Nearly every visitor to Cairo comes home with a version of the same story: the pyramids were extraordinary and the constant approaches were exhausting. Both are true, and the second is much easier to handle once the system makes sense.
What baksheesh actually is
Baksheesh covers three quite different things, and confusing them is where visitors go wrong.
A tip for a service — the waiter, the driver, the man who carried your bag. This is straightforward and expected, and rates are modest.
A payment for a small favour — the caretaker who unlocks a tomb, the attendant who minds your shoes at a mosque, the man who shows you where the good view is. Egyptian state salaries for these jobs are very low, and this is not a scam; it is how the arrangement functions. A small note is right.
Alms. A religious obligation with a long history, distinct from either of the above.
The reasonable position for a visitor is to tip readily and modestly for the first two, and to decide their own position on the third.
What it should cost
Small. Genuinely small — a few Egyptian pounds for a shoe attendant or a caretaker, a bit more for a bag carried, ten per cent or so in a restaurant where service is not added.
Because the pound has devalued sharply and repeatedly, printed figures date fast. The useful rule is to carry a stack of small notes and hand one over without ceremony. Do not produce a large note and ask for change; it will not appear.
The approaches
At the pyramids, Khan el-Khalili, the Egyptian Museum and along the Nile you will be approached constantly. The standard openings:
- Where are you from? — friendly, and the start of a sale
- The site is closed today / this entrance is for Egyptians — untrue
- Let me take your photo — followed by a demand
- Just look, looking is free — in a shop, after which leaving is made awkward
- A camel ride offered as free, or cheap, with the fee arriving when you want to get down
- Someone attaching themselves as a guide without being asked, then charging
None of this is dangerous. Cairo is a safe city and violent crime against visitors is very rare. It is relentless, which is a different problem.
How to say no
The thing that works is not engaging at all.
La shukran — no thank you — said pleasantly, without stopping, without eye contact, and without explaining. Then keep walking.
What does not work: apologising, giving a reason, negotiating a price you have no intention of paying, or getting angry. Any response at all is read as the opening of a conversation, and a long explanation is read as weakness.
This feels rude to visitors from cultures where ignoring someone is impolite. It is the local norm and nobody takes offence — the same people are refused a hundred times a day.
Practical defences
Buy tickets only at official windows. Every monument has one and it is signed.
Agree prices before, not after — taxis, feluccas, camels, guides, anything.
Use Uber or Careem instead of taxis, which removes the fare argument entirely.
Hire a guide properly if you want one, through your hotel or a licensed agency, rather than accepting one at a gate. A good Egyptologist guide transforms a site visit and costs less than you would expect.
Carry small notes.
The other side of it
Having said all that: Egyptians are, as a rule, extraordinarily hospitable, and a great many of the approaches are exactly what they appear to be — curiosity, or an offer of help, with nothing behind it.
Away from the four or five heavily touristed sites, in Downtown, in a neighbourhood ahwa, on the metro, at a koshary counter, the hassle largely disappears and what is left is one of the friendliest cities anywhere.
The trick is to be firm in the places that require it and open everywhere else.
Women travellers
This needs saying directly rather than being left out.
Street harassment in Cairo is well documented — verbal comment, following, and occasionally worse — and it is a problem Egyptian women have campaigned about for years. Foreign women should expect a level of unwanted attention that is higher than in most European cities.
What tends to help: dressing conservatively, covering shoulders and knees, wearing sunglasses, walking with purpose, not responding at all, and using the women-only metro carriages, which are the first two on every train.
Uber rather than street taxis, particularly at night. Zamalek, Maadi and Downtown are the easiest districts.
None of this makes Cairo unsafe — serious crime against visitors is rare — and a great many women travel here alone without difficulty. It does make it tiring, and being prepared for it is better than being blindsided.
Guides, properly
If the hassle is what you are dreading, a licensed guide removes most of it at a stroke. At Giza and Saqqara in particular, having an Egyptologist with you means nobody approaches you at all, and you learn a great deal more.
Book through your hotel or a licensed agency rather than at the gate. The cost is modest by European standards.