Traveling and Safety in Post-Revolution Egypt

We’ve been in Cairo for over a week now (me, Drew and the baby), and we’re loving this city. The Turkish coffee served at outdoor cafes, the architecture, the people, the old men smoking hookahs, the way people just walk into the middle of two lane highways to cross the street — it’s crazy and beautiful and an unexpected highlight for us.

When we decided to come here, it wasn’t without some push back — especially from some of our family and friends. The 2011 Egyptian Revolution (that link goes to wikipedia for more information) was broadcast across news media around the world. Images of the demonstrations in Cairo were dramatic and scary, specifically Tahrir square and although the protests were largely non-violent there were over 800 deaths and 6,000 injuries reported.

Downtown Cairo, where we are now, was reported as a “war zone”:

“Downtown Cairo is a war zone tonight – as reports come in of massive occupations by protesters in towns across Egypt, the centre of the capital is awash with running street battles. Along with hundreds of others I’ve just been teargassed outside the parliament building, where some youths were smashing up the pavement to obtain rocks to throw at police.” via Guardian UK.

The revolution started on January 25th and by February 11th the President had stepped down. On February 13th, the Supreme Council dissolved Egypt’s parliament and suspended the Constitution. On March 3rd, the Prime Minister stepped down. There have been other protests. However, the worst of it was between January 25th and February 11th and on April 28, 2011 the US Department of State removed it’s travel restriction to Egypt and the US embassy has been reopened.

So basically, it was bad, and now it’s much better.

The reason why we came? It was on the way to Rwanda and a ticket here plus Rwanda was the same price as going directly to Rwanda (so basically a free flight). We didn’t know when we’d get a chance to see Egypt again. And we had a friend who traveled in the area recently and said, “Yeah, it’s fine.” We’ve also had friends who were living in Bangkok during the protests and it was very similar to Egypt — if you stayed away from several blocks of protests, then you might not even know what was going on. And ultimately, I knew that a contained protest, while risky, with an unstable government, isn’t necessarily more risky than traveling to Egypt before the protests — or traveling in India where labor strikes can trap you somewhere for days. And I heard a rumor that NY Times writer Nicholas D. Kristof toured the pyramids with his family weeks after the revolution started. I’d guess he has a pretty good sense of relative risk, although you might not share his tolerance level.

So this is a long way of saying: we are not crazy. We thought about it. We weighed it. It seemed pretty safe to us.

What has it been like? Well, our hotel is nearly empty. The taxi drivers are still trying to exhort huge sums and the perfume dealers are still trying to lure you into their shop with the promise of “Egyptian Hospitality”.

The other side has been the discovery that Egyptian men love little babies and will scoop up Cole and kiss him, if we give the slightest nonverbal approval. It’s really affordable to travel here, our private hotel room with bathroom (in a very nice and clean hotel downtown) is just $15 a night. The street food is great — we’ve stuffed ourselves on $1 shawarma sandwiches (meat slow cooked and carved on the street, with the slivers of moist, tender meat put into a roll with a special tahini based sauce).

We haven’t seen an excess of police or any violence, protests or remnants of the revolution. That doesn’t mean it’s not there, just that if we didn’t know about it, we wouldn’t have guessed.

So I ask you guys… would you travel to Egypt right now?