Friday 15th November – Cairo

• Arrival at your own leisure in the city of Cairo. If you are coming from South Sudan, you can use this day to rest at our centrally located hotel.
• If you arrive early and have some fight in you, you are free to visit Cairo, we’ll definitely head out for some optional exploring! If you want to visit Giza or the National Museum, now’s the time
• Meet the rest of the group as well as the people coming from Socotra at our hotel at 8PM
• We will head out for dinner and drinks as you get to know your YPT guide and fellow travelers!
• Overnight in Cairo

Saturday 16th November – Cairo Suburbs

• After a hearty breakfast, we leave our hotel to spend our day going around the exciting suburbs of Cairo.
• Our first stop is the City of the Dead, an ancient necropolis made up of an Arabic cemetery where the less-fortunate of Egypt have settled. Tens of thousands of people live here within mausoleums and tombs. It creates a mixture of bustling living amongst monuments to death. We’ll walk through the neighborhood as our guide introduce us to the settlers and tell us more about the history of the place.
• Then, we head to our next neighborhood of Cairo, this time the Garbage City, or Manshiyat Nasser. Where in the City of the Dead people had to live amongst tombstones, inefficient rubbish collection in Manshiyat Nasser forces people to live amongst waste, creating a kind of post-apocalyptic atmosphere and is truly an eye-opener into a different side of our planet
• We make a lunch stop for a traditional Egyptian meal.
• In the afternoon we spend time visiting the lesser-known pyramids. We stop by the Bent Pyramid, which almost collapsed due to a mistake in its design.
• Our second pyramid is the red pyramid, we can expect to be the only ones around there, in stark contrast to the most famous of the pyramids
• We finish our pyramid party with the Pyramid of Djoser considered to be the world’s oldest intact pyramid
• We head back into town to visit the citadel of Cairo which is also the location of the Egyptian military museum
• After a busy day, we head back to our hotel surroundings for dinner and some rest before our desert expedition
• Overnight in Cairo

Sunday 17th November – White Desert

• Today we head out to the White Desert, jumping into our 4X4s on the trip to the White Desert
• Along the way, we’ll stop at the oasis of Bahariya to stretch our legs and take some photos
• Lunch in a village nearby Bahariya
• In the afternoon, we continue our trip to the White Desert by going through… the Black Desert. Egyptians are certainly good at naming things!
• We stop by the Crystal Mountain, a shiny ridge dotted with quartz in the middle of the sand made by a one of a kind geological phenomenon
• The White desert, located not too far from Cairo, is one of Egypt’s best secrets. The scenery here is like nowhere else with chalk white pillars coming out of the sand. We will reach the White Desert just in time for sunset!
• In the evening, it will be time to pick our own Bedouin encampment where we will have dinner under the starry sky of Egypt followed by a Bedouin music party
• Overnight in the Bedouin camp

Monday 18th November – White Desert

• Wake up in the desert for our breakfast in the sand
• Spend most of the morning going through the impressive chalk formations of the White Desert with plenty of opportunities for walking and taking photos
• Have lunch around the oasis of Bahariya to cut the journey in half
• In the afternoon, we make our way back to Cairo
• Say goodbye to Cairo with our last dinner together as a proper sendoff night.
• Overnight in Cairo

Tuesday 19th November – Cairo

• For those with time we will head to the tent maker street.
• End of tour, YPT can assist with airport transfer
• For those who leave late or are staying for the day, you can optionally visit the National Museum of Egypt or any of the numerous sites of Cairo!
• After seeing the moon-like landscape of the white desert, why not join us on our tour of Socotra leaving in the late evening?

Read More