El Cairo

I spent in el Cairo just few days visiting the Egyptian Museum and many others monuments, including the pyramids nearby in Giza.

I do had the possibility to shot some photos but the time was really not enough for good pictures.
I was prepared and used to the chaos of Bangkok where I lived for months but let me tell you el Cairo is even worst as one of the most polluted and chaotic city in the world. The photos and the images do not need description.

el Cairo, which means “the triumphant”, is the capital and largest city of Egypt.
It is the Arab World’s largest and Africa’s most populous city. It is located on the banks and islands of the Nile River in the north of Egypt, immediately south of the point where the river leaves its desert-bound valley and breaks into two branches into the low-lying Nile Delta region.

The city was founded by the Fatimid caliphs, it replaced Fustat as the seat of the government. It later came under the Mamluks, was ruled by the Ottomans A.D. 1517 to 1798, and briefly occupied by Napoleon. Muhammad Ali of Egypt made el Cairo the capital of his independent empire from 1805 to 1882, after which the British took control of it until Egypt attained independence in 1922.

The metropolitan area has a population of about 8 million people, according to the 2006 population census. The number of inhabitants was about a million higher at the time of the census, but this was adjusted downwards on the 17th of April 2008 when the new government of Helwan was created from parts of the old Cairo government.
el Cairo’s metropolitan area has a population of about 17.8 million people. el Cairo is the sixteenth most populous metropolitan area in the world. It is also the most populous metropolitan area in Africa and in every respect the center of Egypt, as it has been almost since its founding.

The majority of the nation’s commerce is generated there, or passes through the city. The great majority of publishing houses and media outlets and nearly all film studios are there, as are half of the nation’s hospital beds and universities. This has fueled rapid construction in the city; one building in five is less than 15 years old.
This astonishing growth until recently surged well ahead of city services. Maintenance of roads, electricity, telephone and sewer services were all suddenly in short supply.

Analysts trying to grasp the magnitude of the change coined terms like “hyper-urbanization”.

The city also suffers from a high level of air pollution due to decades of unregulated vehicle emissions.
There are over 2,000,000 cars on the streets of Cairo, 60% of which are over 10 years old, and therefore lack modern emission cutting features like catalytic converters. Cairo produces 10,000 tons of rubbish each day, 4,000 tons of which is not collected or managed.
This once again is a huge health hazard.

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