Visiting Egypt during Ramadan

Visiting Egypt during Ramadan is not a problem to be managed. It is, for a lot of people, the best month to come — the country is decorated, the evenings are extraordinary, and the sites are quieter than at any other time outside high summer. What changes is the shape of the day, and knowing that in advance is the whole difference.

What Ramadan is, briefly

A lunar month in which Muslims fast from first light to sunset — no food, no drink, no cigarettes. It moves roughly eleven days earlier each year against the Western calendar, and the exact start depends on the sighting of the new moon, so dates are announced only days beforehand. We do not print them here for that reason; check close to your travel dates.

The fast ends at sunset with iftar, which is the meal the entire country sits down to at the same minute. Then the streets fill, and stay full until very late.

Al-Muizz Street in the evening

What actually changes for you

• Hotels and tourist restaurants run normally. Breakfast, lunch, the bar, the pool. Nothing about your resort day changes, and nobody expects a visitor to fast.
• Opening hours move. Sites, museums and shops often open earlier and close mid-afternoon, then reopen in the evening. Government offices work short days.
• Afternoons are quiet, evenings are not. The hour before sunset is the stillest the country ever gets — everybody is at home or heading there. Then it reverses completely.
• Traffic just before iftar is dangerous. Genuinely. Drivers who have not eaten or drunk since dawn are hurrying to get home. Be off the road in that hour.
• Some cafés and local restaurants close during the day and open only after sunset.

The etiquette, plainly

You do not have to fast, and nobody will ask you to. What is worth doing:

• Don't eat, drink or smoke while walking down a street in daylight. Not a rule, just courtesy — do it in a café, your hotel, or out of sight. A bottle of water on a hot day is fine; nobody wants a visitor collapsing.
• Dress a little more conservatively in towns than you otherwise would. Resorts and beaches are unchanged.
• Say "Ramadan kareem" — رمضان كريم. It means "generous Ramadan", it is the standard greeting of the month, and saying it as a visitor is received warmly every single time. The reply is Allahu akram.
• Be patient in the last hour before sunset. Somebody who has not drunk water since 4 am and is serving you at 5:50 pm is doing something quite hard.

The courtyard of Al-Azhar Mosque