All posts tagged Siwa

AHMED HASSANEIN PASHA (20th Century CE – 14th Century AH): DIPLOMAT AND LEGENDARY EXPLORER

By | June 1, 2015 | Explorers, History, Pax Islamica | Comments Off on AHMED HASSANEIN PASHA (20th Century CE – 14th Century AH): DIPLOMAT AND LEGENDARY EXPLORER

By Islam El Shazly

If anyone deserves the title of “Legendary Explorer” in our modern times it has to be this man, Ahmed Hassanein Pasha. At the very least he would have to be on the top of a very short list.

In his lifetime he had been many things, a writer, diplomat, Chamberlain and the very reason he’s on this list, an explorer. Just like his predecessors from the golden age of exploration, he was a man of many talents, and these talents and insatiable curiosity to discover the unknown is what led him to leave civilisation behind and embark on a journey that would take him across the unforgiving Sahara, not once, but twice, and with none of the modern day comforts of SUV’s. Read more…

101 PLACES TO TAKE YOUR FAMILY IN EGYPT: 26–30

By | April 24, 2013 | Egypt, Off the Beaten Path, Travel + Leisure | Comments Off on 101 PLACES TO TAKE YOUR FAMILY IN EGYPT: 26–30

By Islam El Shazly and Sue Ryan

This latest edition of 101 Places to Take your Family in Egypt has been a long time in the making. Halfway through working on the content our site was attacked by a massive BotNet that targeted websites running on WordPress, we were one of the unlucky ones, and the site was defaced. Alhamdulillah, the damage was repairable and we managed to get the site back online within a few days, but we were working behind the scenes to secure the website against any further future attacks, and insha’Allah we will do our best to prevent that insha’Allah.

Thank you for your patience… Read more…

SIWA: THE FIELD OF TREES

By | March 17, 2013 | Egypt, Off the Beaten Path, Travel + Leisure | 1 Comment

By Susan Ryan

Siwa Oasis is the most westerly of Egypt’s oasis, about 725 km from Cairo, with Libya  just 50 km away. It is worth the trek even if your children usually ask “are we there yet?” after an hour of travelling. Reaching Siwa takes between eight and 10 hours by bus or car from Cairo, but if you break the journey up with stops in Alexandria and Marsa Matrouh you will better appreciate the variety of landscapes you pass through. If you have four days or more for your Siwa trip, it is ideal to have a day in one of those coastal cities before your immersion in desert for the last four hours of travel. Read more…

COMFORT: THE TOP 12 MID-RANGE HOTELS IN EGYPT

By | December 7, 2012 | Egypt, Reviews, Travel + Leisure | Comments Off on COMFORT: THE TOP 12 MID-RANGE HOTELS IN EGYPT

By Islam El Shazly

There hundreds of hotels of different classes and classifications in Egypt, and that is not much of a wonder for a country heavily reliant on tourism. Hospitality comes with turf.

Picking the right hotel for a specific budget becomes paramount with such a large number of hotels, and choosing the right one is not always a straight forward affair, since the quality of service sometime fluctuates from one visit to the next, depending where you’re staying. Read more…

OPULENT: THE TOP 11 BOUTIQUE HOTELS IN EGYPT

By | November 27, 2012 | Egypt, Reviews, Travel + Leisure | Comments Off on OPULENT: THE TOP 11 BOUTIQUE HOTELS IN EGYPT

By Islam El Shazly

Back in the early 20th century and the late 19th century travelling was a more relaxed affair; because of the nature of travel at the time which was predominantly by either trains or ships, people were away from their homes for months at a time, and that called for a different kind of hotel.

The extended nature of the stay meant that only the well to do and the wealthy could travel for any sustained period of time, and hotels became a sort of a home away from home. Hotels of the day defined luxury, unlike most fancy hotels of today that are mostly glitz and glamour, those ones were truly palatial and decadent. Read more…