Police car trip in Egypt

I went to Egypt by car, when no one had done it yet, because there were no direct flights to this country, and there were problems with safety. At first everything was fine - I went and went sightseeing. But in the Meidum region some armed people detained me.

I examined the pyramid in Meidum, said goodbye to the police guarding it, gave the chief of them a bribe in the form of 10 Egyptian pounds, although he said that he was small, but quickly fell behind. And after 300 meters at the checkpoint near the facility, the police told me to follow them. Then I thought that it was necessary to give more, to avoid problems ...

The pyramid in Meidum.

On the left is the local police or military checkpoint.

The first accompaniment.

We are waiting at the checkpoint, the exit was blocked by spikes.

I was going to go from here to Abydos at night, which was already 500 km away, and instead we arrived at the police station, which was located on the road in the opposite direction. There they didn’t explain anything to me, a policeman, or maybe a military man (they didn’t understand them), who knew at least two words in English, when leaving, he said: "Sorry, wait." So I waited about an hour without any explanation. Already about to call the embassy. Then, several cars with armed men pulled into the police station, who took my car in the ring (in their jeeps) and told them to follow them. So we drove at a speed of about 70-80 km per hour to the nearest large settlement, however, in the direction we needed. The armored car closed the column behind us, which, however, lagged all the time. At one of the intersections near the city of Qasr Al Basil, my companions suddenly turned around, showed that I was free, and drove back.

Having lost 1.5 hours of time, I was glad that I was finally free, and rushed to the place of overnight. However, they stopped me at the next checkpoint, copied the documents to the car and told me to wait. After 10 minutes, I again went under guard. The story began to repeat, either army-police cars accompanied me, then they copied the data and allowed to go myself. No one explained anything. They didn’t look at my passport. The only thing they asked was where I was going. Talking about Abydos, which was half a country away, was useless; nobody knew such a city. Therefore, I spoke of the nearest regional centers, such as Asyut, Sohag, etc. It became clear that in this way I was being driven in the right direction, only with security. From this stood out from 4 machine gunners in a car to 4 cars / armored cars stuffed with machine gunners. It was at least some comfort to the fact that I lost a lot of time on the road. Not every president has such an escort, but there would be enough armed men to capture a couple of neighboring countries.

The second convoy.

Change of convoys.

The only thing, almost everywhere I had to wait for this very convoy, which, it seems, was collected from all the nearest roadblocks, and the man with large stars, whom the rest called the "general", was driving in the head vehicle.

True, towards the end of the trip it became easier. On one of the rather long sections of the escort car rushed under 130, and I, along with them, breaking all the rules, rushed faster to the hotel. Two times already in the dark we did not understand that they were slowing us down to give a convoy. The first time we just rushed past, almost knocking down a policeman who wanted to slow us down. But a chase was organized behind us, which on the move became our escort. Another time, we rushed past without a chase. And at the end of the road, on the last stretch of the road, we missed the convoy at the fork, drove along another road, which the navigator gave out as faster, in the end we were lost.

Night walks under guard.

The car ahead is good, we rush quickly.

Another checkpoint.

We arrived at the hotel around 11 pm, replacing about 9 convoys that accompanied us 30-70 km. In the morning we examined the local ancient Egyptian temple, but at the exit from Abydos the situation repeated ... this time we were escorted by several convoys to Dendera, since it was about an hour's drive to her. After Dendera (this is not far from Luxor), right up to the southern border with Sudan, there were no convoys, and we returned to Cairo by the road along the Red Sea - our car did not interest anyone.