The sun again! The blue sky again! Again the sea from one side and the desert from the other one! I’m home again!

Did you have a situation when you have worked hard on something for a couple months? I’m talking about physical feeling of your brain being hurt… when you change everything at one point by leaving to somewhere with only happiness instead of telephones and meetings!
Or that could a feeling of coming back to a place you lived some time before, the place that was home for you…

I have both of those feelings! After 2 months of hard work on different projects during Moscow and Ukraine autumn I finally did the thing I had planned to do for a long time. I wanted to visit my friend in Egypt and show it to the one I promised to walk the dirty scrap yards of Sekala I lived 5 years ago. No doubts, Egypt made me the one I am right now.

I was here 3 years ago. I came back here and it feels like I didn’t leave the place… It seems like time doesn’t go by here… like it was lost in sand dunes and dirty eastern streets. Well, that’s not surprising because Pyramids are here. They say everyone and everything is afraid of time, but the time is afraid of the Pyramids…
Here you can spend whole night sitting in a café on a dirty street of Sekala or Sheraton, drink hot carcade and talk to your old friends you haven’t seen for ages… Or you can simply smoke shisha and puff clouds of smoke to the monitor of your laptop… Or you can lay at your home and listen to imam’s prayer from the closest minaret…

Oh, it’s a heaven to drink fresh orange juice and be recognized by the personnel you haven’t seen for ages! Those meetings with old friends are so true!

I’ve already been here for one month. Mostly I stay at my friend’s place who is one of the best divers of CIS. I also spent couple days at a hotel like a “regular human being” :). I made several conclusions recently:
1) 5-star hotels do not contribute to your self-development :)

2) The further you are from Ukraine the tastier is the lard :)
I almost completely remembered my Arabic language skill. I even was surprised by the level I could restore. It was actually enough to say Arabians that I was from Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and Mansur :)

I also went to Cairo and for the second time in my life visited Pyramids and took a ride on felucca down Nile river. Cairo has many faces. You can see the treasures of its museums and the monuments of history on one side. On the other side, you can observe dirtiness and poverty of ghettos with empty windows. There are actually many Christian churches in this Muslim country. Each mosque is neighbored with a church! Wherever you go in Cairo you can always feel that this city is stronger than time. One of the heroes of “1001 nights” said: “The one who had not seen Cairo didn’t see the World”. It was also to see the changes in my attitude to Cairo. I remember my first visit 5 years ago when I tried to cross a road here. I couldn’t do that since there were no traffic lights, and cars were just endless. I followed a brisk Arabian and reached the middle of the road. Then I spent 20 more minutes in order to finish the business but I changed my mind. I simply took a cab just next to me and took a ride to the other side of the road :)
Now I find the city to be pretty calm. They say “Cairo will be scary for the one who has never seen Deli” :)))))))))

I also remembered the picture of a Tahrir square café canned by Arabians watching a soccer game!

Oh, I love the East and Egypt… I wish I could trade my South America and Pole trip for staying here the whole winter…

My first meeting with the Pyramids, 2003-2004




I found these pictures when I was digging my stuff I left 5 years ago at my friend’s place. This box was like a time machine for me.

The second meeting, 2009




This picture depicts current days. We gave some gift to be admitted to the Pyramids after they were closed for tourists. That’s why we had a great opportunity to make photos on the sunset, have face to face meeting with the Pyramids and avoid crowds of tourists. By the way, I got an idea to spend night on the Pyramids and climb to the top of them. I think I’ll do that in Spring since it’s getting cold now…

The sea


In the desert of Bedouins