Cycling in Cairo with a Brompton
So actually cycling in Cairo is not possible at all. Riding a bicycle is, if at all, only something for very poor people.
We wanted to try it anyway and worked our way through the city for 4 weeks. Of course you can try it with any other bike, it doesn’t get better or worse if you have a folding bike, but it’s just more maneuverable. You can hop up and down faster, squeeze it through the crowds in front of you, and weave through the avalanches of metal better. You’re just faster.
After a few days, we realized that we don’t exist for the others. Cyclists have absolutely no rights. Once you figure that out, it gets easier.
It was so much fun, you can believe me, even if I know that the normal Cairo visitor will not believe us now.
And then the big surprise: we did meet other cyclists. Groups of young people who see cycling as freedom, as something that helps health, as something that serves emancipation.
Crazy.
Cairo Cycling Geckos
Special was the group of young women, the Cycling Geckkos.
Their bikes were a disaster, they had little idea of why to shift gears and were completely untrained. And yet, they dared to do a 100km tour. We were fascinated.
A Brompton in many countries came up to be a status symbol, but in Cairo it was rather the symbol of poverty.
Crazy.
You can read more about this and other cycling groups in our Brompton Fernweh Magazine (Attention only in German).
The lifeline – the Nile
Cairo is a gigantic city and we had planned to see as many districts as possible.
I can not always recommend that either. Nothing happened to us, but I think in some districts the overriding factor was our helper. Districts where people are really bitterly poor.
One day we went by a taxi, with a Nile Taxi. What a gain in time. And actually with normal bicycles not possible.
Unfortunately, this type of transport has not yet become established. Whereby, with the mass of people in this city, it probably wouldn’t fix the traffic chaos either. In any case, we had real fun.
My Summary for cycling in Kairo
I don’t want to miss this experience, but I guess we lost at least 1 year of our life, because of pollution 🙂
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