Egyptian biker to return home Friday after 143 days on road

As the day starts, it’ll be Galal Zekri-Chatilla’s last Wednesday with his beloved bicycle “Sophia” on the road. Chatilla, who started his journey biking around Egypt five months ago, will return to his hometown of Cairo by next Friday as planned.

For 143 days, Chatilla has been sleeping across Egypt all by himself, to prove that Egypt is still safe regardless of the current circumstances. Until now, Chatilla, with the help of his bicycle, has clocked up 7,000km on the trip, which consisted of nine stages.

After three months on the road, Galal faced some troubles completing the required legal permissions which would help him bike from Siwa to Bahariya oasis.

“I waited for a month without any good reason for gaining the permissions,” said Chatilla. “I had no other choice but to return to Cairo again, and start the next phase from Cairo, instead of Siwa.”

Returning to the metropolis after spending a huge period of time in the vacant desert was hard to deal with for Chatilla, who said with a depressed tone: “You can never imagine the amount of noise, pollution and crowdedness you live in as a person in the main city.”

‘I kept asking myself one question, how couldn’t I notice that mess before?!”  he added.

During the two days spent in Cairo, he refused to return home, preferring instead to stay with his supporting friends.

“I was afraid that if I saw my family and stayed with them after this long time, I would back off from going on with the trip,” he said, laughing.

With a high adrenaline rush, stress and a little bit of fear, Chatilla hit the road again to Bahariya to complete the sixth stage of his journey.

Chatilla received many warnings about the huge danger of the road from Cairo to the oasis, and said: “I heard many people got stopped and robbed by thugs on that road, yet that didn’t stop me from going after my dream of completing the journey.”

The weather didn’t make the trip any easier either, as at that time there was a sand storm that hit at the speed of 74 km/h. “I stayed 11 hours on a four hour trip,” he said.

According to him, the view of the white desert was frightening, yet it only added to his determination.  Sleeping inside a fox hole only made the night more interesting for him.

Facing new traditions and a different way of living, is a part of Chatilla’s journey around Egypt.

In a small city in the White Desert called Baghdad, he needed a water refill, and asked where he could buy some. In a surreal twist, the people of Baghdad had apparently never heard of the concept. “I will never forget that look upon the old man’s face when I asked about a place to buy water from,” he said, as he remembered the man then asking him: “What’s the meaning of buying water?”

In Baghdad, they get their water from wells which are public property, and so water is not bought. During those three days spent in Baghdad, Chatilla said he met people he never thought existed.

In Luxor, he got to see the sugar cane farms, which he described as “something he never saw before in his entire life”.  “Watching the women and boys getting the sugar cane from the land was one of the most beautiful scenes ever,” he said

Chatilla completed the seventh stage of his journey by riding 240km between Luxor and Safaga, an experienced he described as one of the most difficult to overcome of his journey as he faced the winds strongly hitting him in the face.

After leaving Sagafa and reaching Marsa Alam, Chatilla decided to take a five day break to learn how to dive at the very famous Red Sea Diving Safari. He managed to earn a diving certificate for open water, before completing the road in 16 days.

“While I was riding Sophia heading to a place called Shalaten, I saw a snake crossing the street,” he said enthusiastically. “That’s when I felt connected to nature the most and attached to the wilderness.”

In some places he crossed, Chatilla saw another side to human nature.

“There were people who showed fear of the camera, others showed discomfort at first but after a while they were willing to cross that limit,” he added.

On the road to Aswan, the pure nature of wilderness showed its bad side to Chatilla, with the temperature reaching 45° Celsius, with a totally barren desert either side of the road.

“At a certain point I was afraid,” he added. “I felt I would pass out, and no one would know anything about me or even save me.”

The total opposite faced him after leaving Aswan heading to Assiut. The agriculture road was filled with people from different directions.

Reconnecting with people again after spending a long period of time away from them was hard.

Now that he’s spending his last days on the road, Chatilla is back to the high spirits anticipating to be back home on Friday. He will end his trip by joining the Cairo Half Marathon taking place in Heliopolis.