Travel: Exploring Egypt isn't for the faint of heart

Hello, Cairo.

And goodbye.

I came. I tried. I failed.

To put it another way: Trying to travel Egypt on your own, not so fun.

I made the pilgrimage to Egypt because it's the cradle of civilization and culture, to say nothing of being the home of Omar Sharif, right? It has 5,000 years of history to explore, along with one of the largest cities in the world, Cairo, home to some 20 million inhabitants. How bad could it be?

Pretty bad.

I went solo because that's the way I've always done it. I've been fortunate to have ventured to more than 50 countries, most of them done with just a backpack, a guidebook and my wits. Taking the locals' advice has always led to some of my fondest memories, such as when a grizzled old Greek man pointed us up the back way to the hills above Crete, giving us the best sunset imaginable — just the kind of thing only a local knows.

Yet Cairo . . . she got the better of me.

I could see beyond the mountains of trash, and I could overlook the accompanying stench. I realize that sidewalks are hard to maintain, and who really needs elevators that work? The constant, ear-splitting noise can be helped by earplugs, one would suppose. And beggars in the street can be heartbreaking, but a good traveler knows that one person can't solve all the world's woes.

No, the problem with Cairo — and Alexandria, Egypt's second-largest city, and Giza, areas I also visited — lies in the fact that it has the unfortunate claim of having been a tourist mecca for centuries, which has given the population here plenty of time to hone tourist-scamming skills.