Back in Cairo once again. The last week has been spent on a whistle-stop tour up and down the Nile, all the way to Abu Simble just north of Sudan, over 5 days. Cramming in days full of ancient sightseeing with brief stretches lounging in the hotel pool - a fantastic accessory in the 30-40C heat.

The Pyramids were no less incredible than I expected. The scale of them is difficult to comprehend, even when your standing next to them. They can seem only a dozen stories high when standing at their base, whilst you can see them pretty much anywhere in town fading through the smog of the city. Spikes on the horizon. I managed to climb inside one of them, definitely not for the claustrophobic, the tunnels were pretty small - no more than a meter, but once you got right inside to the burial chamber it was surprisingly large, about the size of a small chapel.

Another of the highlights was in a town called Luxor, another small town surrounded by ancient monuments. We got this kid, for about 40p an hour to ride us around the sights in his horse and cart. Fortunately there's an animal hospital in the town, so, unlike most tourist sights, the animals are treated well. Our driver couldn't of been more than about 8, despite claiming to be 15, he had very good English for kid of his age. He took us around a few major sights as well as the not so major sights. He offered/invited us to meet his family and so we took a turn just of the main street and within minutes were deep in a myriad of narrow alleys in a pretty impoverished area of town. Obviously the part where the chiefs don't want to tourists. A step up from slums it was still quite an eye opener as several children and their parents came out of a small basic house. Although I'm sure that I and the friend i was with where in no trouble, with all my camera's etc I still felt a little uneasy. And so after a brief meeting we excused our exit and left our new friends behind.

One thing Ive definitely seen through the middle east is that people are so friendly. It would be unheard of back home for someone in the street who you've never seen before or met to say hello to you and ask you where your from. Yet around the middle east its quite common. Fair enough sometimes its when they're wanting to sell you things, but most of the time its out of genuine interest. There's not many places that you feel as safe. Even wandering a little of the beaten track I may of felt a little uneasy, but that was most certainly not through danger, but just from being so culturally different. It seems such a shame that press gives these countries such a bad press and so many see that as the people rather than the government.

Back to the sights... There have been oh-so-many its difficult to remember/describe them all, so Ill just mention my favourites. At 4am we took a very uncomfortable bus ride three hours into the Sahara to a place called Abu Simble. Huge statues carved into the cliff face fronted the tombs. As they dammed the Nile to create lake Nasser Abu Simble was threatened to be submerged, and so they moved it 60m back to the top of a hill. Its only when you see them up close that the impressiveness of the job, moving basically a mountain a little further back to stop it getting wet.

Another was Kom Ombo, another incredibly well preserved temple which looked as if it had been built yesterday. At the front is a kind of gateway about 20m high with huge carvings on god fighting eat other and inside hieroglyphics scaling each and every wall, all perfectly cut. Without any kinds of cranes Ive no idea how they managed to built things so high.

So next stop is Morocco, Casablanca first and then wherever i see fit next. And then its up to Spain before finally getting a flight home. Morocco I hope to be a blast. I'm not sure how different its going to be from the middle east, each country Ive been to have shown many similarities as well as nice little differences. Ill be interested to see how affected it is by Europe looming so close above. The past 2 and a bit months have really flown buy and I hate to think that I only have just over a couple of weeks left. Im sure its going to just fly by.