Egypt Travelogue-5: Accomodation and food

Our motto was "Enjoy Egypt economically". We stayed in budget hotels in all the three cities(Cairo, luxor and aswan) that we visited. We chose the hotels that were near the city centre. We covered most of the sites by walk that way. Only exception was Sharm, where we stayed in a resort that we booked through our club membership. (RCI through club mahindra)

Hotel and resort details

We booked the hotels through hostelworld, one of the best sites to search budget hotels in a city. As soon as you book the hotel, you would recieve an e-mail from the hotel welcoming you and giving you the tour details that they offer.In all the three hotels we booked a room with double bed and a private bathhroom.

In Cairo we stayed in Nubian hostel located very near to Cairo museum. The rooms were quite decent and spacious. The manager was very friendly and helpful. More about the hotel on day wise trip.

In luxor, we stayed in Hotel Nefertiti, one of the hotels reccomended by lot of travel guides. Its a bit expensive when compared to other budget hotels in luxor, but again it was at a walkable distance from Luxor museum and corniche and if you have strong legs, you can even walk to the world famous Karnak temple from the hotel, which we did. Again the hotel was decent, though the room was a bit small.The manager was very friendly and helpful. These managers know how to handle the tourists. Egypt being a tourist nation, its in their blood to be friendly and polite. More about the hotel on day wise trip.

In aswan, we stayed in Hotel Keylany, the best hotel of our trip. It was like a 3 star hotel at the price of a budget hotel. Moreabout the hotel on day wise trip.

Accomodation in the resort was a different story. We were shocked to hear from the receptionist that his computer does not show any booking and the resort has been converted into a pub sometime back. My husband handled the situation so efficiently that after a couple of phone calls to the resort manager by the receptionist, he was able to locate our booking details and finally handed over the room key to us. Though the resort was clean with all facilities and very close by to the beach, we would not recommend this resort because it becomes very noisy because of the disco that continues till early morning. More about the resort on day wise trip.We stayed in a resort called Sanafir Vacation Club now renamed to Pacha.


Food

This is one section that I would not be able to give much information on. I being a strict vegetarian, stuck to the MTR ready to eat stuff that I carried with me. My husband did not have any other option but to give me company, though he tried I think pita. I did have karkady(hibiscus tea) once and that was the only time in our entire trip that we were conned. More on it on Shopping. I think the hotel manager would be able to guide you if you give your preferences with respect to cost etc.

To be continued...

Egypt Travelogue-4:Visa and Travel

Indian citizens need to get an Egyptian tourist VISA to travel to Egypt. You don't get a visa until you book your tickets and attach a copy of it with the visa form. But it is not necessary that you will definitely get the VISA which means you will have to cancel the ticket and and bear the cancellation charges., if you don't get the visa. We have to just take our chances and be ready to loose some money if the unfortunate thing happens.

Non Indian citizens can checkout this site for details on Visa.

Tickets

As of now (March 2009) Oman Air is the only airline that has direct flights from bangalore to Cairo, capital of Egypt.There are also other airlines like Egypt Air and Air India that fly from Mumbai. Oman airways worked out to be the cheapest for us and we went ahead with it. There is a change over in muscat, but overall it is quite comfortable.

We planned to book the tickets through oman airways site in the internet. But we came to know from my brother-in-law that an agent in Delhi was quoting a much lesser price than the internet. We booked the tickets through the agent about two months ahead of our travel date.

Flight Details

Airline: Oman Air
Destination: Bangalore to Cairo and back(stop over at muscat)
Cost of the flight tickets(to and fro for 2 of us): Rs  56000(almost half of our entire trip cost)
This is November 2008 prices.

Visa

Indian citizens residing in India can get Egyptian visa from the Egyptian consulate in Mumbai or Egyptian Embassy in Delhi.One good thing about getting Egyptian Visa is, we need not go in person to get the visa. So we submitted all the relevant documents to a travel agent and got the visa through him.

We got our VISA through Charter Travels and Tours. The only reason I chose them was because their office was very near to mine. Their service was quite OK.

Its better to call them (or any other agent) first and find out the documents that have to be submitted to them to get the visa. We applied for visa around two weeks before our travel. I think its better to get the visa a month ahead to avoid uncertainity.

The following are the documents that we gave them

1.  Filled VISA form(I downloaded it from here, the agent will help you in filling the form)
2.  Passport
3.  1 passport size photo with light background
4.  Confirmed air tickets
5.  Hotel booking
6.  Cover letter
7.  Salary slip for the past 3 months
8.  Leave letter from the company
9.  Last year's filed IT return
10. Credit card copy
11. Brief Itinerary

The agent gave us a call after 3 days to collect our passports stamped with Egyptian toursit visa valid for 3 months. I was overjoyed to collect the passports that officially stated that we are elligible to travel to the land of pharoahs.

To be continued...

Egypt Travelogue-3: Introduction and brief Itinerary

Egypt is a gifted country. Its rich unparalleled history, world famous live corals and colorful fishes, mesmerising beaches, long trekkable deserts, sites of religious importance and most important of them all, warmth of the people makes it a perfect destination for vacation. These are reasons enough for us to plan a trip to visit.

We chose November to start our enthralling vacation as it fulfilled most of our expectations with respect to weather, crowd and availablity of sites for seeing. According to rough guide

"Deciding on the best time for a visit involves striking a balance between climatic and tourist factors. Egypt's tradional season runs from late November to late February, when the Nile valley is balmy, although Cairo can be overcast and chilly. However, at these times, particularly during the peak months of December and January, the major Nile resorts of luxor and aswan get unpleasantly crowded. This winter season is also the busiest period for the Sinai resorts, while Hurghada is active year round.

With this in mind, March or April are good compromise options, offering decent climate and fewer visitors. In May and June the heat is still tolerable but, after that, Egyptians rich enough to do so migrate to Alex and the coastal resorts. From July to September the south and desert are ferociously hot and sightseeing is best limited to early morning or evening-though August still sees droves of backpackers. October into early November is perhaps the best time of all, with esily manageable climateandcrowds."

November suited us the best.

After exploring a lot using rough guide and other internet materials, we came up with the following itinerary.We could almost stick to the itinerary except for few misses which we would definitely cover in our next trip.

Brief Itinerary

Day 1
On the day of arrival, overnight stay in Cairo

Day 2 Cairo sight seeing
Overnight bus to Sharm-el-shiekh

Day 3 to day 10
Stay at Sharm for 7 days(We booked a week's stay in a resort through our club membership.)
On day 10, overnight bus to Cairo

Day 11 
Cairo sight seeing
Overnight train to Luxor

Day 12 
Luxor sight seeing
Overnight stay in Luxor

Day 13 Luxor sight seeing
Overnight stay in Luxor

Day 14 
Edufu,komombo and esna sight seeing
Aswan sight seeing
Overnight stay in Aswan

Day 15 
Aswan sight seeing
Overnight stay in Aswan

Day 16 
Aswan sight seeing
Overnight train to Cairo

Day 17 
Sight seeing in Cairo
Overnight stay in Cairo

Day 18 
Morning flight to Bangalore

To be continued...

Egypt Travelogue-2

I have divided this travelogue into 11 sections..

Introduction: I have given a brief about why we decided Egypt as our destination and our brief itinerary.

Visa and Travel: I have given details about Egyptian Visa for Indian citizens and information about flight tickets from Bangalore(India) to Cairo(Egypt) and back.

Accommodation and food: This section covers details about accommodation available in Egypt and a brief review about the hotels where we stayed and how we booked those hotels.

Inter-city travel: I have given information about traveling between different cities within Egypt. This has information about getting bus and train tickets within Egypt.

Sight seeing trips: Here I have covered in detail about our daily sight seeing trips.

Pack list: A detailed list of things to be packed is covered here. Since we traveled in the month of November, the climate was quite conducive for sight seeing. The pack list here pertains to things that are needed irrespective of the weather and things that are specific to the month that we traveled.

Shopping: No trip is complete without shopping. Information about the places best for shopping and the things that are worth shopping are covered here.

Photos: I would upload some good photos that we clicked touring Egypt.

Research Materials: Information about the internet matrials and books that we referred for making this trip a successful one.

Others: This section covers information about things that are not covered in any of the above sections and also some info about some more places that one can visit in Egypt that are not covered in this travelogue.

Conclusion: Our feeling about the overall travel to Egypt.

To be continued...

Egypt Travelogue-1

My husband and me had been to Egypt last Novemeber(2008) as tourists.We did a lot of research and planning for the trip as we were travelling independently. I used internet extensively while planning for the trip. I was amazed by the amount of information available in the internet. Even the minute details were not missed. All credit goes to the huge amount of publishers who have taken time to put the information in the net for the sole purpose of helping/guiding others...(Ofcourse, no information gets the status of information unless google searches it and gives for you..So hats off to google..)

Thats when I decided that, as soon as I return from my Egypt trip, I should also write travelogues and publish it in the net. Its been 4 months since we returned from our memorable trip to Egypt and I have not done anything to that end. Better late than never..So here I am with my Egypt travelogue, to start with.

Hope the readers would benefit from this travelogue. Feel free to put forth any question that you have in your mind which you think I have not covered. I will be more than happy to answer.

To be continued...