“What is your plan for today? The police are asking.”

This is how we were greeted by the receptionist of the Grand Aton hotel in Minya. 

We had just arrived after a three and half hour drive from Cairo, and we explained that we had no real plans other than walking around the town. 

This was mid-February 2021, and we had finally given up the dream of visiting Canada anytime soon, and so we shifted our travel plans domestically. We decided to do the classic Luxor trip to see many of the most famous ancient Egyptian sites, a trip which is only advisable in winter unless you like being scorched by the sun all day long. 

Luxor is about an eight hour drive from Cairo, and we wanted to break up the journey, so after looking at the map and talking to some friends, we settled on Minya as our first destination. The city is situated on the western bank of the Nile and has a beautiful long corniche with views of lush green fields. The city’s history dates back to pharaonic times, and it was an important centre of the cotton trade during the English occupation, and the downtown still has many colonial buildings in various states of decay. It seemed liked a perfect less-visited destination for a day of exploration.

Fifteen minutes after we checked-in, the phone rang and the receptionist asked us when we would be leaving, since the police wanted to know. We were amused at their interest, and 10 minutes later we emerged onto the street in front of the hotel. 

There was a police car and several police officers milling about, but it was unclear exactly what was going to happen. We tried turning right, and we were immediately asked where we were going. We said the corniche, since we didn’t have any other specific locations, and we were then directed to go the left, and four police officers followed a few metres behind (and in classic Egyptian style, only one of them was wearing a uniform).  

We were still naive enough to wonder if they would actually follow us the whole time, so we turned off into a small park on the edge of the Nile. They immediately followed us, and we understood that our planned day of aimless wandering wouldn’t be as relaxing as we initially hoped.

After walking along the length of the corniche we turned into the town and to look at the numerous old villas. Not many people tried to talk to us, but perhaps they were scared off by the police. 

We had been given several restaurant recommendations, and we stopped for a shawarma at a Syrian place called Freeka. We were warmly welcomed by the staff and were asked to pose for a photo with them. We took our two shawarmas and ate them while sitting on a broken bench (I guess there was a reason it was the only one unoccupied). 

At this point three of our followers left and our remaining friend asked us where we were going next. We said Dahabiyya, a cafe on a permanently moored boat that we had seen earlier. He seemed happy we were doing this instead of wanting to walk around more.

The cafe was pretty busy, full of groups of friends chatting and several people on laptops. We had juice and coffee while the police officer waited at the entrance (thankfully he didn’t feel the need to sit next to us in the cafe). 

When we exited the cafe we saw that another one of the other police officers had returned. At this point they were hoping we wanted to go back to the hotel, but we decided instead to do another loop through the town.

As we walked along the main streets, a guy came up next to us and asked in English if we wanted a coffee. I initially thought he was running a small coffee stand (there were numerous across the city, often in the back of cars), but he continued to follow us and make small talk with his limited English (still much better than our almost non-existent Arabic).

It turned out that he was a friend of one of the police officers and I think they called him to act as an interpreter. The police officers started complaining that they were tired, and that we were walking for too long (it had only been a few hours, but friends often complain that I walk too much, so maybe they had a point). 

From our perspective it seemed a bit rich to have these officers who were following us against our wishes complain about the walk, so we continued undeterred. 

As it got dark, we started to make our way back to the hotel, but first we stopped for takeout at Orkeed, another restaurant that had been recommended to us. This again disappointed the officers who thought they were almost rid of us. 

For most of the day the officers had at least followed a few metres behind us, but at this point they were emboldened by their English interpreter to get a bit chatty, and they also asked to take pictures with us. The friend also added me to Whatsapp, but it was easy to ignore his messages the next day. 

We got our food (the usual Egyptian fare: mixed grill with rice, salad, tahina, mahshi) and to the delight of our followers finally walked back to the hotel. We sat on the terrace of our room and enjoyed the meal, both feeling flabbergasted from the day. We had a quiet evening and went to bed early, now knowing that our plans for the next day to drive to Abydos and stop at Beni Hassan along the way would inevitably involve the police being constantly on our tail, so stay tuned if you want to read about more sightseeing while being followed by the police!