Paul T Lynch

On a Wing and a Prayer Paul T Lynch

EGYPT IN 18 DAYS. Was the visit to Egypt in 1990 a holiday or an adventure? Driving hundreds of miles through the Sahara Desert, riding a camel up Mount Sinai to see where Moses received the Ten Commandments, watching the sunrise from a ferry crossing the Nile at Luxor. Add to that flying above rugged sun blistered mountains while turbulence shakes the plane apart, standing in awe before a massive temple built by Ramses II three thousand years ago and re-located by UNESCO in 1968 to avoid being submerged by the Aswan Dam and stretching out on a sun bed on the shore of the Red Sea. And finally there was Cairo, the cultural repository of so many eras of human history, from the Pyramids to today. It was both, and more. In 1990, there was no Internet, no Tripadvisor, so organising it was part of the adventure.