Egypt

• The Pleasure Domes - Abu Dhabi
• The butler did it - Bahrain
• Dazzled by Dubai - Dubai
• Dubai’s must-do half dozen - Dubai
• The Day Chris tried to swap me for a camel - Egypt
• Ten great wonders - Egypt
• Keeping up with the Joneses - Jordan
• You CAN afford star treatment… - Middle East
• The hippy haunts of Hendrix - Morocco
• Souks you, sir! - Morocco
• Travelling in the sands of time - Oman
• OMAN! What a desert oasis - Oman

NORTH AFRICA IS A DANGEROUS, dastardly place, I was told. The labyrinthine streets teem with footpads and thieves, and conmen swindle cash from gullible Europeans.

So when Wish You Were Here? invited Chris and me to go to Egypt, the question seemed clear. Why was ITV sending its award-winning presenter into a danger zone?

Was a new frontman being lined up in his absence? Happily, no; and, when we got there, we realised what bunkum the scare stories about the place were.

The odd, isolated incident aside, Egypt is stable and safe. Even the water is safe to drink. We were only mildly pestered with offers to buy me from Chris in exchange for a caravan (oh, the flattery) of camels. To put it in perspective, we’d never stroll around London at night and, frankly, Chris would happily swap me for a pint of beer.

My only concern was what to pack. The guidebook advised women ‘not to expose too much flesh’. But with temperatures ranging from 25°C in Cairo to 40°C at Aswan, I didn’t really want to have to cover up, so packed a load of T-shirts and shorts. That was fine, as I soon discovered every other woman had done the same.

We left England in the pouring rain, waving goodbye to floods (and our own leaking roof) and landed in Cairo just four hours later.

We checked into a beautiful suite at the Four Seasons Hotel on the banks of the River Nile, had a large drink with plum-sized olives and gasped at the opulence of it all. Not that it lasted long. After our first evening out, we returned to a carpet that quivered like a jelly as we squished it under foot.

Chris – I know it was him and he didn’t deny it – was responsible for this flood, and the one in the room below. He had apparently failed to return the loo flush handle to its proper position, and there was no overflow system.

The upshot was relegation to a ‘standard’ room as maintenance men and a vacuum cleaner moved in to clear up the gallons of overspill.

By then we had got in our first instalment of culture; we began filming at the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities as soon as we arrived. In a happily Egyptian twist, despite having obtained passes to film from the Minister of Tourism, we spent all morning haggling to get inside. Holidaymakers without a film crew in tow would not face this problem.

Magnificent treasures

It was the substantial sum of ‘baksheesh’ (tips) that proved more effective than any official papers, but worth every Egyptian pound (20p).

Inside were some of ancient Egypt’s most valuable artefacts, including the magnificent treasures discovered inside Tutankhamen’s tomb and his gold funereal mask.

Culturally replete, but starving, we ate at Felfela, a celebrated restaurant known for its traditional Egyptian food – and its pigeon, a speciality best gnawed off the bone to get every tasty morsel. By next morning we were ready for the unmissable; just a few miles away in Giza, we stood gazing in wonder at the three pyramids of Khufu (Cheops in Greek), Khafra (Chepren) and Menkaura (Mycerinus), and the great Sphinx, whose nose was blown off by the Turkish army when they used it for target practice.

We couldn’t resist the attraction of camel riding in the desert, nor the experience of going inside Cheops to the Queen’s (empty) tomb in its centre. For claustrophobics this is not advisable. It involves stooping or crawling on all fours, head-to-bottom up a steep, narrow shaft. It’s dark, cramped, has very little air and there is no quick escape for anyone.

We returned later that evening to watch a spectacular son et lumière show, beautifully narrated in true thespian English. Sitting in front of the Great Sphinx, looking up at the pyramids silhouetted and illuminated against the starlit skies, everyone was mesmerised – until a jumbo jet, lights flashing, screeched overhead

Kings, queens and nobles

From Cairo we flew to Luxor, where we checked on to the cruise ship Radamis (named after a pharaoh) then spent the rest of the day visiting the temples of Karnak and Luxor on the East Bank of the Nile and the tombs discovered in the Valleys of the Kings, Queens and Nobles on the West Bank.

We arrived in Edfu, 45 miles south of Luxor, early next morning and took a little boat across the Nile for a hot-air balloon trip over the Valleys as the sun rose over the horizon. It was magical.

After breakfast, we visited Edfu Temple, dedicated to Heru (also known as Horus), the falcon-headed god. This is the best-preserved Pharaoh temple. Then it was back to our cruiser for a bit of sun-bathing before preparing for the Egyptian fancy dress party, held every Thursday on every Nile cruise.

Buying Chris’s ‘dress’ and headgear was an exhausting battle, fought between me on the top deck of our boat and three men in a row boat 40 feet below. The volley of knotted polythene bags containing individual samples continued until the right outfit came flying through the air – at which point the fierce bargaining began, with other passengers doing the same.

The dining room had been fully Egyptian-ised, but the dummy standing inside the entrance sporting a blonde nylon wig wasn’t quite the Cleopatra I’d envisaged. The only true touch was the basket on its head, containing indigenous crops – until Chris posed next to it and accidentally knocked it off, spilling the contents on the floor.

After passing through the lock at Aswan Dam we arrived in the city of Aswan. It is Egypt’s southernmost city; and very dry. One 24-year-old local told us that in his lifetime, it had only rained once in Aswan. He had missed it, being in England at the time.

Last treat before dashing back to Cairo was a trip on a felucca (a primitive sailing boat), and our final destination in Cairo was the market café, famed for its fresh-minted tea poured into cups that are never washed, to lock in the flavour.

We were sad to be leaving this beautiful country. Our guides, Abdullah and Tam, were well-informed, helpful and friendly. Like all Egyptians, they were proud of their heritage.

And the Egyptians absolutely love the English.