14 ghostly photos of famous Egyptian landmarks with no tourists
After four months of living in Egypt, Terzza and his partner decided to take a trip to Cairo around Christmas time. It was about five hours north of El Gouna, where they had been staying.
They were warned to be careful while visiting Cairo, and sure enough, they felt isolation in the air as soon as they got there.
When they went to the Saqqara pyramids on the edge of the Cairo region, they found they were the only people there. Besides feeling nervous to be off that far alone, they were also being bothered by locals while they were walking around.
The locals were constantly asking Terzza and his partner for their tickets, begging for money, and trying to show them around the premises.
Terzza even had to resort to shouting at them to stop them from bothering him, which he was uncomfortable doing.
But Terzza knew it was deep-seated problem. "As you spoke to more and more locals, the reality of their political, economic, and social cultures started to make sense," he said to Business Insider.
He had done plenty of research about the state of the country beforehand, but the level of corruption and dysfunction within the government was still both surprising and upsetting.
According to Terzza, one of the most disturbing parts of Egypt's culture was their sense of women’s rights, which were pretty much nonexistent. "To watch my partner be treated like dirt was extremely infuriating," he said.
Not many other people were there to check out the pyramids with Terzza.
Egypt has had problems with tourism in the past. Visitors declined dramatically after a group of 58 tourists were killed in a 1997 attack by Islamic militants.
It is a priority for the government to get the industry booming again. Tourism is one of Egypt’s biggest money-makers, bringing in billions of dollars a year.
The tourism minister of Egypt told Reuters that the country is planning to launch a global advertising campaign in November.
Source: Reuters
Even if tourism makes a rebound, however, the country still has a lot to work out with its government and citizens.
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