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Egypt Pakistan photo

Terrorism and Tourism

We are in south Sinai, the locus of some of the deadliest terrorist attacks on tourists in the last few years, and we were told by a co-guest at our hotel that locals had told them that a major attack of some sort was expected at or shortly after end of Ramadan, which is today. The end of Ramadan, or the Eid al-Fitr, is not especially known for being a time for terrorist activity, but I suppose any holiday may pose a tempting/meaningful date for an attacker. Are we afraid? Not really–but certain senses, honed in 2001, seem to be kicking back in, second thoughts about the kinds of luggage loaded onto our bus, a lowered bar for what constitutes “strange behavior” in others and what is the safest mode of transport. As I previously discussed in my post of 4.29, traveling does bring about somewhat greater risks of all kinds, and with it more paranoia about what might happen. All in all, a good time for some thoughts on terrorism and tourism.

From a traveler’s perspective, I think that there are three categories of terrorism, each of which carries different risks. The first is “domestic” terrorism, the best example of which is probably the many recent attacks in India, or the recent Damascus bombing. As a Korean traveler told me in northern Pakistan, Korean tourists aren’t worried about bombs in Pakistan because they’re aimed at other Pakistanis (say, ones of a different religious sect, or ones affiliated with a certain political movement) and not at tourists. While of course a traveler can still be caught in the crossfire (believe it or not, we ran into two separate tourists who said that they were very close to blasts in Lahore), at least some of these bombs are likely to go off in places where a foreign traveler is not particularly likely to venture. We are not the intended target.

The second category is terrorism directed at outside interests. The most prominent target in this category is perhaps an embassy, or a foreign military installation. This type of terrorism is perhaps most akin to a sort of informal war–the attackers mean not only to terrorize but to make a statement and inflict damage. Examples of this are of course many, including U.S. embassy bombings in any number of countries, the attack on the USS Cole, the bombing in Beirut.

The third category is, for travelers, the scariest: terrorism directed specifically at tourists, most likely in an effort to hurt tourism and decrease foreign influence in the country. The deadliest recent example of this is probably the Bali bomb of 2002, which killed 202 people from 21 (!) different countries. More recently, four people were targeted and killed in Yemen at a major tourist attraction. Hotel bombings fall somewhere between categories two and three, perhaps depending on the kind of hotel that is chosen (some hotels may be chosen for their international “brand,” sort of like an embassy, rather than the explicit desire to discourage foreign travelers).

The “prize” for this third, scariest category of terrorism goes to Egypt, not only for the number of incidents but the heinousness of the targets and methods. In 1997, in an incident known as the Luxor Massacre, a group of six attackers armed with guns and knives trapped and slaughtered 63 people, mostly tourists, in one of the main tourist attractions of Luxor, the Temple of Hatshepsut. In 2004, 2005 and 2006, terrorists killed 34, 88 and 23 people, respectively, in bombings in three different resort areas in the Sinai: Taba, Sharm el Sheikh and Dahab. Also in 2005, there were bombings or shootings near three of the most popular tourist sites in Cairo, the Khan al Khalili market, the Egyptian Museum and Saladdin’s Citadel.

Temple of Hatshepsut, Luxor, site of one of the grisliest terror attacks in recent history

Due to the layout of the ruin, tourists were “trapped” for slaughter.

Three separate suicide bombs were set off in Dahab on April 24, 2006.

A truck with explosives drove into the lobby of the Taba Hilton on October 7, 2004, one of three bombings that evening.

Egyptian Museum, Cairo

Yes, the odds of me or you happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time are still fairly slim, but the probability increases dramatically when the attackers are choosing their targets specifically to target groups of tourists, places where tourists spend their time. We are their target. Maybe we shouldn’t “let the terrorists win” by avoiding places such as Egypt altogether, but as the lesson of September 11 taught, terrorists do like to hit the same targets over and over again (perhaps because they are simply the best targets), and Egypt as a country has a uniquely dangerous history in this respect, something visitors should be aware of. While there are countless police and military stationed all across Egypt, one wonders whether armed men begging for tips or sleeping in the backs of vehicles can really stop an attack, or whether such a presence would deter terrorists who are willing to die for their cause.

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Egypt photo

Fellow Tourists

When you pick a travel destination, you may think of how far it is, how easy it is to get there, what there is to see, what there is to eat, where there is to stay, how much things cost, and how safe it is. It may not occur to you to gauge who will be there with you–what kinds of people your fellow tourists will be. But the more you think about it, the more you realize that who else will be there should be a key consideration in choosing a travel destination.

Perhaps the “best” fellow travelers, for us, are independent budget travelers. Most typical is the late 20s/early 30s backpacker, usually from Western Europe or East Asia, traveling after graduating college or post-graduate education, or between jobs. As a whole, Central Asia attracts a well-educated, well-traveled lot, with ample linguistic abilities, travel skills, cultural sensitivity, and so forth. Almost without a doubt, a fellow traveler in Central Asia will have something interesting to show for themselves, a good story or two from the region or elsewhere on their travels. The types of fellow travelers, I find, broadens the “easier” the destination is, but broader does not necessarily mean worse. For example, in Southeast Asia, you may find a younger or less-worldy crowd, but for the most part you are still dealing with independent travelers, people with some sense of adventure and desire to immerse themselves in local cultures.

This issue occurred to me because Egypt is perhaps the worst place in the world that we’ve experienced, in terms of fellow travelers. Egypt is overrun with package tourists. Now, there’s nothing wrong, fundamentally, with going on a package tour. Travel planning can be a daunting and demanding effort (however much I love it), and going on a tour does maximize the amount of things you can see and learn in a limited amount of time. A knowledgeable guide could even afford you cultural insight that would be hard to access for an independent traveler. And, of course, tours can be quite cost-efficient.

But far more often, tours have serious deficiencies. Traveling in a guided group insulates you from interactions with locals (however appealing that sometimes sounds in Egypt). Traveling in a group means that you never have sights to yourself, paced according to your own interests. Explanations are dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. Many tour groups stay at mediocre hotels and eat mediocre food. That is why many (though by no means all) tours attract people who are intimidated by traveling by themselves, people who are less interested in cultural immersion, people who are satisfied with a quick and superficial understanding of history and people with relatively low standards for food and hotels (at least as far as value, authenticity and atmosphere are concerned–no doubt almost all tours stay and eat at fancier and more hygenic places than we do). (One might even go so far as to suggest that tour group tourists don’t really enjoy travel for travel itself. Let’s face it, spending long periods of time immersed in places where people speak little or no English and may have little else in common with you can be lonely, no matter how close you are to your travel companion(s). It should come as no surprise then that people turn to groups and in the end derive as much or more pleasure from internal group interactions as from external stimulus–that’s certainly been the case in the groups we’ve had the pleasure of joining.)

Egypt is full of such mediocre tours. Perhaps people are intimidated by traveling in an Islamic country, or maybe they have very little travel experience and are fulfilling some childhood dream of seeing the Pyramids. But this lack of standards, on the part of the tourists, results in a country whose travel infrastructure is, considering the volume of tourism, largely unspectacular. Package tourists, for the most part, stay in mediocre three-star type hotels that are absurdly overpriced when not booked on a tour, and so Egypt does not have the wonderful range of budget accommodations that one finds in, say, Southeast Asia. Food is similarly uninspiring, with many restaurants offering bland adaptations of local food (I suppose we can thank the abundant British tourists for that). Worst of all, having undiscriminating, relatively free-spending package tourists with apparently little interest in learning about local culture or spending time with locals constantly breezing in and out of cities promotes the worst kind of behavior in local merchants: aggressive salesmanship, overcharging, poor service.

Heaven forbid you have to walk a little to see the Pyramids!

There are other fellow tourist considerations in addition to the prevalence of tour groups at a given destination. In some places, there are large numbers of domestic tourists. The most extreme example of this, I believe, is China, where foreign tourists are almost always dramatically outnumbered by domestic tourists. This can be good or bad, depending on your perspective. Hawaii and Tahiti attract a lot of honeymooning couples, and so a single traveler may feel awkward and lonely. There are cultural issues, too. If you speak French, and only French, you would have more opportunities to meet fellow French speakers in a destination that attracts relatively more French, such as Cambodia or Madagascar.

One small story, showing that hotels understand that travelers care who their co-travelers are: Somewhat shockingly, the Hyatt in Sharm El Sheikh enforces a dress code banning Islamic dress (euphemistically called “ethnic dress”) at the pool and on the beach, even while allowing topless bathing on the beach–no doubt their research showed that their “international” clientele felt more comfortable without a burqa in sight.

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Egypt photo

Suez Canal

Like my posts of 5.3, 9.2 and 9.24, a picture from a place you’ve heard so much about, but perhaps never seen a picture of, or tried to imagine.

The Suez Canal, like the Straits of Malacca (see post of 9.2), is a great “bottleneck” of global trade, and through it passes approximately 7.5% of the world’s shipped cargo and much of Europe’s oil requirements. The Suez Canal is bigger (in depth and width) than the Panama Canal, and so the latter acts more to set the maximum size for ships–“Panamax.”

Egypt made some $4.1 billion from the Suez Canal tolls in 2007, its third largest source of hard currency after tourism and remittances. Geography matters!

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politics United States of America

Election Special – What the World Thinks

We just voted! If you can’t guess who I voted for you’re not reading the blog very carefully, but far more interesting than my choice, I thought that you may be interested in hearing what we’ve been hearing, from people we have met in our travels.

People in nearly every country we’ve been in have been intensely curious about the election–almost every time that we mention that we’re American, the election soon comes up. Generally, people ask us either whom we support or who we think will win. People don’t understand the U.S. electoral system completely–many thought Hillary was still running (and often preferred her over Obama), and I imagine few understand the workings of the electoral college–but they are following the election and care deeply about its outcome. People have said to us that they wish they could have some sort of say in the election, because its outcome will have repercussions for the whole world. Media coverage is equally extensive. We’ve seen articles about the election in numerous local newspapers, and see a great deal of footage on local television. Europeans have told us that their local media is covering the election as if it were an election in their own country.

Every single person we’ve spoken to, given the choice between Obama and McCain, hopes that Obama wins. This is in complete agreement with The Economist’s Global Electoral College, which reports only three countries (Georgia, Moldova and Macedonia) in the McCain camp. Why do people have such strong, uniform feelings? What little they know about McCain, their impression is that he will represent nothing new or different from the last eight years. What little they know about Obama seems to offer them hope. It seems the broader themes Obama’s campaign has been trying to hammer home (McCain = Bush, Obama = Hope and Change) have been grasped by the world at large (or at least the parts of it we’ve come across).

Now, there are some in the world who may favor McCain. We met a Kurdish man in Syria who thought George Bush a “brilliant and beautiful man.” We’ve also found, in the past, that some non-Muslim minorities in Muslim countries who feel oppressed–Christians in Malay Borneo, Balinese–favor Bush, and may favor McCain, possibly because they view Bush as a foe to all Muslims. Al Qaeda seems to favor McCain. But the desire for Obama to win is nearly universal. As you probably already knew this, let us delve into a few more specific topics.

Many (especially Germans, it seems) are curious whether Americans will really elect a black President. I do not know if I can go as far as Kristof in his recent New York Times column on “rebranding” America, but there is no doubt in my mind that the election of Obama will revive in global consciousness America as the land of opportunity and equality, an America with ideals worth looking up to.

Some Muslims, it turns out, believe that Obama is a Muslim, and Indonesians feel a special connection to him because he used to live in Indonesia. As the media reported during the primaries, no doubt Kenyans are especially excited, although perhaps not the Kenyan spiritual warrior who exorcised Palin.

While people are quite optimistic about an Obama presidency, many are also fairly realistic. As strongly as people favor Obama, and as hopeful they are for change, they recognize that certain things won’t change. Arabs know that we won’t pull out immediately from Iraq. Palestinians know that U.S. support for Israel will continue (and many feel that nothing will change for them no matter who wins). Even if people trust that Obama will make wiser decisions than Bush, they know that the U.S. political system will not allow Obama free rein. The only person who responded hopelessly pessimistically, however, was a young Pakistani man from Karachi who said that Pakistanis didn’t care at all (actually, the phrase used was much cruder) about America or its election (which seems foolish given that we are currently attacking part of their territory).

But generally I think that people view Obama as internationally minded, and Bush’s worldview relatively parochial, one of many reasons that they support him.

Many Americans abroad are also excited; we aren’t the only ones who managed to watch debates that took place in the middle of the night local time.. We met one young woman who said that she had somehow arranged to meet her ballot in Kathmandu, so that she could vote while traveling. If you also are currently traveling abroad, it is still possible to vote, as easily as downloading a blank ballot and mailing it in (or going to a consulate or embassy as we did). Instructions are on this site–no excuses!

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Egypt photo

Cataracts of the Nile

One reads about the “cataracts of the Nile” in history books (always with ordinals, like “the first cataract,” “the second cataract” and so forth), but until I saw the first cataract just south of Aswan it was hard for me to picture them–I thought of something like a series of little Niagaras, walls of water blocking passage north. Now, the first cataract currently lies just on the other side of dams (the old Aswan Dam and the High Dam), and so the sort of rapids or rush of water is no longer there, but seeing the rocks in the water at least helped me visualized what these cataracts are–places that, due to topography, are unnavigable.

One of the wonders, to me, of Egyptian civilization is now much it stayed put along the Nile. There were of course times when Egypt controlled south toward Nubia, west toward Libya and east toward the Levant, but despite its incredible wealth and advancement it was never an expansive empire, instead being controlled by the Persians, the Greeks (or Macedonians), the Romans, the Arabs and the Ottomans. One basic reason for this, I suppose, is that Egyptian civilization was centered on the Nile, and perhaps they saw no reason to stray far from what they saw as the source of all life. In periods of ascendancy Egypt did control regions further south, into Nubia, but the cataracts–areas where the Nile was not navigable–presented a barrier. Were it not for the cataracts, perhaps Egyptian civilization would have traveled all the way to Lakes Tana and Victoria, deep into sub-Saharan Africa.

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Egypt photo

Ramadan in Egypt

Ramadan lamp in downtown Cairo

From a traveler’s perspective, one reads, there are good Ramadan countries and bad Ramadan countries. And we were led to expect that Egypt would be one of the greatest, with the streets erupting into all night parties every day as people break their fast. We also thought that, given the volume of tourism in Egypt, we would not actually be forced or feel pressured to fast ourselves. As we’ve discovered, traveling in Egypt in Ramadan has its pluses and minuses.

Ramadan Coca-Cola

Ramadan in Egypt is observed far more strictly than we had thought. We certainly are having no trouble getting food in Luxor, which is a city that exists largely for tourism, but we did have a great deal of trouble finding open restaurants in downtown Cairo, once resorting to the Nile Hilton for lunch. Even McDonald’s and KFC were sometimes closed during the day (including the KFC across the street from the Giza Pyramids). (Compare this to a recent Turkey Ramadan story we heard, where a local McDonald’s was shuttered for privacy and full of Turkish customers, one of whom told the tourist upon friendly questioning that God couldn’t see inside the store.) A lack of restaurants is not only frustrating from a hunger perspective, but of course eating is one of the great joys of travel–eating at hotel or tourist restaurants is generally not as fun, not as tasty and far more expensive. Even where more local restaurants are open, the lack of local clientele makes eating less fun.

So how about the parties every night? That part was pretty much right. Everyone starts cooking starting mid-afternoon (rather early, I think–things must get overcooked; also, are things poorly seasoned because the cooks cannot check for flavor?). Tables are laid out on the streets. Starting about an hour before sunset, people start sitting down and waiting, and starting about twenty minutes before, prepared food is delivered all around town. A few minutes before the muezzin signals the end of the fast, the streets grow eerily quiet as people stop what they’re doing in order to break their fast.

Sunset over the Mediterranean in Alexandria. In some cities, a cannon was sounded to let people know the precise moment at which the sun had set and food could be eaten.

If you’re walking about the streets of Islamic Cairo or less touristy parts elsewhere in the country at this time, it’s quite likely that someone will invite you to their iftar (fast-breaking meal). Or, in many public places such as subway stops, youth will hand out some free beverage or snack (dates are popular) intended to pump some sugar into your blood, a nice custom that we believe is sponsored by local mosques.

Bread deliveries, shortly before sundown

But iftar isn’t about long, lingering meals or happening restaurants–it’s more about eating a lot very quickly. So, unless you’re invited to a fast-breaking meal, it’s unlikely that your dinner will be particularly fun. In fact, dinners were the sources of some of our greatest frustration, as we were often not allowed to order from the special Ramadan menus (which felt to us bizarrely inhospitable–like being refused a Thanksgiving menu because you’re not American or a Christmas set because you’re not Christian).

Eating in the streets

After the meal is when the real fun begins. All of the coffeehouses that were shuttered during the day fill up with customers. Especially in Islamic Cairo, around the touristy Khan Al Khalili, thousands gather for eating, shopping or just hanging about.

In Islamic Cairo

One minor inconvenience of Ramadan is shorter business hours, including at museums and other tourist attractions. We were initially concerned about this, but it ended up not being too big a problem. While the shorter hours mean a little more careful planning, things are generally open long enough–after all, in this heat, one cannot sightsee 8-9 hours straight every day.

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Egypt photo

Tourist Police

Favorite pasttime — reading the Quran

Many countries with a critical mass of tourism, especially in the developing world where the average person may not speak any English, often have separate “tourist police” forces. In every country we had been in, prior to Egypt, the essential functions of tourist police have been to act as English-speaking policemen for whatever visitors may need, to police tourist areas for additional security and peace of mind, to prevent tourists from interacting with “regular” police, who may not speak English or might be incompetent or corrupt, etc. Yes, it’s possible for tourist police to become involved if a tourist commits a crime, but really they’re there to aid tourists. To encourage tourism and tourism receipts.

Not in Egypt. Egypt has a very large “tourism and antiquities” police force, seemingly omnipresent, but they are not the helpful tourist police that travelers may have gotten used to in other countries. Nowhere have we met police, *tourist* police no less, whose job it seems to be not to aid tourists, but to harass them and otherwise get in their way, like the tourist police of Egypt. Even if the primary mission of the Egyptian tourist police is to deter terrorist acts against tourists, which have occurred with some frequency in Egypt [post to come], or there is a special concern in Egypt that tourists themselves may commit crimes (a relic of the days when tourists doubled as antiquities thieves), even then, the Egyptian tourist police should not be so useless to tourists, so negatively harassing.

1. Egyptian tourist police don’t speak English. Given that part of these people’s job description is to interact with tourists, wouldn’t it be useful if they were able to speak to tourists? Even superior officers frequently speak none or only a few words.

2. Egyptian tourist police beg for baksheesh. Now, petty bribery is common in many parts of the developing world, but nowhere have we seen police officers beg for tips. This is common behavior by tourist police at all Egyptian tourist sites. They ask for it in exchange for allowing you to enter restricted areas, for taking photos, for acting as informal guides or for doing nothing at all. Even a policeman guarding a police station asked us for a tip, with four other guards in earshot. Is this really the impression that the Egyptian government wants to give to tourists? That their police officers are beggars?

Acting as an informal guide

3. Egyptian tourist police may steal. I’m almost certain that I had my cell phone stolen during a security check at Philae Temple near Aswan. Most of the time, tourists are simply waved through security checks (perhaps too crude a profiling method), and so I didn’t pay too close attention to the guy going through my bag. Next time I looked–phone gone.

4. Egyptian tourist police are rude. Not only have tourist sites closed early because of Ramadan, but the guards close off sections of sites and try to have you out well in advance of even the early closing time. Given that admissions in Egypt are not cheap (often in excess of USD 10 per person), it is very upsetting, after you’ve paid for your ticket, to learn that much of the site is already closed or to be chased out early. After such an experience at the Egyptian Museum, I refused to leave until the proper Ramadan closing time, at which refusal all sorts of expletives and insults against my country were hurled at me and I was physically handled. Police may have threatened to detain or arrest us in other countries, but never have they stooped to this sort of base hostility, in this case for simply wanting to stay until the designated closing time.

One bizarre incident. We were visiting a small mosque in the “northern cemetery” region of Islamic Cairo. The mosque is famous–on one of the Egyptian bills–and a standard tourist attraction. When we showed up, a keeper of some sort started showing us around, as is usual, in expectation of a tip, or baksheesh. This was fine, especially since the mosque itself didn’t charge any admission. In the middle of our tour, the “guide” was called aside by a tourist policeman who had just entered, and returned to say that we had to leave because of the police. Now, there is no rule in Egypt that tourists cannot visit mosques (they actually make up a fair percentage of the sightseeing in Cairo), and this mosque was one that is quite prominently listed in guidebooks. We were mid-day, at no special time. Annoyed, we finished taking some pictures and exited, giving a few pounds to the custodian/guide at his request. The man then handed the money to the tourist police! You may think that forfeiting the baksheesh could have been some kind of punishment for showing us around, but not if you’ve been to Egypt. The most likely scenario was that the whole “chasing us out” was some sort of setup to encourage more tipping–to make us feel like we saw something that we weren’t “supposed” to see. Derek grabbed our money back.

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Egypt

Tipping, or Baksheesh!

Tipping culture varies across countries, and is one of the local customs that a traveler needs to know in order to behave appropriately in accordance with expectations. Failing to tip in New York is likely to get you a pretty nasty response, and we were once followed into the street by a waitress in Hong Kong who thought that we had accidentally left our money on the table. In any event, especially for Americans who are used to tipping, it’s not a big deal–whether a tip is expected or not, you can imagine that the total cost of service is in the end reflected in the total outlay, the only difference being whether it is included or not included in the price itself. In fact, one may even have a preference for tipping countries, since there is an incentive to provide better service (however patronizing that may seem).

Or at least that’s what I thought until I came to Egypt. In Egypt, tipping has merged with begging to result in nagging open hands absolutely everywhere you turn. It is not just requests for tips under ordinary circumstances (where someone has provided a service), such as one might expect. It is closer to begging, which in most countries is restricted to people who are genuinely in need, even if in some countries that segment of the population may be quite large. In Egypt, people who have done nothing for you at all, or perhaps worse just gotten in your way, people who are not particularly needy or underprivileged, constantly ask for handouts.

Situations where baksheesh is demanded: Guards at ruins, museums, etc., whose job it is simply to stand guard, ask you, on your way out, if you enjoyed the site and for baksheesh (asking for a pen if you refuse them money). People follow around the hot air balloons in Luxor trying to get their pictures taken so that they can ask for baksheesh. Custodians at mosques (including even the most holy, such as the Al Azhar) persistently pester you to go up the minaret (for which they have the key), so that they can get baksheesh. Guards inside tombs and the Egyptian Museum ask if you want to take pictures (ordinarily not permitted), so that they can get baksheesh. People offer you unsolicited directions and demand baksheesh. One small child asked for baksheesh for “helping” us off of a felucca, saying that he had “no mother no father.” One hotel front desk manager negotiated a baksheesh into the room rate (“50 for the room, 20 baksheesh”). Maddening.

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Egypt photo

Art Deco Is Egyptian

I did not even know the well-established fact that Art Deco was inspired by (if not outright lifted from) ancient Egyptian art, but even if I did, I think that seeing the extent of the influence would have been astonishing. Staring inside a four thousand year old tomb and having what looks like the facade of a New York skyscraper staring back at you is quite an uncommon deja vu experience.



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Egypt photo queer

Gay Egypt–A Pilgrimage

Actually, we haven’t made any attempt to find gay life in Egypt. As was widely publicized in 2001, the Egyptian government has developed a record of actively persecuting gay men in the country (with even some foreign tourists caught in raids, although released), and there appears to be little public gay life–not even as much as Iran (see post of 6.6). So far, the only “gay” activity we’ve experienced in Egypt is one somewhat elderly security guard trying to grope Derek in the dark of an underground tomb chamber and numerous disturbingly young boys offering sexual services for money in the tourist ghettoes of Luxor and Aswan. One also reads (although we did not encounter it) that felucca (Nile sailboat) captains offer more than just sailing services and that guards at Cairo’s Egyptian Museum have been known to hook up with tourists. Pretty unsavory stuff, though I’m glad to hear that all those empty sarcophagi are being put to some additional use.

But there was one special place to which I felt a pilgrimage absolutely mandatory: the joint tomb of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep at Saqarra. I will leave the full background of the mystery to other websites (see http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/science/20egyp.html, http://www.egyptology.com/niankhkhnum_khnumhotep/), but the short story is that the tomb (from around 2400 BC) appears to be for the first gay couple in recorded history. (The more/less official line from the Egyptian Department of Antiquities is that they are brothers.) They were, believe it or not, Overseers of the Royal Manicurists.

Below are some pictures we took of the close pair.