My introduction to Cairo was a trip from the airport at 11.30pm. At night in this warm climate people come out in droves, shops are open, tea is drunk, business is done.

Traffic comes from all directions, including ancient, battered Peugeots and Fiats I have not seen on roads for decades. Many drivers see no need to turn on their lights. VW minibuses ply as taxis, their rear engine hatches opened to prevent overheating. There are quite enough overheated drivers already.

Cairo, a vast city on the fertile Nile Delta intersected by numerous waterways, is too large to take in on a short visit. For the many of its nine million people who live in poverty, life is harsh. About 90 per cent of the Egyptian population is Muslim and this is reflected in the way people dress and, for good and bad, in their attitudes to others.

Many people are astonished that the famous pyramids at Giza are in the suburbs of Cairo, indeed the site itself is being undermined by erosion and development. An abandoned 20th century visitor complex on the periphery is progressively falling over the edge. Nearby, guards strolled about indifferently. Although we visited early, individuals selling souvenirs, water and camel rides were as persitent as midges.

The Sphinx is close by, sadly missing its beard and nose. For hundreds of years it was almost buried in sand and erosion also took its toll. Yet, it is still an impresive work.

A visit to the Cairo Museum is essential. This houses many of the treasures of Egypt’s older, less constrained civilisations. Even in early October, it is hot indoors and out, but well worth the effort to see such marvels as the treasures which were tightly packed into Tutankhamun’s small tomb. Among these are beds, containers, his marvellous throne inlaid with gold and ebony, and, most prosaically, a pair of his underpants! He died from an infection aged about 18.

A room is set aside for Tutankhamun’s treasures, with many beautifully-made trinkets of gold, ebony and coloured enamels. The centrepiece is the astonishing solid gold death mask and his two inner coffins, one gilded wood with semi-precious stones. The other coffin is solid gold and still has the power to astonish with its beauty.

We rounded off a day in Cairo by visiting the Khan al-Khalili market, built in 1382. The market is an experience full of colour and noise, but stopping to look at goods we found ourselves surrounded by determined, frequently aggressive salesmen. Had they allowed shoppers to move in peace, one suspects they would have done even better business. As it was, we retreated for an hour to a centrally-placed coffee shop where one can relax in peace.

Nearby, Muslim women, some with borrowed newly-born babies sought alms beside the mosque. As our Egyptian guide pointed out, in Egypt, one must take the good with the bad. While many Egyptian buildings are in a state of decay or simply unfinished, all mosques are pristine.

Further on, a vast graveyard, the ‘City of the Dead’ is inhabited by many homeless people who are paid by well-off families to guard their family tombs.

At the railway station to catch our overnight sleeper train to Aswan, we were joined on the platform by many Muslim pilgrims heading home in packed carriages. We enjoyed the luxury of cabins with fold-down beds and washbasins and were served dinner in the cabins, then retired to the salubrious bar carraige at the rear before bed.

In the soft, warm light of early morning, heading southwards on the western shore of the Nile, people with donkeys and carts worked in the fields, stacking grain or just moving about. The Biblical vision was only disturbed by the occassional tractor, car or incongruous, unfinished modern apartment block among mud-brick huts.

Despite the morning heat on the platform, Aswan is a relatively sedate town, the railway station facing a strip of greenery leading to a long, pristine promenade area along the Nile occupied by luxurious Nile cruisers, usually four storeys high, sometimes moored four deep.

On one such cruiser, our rooms were impeccable, and the food outstanding. While in Aswan at night, we visited a department store and bank, both of which harked back to a bygone age. The local market is well worth seeing, and one tends to develop a relaxed attitude to the enthusiastic stallholders.

In the morning a Nubian boatman brought us in his felucca to the temple of Isis at Philae. By the 1970s the rising waters from the Aswan Dam had half submerged the temple.

This vast edifice, like Abu Simbel before it, was laboriously moved stone by stone onto a higher island nearby, which was landscaped to match the original.

Returing to shore, we braved the usual assault of peddlers before setting off for the Aswan Dam. There is a Lower Dam built by the British from 1898 to 1902, but the current High Dam was built between 1960 and 1972. At 3.6 kilometres long, it needs to be viewed from the air to appreciate its full splendour.

All the electricity for Egypt is generated here. Large numbers of the local Nubian tribe were displaced and their lands flooded.

It is worth taking a felucca sailboat trip around nearby Elephantine Island. Lapping water and reeds form part of a nature reserve, sadly not accessible to visitors. Here also are the Botanical Gardens, while the Aga Khan’s mausoleum tops a nearby hill on the western bank. A few workmen quarried rocks on the island. Despite the serenity, the rounded façade of MacDonald’s burgery could be seen fronting the broad promenade on the eastern shore!

Cruising upriver, the banks of the Nile slipped by silently, sometimes lush and green from ancient irrigation channels which run inland. At other times, the brown hills of the desert were visible in the distance. Periodically, small feluccas and large Nile cruisers slid by our floating cocoon.

We disembarked and walked to the Temple of Kom Ombo as darkness fell and floodlights took over. The carvings on buildings such as these are not mere ornament, they tell in enormous detail how people lived, what they ate, what they wore, how they viewed life and death.

Sailing northwards, the Temple of Horus at Edfu is among the best preserved. The walls are covered with elegant bas-relief images depicting religious and mythological events. The pharaohs ruled Egypt from about 3500BC to 2475BC, an incredibly long dynasty.

The Valley of the Kings at Thebes resembles an undulating quarry of loose stone. It is now entered through a reception area which shows a three-dimensional model of the many tombs within. A good coffee shop and shuttle train are welcome as even at 10am the heat is blistering.

Tutankmamun’s tomb is obligatory, although it was hastily requisitioned and decorated when the young king died suddenly. Relatively small, in a side room his outer gilded sarcophagus and mummy are still in place. The archaelogist Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, with most of its treasures intact.

The tomb of Ramses VI is large and richly decorated in vibrant colours, with a vaulted ceiling and a recently-reassembled inner sarcophagus of the pharaoh.

In the nearby Valley of the Queens, the Tomb of Queen Nefertari is said to be the finest of all. It is exquisitely decorated with scenes of the soul’s journey to the underworld. Its reliefs were damaged by humidity, water and salt but it is now fully restored. Sadly, visitors generate humidity and it was closed when I visited.

At the valley entrance on a hilltop is the the domed house built by Howard Carter during the many years he spent excavating these tombs. Close by are the Colossi of Memnon, two 60-foot high seated statues of Amenhotep III. During the Roman period, the northernmost of these statues ‘sang’ at sunrise. An earthquake in 27 BC seemed to create this phenomon, as it stopped when the statue was repaired in 199 AD.

A final essential journey was inland from Luxor to the temple of Karnak. It was crowded, but in the warm but mellow evening its vastness could be appreciated. Entered by an avenue of ram-headed sphinxes, towering columns support vast stone beams. A large man-made lake cistern is further back.

Against one incompletely finished wall is a sloping mound of earth thousands of years old. Such temporary moveable mounds were the key to the building of these temples and the pyramids.

Leaving antiquity behind, we had a final coffee before joining a long convoy of vehicles through the desert in darkness with a brief ‘comfort’ stop at an oasis before reaching Hurghada on the Red Sea at 11.30pm.

Our hotel overlooked an internal garden of grass, palms, ponds and swimming pool. To the rear, a landscaped beach curved into the Red Sea- an obligatory swim!

Hurghada itself is a purpose-built resort. It is still just a few streets deep with a long ‘strip’ of shops and hotels parallel to the beach. Foothpaths and site markers in the desert show the extent of its future ambitions as a Las Vegas by the Red Sea. For travellers, as opposed to tourists, a day or two there is enough.

More interesting is the full day of travel, by bus from Hurghada, where the road flanks the Red Sea and the oil pipeline on the right, before it gives way to the lower reaches of the Suez canal. Rather then heading north to Suez itself, we had a stop at another oasis for more coffee, then headed west, inland towards Cairo. Although still desert, the land becomes more hilly. Newly built luxurious villas and apartments appear along the road, bolt holes for the wealthy of Cairo.

A beautiful sunset, and as we approaced outer Cairo, braving its chaotic traffic, we saw more apartment buildings, these built by the government to relieve the horrendously overcrowded slums of the city, although people still resist moving.

Arriving after 10.00pm at our hotel, there was still time for a late dinner and drink by the hotel pool before going to bed for a few hours and heading to the airport at 4.00am for the 7.00am flight home.

Approached without prejudice or preconceptions, a journey through Egypt becomes a richly rewarding experience.