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Month: June 2021

First day in Cairo

From the sky, Cairo looks like a kid’s attempt at drawing an aerial landscape. The lines are too sharp between lush green and dusty desert, the pyramids are too close to the city, and the endless 10-story tan apartment buildings have the uniformity of monopoly pieces. Even the Nile matches a little too well with the textbook picture of a river delta.

Our first day was a bit disorienting because we couldn’t sleep on the plane so we were already up for 24 hours by the time we touched down. After the ordeals of getting our first sim cards and calling an Uber (which we later learned you can pay for in cash here), we stepped outside to a surprisingly comfortable 99 degrees.

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Packing for this thing

The philosophy for a trip like this is that if you can pack for a week, you can pack for a year. I’m bringing about 8 days worth of clothes and plan to do laundry frequently.

As scary as the prospect might be of not having enough, I’m even more afraid of my bag being too heavy or burdensome. Real people live their normal daily lives in the places we’re visiting, so if I really feel the lack of something I’ll just buy it there. Same goes for toiletries, I’m keeping everything carry-on sized to refill when I’m there. I’m nervous about finding my somewhat particular type of contact solution, but outside of that it feels pretty liberating to not worry about bringing an extended supply of every little thing I might need.

The goods

Here is a list of everything that will be in my Tortuga backpack as well as everything I’ll be carrying on me, both pictured below…

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