An Introduction to Time Travel
Growing up in Europe, you quickly grow accustomed to old stuff. The route to the nearest supermarket taking you past buildings that have stood for centuries; medieval ruins not out of place on a short countryside walk; your own house, a historical relic were one to strip back the modern renovations and comforts within. In Scotland, it’s a lot of castles. I can name at least five a short drive from our house, in various states of repair. Some, crumbling into the sheer cliff that drops straight down to the sea. Others, still standing, their interiors preserved from their last tenants.
But in Europe, I consider these historical elements an aesthetic backdrop to the places that they are today. In my mind, they are bustling cosmopolitan cities like London or Paris or Rome, or quiet but nonetheless modern villages like you find dotted through the rural areas of England, or France, or Germany. Yet, when I’ve thought of Egypt, over the many decades I have dreamed of this place that seemed to be not entirely be real, all I pictured were its historical features. And these aren’t just historical – these are ancient.
Cairo International, at first glance, could have been any other airport in the world: monochrome and sleek, neon signs illuminating the way. Yet already here, I would start to see little hints of the history blended through the country – just not the history that I had always read about. Not the ancient history, but the recent history. The smoking lounge, wood-panelled with red blinking lights indicating the current time across the world. Through the haze of cigarette smoke, a swath of North African men in tailored pinstripe suits with slicked back hair and thin moustaches talking animatedly. I peered through this window into 1975, momentarily bemused, before moving on.
The drive from the airport gave way from massive stretching highways with no semblance of road rules to the tiny winding streets of Giza and, there, that was the Egypt I had learned about. There stood the Great Pyramids, a towering backdrop to the small cafés and restaurants that lined the street alongside them.
My first real look at the Great Pyramids of Giza.
This contradiction between the country existing as it is today with the ancient history that the visitors flocked to see would be the most jarring part of the trip for me. Moving from the busy market streets of Aswan or Luxor, where vendors called to you left and right, into the enduring history of the temples and tombs of the historical sites, where vendors called to you left and right–
Hang on.
It was, at times, overwhelming; exhausting, almost, as we perfected our Arabic for “no, thank you”, our tones becoming sharper as the week went on. But in hindsight, I almost have to admire them for it. When still today, all many foreigners would think of Egypt for is its distant past, those there should be allowed to find ways to live from it, too. Culturally, it was just a different world to what I was used to and I tried to remind myself of it, to be respectful of it, even as I begrudgingly dug Egyptian pounds out of my coin purse.
“And a little for my friend,” the local man nudged with a toothy grin.
Some more Egyptian pounds.
Exploring the incredibly intact structure of Philae Temple.
A well-positioned local for a few Egyptian pounds.
Over the course of my week across Cairo, Aswan, and Luxor, I learned more about Ancient Egypt than I had from any book and I saw living history like I never had in places like Europe. Here, for whatever ruins, there was also a fulsome temple, or a tomb in which the vibrant paint colours had persevered for thousands of years. The sheer scale of some of the columns and obelises; the enormity of the statues; the detail of the hieroglyphics and the murals. These were things I could not get from books. These were things I had waited a lifetime to see with my own eyes, and they were even more than I could have imagined.
That, too, was a little overwhelming.
But as our week in Egypt grew to a close and we returned to Cairo, I realised how little of the country as it stands today I understood, or even had seen. I returned to the Sphinx, a confidence in navigating the busy streets now that I had not had when I first arrived; an eye now for how to avoid being hit by a camel, horse and cart, motorbike, or a vendor’s armful of miniature pyramids. And with the Sphinx rising up before me, I knew that for all I had developed an understanding of Ancient Egypt, I had none for the Egypt of today.
The city of Cairo, modern and developed and glittering along the banks of the Nile as we sailed the waters that final evening, was a mystery to me. The people, the locals who didn’t lurk around the corners of the temples awaiting tourists like myself, were strangers (with the notable exception of our wonderful guide, with whom I had had the joy of talking with extensively over our week together).
It reminded me again of how travel can broaden our minds, yes, but how it does not work to treat it as a checklist. To go around the world ticking countries off a list, number this of that, when it would take a half a lifetime to understand any one of them; perhaps an entire lifetime for somewhere as vast in both geography and culture as Egypt.
It reminded me, too, of the importance of intention in travel. There is nothing wrong with being a tourist, as long as you maintain respect for the culture and environment of the place in which you are visiting. There is nothing wrong with wanting to take that photo at the Sphinx (which I did!) if you’re careful to support the local economy in how you travel, rather than propping up the already wealthy Western-owned brands from hotels to chain restaurants that root themselves in every popular destination across the globe.
That photo.
Just as it’s okay to not fully understand a culture; to feel out of place or confused or overwhelmed by how things are done there. To understand that, as a visitor, you are just that. And the challenge to adapt to new environments is one that teaches us perhaps more than we can learn from any other part of travel – be it through location or, in the case of my visit to Egypt, through time.
