Destination Truth: Memoirs of a Monster Hunter (22 page)

And isn’t that sort of a big deal? In the previously mentioned poll, a broader question revealed that a staggering 77 percent of people believe in some sort of life after death. And despite the fact that there’s a clear overlap between religion and the paranormal, television networks are loath to make God a part of the conversation. Heaven forbid that spirits and spirituality be uttered in the same breath.

So why avoid the connection? Quite simply, because it’s so immensely polarizing. A whopping 87 percent of people who believe in the afterlife believe that science will never prove if it exists. This statistical chasm is exactly why inquiries into the paranormal are vital. Faith and doubt have bubbled in the human mind since primitive tribes first worshipped animistic tokens and fertility idols. The search for ghosts is inescapably tied to the search for meaning, explanation, and divinity.

Irrefutable proof of the existence of spirits would rattle the foundations of our society. So, yes, it’s worth looking for them.

On
Destination Truth
, we may never prove the existence of ghosts. Without one of those smoking toasters from
Ghostbusters
, we certainly won’t be able to capture one.

But what we are doing is listening to those who have had compelling experiences and then trying to substantiate their claims or explain them as best we can. It’s not exactly science. But it does
nag
at science. Fierce debate and unconventional thinking have always underscored the history of scientific discovery. We’re simply contributing to the ongoing conversation.

Half of us believe. Half of us do not. Where do you stand?

17: Tourists and Pharaohs

Egypt, 2009

Egypt is a den of thieves. Let’s get that out in the open right off the bat. Having gone toe to toe with some of the planet’s most hardcore hagglers, touts, and cons, I put Egypt in a class all by itself. Which is to say, I love this place. Anyone who has traveled with me can attest to my genuine affection for all manner of well-attempted tourist molestation. During my last visit to Cairo, I was in the country for two minutes and thirty-seven seconds before someone attempted to rip me off. And the guy who tried was working for passport control. Kudos, Egypt. Good to see you’re keeping up that sterling reputation.

I had just stepped off a flight from Dubai and was standing in line to buy a tourist visa. It wasn’t a promising sign that visas were being administered by a dude at an airport bank, rather than a government office. An enormous and weathered sign to my left read, “Visa: $15 U.S.” The lone teller looked up at me and said, “Hello my friend. Price is two hundred Egyptian pounds.” As a point of interest, anyone in a financial transaction who calls you “my friend” who isn’t actually your friend is usually about to twist a proverbial knife into your back. A little quick math in my head revealed that this price was more than double what was listed on the sign. “I thought it was only fifteen U.S. dollars,” I said.

Behind the teller, a loitering Egyptian police officer flashed a crooked smile at me and winked. So much for the cops.

“Okay. Fine. Fifteen dollars,” the teller relented.

After I gave him a twenty-dollar bill, he then argued that he had no change in either currency. At a bank. He had no change at a bank. You’ve got to respect anyone with the balls to even attempt that kind of move.

Beyond passport control is one of Egypt’s classic scams. I call it the “hotel shuffle.” Here’s how it works. A con wearing an official-looking “Visitor Assistance” badge walks up to an arriving tourist and asks if he needs a hotel for the night. Few people show up in Cairo without booking accommodations ahead of time, and so the tourist invariably explains that, no, he already has a room arranged. The con then tells the traveler that he’s happy to call the hotel and have them send a complimentary shuttle. Most tourists are unnerved at the sight of the salivating mob of cabdrivers outside and take the man up on his seemingly generous offer.

Then, like a lamb to the slaughter, the unassuming tourist is led into a tiny office where the con artist calls the hotel. Except that he doesn’t call the hotel. He calls an accomplice. After speaking in Arabic for a few moments, the man informs the tourist that the hotel has no record of his reservation and is fully booked. The alarmed mark then jumps on the phone; the fake hotel agent apologizes for the mix-up but confirms that there is no record on file. Alternate lies include that the hotel is undergoing renovation, has flooded, or is suddenly out of business. Luckily the con happens to know another hotel with vacancies (where he gets a healthy kickback for diverting our bewildered tourist). Pretty awesome, huh?

I shook off no less than three people who offered to call my hotel for me and then emerged into the throbbing heat, humidity, and screams of a hundred taxi drivers. “I take you to Marriott for eighty pounds,” someone yelled.

“You’re hilarious,” I offered back. “Twenty pounds.”

The cabbie smiled. “Okay, my friend. We go.”

“Great. And I don’t want to stop off at your friend’s store,” I added.

“Quick stop. I know wonderful price on rug.”

And this is how it goes in Cairo. By the time you get to your hotel, you’re tired, sweaty, possibly stabbed, and occasionally in possession of an overpriced oriental carpet. Here are a few actual exchanges from my last visit to the city.

Hotel Concierge:
“I can arrange a private car for $500. Is okay?”

Me:
“No, is not okay. As I understand it, your job is to help me, not screw me.”

Hotel Concierge:
“How does fifty bucks sound?”

Guy at Memphis ruins:
“My friend. Good camel. You want to buy?”

Me:
“To own?”

Guy:
“Yes, my friend.”

Me:
“How old is it? It looks old.”

Guy:
“Thirty-seven years, sir. Very strong.”

Me:
“Thirty-seven years? Don’t these things die at, like, forty years?

Guy:
“Yes. But will fetch good price for meat at butcher.”

Guy at Pyramids:
“How much for your bracelet?”

Me:
“Not for sale.”

Guy:
“I give you two of my best postcards for it.”

Me:
“Wow. What about if I throw in my watch for five postcards?”

Guy:
“Yes, my friend! We have a deal?”

Me:
“We do not.”

Guard:
“I take your picture for one dollar.”

Me:
“Okay, but I get to hold your gun.”

Guard:
“Be careful. It’s loaded.”

All of this endless scamming exists, of course, because Egypt is a powerfully magnetic tourist destination and is featured on just about every traveler’s “bucket list.” The endless influx of mostly upper-class vacationers accounts for more than 15 percent of the country’s entire GDP. Add the fact that the average Egyptian nets less than $5,000 a year, and it’s easy to see how more than a few of the twenty million people in Cairo turned into Fagin from
Oliver Twist
. To make matters worse, the entire country is an infrastructural disaster. After they erected the greatest civilization in the history of the planet, it’s as though the Egyptians said, “Okay. That’s enough. Let’s just call it a day for the next five thousand years.”

The modern capital city that sprang up in the tenth century A.D. has outgrown itself many times over and is now a bustling mess of dust, grime, and human energy. Trying to drive through Cairo is like being trapped inside an Arabic version of the video game Paperboy. Camels, babies, women in burkas, runaway construction equipment—you name it, and it’s drifting out into the middle of the street. Enough to distract even the most focused of commuters.

In short, Egypt takes the silver medal in the Exhausting Destination Olympics (India still dominates the podium). But for those hearty enough to sidestep its pitfalls, it’s also one of the crown jewels of adventure travel. The people, even the ones ripping you off, are as warm and hospitable as any I’ve met, and they have a deep-rooted passion and pride for their collective past. There are places where travelers get a vague sense of history and places where history reaches right out and punches you in the gut. Egypt’s treasures are not just relics consigned to dusty shelves or remnant architecture on otherwise modernized city streets. The entire country is an open-air museum of the first degree, as vast and substantial as the desert dunes themselves. From the temples at Abu Simbel to the mighty Sphinx, visitors are ultimately humbled by a scale of antiquity seldom seen.

As we prepare to bring
Destination Truth
to Egypt, I’m cautious, to put it mildly. It will be more than a year before the three-decade dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak comes crashing down and the country rises in rebellion. With my previous excursions to Egypt as prologue and political tensions simmering, my critical hackles are up when it comes to toting our cameras to the Land of the Sun. Our first order of business is therefore to hire a top-notch “fixer.” For those unfamiliar with the term, fixers are native producers hired to facilitate the logistics of overseas productions. Able to speak the indigenous language, navigate local politics, and draw upon their own Rolodex of contacts, fixers can be indispensible assets to filming in foreign countries. In Egypt, they’re a downright necessity.

If the experience of getting through customs here is difficult as a tourist, just imagine what it looks like when you show up with twenty cases of expensive film equipment. Case in point: a few months before our arrival, another popular travel show headed to Cairo to film and never made it out of the airport. Literally. Unable to negotiate with airport officials, the entire production was turned around and forced to leave the country.

Intent on actually clearing the terminal, I search high and low for an Egyptian producer who can dial into our needs and help us navigate the road ahead. A trusted producer friend insists I call a man named Ramy Romany. When I ask him why, I’m told, “Just call him. He’s the guy.”

Ramy is the son of Romany Helmy, one of Egypt’s most respected fixers. As motion picture and television production crews flooded into Egypt like locusts in the last half of the twentieth century, Ramy’s father positioned himself as a big player in this business. Ramy and his sister are the next generation; together with their family, they have produced more than five hundred projects for the BBC, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, and countless other companies.

When I first call Ramy to suss out his abilities vis-à-vis a rather unique expedition, he answers the phone in what could pass for a velvety British accent.

“How can I help, Josh?”

“We’re hoping to accomplish a number of activities in Egypt, and some of them might be . . . difficult,” I say.

“Such as?” he hums calmly.

“I want access to film the Tut Mask at the Cairo Museum.”

“Not a problem.”

“I also want to be able to film at the Pyramids.”

“Not a problem.”

“I also want to—”

“Josh,” he cuts in. “What do you
really
want to do?”

I pause. “What I really want is access to King Tut’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Alone. At night.”

Silence on the line. “That
is
a challenge,” he admits. “Give me an hour.”

The discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun is one of the most thrilling stories of modern archaeology, and the ensuing legend of Tut’s curse may be one of the most romantic. In the early 1900s, Egyptologist Howard Carter, sponsored by his patron Lord Carnarvon, toiled in vain for six long seasons in the Valley of the Kings. After more than five years of nearly fruitless excavation and the shifting of tons of sand, Carter’s funding and support hung by a thread. And then, on the fourth of November, 1922, under the shadow of the tomb of Ramses VI, a step was discovered. By the next day twelve more stairs and a sealed entrance were revealed. On the verge of history, Carter sent a frantic cable to his sponsor: “At last have made wonderful discovery in valley; a magnificent tomb with seals intact; congratulations.” Nearly three weeks later, on the twenty-fourth of November, Carnarvon arrived with his daughter, and the dig resumed.

Once all sixteen stairs were cleared, the fully exposed door revealed several intact seals, one of which bore the name Tutankhamun. In the following days the door was opened, leading to a twenty-six-foot passageway and interior door. In his journals, Carter wrote, “At first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber caused the candle flame to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold—everywhere the glint of gold. I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, ‘Can you see anything?’ it was all I could do to get out the words, ‘Yes, wonderful things.’ “

The tomb itself is surprisingly small, and Tut is believed to have been a relatively minor ruler. The real significance of Carter’s find is that, unlike every other royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings, which had been plundered bare, Tut’s was largely undisturbed. For the first time, the world bore witness to the full splendor and wealth of a pharaonic burial. The antechamber alone yielded nearly seven hundred objects, including disassembled chariots and ornate beds. The inner chamber housed four gilded shrines, a multilayered sarcophagus, and the famous golden mask.