What a time to visit Egypt
So where are all the tourists?
Jostling past men three or four times his age and size, a child of about 8 was the first to reach us. He was a miserable sight; mud streaked his face, his clothes were too big, he didn’t wear shoes. It’s not an uncommon sight in a Third World country.
‘‘Five pounds for three!’’ he yelped, offering us three plastic black figurines; a pyramid, an obelisk and a sphinx.
‘‘Real alabaster!’’ he cried. He knew they weren’t, we knew they weren’t, but it wasn’t the blatant lie that prompted our reactions. It was, quite frankly, a now automatic response to hawkers, children or not. I screwed up my face in anguish, upturned my palms, shook my head and averted my eyes from the smiling boy. But there was no shirt tugging. No pleading. There wasn’t even a follow-up beg.
‘‘Welcome to Egypt!’’ came the swift reply, as he sauntered on to find his next candidate.
As far as poignant travel moments go, and for all the Unesco World Heritage sites, ancient history and culinary delights of this country, this is the travel memory I recall most vividly.
Something strange is happening in Egypt, and it involves pleasantries, polite hassling and plenty of niceties.
Sure, a lack of badgering on a holiday isn’t something I’d usually wax poetic about. But considering the first thing people warned me about Egypt was the incessant hassling I was about to be subjected to, this is a point worth making.
It’s no great revelation that Egypt’s tourism industry has been down and out for several years. Still crippled by the after-effects of a failed revolution, terrorism attacks targeting popular tourist spots, and the suspected bombing of Russian Metrojet Flight 9268 over the Sinai peninsula after its departure from Sharm El Sheikh, it’s a country holidaymakers continue to steer clear of. The latter caused the cancellation of all Russian flights into the country – Russians once made up a third of all tourists there – and all British flights into the diving mecca.
The statistical nosedive was brutal. Tourist numbers tumbled from 14 million international arrivals in 2010 to 5.2m in 2016, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation. Optimism soared in the first half of last year, as international arrivals into the country rose 51 per cent.
Last August the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) report ranked Egypt’s tourism market as the second-fastest growing in the world.
Four months later, terrorists killed more than 300 people praying in a mosque in northern Sinai.
This might make you think it would make the touts more aggressive, more desperate in their pursuit of a sale and more willing to bully you into submission. What has transpired is basically the opposite.
As the days went by, it became clear my first encounter wasn’t a strange deviation from the norm.
Touts would approach with their usual one-liner for a ride in a horse carriage (‘‘this is my Egyptian Lamborghini’’), or a boat trip (the less imaginative ‘‘boat ride on the Nile?’’), but as soon as they heard ‘‘no thank you’’, you’d generally be wished a lovely day.
‘‘Come to my boat for a cup of tea or coffee then,’’ a boatie pleaded in Luxor. ‘‘I just so miss talking to tourists.’’
As we wander around the site of the world’s first pyramid at Saqqara, tour guide Laila Hassan, of Egypt Tailor Made Tours, tells us tourists are still too scared to return to Egypt. ‘‘People think because Sinai is bad, the whole country is bad,’’ she says.
Outside the barren complex, four Egyptian men recline on the sand, almost buried under their mounds of made-in-China souvenirs.
Only one bothers to stand to try his luck with us. Inside, only two other tourists have braved arguably the country’s most interesting pyramidrelated site. A group of camels loll about on the dunes near their owners, who are doing the same.
‘‘It’s hard for us. Our country depends completely on tourism – no tourism, no economy. It was starting to pick up and now with what’s happened in Sinai we think it will be bad again,’’ Hassan says.
The remainder of the tour is a similar, vacant story. A car park the size of a large field is occupied by a lone, empty bus at the Red Pyramid. We are the only people at the Bent Pyramid. When we reach Giza, we are initially excited about the crowds – until we realise it’s mostly Egyptian school trips and a Chinese tour bus or two. Security guards wander around listlessly. Camel owners are marginally more aggressive.
As we venture further south, it’s a similar story. Luxor is devoid of tourists; the fact laid abundantly bare
as we attempt to wander the streets, and are barraged with offers of free horse-carriage rides. Such is the desperation some operators feel – they’d rather rely on you feeling guilty enough at the end to throw them a few loose pounds than haggle and barter over a decent wage. The Chinese tour buses remain but you have to remember that many of the local operators miss out with these allinclusive packages.
People are also incredibly polite, with ‘‘I’m sorry’’ being one of the most frequent phrases you’ll hear on the streets.
One night on a train platform in Luxor, while waiting for one of Egypt’s notoriously late locomotives, a friendly stranger apologised eight times for the disruption to our schedule.
It was in Luxor, after about the fifth child ran up to me to wish me a wonderful stay in his country, that I wondered whether an official directive had been issued on how to treat tourists.
Hebba Bakri thinks so. During our stay at Cairo’s Hotel Longchamps, the indomitable hotel owner told us she’s used to hearing from tourists about how much they’ve been hassled. So her eyebrows are raised when we tell her how much we’d enjoyed interacting with Egyptian people.
In the wake of the current situation in Egypt, Bakri acknowledges her
clientele list has changed drastically. When once it was the snap-happy tourist who frequented her halls, she now welcomes mainly diplomats, academics, archaeologists and journalists. ‘‘It’s a good sign that the Ministry is giving them the OK to come back again at all,’’ she tells us.
While Egypt had ‘‘lost a lot’’, it was also gaining a new mix of travellers who might never had considered it a destination. More tourists were arriving from India, China and South Korea than ever before.
But times remain tough.
‘‘Half of the trained professionals are gone, and it’s very quiet here now. It’s hard. I’m not making too much money, and what I do I invest in my team – which is the most important thing for me,’’ Bakri said.
I asked everyone I had a prolonged conversation with why they didn’t leave, or find other work. Most of their answers were the same; they loved Egypt and they truly hoped the tourists would return.
A bubble of hope for the tourism industry remains in sporadic drawcards across the country. The Red Sea diving resorts are one – where the nearby Marsa Alam International Airport is still receiving direct flights from Britain – the West Bank of Luxor and Abu Simbel in the south. The latter is reached via Aswan, a beautiful laidback and felucca-populated city on the Nile, where tourists barely even stop for the night any more. It’s a city where the felucca captains will invite you on the boat as you’re walking by, if only for a cup of tea and a chat.
The beautiful Nubian-style guesthouses, such as Hadouta Masreya where we stayed, would cost several hundred dollars anywhere else in the world – with sweeping views out over the Nile, and plush lodgings. If you play your cards right timing-wise, you can get yourself a luxury room here for less than NZ$70.
It’s unclear whether 2018 will be the year for Egypt. Last year had been touted as such, after all.
The Grand Egyptian Museum, a billion-dollar project championed as the saviour of Egypt’s tourism, could help. Scheduled to open its doors this year – though it’s reportedly dogged with delays – it will be five times bigger than the already-popular Egyptian Museum, and the largest archaeological museum in the world.
Then there are the continuing monumental archaeological finds.
In March last year, gigantic 3000-year-old pharaoh statues were pulled from a mud pit in a Cairo slum. Weeks later, a new pyramid, thought to be almost 4000 years old, was discovered south of Cairo. In November, a secret chamber was found in the Great Pyramid – the first major inner structure discovered since the 1800s.
It’s an exciting time for one of the oldest civilisations in the world, with no-one there to witness it.
Regardless, it’s a wonderful destination if you’ve a penchant for not having to knock wayward selfie sticks out of your face, or queue at the break of dawn for entry into a museum.
Still, the locals remain cautiously optimistic. In Luxor, while wandering through the Valley of the Kings, my tour guide’s melancholic lament at the state of his country subsides at a sudden thought. ‘‘They say Queen Nefertiti’s tomb is somewhere, buried in the valley,’’ he near-whispers. ‘‘That will bring the tourists back.’’
Ashleigh Stewart is a Dubai-based Kiwi journalist.