Meet your tour guides

Samia Fouad

Samia Fouad is a journalist who was born and raised in Cairo, attending the Mere de Dieu school as well as the American University in Cairo. She also attended the University of Southern California and Bonn University Germany. She has worked as a news journalist in Arabic TV and Radio for many major organisations, as well as having been head of the English language section of the German Press Agency in Cairo.

Samia is an insider and expert on all things Cairene and Egyptian. It is her insights, contacts and expertise which make Cool Cairo such an amazing and enlightening experience in connecting to the many strands of the culture, a culture that many find hard to penetrate or hardly even suspect exists…She is an amateur painter and has exhibited alongside many top Egyptian artists at the Caravan art exhibition. Her insider contacts in the creative world of Egypt are what led us to design Cool Cairo as a tour.

Robert Twigger

Robert Twigger is a writer, explorer and raconteur who has been sharing his love and interest in Egypt through books, talks and tours since 2005. He was born in the UK and educated at Oxford University where he won the Newdigate poetry prize; former winners include Oscar Wilde and John Ruskin. He then lived for three years in Japan, the subject of his first book Angry White Pyjamas which won the coveted Somerset Maugham award; previous winners include Doris Lessing, John Le Carre and Zadie Smith. After writing several more books he moved to Cairo with his wife Samia. They lived here permanently until 2011 and then on and off until the present day. As well as writing and journalism he has presented documentaries including the National Geographic film Big Snake. He is the author of Red Nile, the bestselling cultural history of Egypt’s River Nile as well as the Egyptian desert exploration book Lost Oasis. In total he has published 15 books translated into 16 languages, Robert has led desert tours and was the first person to walk with camels from Dakhla to Siwa oasis, over the great sand sea, a distance of over 600km. He has written the official Egyptian Tourist Authority guides to Alexandria and the Western Desert. In addition he has taught creative writing at Moniach Mhor writing centre and the Wigtown School of Writing. This experience helped inspire the 1001 Nights tour – writing and living the magic stories of Cairo. There is more about him on wikipedia