The sand waves flew across the thin road cutting through the desert, as though attempting to assimilate it with the huge expanse. The dunes flew from side to side, encroaching on the road, partly covering it... The flying sand was impossible to transfix, it would fly away, be dispersed, cover the man-made road like a blanket, rendering the vast sandy landscape uniform...

Is it possible to transfix it for a moment, I wondered... for the flying sand made me think that my experiences in Egypt, although stored in my memory, would lose their lustre with time, time would fade away the magic of my experience like the sand flying through the desert, covering the road, rendering everything uniform...

The images flashed through my mind with all their poignancy: the sphinx with the pyramids in the backdrop; the Nile cruise on a river boat; the wonderful Khan el-Khalili bazaar which seemed straight out of a fantasy world; the moment we turned a corner and saw Abu Simbel temple – a temple whose façade is made up of four gigantic pharaohs hewn in a mountain rock face; the Valley of the Kings where Tutankhamun’s mummy was discovered in 1922...

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There is a silent magnificence when one reaches the Valley of the Kings, where many of the Egyptian pharaohs’ richest tombs – including King Tutankhamun’s – were discovered. The wonderful riches of the tombs and the pharaohs’ mummies were discovered in beautifully decorated chambers buried beneath the mountains...

Henry, our Egyptian guide, explained that the pyramids, being obvious projections on the landscape, had been plundered of their riches and so the Egyptians had decided to bury their kings in natural pyramids, the mountains, which would honour and protect their kings without signalling where they were buried...

So the kings, surrounded by their riches, rested beneath the mountain for centuries... Henry, a very learned ‘academic Egyptologist’, said he surmised that there was still one tomb to be discovered since there was an unaccounted lapse of time...

There are countless untold stories in Egypt... it is calculated that only 30 per cent of the country’s monuments have been discovered... so much remains to be found and told...

The ancient Egyptians were very concerned with the preservation of the human body; they invented the mummification process which preserved the bodies of their kings and rich people for centuries. Mummification has been reattempted in modern times but the secret seems to have been lost with the ancient Egyptians, explained our guide... Modern mummifiers have only succeeded in preserving a body for a few years.

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Khan el-Khalili bazaar is a labyrinth of streets full of little shops selling shining brass items, souvenirs and other Egyptian artefacts. It is a bazaar which seems to have come straight out of a fantasy world. Hidden somewhere in its centre one can stumble across a street full of coffee shops, with people drinking tea and coffee and smoking sheesha, surrounded by the colour and confusion of the bazaar. The four of us sat at a table in the street, belonging to a turn-of-the-century coffee shop which served us tea in wonderful metal teapots... surrounded by colour, chaos, fantasy and confusion... we watched the people walking through the streets, including some very wonderful personalities and were, inevitably, also accosted by countless sellers... a man wearing a false nose and false black glasses which buzzed if you pressed a button on the nose – Marisa bought one of those, imagining her children in fits of laughter; a very insistent man carrying a number of wares including two writhing plastic snakes which he dangled before us; a little girl who brought us necklaces made of flowers...

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We turned a corner and – the sight was breathtaking. Four huge stone pharaohs were hewn in a mountain face facing the morning sun... The grandeur of the four stone structures was awe-inspiring. It takes a three-hour drive through the desert from Aswan, Egypt’s southernmost city, to reach Abu Simbel temple, but nothing can describe the aura of grandeur which it exudes. In American cinema, its sight would be accompanied by a choir of Alleluias...

The temple was built by one of Egypt’s most powerful pharaohs, King Rameses II, who had over 90 wives and 160 children, explained Henry. Close to it is a temple built by King Rameses for his favourite wife, Queen Nefertari.

We walked inside the temple, whose walls and columns are covered with images glorifying the King: the King stepping over his enemies, a victorious return from battle etc. At the far end of the temple, in its innermost shrine, there are four sitting gods. Twice a year, three of the gods are illuminated by the sun’s rays which travel inside the temple to its innermost shrine. The first god, the god of darkness is never illuminated...

With the building of the high dam in Aswan in the 1960s, as the waters of Lake Nasser began to rise the temple was in danger of submersion and in an incredible international operation the temple was cut into stone slabs and transposed further up the mountain face, explained Henry. The only difference, he said, is that the gods are now lit up a day late.

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I was looking at the sphinx, face-to-face with it, in fact, at sunset with the pyramids in the backdrop. Hmmm... we were being hurried out because it was closing time and I was wondering how to achieve a deeper communion with the sphinx than mere looking... one should be allowed to climb all over it and grip it, I thought to myself, otherwise how else can one experience it fully? But the sphinx’ magic slowly grew on me... and the sight of it instils a sense of silence, peace and awe.

We had just driven round from the pyramids, whose silent geometry also instils one with a sense of silence and awe. How these huge triangular stone structures were constructed by the ancient Egyptians has always baffled scientists because the huge slabs of stone from which they are constructed are impossible to carry.

We approached one of the pyramids, the larger one called Khufu, and were wondering whether or not to enter its chambers (Henry had warned us that one has to pass through some very narrow passages) when one of the guards at the door beckoned to us. He led us in a short way until the passage takes a different angle and we could look all the way up at a steep narrow passage leading up into the stone structure. Incredible. Brrr.

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The scenery of the Nile river banks is an immensely relaxing sight. We stretched out on the sun beds on deck, sipping tea and cake and enjoyed the marvellous scenery from our cruising river boat, The Orchestra. Cleopatra had seduced Mark Antony by cruising down the Nile, appearing in all her glory, dressed as Venus, the goddess of love, reclined under a gold canopy, fanned by boys in Cupid costumes... so many stories can be told in Egypt, every place whispers its own...

Downstairs, in our cabin, we found our towels folded into swans on the bed, drifting towards a red rose on the quilt... it was a little surprise from the river-boat’s staff who, like all Egyptians were wonderfully friendly and hospitable... one cabin-boy asked us whether we liked it and we smiled and said yes... as I entered the cabin the following evening I took a couple of steps back...

I had almost stepped over a grinning crocodile shape, wearing sunglasses. It took a moment to realise that it was our green quilt folded in the shape of a crocodile which seemed to be grinning because it was wearing Marisa’s sunglasses.

The hospitality and genteel manners of most of the Egyptians is beyond anything I have ever encountered: “Welcome to Egypt” we heard whenever anyone noticed we were foreign; “Come back” we were told at the end of our stay. On one occasion in Cairo, Pam and I were looking for a taxi which would take us to our hotel for 10 Egyptian pounds (erm, something like 60 cents). One cab driver agreed, smiled at us through his mirror, and said: “Even for free”. Cabs are a wonderful experience in Egypt: many of the cars are old and battered, with old seats and goatskin dashboards...

At one hotel we were staying, Marisa was so charmed with the way one of the waiters poured tea so beautifully and smilingly, that we kept devising strategems to make him pour tea for us.

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We passed across the river boats which were berthed side by side, through the ships’ reception halls, opening and closing their doors with impunity. It was the only way of getting to land from our river boat which had berthed last and was therefore at the farthest end. The receptionists and cabin boys from the various river boats looked at us indifferently; clearly it was common practice to open a door, step across a reception hall and go out through the other door, using the successive boats as a bridge to land.

I was vastly amused by the time we reached land; I had set foot in Luxor (ancient Thebes), where one-third of the world’s monuments are found. It was night-time but I was accompanied by an Egyptian guide native to Luxor, so I was not worried. We walked the streets for a while; this was exactly what I wanted, to experience the reality of the people and the general ambience.

After a few minutes we saw a crowd approaching – it was a funeral procession – the crowd was carrying a coffin – it looked somewhat surreal at that time of night. Behind the procession, the usually hooting Egyptian traffic was moving slowly and silently, uncomplaining...

“Why do the cars drive without lights?” I asked somewhat curiously... “There is enough light in the streets,” replied my guide with a smile...

An Egyptian night out must include belly-dancing, so we stopped a cab and found a bar where a belly dancer was performing. Most of the onlookers were men, some of whom she would invite on stage to perform with her. The belly dancer, a beautiful Egyptian woman, was accompanied by two Egyptian male singers, singing in powerful and stirring voices...

So many other magical moments to relive: the huge columns in the temple at Karnak which seems to have been built for giants and the wonderful mystic lake at the end of the temple; the beautiful churches in Coptic Cairo and the shrine where Joseph and Mary lived for a while after they escaped to Egypt from King Herod’s persecution (this was inaccessible because of restoration; the Holy Family lived in Egypt for around four years; around 10 per cent of the Egyptian population is Coptic Christian); the ride in an Egyptian horse carriage to Edfu temple; the sellers who threw their wares at Marisa through the cabin window and then climbed down into the river to collect the money she threw out – in fits of laughter; the wonderful final evening, dinner on a cruiser on the Nile, watching the lit-up river banks and entertained by a whirler dressed in fantastic colours and who whirled at such speed that he seemed a symbol, merging all our Egyptian experiences together...

The magic of Egypt was everywhere we went...

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The sand waves were still flying across the road, attempting to render the landscape uniform... I was struggling with the knowledge that the memory of my experiences will fade away like the sand which, once dispersed, can no longer be reconstituted in its entirety. Of course I will return to Egypt at the first opportunity, but even that consoling knowledge is not enough to offset the sadness that this experience is destined to fade...

The ancient Egyptians struggled to transfix the moment of death; to preserve the human body as it appeared at that moment; they also were concerned with the preservation of the moment, I thought... And their tombs, mummies and artefacts do allow us a glimpse of their great civilisation... although the fullness of experiences may fade, something always remains...

Sandra Aquilina travelled to Egypt as part of an educational tour for journalists and travel agents organised by Amphora Travel, Testaferrata Street, Msida. The tour was also possible thanks to Air Malta and to the support of the Egyptian Tourism Authority in Cairo.

Amphora Travel offer three programmes to Egypt: one-week or weekend packages to Cairo in five-star hotels; the Classical Egypt package (the one followed by the journalists); and a visit to the exotic Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, close to Sinai. Air Malta operate twice weekly flights to Cairo.

More details and prices can be obtained by contacting Yvonne Ellul or Elizabeth Baldacchino at Amphora Travel Ltd.

Tel: 21 342 028, 21 319 834;

fax: 21 346 398; mobile 9949 6061;

email [email protected];

website: www.amphoratravel.com