Category: Culture

The Siwa Oasis: Deep inside the Sahara desert (travel update)

written by Benny Lewis

(Today’s video is in English, but has a brief segment in Arabic when I chat to my jeep driver).

Don’t worry, next week I’ll get back to language updates, including a video where I do most of the talking, all spontaneous, so you can hear what my level truly is. For now, I wanted to share my favourite place on my travels in Egypt: the Siwa Oasis!

It’s a 10 hour or so bus ride from Alexandria (where I ended the first leg of my travels), through a road that has only been paved in recent decades, and as you can see it’s a huge area of fertile land covered by palm trees, rather than our stereotypical image of an oasis being a single watering hole.

Travels through/along the length of the Nile in Egypt: Aswan to Alexandria

written by Benny Lewis

When you leave the chaos of Cairo, you are instantly hit by how peaceful Aswan is. No constant horns and no polluted skyline. As you can see in the start of the video, you also get the more typical view of the Nile we expect with huge sand dunes right by the bank of the river.

While in Aswan, I got to learn about Nubian culture, as most of those I would speak to were Nubians. This included the Felucca boat and sailor that I hired for the day through a local company. The captain picked me up and brought me as far downstream as we could go for the first half of the day before we turned back.

Nubian history: discussion in Arabic about ethnic group in Egypt

written by Benny Lewis

After leaving Cairo, the first stop on my Egyptian travels was Aswan, the furthest south in the country where you can find a major settled area, and where the Egyptian part of the Nile begins after Lake “Nasser” and the High Dam.

By far, the most interesting part of my time there was discovering things about the ethnic group known as the Nubians, which at one point in history were able to overpower the Pharaohs of Egypt, but have had an unfortunate history of displacement and migration, especially in the last century.

To share that story, I let Gasser M. Anwar, a Nubian working in the tourist industry, take the microphone to share his perspective on it all with us. With subtitles in English and Arabic as always!

5 steps to overcoming your fears and conquering the world

written by Matt Kepnes

Today’s guest post is from my friend Matt Kepnes (aka Nomadic Matt), who wrote here earlier about How to travel the world like Indiana Jones. He has extensive travel experience, and his book How to travel the world on $50 a day has just been published today. If you are in any of these cities, […]

9 of the most unlikely countries to find the language you want to learn

written by Benny Lewis

In the last five months, I have definitely received the most double takes of my life whenever I said that I had been learning all my Egyptian Arabic in Brazil.

It’s just such an unlikely combination! Brazil has never had a huge or even tiny wave of Egyptian immigration. While there, I only managed to meet one single Egyptian in person in my entire 3 months. This was partially the reason I did it – to prove that even if there are no natives nearby, you can learn to speak the language entirely online.

Walking from the Nile to the pyramids, and the people I met on the way

written by Benny Lewis

Don’t worry, video updates in Arabic are coming soon 😉 Today I’ve just recorded the first of many videos to document my time in this country, and it should be on my Youtube channel by Monday (need time to upload HD videos on slow connections, as well as subtitling). But first, it’s time for another […]

Walk like an Egyptian: Why Blending in Matters

written by Benny Lewis

I woke up groggy, still trying to snooze off a sleepless night of New Year’s parties, looked out my window and could see that we had just flown over a small bay of some sort that showed the Mediterranean sea part of my journey was done. Our flight had just entered Egypt, and it was […]

“It’s a big bad scary world out there!” Are you sure North America?

written by Benny Lewis

Edit: I wasn’t expecting this post to cause so much debate, but like the one linked just below, the reason I wrote it isn’t to be “anti-American” as far too many crybabies are claiming, but because you guys need to read a different perspective and understand how us non-Americans think for a retrospective look at […]

The month I lost faith in the system, and gained it in humanity

written by Benny Lewis

Today, I want to mention one of the most important points in my life, when my destiny changed and my faith in the traditional system of study hard, get a job, work up the ladder, and retire with as much money as possible, was absolutely shattered and I decided to start over from scratch, and why I’m really glad that I did.

Sorry it’s a little long, but I do want to give the full picture so you have the context of how my philosophy on life evolved dramatically in a very short time.

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