Travel: Not far from Cairo's madding crowds

The Sydney Morning Herald (David Wroe)

Cairo is, to my mind, one of the world's great cities, whatever its shortcomings. With a population of 18 million, the crush of people is suffocating. If you're a woman, the young men on the street can be vile. There are five million cars on a road system at best equipped for two million.

The result for visitors is that Cairo delivers either a gutful of reality in the traffic jams and sprawling suburbs or, if you choose to swing past the pyramids and the Egyptian museum in an air-conditioned bus, no reality at all.

Yet there is an intoxicating energy to Cairo and, if you know where to look, even beauty. The tentmakers' alley is one of the few places left that blend the romantic with the real. It may live in the shadow of the famous Khan al-Khalili market, a few minutes' walk north, but the tentmakers' alley is the place to go for a more authentic experience.

To get there, you walk down a busy market street where tinsmiths hammer away and roadside carts roast sweet potatoes. Boys weave along on bicycles, balancing trays on their heads piled with freshly baked bread. Every imaginable trade seems to be in progress, so that the street rings like a soundly struck bell with the songs of the city.

See the above three page article for the full story.