Egypt Looking Back
Well, we’ve been back in Redmond now for a few days (sort of anyways, as I have actually moved on to Australia for work), and I have been a little apathetic about putting together the usual post mortem for our trip. My body is on some crazy, mixed up time zone, so wide awake in the middle of the night in Sydney seems like as good a time as any.
In a nutshell, Egypt exceeded our expectations. Feedback was all over the map when we told people where we were going, so I’m not sure we knew really what to expect. We knew we had to go at some point in our lives, if for nothing else than to see the pyramids, but I think we were prepared for the trip to be more about history and less about enjoyment and relaxation, similar to how we felt about China. And if that was all we would have gotten out of it, it still would have been well worth it.
The words and the pictures are great mementos, but neither can really convey the impact of being there. Standing at the bottom of the Great Pyramid and tilting your head back to see two million blocks, each as tall as a person, stretching skyward is something that only works in person. That the same can be said for dozens of other things we saw, from the Ramses statues in Abu Simbel to the Burning Bush on Mount Sinai, to the coral reefs at Ras Abu Gallum only reinforces why we pack our stuff up ever year and head off somewhere new.
Ask us though what we remember most about this trip, and the answer may be a bit surprising. For Ang, I know it was the colors. No matter where we went, she always noticed how blue the sky was, or how blue the water looked. And I can’t count how many pictures we had to wade through of pink sunsets and red mountains to winnow them down to the still overwhelming number we kept. For me, it is a picture I took in Philae Temple where Ang is running her hand along the hieroglyphic carvings. These are everywhere, and its impossible not to reach out and touch them, letting your imagination go back 5,000 years ago to picture the workers creating them.
That said, like anywhere, there are things about Egypt that are unpleasant – the endless requests for baksheesh and vendors always trying to rip you off being near the top. And in the back of my head, when the voice that asks whenever we go somewhere if I could ever see myself living there, the answer comes back no. But would I recommend it for a trip? In a heartbeat.