Week 21 - The end is nigh

Unfortunately my self congratulations of last week on a successful border crossing into Egypt proved a little premature - an email from the shipping agent I'm to use to get the bike out of Egypt and back to Europe told me I'd failed to get an important piece of paper at one of the towns near the border and without it the bike won't be leaving. The easiest solution was go back and get it, so one thousand kilometres later.....

...... I had the above. Only a very creative bureaucracy could dream up a system where you need to get a piece of paper saying you've got no outstanding traffic fines from the Traffic Court closest to your place of entry, before allowing you to drive the length of the country to your port of departure. Bizarre.

Saw a lot of this view in my doubling back - fortunately for me most of the ride was (relatively) fast desert road

Having my ego fed - waved down by a group of cars so the passengers could have their photo taken with me

 Whilt back at Aswan getting the missing bit of paper I went to see one of the tourist sites I'd missed first time through, the quarries where the stone for many temple statues was mined. More impressive than it sounds as it contained this unfinished obelisk.

Your having a bad day at work when three quarters of the way through shaping up a 44 metre obelisk it develops a crack. Ah well just leave it where it is and start another one. 

Onwards again we made it to Cairo a city which I had been in some trepidation of as the traffic has a fearsome reputation. All I can say whoever thinks it's bad hasn't tried Kampala. It's fast, it's noisy, but it sort of obeys the rules we're used to, and most importantly everyone keeps their sense of humour and even the craziest driving just raises a shrug of the shoulder and another blast of the horn.

Also having a bad day - just lost his load on the middle of a three lane road

At the end of the day tourists like me only come to Cairo for one reason the Great Pyramids of Giza, and like the rest of Egypts antiquities they didn't disappoint. It doesn't matter how many photos you have seen of them, how many statistics you have read they are still awe inspiringly massive.

Playing the tourist - Lawrence of Arabia I'm not. 

Obligatory photo to prove I and bike were really there. 

Look carefully and you can see people in the foreground.

The playwright Alan Bennett said of the Sphynx "like many TV stars its smaller than expected".  I have to agree,  but it doesn't help that the viewing area puts you up high alongside it,  if you were down between the paws you might think differently. The poor thing is also badly eroded and had been patch repaired by the Romens onwards and some of those were not done well.