Khan el Khalili – Streaming thru America

The Viking Ra was cruising steadily from Edfu to Luxor on the final leg of our Nile adventure… until we encountered the Esna lock with a 6-ship back up. With each passage through the lock requiring about 20 minutes, we were looking at a 2-hour layover before we’d be underway, so what better way to spend the time than to shop… again.

Viking and I have visited a variety of revered venues vital to vending, but the finest one was the first one–Khan El-Khalili in Old Cairo–one of the oldest and largest open-air souks for whatever you never need, but find it necessary to own.

But that was just the beginning of so many other shopping opportunities we discovered along the way, whether it was sourcing a simple souvenir at a temple souk;

or buying a bolt of fancy fabric at a textile shop;

or funding a furnishing from a village storefront;

or securing a special spice at the food bazaar;

or raising thousands for a hand-knotted rug at a weaving studio.

There was also a gift shop aboard the Ra, where an Armenian jeweler could craft 18K gold into personalized cartouche earrings and pendants for a pretty price.

In fact, there was nary a place we visited, where Ra passengers couldn’t “get their shopping on,” to the extent that a few passengers required an extra suitcase to transport their trinkets and treasures.

Deck hands used the extra time to swab the main deck and raise a clean flag,

while passengers on the sun deck flocked to the starboard side to find our riverboat nearly surrounded by a band of merchants in blue rowboats, reminiscent of how Somali pirates operate, but with a enterprising purpose.

It was an interesting phenomena, but rather than explain it, I believe this video best captures the merchandising protocol.

^{Shopping on the Nile at Esna Lock}

Items for inspection usually arrived by air mail–rolled up and bagged. Unwanted items were returned the same way, but errant tosses to the boat got wet on occasion. Money was exchanged by sealing it in a tied bag with a returned item.

Eventually after two hours, it was our turn to pass through the lock. Surprisingly, the merchants who tied their vessels to the Ra were carried along–still haggling with their Habibis before finally disengaging on the downriver side of Esna lock.

Even more surprising… Leah and I didn’t purchase a single thing!

In a document dating back to 1434, traces of Dresden’s Striezelmarkt Christmas Market’s existence were found. Additionally, the Turks tell us that the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul has been around since 1455.

Although proponents of both regions claim title to the oldest market (souk) in the world, 100 million Egyptians would beg to differ, because deep in the midst of historic, Islamic Cairo, stands the beating heart of city commerce–a pulsing and twisting labyrinth of passages that is Khan el Khalili–the world’s oldest continuously operating market since 1382.

Passengers of Viking Ra who elected to crowd surf through the Khan el Khalili, got a glimpse of life as it once was during the Mamluk dynasty (from 1250 until 1517), when self-pronounced sultans occupied Egypt after driving out the Crusaders. The souk was built atop the mausoleum of the Fatimid Caliphate, which founded Cairo as its imperial city in the 10th century.

Once divided into distinct districts serving merchants trading copperware, gold accessories, and spices, the souk now balances its variety with every imaginable trinket and souvenir sold among competing vendors standing just a breath away from each other, forming an almost impenetrable wall of sounds, sights and smells…

across alleyways that could barely accommodate our bus.

We disembarked from the bus and melted into a crowd of families strolling past aggressive venders hawking endless supplies of camel pants, pashminas, and pyramid paper weights to tourists,