Egypt 1990 - Part IX - Exodus

How I remember it, with some writer's licence. Photos from other parts of Egypt.

At the bottom of Mt Sinai, I took the bus to the beach - Dahab, which means either The Golden, or the Place Where One Day Merges into Another. Either could be true of what was then the budget version of Sharm el Shaikh, and a hippy paradise.

I took a room for the price of my straw hat in a place called something like Don’t Worry Be Happy Hotel. A bare gravel floor in a concrete block around a courtyard, and a cockroach. I was quite happy with it.

I hired snorkelling gear that didn’t quite fit, and spent a happy hour or so discovering what a coral reef looked like, and how much longer I could swim for with my head under water.

An Australian backpacker made empathic “No Way!” noises to my tale of the Cairo scam, then told me that sharks come into Dahab Bay late afternoon. I ate catfish. I could have stayed days. But I had to leave.

I took buses and hitch-hiked through the Israeli border and Eilat. Two days later I was back in Dimona and staying with the Bridge group.

It was only there, to my mother’s great relief, that I phoned home. Somehow I forgot to keep my parents or anyone else in my family informed of my movements during what was surely the most active and risky part of my whole gap year.

Mistakenly I had concluded telephoning wasn’t so important, after I called from Jerusalem and found them unconcered about tear gas attacks that hadn’t been in BBC news. They heard nothing of me for the month that I disappeared into the desert. I sent postcards from Egypt but they took weeks to arrive. I was home before I realised how worried they had been.

Egypt was my first experience of the majority world, if I don’t count Palestine. Certainly there was a lot more poverty in Egypt, and it was ten years before I saw as much again. Hepatitis A (I was always keen to point out the "A") stopped me drinking during my first term at university, and the scam was an important if shameful life lesson.

But the best parts of the experience stayed with me far longer, so I expected in the future to relish difference, try new things, and expect a welcome. I know Cairo and Egypt do not work for everyone. Being a young man, mostly a solo traveller, and autistic (perhaps), made a lot of it easier.

Click for what happened next.

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