Egypt Visit-Musings of an Accidental tourist 

The Qatar airways flight sped towards Doha as it crossed Italy into the Mediterranean Sea. The pilot came on the public address system urgently and let us know that due to the escalation and missiles being launched in the Gulf, we were being diverted to Cairo. The other options like Athen, Greece and Bombay, India were not viable due to congestion and fuel respectively and we landed in Cairo, Egypt. Surprisingly the passengers and the crew were very calm. So we landed in Cairo. Even thought it was late Feb, the weather was a little cold but humid. Light jacket weather.

Immigrations and Customs

The first thing that you notice about Egypt is that it is a cash economy especially around tourism. They like dollars not just any dollars. They want them crisp and clean. Old looking dollars are suspect. There is a 20% premium to the undiscounted tourism charges, to enter Egypt, we needed a visa. There was a USD cash line which was manned 2x compared to the card which was just one person. It took us a while to get the Egypt visa stamped on our passport.

Heading to the hotel

It was a lot of confusion heading to the hotel and we were not clear as to which hotel it was, and we finally found it was the Hilton near the airport called Hilton Helioplois which is like a Vegas convention dump hotel. We were asked to share rooms with strangers as the rooms were getting fewer.

Where to stay in Cairo

I don’t recommend the airports near the hotel. They are a dump. The hotels near downtown are better. Also avoid hotels near Tahrir square which is the center of the city. If there are violent protests and they are rare these days, that place is a tinderbox. The best hotels to stay in are downtown and on the banks of the river Nile. In the evenings, you can walk along the riverwalk although it can be quiet and lonely. So, exercise caution. Also, group tours have pickups at certain hotels which work out nicely instead of trying to join the pickup spot.

A note on personalized private tours

Because of the exchange rate, it is possible that personalized private tours for 2 people (husband and wife) may work well. Because parking is hard in Egypt, most personalized trip will have a driver who will pick you up and drive you around and then will pick up the English-speaking guide at a different place (close to their home) and drop them off before going to the hotel. This is a little expensive but affordable but you get personalized attention. These tours work well for 2 people because the cars can be smaller. For 4 people, they will have to mobilize an expensive SUV which increases the cost of the trip but is still affordable and more worth it than a large group tour.

Working Remotely

It is possible to work remotely if your company allows it. For e.g. I finished my tourism by 2PM, took a power nap and started my workday from 3PM to 11PM (EST working hours)

How to spend a day in Cairo

Morning

We recommend waking up early, getting a nice breakfast at the hotel and being on your way to the tourist spot by 7AM. The good things are you will avoid traffic (rush hour starts at 8AM) and the tourist spots will be cooler and less crowded. The large tours land at 9AM and you are now competing with them, and it can get crowded and noisy around important interest points.

Afternoon

Recommend finishing the tour by 1PM, having lunch outside and take a nap for a couple of hours.

Evenings

In the evenings, I recommend walking around downtown, old Cairo and do some bargain shopping.

Late evening/early night

I recommend going to a bar for a nightcap and going to bed early.

Tourist Locations and Timings

All Tourist locations operate on a 8 to 5 schedules. I recommend being there early, especially in summer as the summer hear can become unbearable. Indeed, the lightest tourism months are summer months. So, if you can go early and finish everything by lunch, it is a good deal.

Currency Exchange

A dollar is about 50 Egyptian Pounds (EGP). The ATMs there do dispense cash if your ATM is Visa enabled and your bank is aware that you are withdrawing money. The max the ATM dispenses at one time is 4000 EGP. You can withdraw multiple times of course. The tourist shops prefer USD and you get a better discount.

First trip to the Pyramids

A bunch of us from the hotel decided to go the Pyramids in the afternoon but it was late and we were the last group allowed in at 3PM. There are a bunch of touts there who own horse carriages and camels. For 20 USD, they will take you around and get some good pictures. The horse carriages are easier to climb than the camels. We got some good photos. I actually recommend this even though the negotiation process is a little painful.

Cabs and Taxis in Cairo

It is hard to get cabs and ubers from tourist’s spots to the hotels. They know they can extract more from you and they make it difficult to find you. In any case, the cab numbers are in Arabic so you can’t really figure out the cab from the license plate but more from the color and model. Don’t get into a cab when approached. Always use Uber and negotiate and add a 100 EGP tip or 2 to 3 dollars in USD.

Second Day in Cairo

The second day we made a beeline to the Grand Egyptian museum. You have to buy the tickets online. It is a new museum with great exhibits and a must-see. We went around the museum and then headed back.

Third Day in Cairo

I used viator to book personalized tours. Viator is a nice service that lets you book private tours and you can custom build your own tours. It can include picking up from your hotel to dropping you back and you can itemize the things you want to see. The third day in Cairo was to see the Jewish and Coptic Cairo locations and the grand mosque (the oldest), the Citadel of Cairo and the downtown Cairo Museum and it also included lunch. We started at 8AM and it all took six hours, and it was nice and was back at my hotel at 2PM so I could start my work day.

Fourth Day in Cairo

The fourth day I organized a Viator trip to Saqqara and Memphis. Saqqara also has pyramids and these pyramids have hieroglyphs in them. The Great pyramid at Giza does not have hieroglyphs in them. Another cool thing about Saqqara is that the Nile valley ends right there and the great Sahara Desert begins. So, it is a cool geographical thing. Saqqara had some nice pyramids that you could go into and some nice inscriptions.

Memphis was kind of a let down although the Sphinx there was a sight to behold and a couple of other tourist spots.

My guide was a Coptic Christian who spoke English well and explained to me some of the challenges facing the community.

Fifth Day in Cairo

The fifth day was visiting Alexandria which I booked on Viator. Again got picked up at 6AM and left for Alexandria which was 3 hours away. We reached there and did the Alexandria tour. We visited the Roman theater ruins, the great modern library at Alexandria and the great fort overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Had lunch at a great place overlooking the ocean. Reached Cairo at 4PM.

Sixth day in Cairo

On the Sixth day, I decided to go back to the Pyramids and the Sphinx with a tour guide on viator. We reached there at 9AM and there were several group tours already there. So, it is better to be at these sites by 8AM to be the early bird and check them out under less pressure. The Pyramids are simply awe-inspiring. You have to buy tickets to go into the pyramid. I went into the largest pyramid, and it was hot and humid. It was also not easy to climb in and out of the narrow passage way. So being physically fit and flexible helps. We avoided the tourist traps and headed home after seeing the Sphinx and the pyramids and taking some photos.

Cruising on the River Nile

There are a couple of ways to cruise on the river Nile.

Dinner and Evening cruises

This is a touristy version where a not-so-great dinner is accompanied with entertainment including belly dancing, Egyptian dancing and some nice music with some good old fashioned romantic sings if you want to dance with your partner.

Felucca Rides

Felucca are small boats with sails that can be a much nicer option than a cruise. Plan one for sunset so you can see the sunset and also the lights come on.

Fine Dining Experiences

Hotels

Almost all big hotels downtown have fine dining experiences. The Hilton has a revolving rooftop restaurant which offers great views of Cairo.

Iconic tower rooftop Restaurant

The iconic tower is the tallest building in Africa, and you can go to the top and do viewings. They also have a rooftop restaurant which is considered good.

Shopping

There are three things to buy in Egypt.

Papyrus Mementos

Egypt has an ancient papyrus tradition. One can buy a papyrus mural and get your name inscribed in it. Some of them are nice and make great addition to a house. These things can run you a few hundred dollars. They will offer tea or jasmine extract juice. It is considered rude not to accept it. Do some reasonable bargaining. Usually, 10% and waiver of credit card fees is considered acceptable. You can have your name written on the papyrus for a small charge.

Perfumes

It is a well-kept secret that Egypt has been home to perfumes for thousands of years. They make them crushing lotus and other flowers. You can have your guide take you to a bespoke custom perfumery and make a collection.

Cartouche

The cartouche is a kind of jewelry, and the price has a wide range depending upon how much silver and gold you want to embed. You can have your name inscribed in jewelry design. So that is a good gift to the wife or the daughters.

Other Mementos

Of course, there is always magnets, pens, pencils, cups, book-marks, shot glasses and other things that can one buy.

Closing Thoughts

Cairo and the surrounding tourists’ spots can be seen in 6 days. You can also squeeze a workday in if you can wrap your tourism by 2PM especially if you work in US hours and are allowed to work remotely.

Egypt has two tourist hubs. Cairo and nearby areas are the Mediterranean part of the hub. Luxor is the other part of the hub and it is in Southern Egypt and closer to the Red Sea.

Luxor Tourist Hub

There are a couple of ways to get to Luxor. The easiest and fastest way is to take a one-hour flight. You can also go by train which would be an experience. There are cruises that will take you down the Nile and it can get expensive and you have to book early.

Some of the key tourists spots in Luxor are the Valley of the Kings, Abu Simbel temple, hot air ballon rides, Karnak temple, valley of the kings, Aswan dam, Dendera temple, Edfu, Kom Ombo, Colossi of Memmon. I am guessing this would be another 6 days.

Diving Enthusiasts

If you are a diving enthusiast, Luxor has something to offer where you can dive to the ancient sunken attractions. You should probably have advanced diving experience in the ruins of dives which can be risky. With the right planning, one can see the country while working remotely over a 15 day period.

A tribute to the Jagadeesans

The Jagadeesans were a husband-and-wife couple who served in the Coimbatore Institute of Technology Math Department. Dr. Jagadeesan taught first year math and Dr.Sarada Jagadeesan taught second year math.

Dr.Jagadeesan

Dr.Jagadeesan was full of energy, and he was relentless in his teaching whether it was the theory, the examples and the homework. He was passionate and would conduct class on Saturday mornings to catch up with the material and the progress he wanted. He also took time to visit us at our hostel and encouraged us to do the best with what we had. He was kind and encouraging. I am not proud to admit that when he came up to me in class and saw me not taking notes, he was surprised and not happy. He asked me that I can do better and owe it to myself to be present and learn. I wish I had listened.

Dr. Sarada Jagadeesan

Dr.Sarada Jagadeesan was a petite woman who would not stand for any nonsense. She was tough but kind and a gentle soul. She was a good teacher and probably one of the few teachers I appreciated. She and Professor of English Joy Raju were good friends and they shared the same offices. Dr. Joy Raju was our first year English teacher and another great teacher as well. She was soft spoken and kind. A couple of incidents about Dr.Sarada Jagadeesan.

Once, she was teaching our class Fourier Transforms and she saw one of the students playing a prank and was annoying the class in general and snickering. She had him stand up. He was little short for his age and she said whenn you were in your diapers, I was getting my Ph.D. in Infinite Series and had him stand down from whatever nonsense he was doing. He stopped.

Another time, I asked her what was the physical meaning of the Laplace or the Fourier Transform and why it was a big deal in Electrical Engineering and she was a little taken aback and then she politely replied that these transforms are just mathematical tools and that I should learn the technique and would find problems that would match the solving techniques in Laplace Transform (time to frequency domain) and so on.

Dr. Radha Jagadeesan

Dr. Sarada Jagadeesan and Dr. Jagadeesan had a son name Radha Jagadeesan who was an IIT entrance exam top ranker, studied at IIT Kanpur and then Cornell and is a professor at Depaul University in Chicago. Dr. Radha won the Alonzo Church award (Alonzo Church was a professor at Princeton and the advisor for Alan Turing).

Jagadeesan, Radha: Software Engineering - School of Computing

Winners of the 2017 Alonzo Church Award – ACM Special Interest Group on Logic and Computation

Dr. Lalita Jagadeesan

She is the wife of Dr. Radha Jagadeesan and she has a BS/Ph.D. from MIT and is a senior strategy leader at Nokia.

Lalita Jagadeesan | Nokia.com

Dr. Ravi Jagadeesan

Dr. Ravi is now a professor of economics at Stanford and got his undergrad and Ph.D. in Math and economics respectively. Dr. Ravi is also a Putnam fellow at Harvard. Putnam fellows have to face a formidable mathematical competition against some of the best in the world.

Ravi Jagadeesan | Department of Economics

Dr. Meena Jagadeesan

Dr. Meena is now a professor at U.Penn in CS. She had her undergrad from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Berkeley in CS.

Meena Jagadeesan 

Dr. Jagadeesan and Dr. Sarada Jagadeesan raised an amazing family which should not be surprising given their intent and their passion for learning. I believe both of them immigrated to the US and Dr. Jagadeesan passed away a few years ago. My friend Rajesh Shanmugavel kept in touch with their family while he lived in the North East. 

Rajesh Shanmugavel also mentioned that Dr.Sarada Jagadeesan has donated her pension for student scholarships for CIT students in need and she lives in Chicago.

Sam Harris on Ayn Rand

Sam Harris vs Ayn Rand 

Sam Harris

Okay, next question, given the popularity of Ayn Rand on the right can you give your best refutation of Objectivism?

Sam Harris

Well, you know, I haven't spent a lot of time reading Rand. I found her novel more or less unreadable and I've read some of her essays. I've read some of her interviews.

My basic issue with her ethics is that she seemed not to understand that pro-social emotions like compassion were a real source of well-being even for quote selfish people.

The stark opposition between selfishness that she thought was rational and altruism that she thought was delusional or masochistic that I think is psychologically untrue and ethically unhelpful.

I think a wisely selfish person more and more begins to recognize that he or she is committed to the happiness of other people and is right to be that their happiness redounds to his own happiness that is a more mature a more enlightened form of ethics than any I've ever heard Rand espouse.

It is also more enlightened and mature than attend to fans of Rand espouse so whatever Rand herself believed those who are drawn to her philosophy often strike me as malignantly selfish and un-illumined by a larger picture of just how good life could become right if we also saw that we were in this together.

Bertrand Russell on Karl Marx

 The video and the transcript.

Bertrand Russell talked about Marx in 1952 interviewed

Interviewer:

Lord Russell, speaking as of today, can you see the influence of any one Philosophers more than any other one?

Bertrand Russell:

Well, I suppose in recent years the most important influence has been Marx. If you can dignify him with the name of philosopher, I should hardly like to dignify him so myself, but I suppose he must count in the list. And he certainly has had more influence than anybody else.

Interviewer:

For those of us who reject Marx, can you offer any positive philosophy to help us toward a more hopeful future?

Bertrand Russell:

Well, less to that. You see, I think one of the troubles of the world has been the habit of dogmatically believing in something or other. And I think all these matters are full of doubt. And the rational man will not be too sure that he's right. I think that we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe in any philosophy. Not even mine. Not even mine.

No, I think we should accept our philosophies with a measure of doubt. What I do think is this that if a philosophy is to bring happiness, it should be inspired by kindly feeling. Now Marx is not inspired by kindly feeling. Marx pretended that he wanted the happiness of the proletariat. What he really wanted was the unhappiness of bourgeoise. And it was because of that negative element, because of that hate element that his philosophy produced disaster. A philosophy which is to do good must be one inspired by kindly feeling and not by unkindly feeling.

Corruption poem by Zrini

 The quality of bribery is strained.

It droppeth as the acid rain from hell

Upon the place beneath. It is twice cursed:

It curseth him that gives and him that takes.

'Tis deadliest in the mightiest. It becomes

The thronèd monarch worse than his crown.

His scepter shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings,

But bribery is above this sceptered sway.

It is enthronèd in the dark psyche of kings.

It is an attribute to Devil himself.

And earthly power doth then show likest Devil’s

When bribery seasons injustice. Therefore, Desi, Though injustice be thy plea, consider this-

That in the course of injustice none of us

Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy,

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much

To mitigate the justice of thy plea,

Which if thou follow, this strict court of Desis

Must needs give sentence 'gainst the government servant there

The vetals in life

 Since, we are social beings, we have to interact with people and young adults going to college is much more immersive and can get quite crazy. While most folks are fine, and since young adults are joining a large cohort, it is likely that they will run into these three types of people. We identify these types and recommend ways to handle them.

1. The Psychos - This is a fairly small set of people. They range from narcissists to psychopaths and from the depressed to the bipolar. These types are looking for victims in the sense that they want to attach themselves to a healthy person and then take them along their crazy journey. This type of cohort also extends to the people who identify as something other than the sexual binary and gender. The way to handle these people to sense their intent and recommend them to get help at the University counseling centers. The psychopaths are particularly manipulative and can get quite dangerous. We should be careful in choosing the group cohort that is healthy. For better or worse, in a contrarian way, the Greek fraternities offer protections against the psychos because the focus of these fraternities are fun and enthusiasm for life instead of the downers.

2. The Religulous - These are typically the missionary type of the Abrahamic variety. They are very good at persuasive arguments and are constantly looking to indoctrinate and convert. The Hindu students are particularly a target as we tend to be secular and open minded. The use caste as a weapon to indicate that the religion has issues and use it as cudgel against us. We need to reject it and say that Christianity and Islam practiced slavery of the most brutal kind and their societies were no exception to injustice. The Arab/Turk African slave trade in particular was genocidal and achieved it by castrating the slaves. There is a reason why you don't see any African descendants in the Middle East and the Islamic world. The United States practiced slavery until 1865 and Jim Crow laws until the civil rights act of 1965. So these Abrahamic faiths using caste as a cudgel should be laughed out.

3. The woke socio-commie left - This group has grown like crazy in the last 3 decades and exceeded the influence of the Religulous. The recent protests at ivy league campuses for the cause of Palestine and the tone-deaf indifference to the Jewish victims is alarming. Particularly, Hindu and Indian American children have been cajoled and intimidated to join these woke movements. In many cases, the Hindu/Indian Americans have led these like Megha Vemuri and the like. This cohort needs to be avoided especially by STEM major students. The woke socio-commie left tend to be in soft humanities majors and are rewarded for this behavior. These majors have light academic load which gives them ample time for activism. The woke socio-commie left is particularly adept at using caste as a cudgel and wielding it and trying to brow beat/bully/co-opt Hindu/Indian American kids. 

As our kids head to college, it is important for us to coach them on these types and avoid them or engage them but not give in and be a victim. This is particularly true for Hindu American kids.

We need to keep in touch with them, be engaged and watch out for signals that could led to them being victimized by any of the above groups.

Chinnanchiru Penpole - Like the little maiden

 

There was a young maiden,

a petite outfit she was wearing,

Near the pool of the Shivaganga town,

The maiden was Durga Incarnate laughing.

 

The beauty of her eyes,

cannot be expressed in speech,

Her eternal beauty

cannot be found in reach.

 

The mother goddess as Sivakami

Her skin as sublime as lightning

She grants the wishes

and bestows happiness rejoicing.

 

She braids her hair,

sand decorates it with flowers wild,

And as an equal of the Lord Shiva,

She dances in all glory like a child.