Day 15: Cairo, Egypt

Sheraton Cairo Hotel & Casino

6 January 2026

Well - the first day of our official tour of Egypt with Viking! The day began nice and early with a briefing at 8am, where it was emphasised that we were to be punctual. (Good!) Then it was off to the buses to our first destination - Saqqara.

Our bus had only about 25 people on board, which was nice, and it was very comfortable - good air-conditioning, cold water available, even a toilet! Our tour guide is Younis, who has exactly the right personality for the job. He is confident, knowledgeable, enthusiastic and personable. You need someone who won't put you to sleep. He introduced the bus driver, Mohamed, and the security guy, also Mohamed. (And remember, Younis's real name is actually Mohamed.) This will be a common occurrence, I think.

Our other passengers seem perfectly friendly, as far as I can tell, There are four other Australians and I think the rest are Americans. There's one woman who asks a million questions and, by the end of the day, I was rather irritated with her - but I think she means well and is just interested in everything.

We drove for an hour or so to the south to the area of Saqqara, which has some amazing tombs and even a pyramid with the burial chamber of King Teti. It was more a pyramid-shaped pile of sand than an actual pyramid, but the tomb was very interesting. The guide warned us that the entrance to the tomb was quite tricky and that we should only enter if we felt physically fit and weren't claustrophobic. We felt that it couldn't be as bad as the Great Pyramid - and we were right. It was actually relatively easy in comparison, while other people were exclaiming about having to bend double, we were marvelling at how straightforward it was. It helped that it didn't go far inside the pyramid, so the air was still quite cool, and there weren't too many other people. The burial chamber held an empty stone sarcophagus, but the walls were decorated in lovely hieroglyphics, so it was well worth a visit.

We were then led to the tomb of King Teti's vizier, which was even more impressive. There was no pyramid or difficult entrance, but just a number of chambers with absolutely charming images. There were so many lovely scenes of daily life in Ancient Egypt - showing different species of deer, oxen, fowl, hippopotami, crocodiles, fish and people just going about their daily business. Some images still had traces of coloured paint on them. They would have all been brightly coloured when they were first made. Beautiful!

After the tombs, we hopped back on the bus to visit the nearby Saqqara Step Pyramid - the first pyramid ever built in Egypt - and the basis for all pyramids built subsequently. It was a beautiful site and would have been surrounded by a massive wall in ancient times - of which, only a small part remains. It is impressively big and you can see why later pharaohs said they wanted one just like it - but bigger and with a proper pyramid shape! It's still an impressive monument all these 4,500 years later. There is a burial tomb under the pyramid but we were whisked past it, much to Jim's annoyance. We probably didn't have time, but I can see from photos online that it would have been fascinating to visit.

What was a bit annoying was that the reason we were rushed on was that our next stop was an Egyptian Carpet School (with 'school' in quotation marks). We saw whole families weaving carpets - with children squatting next to the loom working away (which was a bit disturbing, actually). They assured us the children all went to school and just did the weaving in their time off to earn money and learn an important skill. I hope that's true. The main aim of this stop was to encourage us to buy a carpet. They had hundreds of different designs and sizes, and some were lovely, but they were super expensive. A relatively small one I was looking at (maybe poster size?) was $USD 450 (about $AUD 750). I can't imagine how much the actual carpet-sized ones would have been. Fortunately, a couple of people bought something, so I felt no pressure to spend money.

After the carpets, they took us to lunch at a local club - which felt like a slightly run-down British Colonial Club - with palm trees, a pool, and an outdoor buffet. The food was actually very nice, with a wide variety of dishes (rice, eggplant, stuffed cabbage, beef & chicken on a barbecue, hummus, pita bread) and Arabic coffee and sweets to follow. Nothing to complain about.

After being fortified with food, we set off for our final stop of the Saqqara Citadel - a fortress built by Saladdin the Great, and still standing today. It contains a beautiful mosque, known as the Alabaster Mosque, for obvious reasons, and we spent quite a bit of time walking around it and inside it. It was moderately interesting, but I was ready to leave before the tour was over. It was probably because it was the end of a long hot day, rather than anything being wrong with the mosque. 

I was interested to see there were lots and lots of stray dogs around - many with tags in their ears, which means they have been neutered and vaccinated. You could even buy dog food from stalls to feed them. (The locals have worked out how soft-hearted foreigners are!) Our guide said that the staff feed the dogs and look after them. I hope that's true. 

As we were leaving, it was the hour for the call to prayer, and we stood at the top of the Citadel and listened to the sound of every mosque in the city of Cairo calling the faithful to prayer at a slightly different tempo, pitch and beat. It was actually quite beautiful, although the smog haze over the city was still really thick at the end of the day, so the view wasn't fantastic.

We came back to the hotel by 4pm and were happy to be able to relax in our room. Some people had selected an optional trip to a local market at 5pm and dinner at a restaurant, which I am glad we didn't sign up for.