Public Security and Safety in Egypt
Public Security and Safety in Egypt There is a high level of security in Egypt, due to past terrorist attacks at tourist sites, so you can expect a heavy police presence. We saw police at major tourist attractions, road checkpoints, intersections, and around important institutions and buildings. It was common for the police to be holding big guns while on patrol. While this would definitely be unusual to see at home in Canada, it’s normal in Egypt.
Hotels also have strong security, especially in Cairo. Most of the hotels we stayed at had metal detectors we had to walk through at the entrance and some had x-ray screeners for bags. Our hotel in Cairo even checked all vehicles with a bomb-sniffing dog and looked under the van with a mirror.
Major tourist attractions had airport-like security with metal detectors and x-ray machines for bags. At the Pyramids of Giza, any luggage inside a vehicle must be brought in and passed through the x-ray machine before you can visit the site. At some attractions, a mirror was used to look under the vehicles
Egypt has designated tourist police whose job is to protect people visiting Egypt. They are easily recognizable by the big badge on their shoulders that says “Tourism Police”. We saw them stationed at popular tourist attractions throughout the country.
There are so many police and military checkpoints on highways in Egypt.
They would ask our driver and guide how many tourists were in the vehicle, what nationality we were, where we were going, and sometimes what hotel we were staying at. They would write this information down and then call our guide later in the day to check if everything was okay and see if we arrived safely.
Our guide told us that if he didn’t answer the phone or if we didn’t make it to the next checkpoint, the police would come looking for us.
To travel certain roads and visit some destinations, you have to get special permission from the police or military. We were very glad we had a tour guide to arrange all this because we wouldn’t have known what roads/places needed a permit and how to get it. Some roads have other safety rules, like only being open at certain hours so there are vehicles travelling together
(this was the case for the road to Abu Simbel). When traveling in Egypt, we noticed that coach tours had a private security guard with them. Our guide said that security is mandatory for groups larger than 5 or 6 people and whether or not you get a security guard depends on your nationality.
The heavy police presence was surprising at first, especially because powerful weapons were on display, but we quickly got used to it. Ultimately, this and other security measures, made us feel safe while visiting Egypt.
