The Kahn

8/15

The Kahn… is crazy. It is the most intense market area with what seems like millions of different alleyways that lead to the most random people and things. A few newbies and I had the pleasure of getting lost in search of certain parts of the market when we learned a very valuable lesson: the instant you stop looking for something, either someone you meet will take you on a crazy adventure or you will stumble upon it. We stopped in a small little hole in the wall teashop to take a break and see if we couldn’t figure out where we were when we met an Egyptian who taught English at a local school. And wouldn’t you know it, he just had so many things he wanted to show us. We found ourselves following him through a labyrinth of twists and turns that suddenly left us as “his spice man” we were taken even further into the alley of the shop and given a private tutoring session on all the different spices, what to look for when buying things and what not to buy from certain people. It was so cool to just sit there and smell and look at all these spices and get their history and what they are used for in Egyptian cooking. (Turns our new friend was quite the cooking history buff as well) We shown all kinds of spices from real saffron to the stuff others try to pass off as saffron to Egyptian yellow tea to red and green pepper. In all honesty, just looking around was enough for me. I could have wondered around all day just taking pictures. The Kahn is so massive I have a feeling that I could go back every weekend and never see it all. So what started out as a run of the mill trip to discovering the Kahn led us to a new friend and a lesson that I never expected. If there is one thing that I have learned in my short time here, it’s that things usually don’t happen as you plan, and that’s when the best stuff happens!