Birquash, Egypt
Egypt Travel Diary : 25.01.2003
Salam Alekum,
Well yet another day down in the land of pharoahs. Today was spent venturing north of Cairo to the camel markets and exploring Khan-a-Khililli in Islamic Cairo - both very unique experiences.
We got up early around 7am and had breakfast, which is included in the rate for our room. You get two cold bread rolls, fig jam, a green egg (which we refuse to eat) and a cup of strong egyptian tea (which is quite delicious). Our hostel that we are staying in is just off a main roundabout in downtown Cairo and there are usually literally hundreds of cars squashing into its 3 lanes. But today it was suprisingly very peaceful, as Thursday and Friday are like the weekend here. We hopped into a taxi and headed from Imbada Matir (Imbada Airport) as our Lonely Planet instructed, from which we would supposedly be able to see a cafe and catch a minibus from there to the camel markets.
Let's just say there was no cafe in sight, so we walked about 20 minutes down into a rural village on the outskirts of Cairo. I was amazed at how primitive the village was, considering it was so close to downtown Cairo. The streets were full of carts pulled by donkies, stocked with food, rubbish and bags of grain. A few people gave us directions on the way and we eventually found the minibus - a small battered white van meant for 9 people, but today it was carrying no less than 16. It cost us around 40 cents for the 45 minute ride to the camel markets in Birquash.
It was quite a journey, we were the only foreigners on the bus and we passed through huge fields and tiny decrepit villages. We then drove through into an area surrounded by huge concrete walls - the souq - or the camel market. I couldn't believe my eyes... we were shocked. We just stood there and looked around in amazement, there were thousands of camels. Most of them were in very poor condition and had one leg tied up to prevent them from running away. Camels are very expensive to buy, they cost around $2000. There were lots of business transactions going on, and every now and then a herd of camels would be packed into a pickup truck and driven off to be sold again or to a meat works. The sounds of their wails were heartbreaking. We spent a couple of hours wandering around, just observing, often standing in piles of camel shit - quite disgusting - but it amused me everytime I hear Cassie yelp as she walked into another pile.
After we had had enough of seeing camels get whipped and sold we got back onto the minibus and made our way back to Imbada.
Salam Alekum,
Well yet another day down in the land of pharoahs. Today was spent venturing north of Cairo to the camel markets and exploring Khan-a-Khililli in Islamic Cairo - both very unique experiences.
We got up early around 7am and had breakfast, which is included in the rate for our room. You get two cold bread rolls, fig jam, a green egg (which we refuse to eat) and a cup of strong egyptian tea (which is quite delicious). Our hostel that we are staying in is just off a main roundabout in downtown Cairo and there are usually literally hundreds of cars squashing into its 3 lanes. But today it was suprisingly very peaceful, as Thursday and Friday are like the weekend here. We hopped into a taxi and headed from Imbada Matir (Imbada Airport) as our Lonely Planet instructed, from which we would supposedly be able to see a cafe and catch a minibus from there to the camel markets.
Let's just say there was no cafe in sight, so we walked about 20 minutes down into a rural village on the outskirts of Cairo. I was amazed at how primitive the village was, considering it was so close to downtown Cairo. The streets were full of carts pulled by donkies, stocked with food, rubbish and bags of grain. A few people gave us directions on the way and we eventually found the minibus - a small battered white van meant for 9 people, but today it was carrying no less than 16. It cost us around 40 cents for the 45 minute ride to the camel markets in Birquash.
It was quite a journey, we were the only foreigners on the bus and we passed through huge fields and tiny decrepit villages. We then drove through into an area surrounded by huge concrete walls - the souq - or the camel market. I couldn't believe my eyes... we were shocked. We just stood there and looked around in amazement, there were thousands of camels. Most of them were in very poor condition and had one leg tied up to prevent them from running away. Camels are very expensive to buy, they cost around $2000. There were lots of business transactions going on, and every now and then a herd of camels would be packed into a pickup truck and driven off to be sold again or to a meat works. The sounds of their wails were heartbreaking. We spent a couple of hours wandering around, just observing, often standing in piles of camel shit - quite disgusting - but it amused me everytime I hear Cassie yelp as she walked into another pile.
After we had had enough of seeing camels get whipped and sold we got back onto the minibus and made our way back to Imbada.