Ritual and Travel, Part 2

From Menletter December 2010

By Tim Baehr

Mohamed wasn't exactly Yoda, but once in a while he'd lapse into a kind of inverted syntax as he described where we would be going next and what we would see, or as he explained some aspect of his culture.

As with the ally in the traditional stories of a hero's journey or journey of discovery, we would have been totally lost without Mohamed. He was our guide, our mentor, our protection in a group tour to Egypt.

I wrote about the ritual aspects of travel in May of 2007 after a trip to the Southwestern US and Mexico. ("Ritual" can be defined as an activity or ceremony in which some life change takes place.) Now here I am with another installment.

In 2007, I wrote:

I had been away from my familiar places and routines for three weeks - wearing special clothing selected for the journey, eating special foods and drinking new drinks with family and with people I didn't know, going to some familiar and strange places, living in an altered sense of time, undergoing a few physical ordeals, discovering new friends and unexpected kindnesses, and bringing back gifts for others. Sounds like a typical vacation trip.

It also sounds kind of like a journey of discovery, an odyssey, a trek, a series of events out of a fable, a legend, a fairytale, a myth, a ritual - doesn't it? (http://menletter.org/articles/Ritual%20and%20Travel-May%202007.htm)

In the rest of that essay, I mentioned a plan to go about traveling with some conscious intent and awareness of the ritual aspects of travel. But most of the time the person on a journey is thinking only about survival. He may have some big-picture idea of a mission, but - as they say - when you're up to your ass in alligators, it's hard to remember that your mission was to drain the swamp. Even in recreational travel, the day-to-day concerns are mostly fighting fatigue, getting fed, and absorbing new experiences. The changes and insights happen on reflection after the return.

This latest trip to Egypt had much the same elements of any journey: clothing, food, strange places, altered time, ordeals, new friends, gifts.

But this time we (my wife and I and about 40 fellow travelers) were plunged into extremes of unfamiliarity: Egypt, including Cairo, Aswan, Luxor, Karnak, Kom Ombo, Edfu, Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut's tomb, and Alexandria.

No amount of reading or orientation meetings could have prepared us for the differences.

Food and drink. Some was fine and familiar: pita bread, baba ghanoush, hummus, broiled or grilled meats. Some was dangerous and familiar and to be avoided: fresh fruits and vegetables, tap water. The sweet desserts were strange but tasty. Bottled water was always necessary. Most of us were very careful, but many of us got stomach bugs anyway - one of the physical ordeals of the journey.

People. We had little contact with any Egyptians other than hotel and restaurant staff, vendors, our guide, our ever-present and well-armed security guard, and tourism police guarding temples and other tourist sites. The more aggressive vendors would give Star Trek's Ferengi merchants a run for their money. But most people we met, including most of the vendors, were cheerful, polite, and friendly.

The silent, absent people - ancient Egyptians from several millennia ago - had left monumental and detailed records of themselves, along with their mummified remains. An immense, complex, advanced civilization had been defeated or overrun by successive waves of Turks, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, French, and English.

We did not see people practicing their religion - Islam. But we heard the call to prayer from their muezzins broadcast over loudspeakers five times a day (starting at 5:00 a.m.) from minarets in mosques all over the cities and countryside. Individual calls were eerie and strangely moving; sometimes several would be going at once, raising a cacophony in our unaccustomed ears.

Everyone we encountered underscored our status as alien journeyers in unknown territory. Like a prince or princess in an enchanted forest, or a hero confronting strangers on the road, we were often on high alert.

Places. The range of sights was immense. The things we came to see - pyramids, the Sphinx, the temples of Isis and Osiris and Horus and Hatshepsut - were larger than we could have imagined. I found it disconcerting to be in such places without their sacredness being emphasized or honored. Mohamed did a good job of pointing out the sacred inner sanctums of the temples, but we were sometimes overrun by chattering hordes from other tours.

The cities were crowded and noisy (Cairo was a 24-hour perpetual traffic jam) and covered with dust and grit that no rain had washed away in years. They looked like the set for a post-Apocalyptic movie: tan on tan, gray on gray, with dish antennas sprouting from balconies and roofs.

Our four-day cruise on the Nile passed by farms being planted and tilled by hand and farmyards filled with donkeys and camels. From our position on the water, the farms seemed to be among the only quiet and serene places we saw. Within the cities, the modern library in Alexandria was an urban oasis of quiet and beauty.

Time. We were seven time zones away from our home on the US East Coast. Read: jet lag. Our itinerary added to the challenge: we were often roused between 1:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. to catch a plane or bus. After a while it was difficult to be sure of the time of day, or even what day it was. The time distortion and disorientation were like those in a fairytale.

The time of antiquity was another factor in our journey. One of humankind's earliest writing systems, 4,500 years old, spoke to us in pictures from almost every surface of the walls and pillars of the temples.

Ordeals. We faced nothing life-threatening, but we did have the discomfort of time-disorientation and intestinal upsets. Two of our fellow travelers fell and injured themselves. My wife compared the constant fatigue to the first months after childbirth, or the last week of college finals. And then there were the exits from most temples and exhibits, which forced us down a gauntlet of vendors, some of them very aggressive.

Guides and allies. Mohamed, our Egyptian tour guide, was remarkable in his knowledge of Egyptian ancient history, contemporary culture, and the intricacies of travel in Egypt. He anticipated most problems and solved the rest. He was the perfect traveling companion on a journey of discovery.

Salah, one of the security guards who traveled with us, stayed mostly in the background, eyes constantly scanning for potential trouble. He attached himself to a group of eight of us on our last night in a maze of vendors' stalls. Mostly silent, but with an amused smile at times, he was well over six feet tall and built like an NFL linebacker. He was the only person in the market wearing a Western-style business suit, so he stood out as something very special. As in traditional tales and myths, he provided the comfort of an unexpected ally.

Gifts. The hero's journey, the journey of discovery, or even recreational travel would be pointless if the traveler returned unchanged, with nothing to show or share. As with journeyers in traditional tales, some of us arrived back from Egypt exhausted and spent; some were even wounded by falls or still-active stomach bugs. Some of us came back with trinkets or more substantial gifts to share with family and friends. And I think we all came back with the gift of a deeper knowledge of ourselves and our world, and a sense of wonder at the marvels and treasures we had seen. Those marvels and treasures are now a part of us.

Our reactions to some of the less wonderful aspects of the trip - the dust, urban ugliness, fatigue, time warps, illness, and a few aggressive vendors - gave us further insight into ourselves. Those experiences are also now a part of us. And, in a way, those too are among the gifts we carried back home.

[Some pictures from this journey are here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/tim.baehr/Egypt2010]