The Rough Guide to Egypt

Description

The new full-colour Rough Guide to Egypt is the definitive guide to this amazing country, whose ancient civilization still fascinates today. But there's more to Egypt than just pyramids and temples. The Red Sea offers some of the world's finest diving, a few hours by air from Europe. There are awesome dunes and lush oases to explore in its deserts, and fantastic bazaars and mosques in the capital, Cairo.

Detailed accounts of every attraction, along with crystal-clear maps and plans, make it easy to access anything from remote oases to nightlife that only locals know. You'll find lavish photography and colour maps throughout, along with insider tips on how to get the best out of Luxor's temples or Sinai's beach resorts. At every point, the Rough Guide steers you to the best hotels, cafés, restaurants and shops across every price range, giving you balanced reviews and honest, first-hand opinions.

Make the most of your time with The Rough Guide to Egypt.

Now available in ePub format.

Sujets

• Travel
• North
• Africa

Informations

• Publié par: Apa Publications
• Date de parution: 01 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781409324249
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 12 Mo

Extrait

CONTENTS
HOW TO USE
INTRODUCTION
Where to go
Author picks
When to go
Things not to miss
Itineraries
BASICS
Getting there
Getting around
Accommodation
Food and drink
The media
Festivals
Sports and outdooractivities
Culture and etiquette
Shopping
Travelling with children
Travel essentials
THE GUIDE
1 Cairo and the Pyramids
2 The Nile Valley
3 The Western Desert Oases
4 Alexandria, the Mediterranean coastand the Delta
5 The Canal Zone
6 Sinai
7 The Red Sea Coast
CONTEXTS
History
Islam
Ancient Egyptian Temples
Music
Books
Glossary
MAPS AND SMALL PRINT


HOW TO USE THIS ROUGH GUIDE eBOOK

This Rough Guide to Egypt is one of a new generation of informative and easy-to-use travel-guide eBooks thatguarantees you make the most of your trip. An essential tool for pre-trip planning, it also makes a great travelcompanion when you’re on the road.
From the table of contents , you can click straight to themain sections of the eBook. Start with the Introduction ,which gives you a flavour of Egypt, with details of what to see, what not to miss, itineraries and more – everythingyou need to get started. This is followed by Basics , with pre-departure tips and practical information, such as flight details and health advice. The guide chapters offer comprehensive and in-depth coverage of the whole of Egypt, including area highlights and full-colour maps featuring all the sights and listings. Finally, Contexts fills you in on history, Islam, Egyptian music and books.
Detailed area maps can be found both at the relevantpoint in the guide and in the dedicated map section ,accessible from the table of contents for easy reference.Depending on your hardware, you will be able to double-tap on the maps to see larger-scale versions fill your screen. Use of the screen-lock function on your device is recommended for viewing enlarged maps.
Throughout the guide, we’ve flagged up our favourite places- a perfectly sited hotel, an atmospheric café, a special restaurant - with the “author pick” icon . You can select your own favourites and create a personalized itinerary by bookmarking the sights, venues and activities that are of interest, giving you the quickest possible access to everything you’ll need for your time away.

INTRODUCTION TO EGYPT
Egypt is the oldest tourist destination on earth. Ancient Greeks andRomans started the trend, coming to goggle at the cyclopean scale of the Pyramidsand the Colossi of Thebes. During colonial times, Napoleon and the British lootedEgypt’s treasures to fill their national museums, sparking off a trickle of GrandTourists that eventually became a flood of travellers, taken on Nile cruises andEgyptological lectures by the enterprising Thomas Cook. Today, the attractions ofthe country are not only the monuments of the Nile Valley and the souks, mosques andmadrassas of Islamic Cairo, but also fantastic coral reefs and tropical fish, dunes,ancient fortresses, monasteries and prehistoric rock art.
The land itself is a freak of nature, its lifeblood the River Nile. From theSudanese border to the shores of the Mediterranean, the Nile Valley and its Deltaare flanked by arid wastes, the latter as empty as the former are teeming withpeople. This stark duality between fertility and desolation is fundamental toEgypt’s character and has shaped its development since prehistoric times, impartingcontinuity to diverse cultures and peoples over seven millennia. It is a sense ofpermanence and timelessness that is buttressed by religion , which pervades every aspect of life. Although the pagan cults ofancient Egypt are as moribund as its legacy of mummies and temples, their ancientfertility rites and processions of boats still hold their place in the celebrationsof Islam and Christianity.
  The result is a multi-layered culture , which seems toaccord equal respect to ancient and modern. The peasants of the Nile and the Bedouintribes of the desert live much as their ancestors did a thousand years ago. Othercommunities include the Nubians of the far south, and the Coptic Christians, whotrace their ancestry back to pharaonic times. What unites them is a love of theirhomeland, extended family ties, dignity, warmth and hospitality towards strangers.Though most visitors are drawn to Egypt by its monuments, the enduring memory islikely to be of its people and their way of life.

FACT FILE
The Arab Republic of Egypt covers 1,001,450 square kilometres, but96.4 percent of that is desert . Only the NileValley, its Delta and some oases are fertile. Egypt’s population of 83.7 million is overtwice that of the next most populous Arab country (Algeria) and aquarter of the population of the Arab world. 71 percent of Egyptians areliterate. Average life expectancy is 73 years. Islam is the biggest religion, and some ninetypercent of Egyptians are Muslim; most of the rest are Coptic Christians , with a small number ofother Christians, and a tiny but ancient Jewish community. All Egyptians speak Arabic , but there areother Egyptian languages too: Nubian ,related to the Nilotic languages of East Africa, is spoken around Aswanand Lake Nasser; Siwi , a Berber languagelike those of Morocco and Algeria, is spoken in Siwa Oasis; and Coptic , which is derived from ancientEgyptian, is used in church services, but not otherwise. Since the monarchy was ousted in 1952, Egypt has been a republic , ruled by a succession of militarystrongmen up until the 2011 revolution that overthrew Hosni Mubarak.Elections in 2012 resulted in an Islamist government under President Mohammed Morsi . The MuslimBrotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party is the largest in parliament,followed by the Salafist Al-Nour party, the liberal Wafd party andEgyptian Bloc. Tourism has long been Egypt’s biggestmoney-earner, followed by tolls on the Suez Canal, and exports of oil,petroleum products, natural gas, cotton and textiles. Over forty percentof the population lives below the poverty line, and the economy would collapse without $2 billion a year infinancial and food-aid from the US.

Where to go
Egypt’s capital, Cairo , is a seethingmegalopolis whose chief sightseeing appeal lies in its bazaars and medieval mosques , thoughthere is scarcely less fascination in its juxtapositions of medieval and modernlife, the city’s fortified gates, villas and skyscrapers interwoven by flyoverswhose traffic may be halted by donkey carts. The immensity and diversity of this“Mother of Cities” is as staggering as anything you’ll encounter in Egypt. Justoutside Cairo are the first of the pyramids that range across the desert to theedge of the Fayoum, among them the unsurpassable trio at Giza , the vast necropolis of Saqqara and the pyramids at Dahshur . Besides all this, there are superb museums devoted to Ancient, Coptic and Islamic Egypt, and enough entertainment to occupy weeks of your time.
  However, the principal tourist lure remains, as ever, the Nile Valley , with its ancient monuments and timelessriver vistas – Nile cruises on a luxury vessel or a felucca sailboat being agreat way to combine the two. The town of Luxor is synonymous with the magnificent temples of Karnak and the Theban Necropolis ,which includes the Valley of the Kings whereTutankhamun and other pharaohs were buried. Aswan , Egypt’s southernmost city, has the loveliest setting on theNile and a languorous ambience. From here, you can visit the island Philae temple of Isis and the rock-hewn colossi at Abu Simbel , or embark on a cruise to other templesaround Lake Nasser . Other sites not to be missedare Edfu and KomOmbo , between Luxor and Aswan, and Abydos and Dendara , north ofLuxor.
  Besides monuments, Egypt abounds in natural wonders. Edged by coral reefsteeming with tropical fish, the Sinai Peninsula offers superb diving and snorkelling, and palm-fringed beaches where women canswim unmolested. Resorts along the Gulf of Aqaba are varied enough to suiteveryone, whether you’re into the upmarket hotels of Sharm el-Sheikh , nearby Na’ama Bay or Taba further north, or cheap, simple livingat Dahab and Nuweiba . From there it’s easy to visit StCatherine’s Monastery and MountSinai (where Moses received the Ten Commandments) in themountainous interior. With more time, cash and stamina, you can also embark on jeep safaris or cameltreks to remote oases and spectacular wadis.
  Egypt’s Red Sea Coast has more reefs furtheroffshore, with snorkelling and diving traditionally centred around Hurghada , while barely touched island reefs from Port Safaga down to Marsa Alam beckon serious diving enthusiasts. Inland, themountainous Eastern Desert harbours the Copticmonasteries of St Paul and St Anthony, Roman quarries, and a host of pharaonicand prehistoric rock art, seen by few apart from the nomadic Bedouin.
  While the Eastern Desert is still barely touched by tourism, the Western Desert Oases have been on the tourist trailfor forty years and nowadays host safaris into the wilderness. Siwa , out towards the Libyan border, has a uniqueculture and history, limpid pools and bags of charm. Travellers can also followthe “Great Desert Circuit” (starting from Cairo, Luxor or Assyut) through thefour “inner” oases – though Bahariya and Farafra hold the most appeal, with the lovely White Desert between them, the larger oasesof Dakhla and Kharga also have their rewards once you escape their modernized“capitals”. And for those into serious desert expeditions, there’s the challengeof exploring the Great Sand Sea or the remotewadis of the Gilf Kebir , whose prehistoric rockart featured in the film The English Patient . I