Narasimha' at the Egyptian Museum Cairo

Read that title as Narasimha Prime...

The previous post in this series is here..

One of the avatars of god Vishnu is Narasimha (Nar - human, Simha - lion) and has the head of a lion and body of a human.. 

In Egypt, we have the "prime" version.. the head of a human on the body of a lion.. everywhere! Two ancient cultures, just flip the part of the body that is animal. When I told the group  "get your blessings from the Egyptian Narasimhar!" there was a lot of eye rolling. They did appreciate the way my weird brain connects things.

After visiting the Pyramids and Sphinx, we drove across the Nile river into downtown Cairo in peak traffic to reach the Egyptian Museum. It is an old and amazing place. Still without a tourguide, we would have been lost. Ibrahim was upfront and said "I am going to hit the highlgihts and keep moving. So please keep up with me!" and we did.. 

There were a few amazing pieces here like the first steele of North and South Unification , the only statue of the first ruler (a very small figurine), some lifesize statutes of the kings and queens as well as giant statues of Anubis and the pharohs. 

Posting select photos here ..

 

The highlight of the museum of course was the King Tut section. There is a part of this section where photos and videos are allowed.. 

In a relatively small chamber they found so much!!

A fan with ivory handle and ostrich feathers that was miraculously preserved for 3000+ years

Jars with heads that screw on made of alabaster where king Tut's internal organs were separately mummified..

Jackals seem to be another commonality between the dead, spirit world and life after death. The Tantric worshipers who do penence sitting on dead bodies in a cemetary in India also wait for a Jackal to show up as part of the success of their ritual. Just thought it was an interesting parallel..

 

King Tut ruled for ~10 years and he was a kid. His tomb had treasures like this. Just imagine the larger empty tombs we visited earlier ! Rameses II was 93 when he passed on to his afterlife.. One can only imagine how much got looted from there...

We did get to see the golden mask and the actual coffins of king Tut. However there was no photos or videos allowed in that section. There were many guards continuosly following folks and making them delete photos. I just respected their rule and put my cameras away. That golden mask with blue black and gold is a few thousand years old made me think a lot. How can something that great just disappear ? No matter how impregnable they thought their tombs were, it just took less than 10 generations for folks to loot it all. Nothing is sacred. It just goes to show how insignificant and arrogant we are in todays age knowing what happened in the past. 

The rest of the photos are in this slideshow..

we walked past another section of large statues.. 

We then walked out of the musem through the place where the famous Egyptologist Auguste Mariette is buried right outside the museum. 

A video highlight of this visit..

After this we got back into the van and drove towards Giza again. Given the time constraint and the hunger levels, we had to eat in the van. Ibrahim picked up some vegetarian food for us. Sadly he realized there was not much I could have given everything there had sesame seeds. So I was given white rice cooked with vermiceli. It was plain rice but the vermicelli added a flavor to it and I gobbled it up. The rest of the group were very happy with the food and ganna (sugarcane juice) that was given. 

Our next stop in the next post!

The grandeur of Giza

The first post in this series is here..

Our group met at the roof of the Hayat Pyramid View hotel for breakfast. It was cold outside and all the breakfast items were cold given it was in a room with open doors. We made the most of it and saw the run rise to face the pyramids. Caught the first light hit the great pyramids! It was fantastic.

When we first walked up to the roof, it was hazy! The moon was still up.

We took pictures before and after the sun came out..

Had a feeling this trip will be a good one just by the way she was smiling!!! 

The sun comes out and the clouds roll in and "magic"!

Then it was time to meet our guide for the day, Ibrahim. At first glance if you are not used to Arabic nations, the tone comes across as rude and our guides way of saying "excuse me!" everytime he wanted to grab our attention was interesting. He was a really sweet and caring dude!

The language and accents make up for an intersting social study! He was dealing with desis .. from US. So he was a bit flummoxed on how to deal with us. Should he be proud that we bargained for everything like Egyptians? Or should he be upset that being Americans who can afford things, we are still bargaining.. he literally was telling us that in a very roundabout way. He wanted us to tip the locals wherever possible. Tipping, how much and when was the topic of most of our group discussions! 

Ibrahim gave us the rundown and told us he was not allowed inside. He also told us that the big pyramid and the pyramid of the grandson had entrances to go in but it is the same experience. One was 20 USD and a longer line and one was 4 USD and a much smaller line. We opted for the shorter line given the interest of time! We went in and out through a narrow tunnel at a steep angle to see the bottom of an empty chamber and come back up. It was an intersting experience. How they moved things around in these angles and got giant granite boxes in and out is just mindboggling.

Everything about this place is just amazing. This was 3000+ years ago and they still stand inspite of all the regime changes and looting over the decades. Everything thas been stripped off including the stones over the years but what took them a few hundred years to build has lasted a few thousand.

One side has all the drama.. other side is bland ..

 

We as a species don't build anything this lasting anymore. All our glass, steel and sheetrock stuff won't last anything compared to this! 

At some point the room would have had a large granite box with the mummy and all its treasures. They were looted a long time back! What little things the locals and invading cultures didn't take, the Brits and French took to their museums! 

now there is an empty chamber with graffitti over a few thousand years! We suck as a species is what I kept thinking!

After we went in and out of the pyramid, some of us got to go on a camel ride around the pyramids. Our camels were named Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, Alex, Mickey mouse and Charlie!

Once the camel ride was done, we visited the Sphinx which was right across from our hotel. There was already a big crowd at the Sphinx thanks to some school excursions. We were lucky to get some photos without too many people around. We also got to see the place where they did the mummification near the Sphinx. 

There is a steele in front of the Sphinx which talks about the Pharoh's dream to clean the sand around it.. we learned that the sphinx probably predates the pyramids. That was a special ticket and given time we were just happy to walk around it and get a view! I cannot write enough words to make you realize how amazing this place is. You have to see it for youself. Do it while you can still walk long distances every day, do a little climbing on tall stones. In another 10-15 years this trip might be difficult for me! 

Was wearing my uniform BYSJ 60 day challenge shirt on multiple days. Surprisingly no one asked me what a 60 day challenge was in Egypt or Jordan and that is a first! 

A video highlight of our first morning in Egypt!

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After this it was time to drive off to our next stop across the Nile into Cario!

A rainy day hike in Windy hill

Call us crazy, but a few weekends ago, there was a plan to go on a sunset hike in Pacifica area around Mori point. When we started driving, a revised weather forecast changed things to cloudy and rain. So halfway on the route, we decided to go to the closest familiar hiking point. 

Chai was already in the flasks and the Parle-G biscuits and customized trail mixes, not to mention kuzhi paniyaarams were all loaded into backpacks!

We made a detour to go to the top of Windy Hill

I am always happy for Windy hill for all the wrong reasons. San tripped on a root and damaged her ankle at this very holy place and got enlightened. She started doing Bikram Yoga with me at BYSJ only thanks to that ankle damage and for that I am grateful to some root and this trail. That said, we always watch our step as a group when hiking here!

This time we went back and forth and walked a nice 8+ miles with wet jackets! Needless to say the trail was empty except for us and four Japanese students. 

Photos... the bench was wet.. so San was literally doing awkward pose for this now customary "bench photo"!

than again iPhone auto saves images like this when you get close enough! We could hardly see anything 15 feet ahead of us.. the picture above is closer to what we saw with our eyes..

Chai at the top with the treats were just amazing.. the chai got cold within a few minutes at the top and we had to scram as it started raining!

it was dark by the time we made it back to the parking lot with iPhone flash lights!

short video clip..

Windy hill is always interesting. What is more interesting is us. We are all crazy!