End of Term Two / A vacation in Egypt / An added skill

Ship of the Desert

You think the only people who are people,

Are those who act and think like you do;

But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger,

You learn things you never knew, you never knew.

- Colors of the Wind, Pocahontas

I could not figure out what the name of this blog entry should be, hence the multiple titles. The end of term two had to be celebrated in a special way. Adventure would have to be the icing on the cake. So, some of us figured that internet (esp. facebook) was a comparatively recent invention as compared to Planet Earth which certainly would have more to offer considering that it was formed a couple of billion years ago. Hmmm. (deang)

I thought that a vacation to Egypt would be fun. And with it, the icing on the cake would be… (he he he) Scuba Diving. Now apparently to dive using SCUBA requires proper training and a license. So in the middle of exam week (and a month before that) whilst everyone was studying hard, yours truly was in the Acquatics Center swimming pool, practising how to dive. After four pool sessions and some theory tests (duh!), I was 80% into the course. All that needed to be done was to complete two open water dives (for me, it was in the Red Sea) to be a certified diver.

Term two ended with a farewell MBA ball to the class of 2009. I bid final goodbye to the 2009 batch and some others as well, and came back to pack my bags to catch a flight to Sharm-el-Sheikh (no pun intended on “sheikh” please). There were three groups of people from our class going to Egypt. One group to Cairo then to Dahab. Another one to Cairo then Luxor then Dahab. We were just going to Dahab from Sharm, as Dahab, although a small sleepy town is one of the best known locations around the world for Scuba Diving!

@ a local restaurant

Day 1: We departed from Manchester in the morning. The flight to  harm was pretty good, except that the legroom in Fly Thomas Cook is near to nonexistent. Reached Sharm in the evening and it took around an hour to clear the customs and stuff and we were headed to Dahab in our own private van. The hotel that we had booked for ourselves was the Le Meridian Resort, a five-star facility with five swimming pools, balconies overlooking the Red Sea and a bar with a 100 inch projector with Wii !! These were however just a few of the facilities and at very cheap rates, thanks to our mass booking, recession and Egyptian Pound converstion rate ;-) Now, one of my colleagues on the MBA had introduced me to a veggie Egyptian dish called the Falafel, here in Manchester, which I had never tasted before. So as soon as we reached the hotel and freshed up, we headed to Dahab town, I particularly in search of the elusive Falafel.

Dahab is a small small town. Most of the shops are centered around diving gear and the remaining are paraphernalia and restaurants. Its cheap by all standards and the food is deliciously good (though I had some problems explaining the concept of vegetarianism). We had a good meal, in a decent restaurant. One thing I noticed was that some of the restaurants had no sofas… just tables around which mats were arranged with big pillows. One thing common in all the restaurants in town was cats. You read that right, cats. One of the Egyptian goddesses is a cat, so cats are revered as gods here. They are free to roam about in restaurants and an enterprising one can even dare to take a bite or two off your plate if you’re not careful enough!!

We returned to the FIVE STAR hotel in a FIVE STAR vehicle – the back of a pick up truck !

Open water course…

Day 2 & Day 3: For me these two days were pretty much similar. Since I had to complete the two open water dives to get my scuba license. I got more complements for the fact that my instructor was so *cute* rather than my diving prowess. At the end of two days and four open water dives, I was a PADI certified Open Water Diver. Everyone toasted at dinner to their “freshly minted diver” ! I couldn’t have failed the skill-tests, as is evident, my “motivation” was too high ;-) Everyone else did their due either relaxing by the beach in the hotel or going diving. Dahab and surrounding areas have innumerable dive sites. My colleagues who had licenses of Advanced Diving and Wreck Diving and Nitrox and the likes couldn’t have fell short of options here. Take your pic !

Whazzat again…?

Day 4: Since the rest of the divers had had their share of diving for the past two days, we decided we would venture into the heat of the desert and climb up Mount Sinai. At the foot of the trail leading to the mountain is a monastery dedicated to St. Catherine. Now, I have visited many monasteries and this one, I must say can be avoided. In one part of the monastery we have a restaurant with a sign that even google doesn’t have the meaning of.  (dunno) When we came back from the monastery I had the BEST FOOD in three days at a simple place that delivered what it advertised = RESTAURANT (duh!) and the best part of the food was the TASTIEST CHEESE ever. We nicknamed it (with all due respect to Moses et al.) Demonic Cheese from a Holy Goat.

What else?

Mount Sinai is the tallest peak in the Sinai peninsula at 2285 meters high. Incidently its lower than the altitude of Shimla!! :-D So we started climbing Sinai. One can either slog to the top or hire a camel. We chose to walk. Although some camel owners kept following us like vultures to see whether we are getting tired and would be lured to rent a camel. But after some time bearing testimony to our stamina, they finally gave up. Mount Sinai is a cool trek, however trekking the same terrain again and again becomes monotonous.  When we reached the top we could see a Bedouin village in the middle of the desert and all of us waited to watch the sunset. Someone caught me on camera thinking deeply over something – and I have no memory of what/who the **** I was thinking of in the first place. We also saw what I reckon would be Sinai’s highest toilet, built right at the very top of the mountain. After watching the sunset we descended the mountain in *pitch* dark conditions, apart from the occassional slips here and there, there were no casualities. I think Moses must have preferred just rolling down the mountain, especially while carrying those heavy tablets of commandments ! Or, as Eric Von Daniken would have put it, he must have been teleported directly down to the base ;-)

Silly Diver

Day 5: We decided to dive. And this would be my first dive as a certified diver! Our group picked something really easy for my first dive – The Blue Hole; the only diving site in the world that is famous only for the number of fatalaties that occur there  (nrvs) . The problem is that usually divers dive in steps – go down to 3 meters on a sandy bottom, then to 15 or 18 meters and so on. In the Blue Hole however, there is no bottom. Only a 100m drop to the sea floor. A small error can lead to miscalculating the amount of air left or buyouancy and one can plunge headlong down. Our dive guide, Mamdoh, was pretty good. The entry to the hole was one of the *coolest* ones. A head-first dive into a small crack in the coral reef. I did not go more than 18 m deep (was not allowed to, actually) although everytime I tried to ditch my guide, he kinda read my mind and told me to come up to his level. When we were at something like 10 meteres we turned our faces to the surface of the water and saw the sunlight reflected into the deep blue water with a school of translucent fish coming right past us. In the background the shadow of surrounding mountains was imaged on the water surface. Cool sight! We came back from the dive and our lunch was ready in a sea-side, if I may, dhaba! The rest of the day was spent talking about the spectacular sights and planning the dives for the next day. I played on the Wii and everyone toasted to my first dive and then to all the divers.

Boat ride and diving

Day 6: Day six would be awesome. It had to be. We hired a boat – some 20 of us, and went into the middle of the sea. From there some people took up swimming in the sea, some snorkelled, some dived and some just lay back getting sun-tanned. We made three dives, and celebrated a colleague’s birthday – also arranged for a birthday cake for her as a surprise. All the dives were spectacular. One of my colleagues had an underwater camera which she used to capture some awesome shots!! The rest of the day was spent on the beach talking about the day’s adventure.

Navigating the Coloured Canyon

Day 7: We had done our share of diving, and since everyone would be flying to Manchester the next day, diving wasn’t recommended. So we took a trip to two *awesome* canyons – The Coloured Canyon and The White Canyon. Now firstly, to get to the either of the canyons is not an easy job. A long jeep ride into the middle of the desert, slipping over steep sand dunes and the sun and the heat for two hours… But in the end it is well worth it. I personally liked the hiking in the canyons better than the hiking up Mount Sinai. First we went to the Coloured Canyon which has different coloured rocks and stones owing to the abundance of different minerals. We were told that the canyon especially looks more beautiful just after it has rained as all the crystals shine with the drops! I also figured a new way to stay cool in the desert. Have someone drain a bottle of water down your back! The coloured canyon was pretty impressive especially when going under some big boulders and finding way around bigger ones still. The colours reflected off the rock faces especially when combined with the shadows were *amazing* !

After we were done exploring the coloured canyon, we were taken to an oasis! Here we had the privilege of having lunch with the Bedouins. Contrary to what I expected, the lunch was pure, healthy, vegetarian food. After that we were served Bedouin Tea with sage leaves – and I must say, it is no short of the usual masala chai that I am used to having. Simply delicious. Having had lunch, we headed to the White Canyon. This one involved more of climbing and was littered with soft rocks which had less stronger footholds. I have done my share of Caving and so it wasn’t much difficult for me to hop skip and jump new rock faces and routes in the canyon, much to the amazement of our guide. Near the end of the canyon we reached a make-shift tent where a bedouin was pot-boiling bedouin tea. Another was sitting by his camel playing what we nicknamed the “Egyptaphone”, and I had a go at it. I am a great guitarist (recently finished learning the Classical Gas by Mason Williams) and I must say that the Egyptaphone was a little too “technical” for me to play on.

The Egyptaphone

Day 8: We all had had a great vacation. It was time to leave. We had our flight to catch in the evening and so after breakfast we were mostly killing time on the beach. I got tanned more than usual, and I am now almost invisible in the dark (except my teeth, that is). Next time I am definitely buying a pair of sunglasses and a hat before I head off to Egypt. One of the good things about diving, though is that most of the diving locations in the world are very exotic! We had a make-shift lunch on the van and reached the airport well in time. Had a good time sharing jokes about the vacation on the flight and then were back to Manchester by midnight – only to call up others in our respective groups for a project submission after two days ;-) And we made it! Ok. Time to face the gruelling next term and ofcourse plan the next vacation! At the rate that I am going, I think I shall have to create a new Travelogue(s) category on my blog. Having travelled extensively though, I have found that there is NO SUBSTITUTE for travel. There might be numerous websites, books, people who/which may tell you may things about many places, but GOING there and breathing the air around is an experience second to none :-)