Using an eSIM in Cairo

What Cairo is like on a phone

Most people arrive in Cairo for the same short list: the pyramids, the museum, then a flight or a boat south along the Nile. The others are working visitors and long-layover travellers who stay two or three nights. Getting around leans heavily on ride apps, because spoken addresses are hard to hand over and the traffic rewrites every route as the day goes on. Across the inner city the line behaves the way a very large capital does — usable almost everywhere — and what actually interrupts a day here is crowds, thick old buildings and roofed lanes rather than the network itself.

À l'atterrissage

International flights come into Terminal 2 or Terminal 3 at Cairo (CAI); they sit apart from each other with a shuttle between, so check the terminal letter on your boarding pass before you stand up. Switch the eSIM line on while the aircraft is still rolling — entry and visa procedures here are the kind of thing that changes from one year to the next, so read the official site before you fly and keep your documents saved on the phone rather than in a browser tab. The airport sits out to the north-east, and the ride into the central districts takes a real chunk of the evening once rush hour is involved. If you order a car in an app, stand at the pickup point the app names and let the driver call you through the app; the line holds the whole way in, though the map will recalculate your route again and again as the traffic shifts.

Où la couverture change

Through the inner city, along the Nile and across the usual hotel districts the line stays usable, and the open ground in front of the Giza pyramids is no different. What changes sharply is the inside of the stone chambers and the underground burial rooms: treat those as no service from the moment you duck through the entrance. The roofed lanes of the old market are a separate problem — data still arrives, but your position on the map slides around enough that following the arrow stops working, so navigate by shop signs and by the old city gates instead. On the desert roads out towards Alexandria or the Fayoum there are genuinely quiet stretches between towns rather than merely slow ones. If the day takes you out of the city, save the offline map area while you are still at the hotel.

What a day here costs in data

A sightseeing day here — maps open, several cars ordered, tickets checked, photos going home — tends to land around 1.5–2GB, noticeably above a city you can walk all day, because the ride app keeps working in the background between stops. Translation is the app people underestimate: signs, menus and a few sentences with a driver add up, and the camera translation mode costs more again than typing a phrase. Pyramid days produce far more photos and clips than an ordinary day does, so if the hotel has Wi-Fi, let the big uploads wait until the evening. Cairo runs several hours behind Bangkok, which is why most people call home early, before leaving the hotel, or late once they are back in the room.

Districts travellers ask about

• Downtown and Tahrir — Old European-style blocks, coffee houses and the museum, with a steady line throughout. The pavements are narrow and the traffic is constant, so step into a doorway before you pull the phone out to check the map.
• Khan el-Khalili and Islamic Cairo — Market lanes that run under roofing for long stretches: data still works, but the dot on the map wanders. Pin the gate you walked in through before you go deeper, and hold the phone with both hands in the press of people the way you would in any big market anywhere.
• Zamalek on Gezira Island — A quieter island neighbourhood of apartment blocks and small restaurants, comfortable to use indoors and along the water. It is a far better place to take an evening video call than anywhere near the markets.
• Giza and the village below the pyramids — The open sand in front of the monuments is fine to use, and the stone interiors are silent the moment you are inside. Agree on a meeting point with your driver or guide before you split up rather than assuming you can call from in there.

Day trips out of the city

• Saqqara, Dahshur and Memphis — A drive out along the edge of the desert where the road and the car parks stay connected, while the descending passages inside the older pyramids have nothing at all. Load tickets and the route map before you leave the city rather than at the gate.
• Alexandria on the Mediterranean — Reachable by train or by car, and the city at the far end is comfortable all along the seafront road. The desert highway between the two has patches where service simply goes, so if you have something booked, save the address and phone number to the device instead of planning to search for them en route.
• The Fayoum and the desert lakes — The further you leave the main road for the lakes and the dune country, the thinner it gets, to the point where planning the day as an offline one is the honest approach. Download the whole area, tell whoever is waiting when you expect to be back, and do not schedule a transfer or an online meeting for that afternoon.