Travel Guide Cairo

Located on the banks of the Nile, at the exact beginning of the fertile land of the delta, Cairo is the second largest city on the African continent (after Lagos, Nigeria), although its perfume is that of a fully Arab city.According to the latest census of 2017, almost 18 million people live there. Of course, we speak of Cairo, including the two administrative governorates in Cairo (right bank) and Giza (left bank).For the authorities, this ever-increasing human concentration is a puzzle. Any inhabited space ends up being occupied, be it cemeteries or sectors intended for agricultural, artisanal and industrial activity. The pressure of the newcomers is terrible: every day, hundreds of peasants from the Nile leave a land that no longer feeds them for Cairo suffocating, suffocating by too many inhabitants.Describing the current state of Cairo often means aligning the clichés with the urban, sprawling, and polluting urban monster. You will be brutally aware of this during your first contact with this troubling city, with skyscrapers and minarets. The incessant clamor of the horn, engine snoring and air conditioners will insinuate your head. Fans of the large spaces, the air moth, barely bearable in the summer, or the brown fog of the autumn evenings bearing the rice straw smoked in the surrounding countryside, will soon be reason for your energy and leave you, from the middle of the afternoon, without force to face urban chaos.Leading to the appearance of the entanglement of giant autoponts that hamper the city, a cohort of Peugeot and Toyota is a mechanical, nervous and snorted ballet. No one seems willing to stop, not even to avoid pedestrians crossing or walking off a bus. As long as we can go, we're going! Traffic congestion will soon slow the flow. In the meantime, we're going down, we're infiltrating, we're insulting to make less than two meters at a completely overcrowded crossing.The first hours are nervously exhausting. Make sure you get used. After a few days, we are even surprised at its resistance to the stunning pressure of Cairo. It is easy to adapt without noticing. As long as it is carried by the rhythm of the rhythm, slow down its own, take it every time dead and savor the many moments of grace. The anarchy of the cairote activity resists any rational explanation. Tell you it's one of the charms of this town.This confusion is compounded by the paradoxes of companies that live in parallel: wealth and poverty are bordering on the streets of Cairo. Some Cairotes have the same lifestyle as in London, New York or Paris. A few hundred meters away, we still live without running water. The alley in front of the house was never tarnished. Hens and goats, free before the door always open, may suggest that we are in the countryside. But as a field, there's only a bunch of smoking garbage that makes flies and wandering cats happy.These two extremes form bubbles that coexist or cross without knowing each other. The scars of some crosses the peeled donkeys of the others, in a reciprocal and absolute indifference. The subway is a fine example of this separation between social classes. But very handy to avoid interminable plugs, you won't see that a costume closes in the crowd of students and employees at low wages.