Visiting Cairo

Cairo is the city I had been yearning to go. I learnt about its greatness from school texts since I was young. Its ancients civilization, pyramids, biblical stories, phroahs' rule, al azhar,salahuddin al ayobi, the fitimid empire,tomb raiders,  syed qutb, etc, put Cairo as the top priority among must go  places.

Upon arrival at Cairo international airport, I know instantly that I was in  a third world country.The airport clearance was tedious and time consuming , the traffic was busy and chaotic and I was accosted by a numbers of people who offered assistance for tips in American dollars.The run down taxi drove me to downtown city center, and dropped me and my wife at the roadside along a busy street,on which our hotel was situated. After struggling with our luggage we were relieved to check into a double bed room with a balcony which was not a bad accommodation for the price we paid. As our room was right in the middle of the downtown, we could see the milling crowd below. It was already 10 pm at night and the street was alive with people, and we felt  that could be a good time to feel the city's atmosphere.

The city street was crowded city folks doing shopping, chit-chatting on the sidewalk,shopping, drinking coffee, or just walking about, enjoying the chill air. The architecture of the downtown was European and the people dressed themselves well, and that make me feel I am walking about in some western city downtown.The people were courteous and were conscious of visitors, so I got friendly hellos and polite nods as we walked. A few would stop to ask where we came from, and once I said from Malaysia, they showed their interest wanting to acquaint more with us.From the brief conversation with people on the street, I know them to be well read, well informed and willing to help out.

Cairo streets were bustling with people whose main preoccupation was to earn a living.Taxi drivers , petty traders, commission agents, touts and street peddlers were everywhere selling things like perfumes, train tickets, hotel accommodation, breads , etc.Despite the hectic appearance, the people were relaxed and were willing to engage in  conversation which centered around how difficult life was in the city. The cafes serving Turkish coffee were crowded with people sitting down over cups of coffee for hours .If not in the cafe, they would be on the sidewalk, chatting and sitting down oblivious of the busy life on the street, and resigned to life as it comes.                                                                                                      


There were too many  places of interest to see in and around Cairo and it was impossible to give full account on this blog.The Cairo Eygptian Museum was the greatest museum for eyghtology with impressive collection of 5000 years of civilisation. It will take a person a couple of days to go through the huge collections of 5000 years of human civilisation. One day was not enough to cover the whole museum as the collection was too immense. The bust of Tatunkamum casted in gold was the top display admired for the beauty of ancient craftmenship..Then there were mummies of great kings, artifacts in stones and metal explaining the ancient history of Eygpt back into time making Louvre and Rome look very recent.

The Old Cairo at Maydan Hussein and the Al Azhar reminded visitors of old day Cairo.The citadels witnessed Cairo great history as governed by Mamluk, the Fatimid, Kamal Pasha , Salahuddin and other great conquerors. Then there were the pyramid at Gaza, the Sphinx, the Nile river, Heliopolis,Zamlud, etc.

Maydan Tahrir, where massive demonstration that brought down Mubarak took place ,was focal point of the city where all roads,underground train  and traffic converge , making this place into meeting points of people.I spend quite a lot of time here just walking about and looking at people.

 Unlike many third world city, Cairo was well served by an efficient and cheap underground network of trains.For just one Eygptian pound the underground could take you to so many places.From the numerous metro train public transport, even though rickety,  can take to many places including the central station from where the train would go to Aswan and Alexandria.

Al Azhar-the madieval remains at al Qahirah

From downtown Cairo, I took the efficient Cairo underground train to Ataba, then hopped on a taxi to Maydan Hussein which is the centre for Al Azhar. This place is also known as al Qahirah, from which the name Cairo is derived and built by the Fatimid 1000 years ago. It  looks very medieval,with narrow crowded streets,huge middle east bazaar, tall minarets and original islamic architecture . Al Azhar mosque,Hussein mausoleum and Khalili market dominate this place.

It was Al Azhar mosque that led me to this place as it has been the oldest university in the world and  the ivy league of Islamic learning for Malay religious student  for ages. Any scholar who had studied at Al Azhar would be highly regarded and properly placed by the Malays in their social hierarchy  and would become an ulama in the society. Even before stepping his foot on Al azhar , the whole kampung would celebrate his departure with kenduri and doa. Parents would be eager to engage their daughter to a boy going Al Azhar and the richer one would go further by financing his studies.Such is the respect accorded on Al Azhar boys in Malaysia then.

As I entered the mosque I was welcomed by a large tiled rectangular courtyard.Bordering the courtyard was an open arcade for resting, waiting , studying and sleeping.The arcade leads to classrooms for religious classes and each class is separated from one another with partitions.As there were no chairs or tables and students would sit on the floor.The atmosphere at the mosque courtyard was serene and quite, very much different of the hustle bustle of the market streets outside.Some religious students were seen on the terrace , alone or in study group,mugging  the old religious texts or having group discussion by themselves .The student studied by rote devouring some battered Arabic text and when they formed study group it was for the mastery of the text . I peeked into the classroom and saw a teaching session in progress.  Anyone can walk into the classroom to listen, so in the class I saw students of different age group.I was told by an Indonesian student that the scholar giving the religious lecture in this class was a renowned cardiac surgeon.It looks like teaching is  a one way traffic  with the scholars imparting what he knew and the students absorbing as passive listeners.There was not much of learning, only teaching and passive listening.This must be the only way knowledge has been dessimenated to future ulamas  for ages and our sekolah pondok must have got their inspiration from here.Most of the students at the mosque were from Malaysia and Indonesia  and I hardly seen any Arab looking faces among them, except some walk in Arabic ladies.

I spoke with students from Kelantan and  Kedah  about their life after classes.It seemed that there is no distraction that that can lead them away for around Al Azhar there nothing ,even open space or sports complexs and these students  don't live like their counterparts in Malaysia.Their focus is on religion and that make them very motivational to stay at the mosque to study. After their study, they go back to their hostel which is their home in Cairo named after their states eg Kelantan House, Kedah House, where they find solace within their own tribe.Our boys in my neighbourhood in Petaling Jaya could never live this life without going to video arcade, mamak stall, jamming studios, shopping complex ,etc,etc.

I walked across the road to Hussein Mausoleum, which was housed in an imposing mosque that can accommodate about a 1000 worshipers. The mausoleum itself was in a special chamber within the mosque, where Hussien's severed head was entombed.Husein's body was burried in Karbala where he was killed, but his head was brought by his follower to Cairo. The Syiah sect regarded Hussein with the highest reverence and they displayed their  emotions when they visit their iman's mausoleum.. They not only prayed at the mausoleum but kissed the the mausoleum doors, gates, fences and pillars with deepest affection. The Syiah had been saddened by Husein's death  and even after 1300 years their grief had not abated.

Nearby was Khan Khalili, the biggest open market in Cairo , selling almost everything a household may need, but not much on high tech gadgetry for I couldn't find the card reader for my laptop.Visitors to the market were accosted by shopkeepers and harassers to buy their merchandise and customers must be ready to drive a hard bargain to get a fair price.

Around Al Azhar , there were many more monuments and historical artifacts that testify to the greatness of Al Azhar as the influential centre of Islamic leaning and civilization.This place is archaic, from the buildings, the narrow bazaar,  to the dress of the Arab scholars. I saw many European tourists sitting down in the arcade cafe at the market square, romanticing  and immersing in madieval exotic.

Rinjani in Lombok

I landed in Denpasar when it was almost midnight.I was in a group called orang gunung and our trip was for the purpose of climbing Gunung Rinjani,the highest mountain in the Malay Archipelago at 12300 ft and the most beautiful. We were the last arriving passengers and we proceeded to the parking lot to look for the van that would take us to Padang Bai, the embarkation port to Lombok.Before midnight ,we boarded  the ferry,  I  found myself a cozy corner  and was soon fast asleep helped by the cool sea breeze and choppy sea. At sunrise the ferry arrived at Lombok and we took the van to Rinjani base camp which was a three hour journey from the port.

From the van, Lombok appeared to me very rural with activities centering around agriculture, mainly paddy farming. The kampungs that we passed through looked clean and the farm well tendered. The van weavered through the country road passing through winding remote villages, steep slope and deep ravines. We reached Rinjani base station on the eastern side of the island, where all Rinjani hikers must report themselves and the hiking groups were each assigned mountain mountain guides .

We started the climb after lunch, ascending slowly  through meadow of long and soft grasses.The landscape was undulating and was  never boring with features shaped by volcanic activities. As we climbed higher we got a majestic view of the mountain and valley.The scene was beautiful with uninterrupted vista  and the air was fresh and cool.At night fall we reached  the first camping spot  , a deep valley shaped by larva rivers,where we set up tents and  spent the night.

The next day, we resumed our journey . It was not an easy climb this time as the gradient got steeper.There was not much vegetation except clump of coniferous trees and patches of grasses and old dead trunks ravaged by larva flow..Ranjini is an active valcano littered with rocks hurled by explosions and steeped crevices chiselled by larva stream .The topography looked bleak with patches of trees and grasses.But the view was panaromic since there were no tall trees that hide our view.Although the slope was steeper than the day before, our climb was leisurely as we slogged along slowly to the next station. By late afternoon, we reached our second camping site at the edge of the crater called Pelawangan at 9500 ft.

The crater rim where we camped was a narrow ridge plunging to great depth into the crater lake beneath. The view at this height was postcard like with the crater lake Danau Segara before our eye.The crater lake was huge and placid and in its midst is an island with smoking volcano named Gunung Baru, making Gunung baru a volcano within the volcano. On the horizon was the blue Bali Sea and beyond the sea,  Gunong Agong in Bali, the most sacred of the Hindu site, rose majestically in Bali.The night was cold with howling wind that fluttered our canvas sheet and sent shivers to us .In that condition , plus the high altitude rarefied air,it was impossible to light up fire for cooking. That night, we managed to cooked half boiled rice and  I went to bed on empty stomach.

At around 2 am we woke up to begin the final ascent of Gunung Ranjini reaching the peak as the sun rose over the sea..We enjoyed the stunning view for a short while before making our descend.


We continued our way back to the  camping site at Pelawangan , dismantled our camps and made our way down to the crater lake  Segara Anak.At one spot I found traces of old cloth and plastic mats and asked the guide what was that.The guide said seven local climbers encountered bad weather and died of exhaustion and hyperthemia on the spot and local custom forbidded their  belongings from being removed.The crater lake Segara Anak was the most holy site for Bali Hindus second only to Gunung Agung.The Bali Hindus believed that mountains are where their deities reside and made offering to appease their deities to stop catastrophe like volcanic  eruption,  drought season and bad weather .Where we camped there were litters of prayer offerings.The lake was placid and almost surreal .The water was not suitable for drinking as it is highly sulfurous,but there were plenty of fish in the lake.There were hot springs, waterfall and a cave with an ascetic doing meditation, but I didn't visit those places for the lack of time. This was a nice place to be , with an excellant camping site by the lake shore, lots of fish which we grilled over fire and  stunning landscape in its pristine state.

When the sun rose the next morning, I was ready to make my the most arduous task of the expedition, that was climbing the steep rocky alpine slope from Segara Anak to the other side of the crater rim at Senaru Crater rim.After 4 hours of climb, exhausted I reached the crater rim , rewarded with a picturesque view of Segara Anak and Gunong Baru, exactly  the same image on the rupiah note of the Indonesian currency.


The rest of the journey for the next 5 hours, we walked through patchy grass slope, semi alpine forest and lush tropical jungle teeming with birds , butterflies and wild fowls.. We reached the Sasak village of Senaru when it was  almost dark .The traditional village was circular in shape with well built sturdy houses of wood and palm leaves and no nails. The Sasak lived in a well contained community and appeared  to be well organised with their own social structure and a system of belief  I was told that although most Sasak has practiced mainstream muslim religious practice, the Sasak  who lives in villages like Senaru are adherent to wektu telu, a form of Islamic practices that prays only 3 times a day and practising animism at the same time.It was late at night that our bus arrived and took us back to Mataram.,the last Hindu kingdom in the Nusantara.