About 20 years ago, I was in Cairo.  The tail end of a trip around the world for 70 well heeled punters.  This was their last stop, so it had to be something good to send them home on a high.  These trips absolutely had to end with a strong destination, thus Cairo was slightly problematic.   All they had ever heard was it was a scruffy Arab city (this was a year before 2001, which would effectively remove them from the map.)

But don’t forget, Mr. Thomas Cook’s first trip from the UK, with a group, had been to Egypt in, so he had huge seniority on that map.

We would be accommodated at the Four Seasons Cairo.  If you know that brand, then all would be well.  All singing, all dancing, all American. All ‘How can I make your stay even better…”?

As were just in Cairo, with its horrendous traffic problems (20 years later I cannot begin the imagine…) we had to have a great deal of flexibility there.   The big moment would be a PRIVATE visit to the great Cairo museum.  A wonderful repository of the last 3000 years’ worth of the best.  This enormous building is under attack from every visitor to Cairo, but our gang was not on a $195RT Easyjet fare from Rome or Madrid.  They had spent $100,00 a head, so standing on line with the great unwashed, was not an option.  We needed exclusive.  Don’t forget they did have a B757 with 70 seats just waiting for them … that costs A LOT OF MONEY.

Well the museum will fix things. Basically, put your money where your mouth is.  Well how much for being there at 7am on a Tuesday morning.  Done.  So we dragged these poor exhausted people out of their beds at 5am (they were now so in our power that, after 23 days of telling them what to do, they did it).  The Four Seasons of course, was able to provide coffee, fresh orange juice, croissants at 05.15.  They staggered on to coaches and where was all this traffic coming from?  Well, basically, it Is Cairo … if New York is the city that never sleeps, then Cairo is the city that never goes to bed.

Anyway, we get them there and one door at the top of the huge range of steps is open and we are practically whisked in, without the population of Cairo.  It was just us… and the cleaners … solid Cairenes with buckets and mops.  But the whole place belonged to US.  Imagine the Met Museum in NY or the British Museum in London or the Louvre in Paris and just You.  Very special.  (and we had hyped it to them of course. Without revealing this is what some of your big bucks went towards.)

Our Egyptologist guides were waiting. In Egypt you don’t get guides … you get Egyptologists. And off they went.   The absolute heart and soul of the museum, is the incredible gold death mask of Tutankhamun.  The one thing apart from the pyramids and sphynx which says Egypt to us.  It is beyond amazing.   So our gang hears all about it and take their pictures and off they go.  But I linger back.  I am the official bringer up of the rear, watching out for who does not turn right. but left.  So suddenly, it is just me and his death mask. Sealed in to its case.  I am starting to realize, there are not many people, apart from the women with the mops, who can have this experience.  Who can have a one on one with him?  It hits me like a ton of bricks.  The more I look .. no.  stare, slack jawed, I realize how amazing this moment is.  Just the two of us.  In the end, I start to have prickling eyes.

One of those moments I will never forget