles

This weekend (because weekends are Friday and Saturday here, so while all of you read this over your Sunday morning coffee, remember that I woke up at 8 and have been sweating in an office at a computer for hours. Similarly, when you re-read this on a Friday at work, remember that I got to sleep in), I have lived up to my ultimate tourist. Yesterday, Sheetal and I went back to Khan al-Khalili (and north/south of it), which was really pretty (re: kid with kite on roof), if a bazillion degrees (actual temperature. Bazillions exist in both Fahrenheit and Celsius in Cairo).

near bab zuweila

bab zuweila

shade at al-fishawi (open for 2 centuries without being closed one day). also, stuffed crocodile.

sheetal at the masjid al-aqmar – mosque of the moonlight

street view

inside the wikala

on top of the wikala.

Then today I woke up at 7 in order to go to some famous triangle-y things in a suburb of Cairo with Buchi from work so that he can see them before they leave.

these famous triangle-y things

I feel like going there was the singularly most touristy thing I have ever done and may never be able to out-tourist. They are the Pyramids at Giza after all. For the record, I don't really mind being a tourist (it is, after all, how one sees things when traveling), so this is more an observation about how seeing the Pyramids is the ultimate tourist destination.

for all your mini-statue of anubis needs

For those of you who didn't know me as a fourth grader (be glad first of all), I had a thing for Pharaonic Egypt. I can still probably rattle off the who-begat-who of Pharaonic cosmology (Nut + Geb = Osiris and Set, etc.). That said, during this entire phase, I never really became interested in the Pyramids. They were part of the whole yes, but never really the part that appealed to me. As a result, I guess my expectations for today were pretty low for the Pyramids themselves. I didn't think they'd be boring, just that they weren't something that particularly interested me.

they were uninterested/ hot and sleeping in the pyramid.

The Pyramids of Giza themselves are located in Giza, which is really just a suburb of Cairo (with something like 7 million inhabitants) at this point. The illusion of the Pyramids being in the middle of nowhere in the desert is completely an illusion. Most views reveal the sprawling apartment complexes of Giza all around you, with just a small, cordoned off area of desert to surround the Pyramids.

see the polluted sprawl of cairo in the back?

there it is!

After entering the park at the Sphinx gate with my oddly still functional Jordanian student ID giving a 70% discount, the Sphinx sort of confirmed this suspicion. I guess it was just smaller than I had pictured/ wanted it to be. Significantly smaller. And behind a wall. That said, I did learn its name in Arabic, which is أبو الهول (Abu al-Hol), or the Terrifying Dude. This combined with its small stature completely re-endeared it to me.

the dude

hey look, it's me.

However, once approaching the Pyramids, they started to win me over. Don't get me wrong; there is nothing to do in the park really other than look at big triangles and have people attempt to get you to pay to ride a camel. But there's kind of a reason those triangles are famous.