Egypt Cities info :

Cairo is not only the largest city in Africa and the capitol of Egypt, it is also the political and cultural pivot of the Arab world. Its population of around 15 million has grown five fold within a generation as people have poured in from the villages in search of opportunities.
New bridges, flyovers and an excellent metro system keep the city from grinding to a halt, and there is constant new building.
The most modern part of the city lies close to the Nile, which provides the heartbeat of Cairo. Further east, towards the Moqattam Hills, is the medieval city of splendid mosques and thronging bazaars, founded by the Fatimid’s in AD 969.
To the south is the now
pruinous Fustat, the earliest Arab settlement, built when the invaded Egypt around AD 641. Westwards, beyond the spraql of Giza, the Pyramids gloq gold at sundown against the western desert, as they have done for 1,700,000 evenings past.

Aswan lies at the southern tip of Upper Egypt and is home to the High Dam which supplies Egypt with most of its water and electricity. The layer of sandstone covering Upper Egypt from Edfu southwards is ruptured here by rhe thrust of underlying granite which the river has sculpted into the rocks and islands of the First Cataract.

Throughout history, this is where traffic on the Nile stopped, where cargoes had to be transported round the rocks. Aswan became the entrepot for the African trade.
 

Luxor is one of the most popular tourist destinations and offers the richest collections of Egyptian treasures. The name Luxor is loosely applied by travelers to include three distinct places the town of Luxor, with a population of 100,000, on the east bank of the Nile, the village of Karnak and its immense temple 4km north on the same bank and the Theban nacropolis on the west bank of the river opposite Luxor and Karnak.


 

Alexandria is Egypt's major port and the country's second largest city. Unlike the rest of the country, it is cool and wet in the winter, with refreshing Mediterranean breezes during the heat of summer. Alexander the Great founded the city in 332 BC on the site of a small fishing village, Rhakotis.

He then built a causeway connecting the island of Pharos (where Ras el Tin Palace and Qait Bay Fort stand) to the mainland, creating two great harbors which became the basis of Alexandria's prosperity.

Egypt is very much desert, and the number of oases are smaller than many might imagine. There are 8 oasis communities interesting to a traveller, plus a handful of places where people do little but work and long for the day when they can return to their home town
Getting to the oa. ses is straightforward these days: There are good roads and plenty of public transportation that costs next to nothing compared with Western price levels.

Egyptian oases correspond fairly with the Hollywood / Disney - like image of an oasis, where sand dunes suddenly turn into lush palm groves with a fresh-water pond in the middle. Some of the oases have blurred borders, where the gardens and settlements in the outskirts are poor and ugly. Other oasis begin almost suddenly after you climb down into the bowl where water is naturally pumped up from the ground, and agriculture is possible.

And that is very much the true reason for the existence of Egypt's oases. Water is pressed up from underground water reservoirs, water which can be distributed through canals to allow extensive agriculture. In modern times, gazoline driven pumps are used for reservoirs without sufficient pressure.

Until a few decades ago, before the roads were built, the oases were quite isolated from the rest of the world. Most of the inhabitants never left the oasis through their entire lives. Culture, lifestylese, clothes and even language could be unique from oasis to oasis. Much of this diversity is disappearing these days, but still there is plenty left to intrigue visitors. Tourism has had a positive impact on the oases; the inhabitants have been taught that they possess something unique, so valuable that people from the other side of the world come to discover it.
So which are the best oases to visit, for anyone with limited time??
Here is my ranking, just remember that every oasis has its own attractions, so many other travellers would make a very different ranking.

Not many places in the world can capture your imagination in as many ways as the Red Sea. It derives its name from the explosive growth of a blue algae, Trichodesmium erythraeum, that notwithstanding its name, every so many years, dyes the normally blue-green water of the Red Sea an orange-red. Red Sea is about contrasts. A desert and the magic sea
The desert comes to an abrupt end at the Red Sea, where exquisite coral reefs provide a fine underwater playground for divers and snorkels from around the world. The coral reefs along the Red Sea, coastline are among the best in the world and 'diving tourism' is the most recent catchphrase on the peninsula. The Red Sea has one of the highest amounts of marine life variety in all the tropical seas.