Luxor/Ägypten – Assuan/Ägypten
Von Luxor aus fahren wir entlang des Nils durch Zuckerrohrfelder vorbei an ärmlich aussehenden Lehmhütten, die dennoch mit Satellitenschüsseln ausgestattet sind. Nur hinter Luxor bekommen wir kurz Polizeibegleitung. Ansonsten bleiben wir unbehelligt auf der kleinen, verkehrsarmen Straße. […]
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Luxor/Egypt – Aswan/Egypt
Good Morning!
this time from Khartoum. I hope you all are fine! Thank you for the first comments on the new picture posts! Maybe we will still manage to set up a page for all of them, for you to read, so that it would be easier to discuss the one or the other topic.? […]
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Kairo/Ägypten – Luxor/Ägypten : Fotos
Cairo/Egypt – Luxor/Egypt
Hello there, wherever you are! I hope you had a good time! January was passing by quickly, no? Thank you again for the refreshing comments and enjoyable e-mails. They are like vitamins for us!
With the new pictures and these few lines we hope to bring you a bit of sunshine and blue sky, a bit of dessert sand between your teeth, a thirsty feeling in your throat, a smile. :)
It was a great time on this route, together with David, if you remember, the cyclist from Fribourg/Switzerland. We were meeting at Ingys parents house on Saturday afternoon, January 13, had a cup of tea together and some delicious dates, spent the night out there in the garden. The next morning a ‚Good Bye‘ and ‚Thank you‘ note for her, before we started, going south to see some of the other impressive pyramids along the Nile. But our plan to go from Dahshur directly to the 6th October City had to be changed – military zone. So we were passing by the Gizeh Pyramids another time and called it our ’sunday round trip to the Pyramids‘, after setting our first night camp just outside of the modern and clean 6th October City.
With the bikes heavely loaded with food and water for the next 3 days, we were happy to have the wind from behind, reaching the first Oasis, Bahriya on Wednesday afternoon. There we had a good rest, bought more food and filled our water bags again, calculating with 4 Liters per person and day.
Thursday afternoon we had a foto session in the White Desert, a popular sight along this route and still without ticket office. Passing through Farafra Oasis on Friday and almost 160 tailwind-kilometers on Saturday we reached Dakhla Oasis on Sunday, stopping in Al Quasr to have a closer look to the old islamic town, built out of clay, palmwood and palm leaves.
Following a side road we found this pitoresque spot for the night – a sandbed between palm trees! We are in Africa! It might sound strange, but I am sure you know this feeling, these moments, when you suddenly realize, where you are and how you got there! Well, and although we are on tour with an average of 18-20km/h, cycling more or less 600km a week, it still takes time to find yourself as part of these different countries, cultures, continents. To see and read and also meet the people along the way, to listen to their stories, to share our differences and commons, to get a feeling for the world they live in, the world we share and our own world. We are in Africa!
The next morning, a lazy Monday morning ;) we met Raga, who came along and invited us spontaneously for a kind of eco-tour, showing us the place where he lives and works. Along the way he picked and offered us some oranges, some dates, guaves and freshly melked milk. He showed us how they bring water on the fields, while his mobile phone was riniging, and how peanut plants look like. Off course we had to taste them too. Well and then he wanted us to climb this donkey-mobile… ;) Thanks again to you Raga!
15 km later, already in Mut, the main town of Dakhla Oasis, we met Otto, first on his bicycle, later in the ‚Garden Hotel‘, where he stays, when he is not out there in the desert walking, pulling his trolley, enjoying the peace and silence of this fascinating scenery. He still lives in Germany, retired earlier from his job in a customer service office of a crane company and returns to the arabic countries and the desert regularly for several months. He speaks arabic and also helps Muhammed Ali, the man on the left, with the happy smile, who is managing the ‚Garden Hotel‘ with an unbelievable monthly income of 150 LE (about 20 Euros), as Otto told us. I still can not believe it! The night-watchman is actually a teacher, who supposedly earns about 250 LE a month plus the 120 LE for his night shifts… We stayed for 2 nights. It was a good time there!
From Dakhla the road leads to the Kargha Oasis, where we arrived on Thursday afternoon. This time we were accompanied by a police car into the town centre and they even stayed near us, when we did our ‚independence shopping‘ (water, bread, feta cheese, marmelade, beans, rice, pasta, tuna, tea, oranges, bananas, onions) and when we were leaving the town again, passing the police-checkpoint, to find a place for the night. Some patience was needed, but then they turned arround and left us alone. So we used our chance, switched off the lights and pushed our bikes off the road, far enough, before the ’night shift‘ arrived…
We still had about 320 desert km ahead of us to Luxor and the wind and the burning sun during midday hours were slowing us down. But, believe it or not, it is a great feeling to cycle along these roads, almost everyday. It was never boring or monotoneous and there was always time to have some fun, to discuss, to wonder about this scenery, its evolution and the visible process of equalization (crumbling rocks and mountains), or just to enjoy the feeling of beeing there, somewhere, on a planet called ‚earth‘, watching the stars, in a silence we are not used to (anymore?) in europe, wondering, how and when and why man started to think that light has a velocity and that it is not indefined…
Well, there we are again, here in Luxor. It is 1:00 am, early Wednesday morning. We want to leave today to go to Aswan, where we want to be on Friday. Our tickets for the ferry to Wadi Halfa on Monday are already reserved. We are looking forward for our next country – Sudan!
We don’t know yet about the internet availability along the way to Karthoum, but I think within the next 3 weeks you will hear from us again! Thanks for joining us so far ;) and best regards from Thomas and David as well!
Maik
pictures to this article: Kairo/Ägypten – Luxor/Ägypten : Fotos
Kairo/Ägypten – Luxor/Ägypten
Weiter geht’s. Wir haben uns entschieden, nicht entlang des Nils zu fahren, sondern den Weg durch die Sahara (! ;) ) zu nehmen. Zwar deutlich länger, versprechen wir uns aber weniger Stress, als am dicht besiedelten Fluss und können diese Route vor allem individuell mit dem Rad befahren. Entlang des Nils besteht zum Schutz der Touristen Konvoipflicht. Gerade in der hier dargebotenen Ausführung eine aus unserer Sicht sinnlose Einrichtung. […]
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Fußgängerüberweg in Kairo/Ägypten : Video
Wenn man in Kairo vor dem Überqueren einer Straße wartet, bis frei ist, wird man sie nie überqueren, selbst an einem Fußgängerüberweg. Also einfach loslaufen.
Kairo/Ägypten
Vor unserer Weiterfahrt nach 19 radfreien Tagen, müssen wir in Kairo noch unsere Aufenthaltsgenehmigung für Ägypten verlängern und ein Visum für den Sudan besorgen, wofür wir wiederum ein Empfehlungsschreiben der Deutschen Botschaft benötigen. Alles zusammen zieht sich fast über eine Woche. […]
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