Street View – Cairo style.

Hi folks!

Sitting here in Cairo airport with half-an-hour till boarding, I’ll take this opportunity to share some of my key impressions during my quick stay in the Egyptian capital – especially since they match the thoughts of my travel companion, NK, who’s here for the first time. Thus, there are three (agreed-upon!) main takeaways: one positive/encouraging, two – not so much…

The positive/encouraging? The huge number of construction sites in Cairo’s suburbs. There are new buildings going up everywhere in various stages of completion.

The “not so much”? First – how folks drive here: total bedlam and chaos. Second – the older buildings. I’ve written before about these high-rise brick ghettos, but now I can finally share my own pics; last time I was too taken aback to be able to snap such… abominations…

My snaps were taken while we were being driven along Cairo’s ring road, which in some places cuts straight through residential areas as an elevated second-level roadway. The views out the window look like this:

High-rise and relatively decent (compared to the rest) ->

While here’s another neighborhood. Looks like it was thrown together DIY-style:

Is that a pigeon coop?! ->

All you can really say about these parts of Cairo is this: when you see them you begin to truly appreciate just how comfortable your own living conditions are compared to those of the locals here…

Check out the space (rather – lack thereof) between neighboring buildings:

And here’s a “new build”:

But why so few windows? I guess the land next to the building belongs to other owners who might build right up to it, so, like, what’s the point of windows? Just a theory, but I’ve seen a bunch of solid walls like that, and I’ve gotten no better explanation.

Apartments are sold without windows. I mean literally – there are just open holes. The owners have to install the windows themselves. More on the windows theme: when folks move out of an apartment after selling it, they apparently take the windows with them! Well, I guess the warm and dry climate does make that kind of thing possible…

Penthouse? (Didn’t see any others.) ->

These scenes aren’t the most depressing, trust me!

Here, for some reason, they’ve demolished only part of a building – just a part! You can still see remnants of plaster and interior decor from the apartments that were once there! ->

Look closely – that was probably a kid’s room. And notice how windows aren’t the same – probably added as per the wishes of residents on an individual basis (wait – added after half the building was demolished, right?!) ->

The images are grim, but there’s a ton of construction taking place nearby – but I didn’t take pictures of that since it’s pretty self-explanatory. But when we were taking off and I looked out the airplane window – the contrasting style of construction I could see bowled me over ->

Pretty, modern, spacious, well-designed residential districts with greenery and lakes. Woah! ->

It all looks look super impressive on Google Maps too:

Next came what look like palace-style complexes with huge gardens ->

Interestingly, the road infrastructure is being extended way out into the desert. Looks like they’ve got big plans for a “garden city”. You just want to wish them success – and, of course, the highest level of cybersecurity for these massive projects :-)

And that’s all for today folks – but not all for my tales from the Egyptian side; stay tuned!…