Day 2: Cairo and Giza

So this was the big day. Our first full one in Egypt. The day we would see the pyramids...in sunlight. There was a logistical challenge, because we had check out of the hotel before we did that, we had to have breakfast even before that and we had to be packed even before that. Not to mention that Ma wasn't feeling very well.
But jetlag to the rescue.
We were up at the crack of dawn, welcoming the sun's ascent across the smoggy sky, viewing this gorgeous view as I prepared instant coffee in the room.

The smog in Cairo was amazing. Like Delhi from two decades ago. You could not clearly see a mile out. As in this case.

This is Rania Maher, our wonderful guide in Cairo. A single mother of two girls that she sends to American school. Explaining ancient Egypt's choice of pyramid as the divine shape to my mother and daughter.

And here is Ayon, trying to figure out the pyramid geometry himself. Notice the West Side Montessori School, hat.

And here is me. Doing what everyone else seemed to be also doing, except my friends maligned poor Japanese tourists; of whom we did not see much. Lots of Chinese tourists, though. And a few Indians, from India. In fact, whenever the Egyptians asked us where we were from and we said India, they would roll their eyes like they knew that already and ask us the next question ..."but where do you live now". We would say NY and they would be satisfied. That is a state of things that is changing. One of the guides told me that some guides have been going to China to learn Mandarin to guide Chinese tourists. Chinese tourists, that is, from China.

Camel, topview.

The less brave, i.e. Ma, Mamta and Ayon, chose this as their mode of transportation around the pyramids. Keya and I, of course, went camelback riding.

No sense of scale in this picture but these things are huge.

Each course of stone is about 5'-6' high.

The tourists.

The Sphinx.

Itsallride V 2.0: First night in Cairo

Room 218, with a view

Coming back to the blog that we started to post about our trip across the USA in February of 2009, feels nostalgic. Spent a long time going through the posts. But back here basically, because this was a great way to share images and impressions with family and friends. So here goes version 2, our trip to Egypt in October 2009. The photos will be sorted chronologically, day by day. Starting with the first day, rather afternoon and evening, that we spent in Cairo. Where we arrived in two lots - Keya+I in the afternoon; Mamta, Ayon and Ma (from Delhi, connected with Mamta in Dubai) in the evening. That evening we checked into our wonderful hotel - Oberoi Mena House, and went for the sound and light show at the pyramids.

Sound and Light at Giza

Downtown Cincinnati

The beautiful old Music Hall. Note the trolley tracks on the road, now tarred over. No street car clangs down past the Hall, anymore.

The P&G Headquarters. Still hanging on, a ghost from another era. When the town was prosperous. Its still very beautiful and is also has several different initiatives to come out of the funk. Including our good friend Sanyog and his wife Carrie. Sanyog is, in his own entrepreuneurial way, contributing to the revitalization of his neighborhood and of the whole town.

Zaha Hadid's contemporary art center. Was closed, but looked quite nice in from the outside. Tries, with mixed success, to engage with its surroundings.

Pelli's concert center. Had seen this in drawings and models while I was in his office. The usual, post-modern, Pelli style. But with a nice and comfortable fit into its surroundings.

Burnt out, torn down and not re-built. What much of the city looks like.

In the west again, memories of another ride home

Am sitting in the Phoenix airport, waiting for a delayed plane to go home. Was here the last three days. Most of them cooped up in a meeting to determine the final program for Greenbuild. The annual conference of the US Green Building Council.
Managed to get out a little on the last day. Went to Taliesen West - Frank Lloyd Wright's fantasy settlement in the Sonoran desert. Then did some hiking on the Camelback "mountain" in Phoenix. Finally, met up with an old friend - Anubhav Bagley and his wife Shalini. Anubhav went to high school and architecture school with me and works as a planner in Phoenix. They took me out to Sedona. The landscape was just breathtaking. It also restarted a familiar itch. Of getting behind the car and driving long distances. Not sure when I will do that again.
So did the next best thing. Came back to this b(ack)log.
Today's pictures are from the leg between Keystone and Des Moines.

Not camera shy, just asleep.

The Iowa countryside, this picture is taken after leaving Des Moines. The road was slippery and there were a bunch of cars abandoned on the median.

Precisely the kind of (re)connecting that we were hoping to do. Mamta's cousins - Ajit and Rini and Keya. This was after a day's R&R, the second of our two day-long breaks. Fortunately, it snowed a lot the day we were taking that break.

Crossing the Mississipipi, a second time, eastbound.

Getting out of Keystone, via Rapid City.

Long overdue picture post 9: Presidents on a hill and a real Country Store in a Ghost Town

The drive from Fort Collins to Keystone, SD (the closest town to Mount Rushmore), was as poster-child of a cross-country drive as it could possibly get. Long stretches of lonely, empty roads. The train line, with Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) trains carrying some primary resource or the other - outbound; and containers with (possibly Chinese) manufactured goods - inbound. And long stretches of seeing no one. The landscape in Wyoming and South Dakota was dotted with abandoned farms. Very different from (also) abandoned farms in the North East. One of the chief differences being wind-mills that stood rusting alongside the homesteads. There was very little agriculture, mostly grazing. The vistas were long and wide and the views dramatic. Perhaps not the same scale as in, say, Arizona or Nevada. There were too many rolling hills in this part of the country. But still large expanses.
The story of Mount Rushmore itself was fascinating. There is a lot available on it. What was fascinating to us, though, was going there in February. Keystone, the closest town, had a population of 311. In summer that swells to 6000, not counting the tourists. Only two hotels were open. And no places to eat. Not even a McD.
The innkeeper, instead, suggestd that we go to the only place that could serve us something to eat at 8 in the evening - the Country Store. This place turned out to be quite a relic. It has been functioning non-stop, in the same place since the 1920s. There is even a gas dispenser "grandfathered" in, that sits on the verandah in front of the store. The current owner, Walt, "knows the Black Hills like the back of his hand". I wish we had a little more time to hang out with Walt, probably go out to real ghost (mining) town, together. He is a unionized iron-worker, who is from the area and has come back there after having roamed around some. You will see pictures of Walt farther down this post. And of his wonderful pizza-maker.

Not quite on the hill-side, yet.

Irreverence, in the face of monumentality.

The gents.

A collapsed mine shaft, at an abandoned mine, at the edge of town.

Ghost town, mainstreet of Keystone SD, with nary a soul in sight. Thankfully that meant easy parking and no lines. Apparently not the standard in summer.

Walt's pizza maker. He brings it out, "all the time", he said. A little service he provides. You can stand and chat while this is going on.

Not the kind of Indians, Walt was used to seeing.

The gas dispenser.

I was not kidding about the population. This swells to 20x in summer.

Night vision.

The traffic light at Lusk. The store in the center of town was...a Radio Shack.

Beautiful and rugged Wyoming. Except that I got a ticket, the only one on the entire trip, right around here.

Long overdue picture post 8: From the CA stateline to Ft. Collins, CO

The trip back to the east coast ran into snow very early on. Although we were able to get through the high mountain passes in north-eastern California (having NE and CA in the same sentence, seems strange for a New Yorker) safely, we hit snow again on the high plateaus of Nevada. Had had a half a mind to stop at Reno and head to a Casino, but decided to stick to our plan, which had us overnighting in Salt Lake City.
Did not happen.
Instead we ran into a complete whiteout as we gained altitude. The roads were very treacherous and night was falling fast. We decided that discretion was the better part of valor and took another close look at the map. I had, in the original planning, seen this dot on the map - Elko, NV - that dot turned out to be our sustenance on that snow-crazed evening.
Left the highway, started looking for hotels off the interchange (was too small a town for hotel listings on our trusted Lonely Planet guidebook) and finally settled, mainly on the basis of a pool and hot-tub on offer, for Shilo Inn. Loved it.
The next morning, we took off early for the now much longer drive to Ft. Collins. En route, we stopped at Salt Lake City - the original destination from the previous evening - and visited the Mormon HQ. There we were shown around by two lovely young ladies - one from Taiwan and another an Aussie of Chinese heritage. Much to their disappointment, we chose not to leave our address on record. They were very hospitable, although we were somewhat intimidated by sheer outnumbering of tourists by the tour guides and also their somewhat pointed questions about religious practice in our home (which as those of you who know us will testify, is next to absent). Given that the kids really did not know what to respond with, I had to step in and say that whilst we were very open in our respect for all religions, we would rather not discuss the subject with them.
From then it was the rush to Fort Collins. Given our routing, consistent with the first trans-continental railroad alignment around these parts, Cheyenne would have been the place to camp for the night. However a colleague of mine from the US Green Building Council's Program Committee and a dear friend - Jana McKenzie - is a Ft. Collins resident and I have heard many stories about it. So, given that its only a 35 mile detour (on a 8000 mile scheme of things its not a lot), we decided to go there.
I am very glad we did. It had just snowed and downtown Ft. Collins looked just magical. We also got to stay in a wonderful heritage hotel - The Armstrong Hotel (http://www.thearmstronghotel.com/), Jana's recommendation and a wonderful hotel - eat dinner at Rio Grande (mostly drink), I got to visit the offices of EDAW where Jana works as the Managing Principal and finally we got this enormous western breakfast at Silver Grille Cafe. All in all, Ft. Collins was memorable.
There was also a little something else that happened. But more of that in the next post.

Silver Grille Cafe, the home of the hearty Fort Collins breakfast. Cinnamon rolls are a house specialty.

Trying out the tripod, right after checking out of the Armstrong. Locals there are, often, academics, Ft. Collins being the home of Univ of Colorado. I thought I saw some looks with that MIT sweatshirt on me. As it turns out there was an MIT alum club in Colorado, before it became a state. Because young engineers were heading there from Cambridge, MA to work in the mining and metallurgical industries.

One last shot of that beautiful evening.

The office was in an old converted space downtown and clearly the designers had some fun while doing the conversion. The one thing I really liked was the memory of a staircase that had been preserved, not only in the outline of the steps, but in the handrail, still around.

Fort Collins' mascot - the fat tire bike.

Dinner (and a lot of margarita) at Rio Grande.

Our magical introduction to downtown Fort Collins. With, we learnt later, new LED lights for the trees and a fresh input of powder. Could be straight out of a Norman Rockwell image, if you ignored the big SUVs and trucks.

The young Mormon ladies who gave us a tour, perhaps a little disappointed that we did not fill out the forms for "more information".

The organ at the home of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Our trusted companion, the Lonely Planet Guide. After being very used to opening it up in strange cities and countries, it was quite a change to read it for recommendations on places to see, eat and stay in - all over the USA!

In Utah, approaching the Great Salt Lake. There were signs asking sleepy drivers to pull over and you could (and we are not saying if we did or not) set the cruise control to 100 mph. This on the road. If you chose to go onto the flats themselves, you could do much better.

A whiteout. You can see the shoulder of the road, but there is no horizon line between the land and the sky. Only snow.