Security Madness!

Ten years ago Egypt was rocked by some severe bombings and killings - where many tourists lost their lives. The were several different incidences round 1997 and 1998. And due to Egypt's severe dependence on Tourism for income ... they do have a VERY evident security presence all over!!

Our days on the road, as well as nights at the camps, are continuously supervised and supported by military and police entourages. We have lead vehicles, sweep vehicles and vehicles driving up and down along the whole distance covered by all the riders.

We go through regular police checkpoints ... probably every ten kilometers on the main road from Qena to Luxor and less in the previous areas along the Red Sea and towards Qena. All Tour buses have to travel in convoy, with police escort, between Cairo and Luxor - so we had convoys of well over 50 buses creaming passed us as all other traffic gets stopped for the convoy. All traffic also gets stopped for us as we progress thru the countryside.

There are some major checkpoints out of some bigger towns ... where those cyclists leaving early in the morning were getting lots of hassles about cycling alone ... especially the women. We started out Safaga- Qena day from the check-point and we were all stopped and our Race Numbers were noted down (probably as registration numbers??) before we could continue. By the way ... my number is 127.Throughout town there is also always a very strong police presence.

On our Tour of Luxor (today) we had a plain clothed police/security person travelling on the bus and walking to the sites with us - armed with both a machine gun and a hand gun. No other tour groups had this type of escort ... maybe they don't trust us crazy people who cycle thru Africa?? Oh, yes, we also had some fancy, well dressed and stiffly cold (high ranking?) official from the Tourism Police travelling with us on the bus.