There's much more to Egypt than temples, pyramids and the Valley of the Kings.

Cairo is Africa's largest and liveliest city, pulsating with 15 million people and still growing. Yet only a few miles from the city centre is a tranquil rural life, little changed from several thousand years ago.

Cairo can be a great culture shock. Mentally prepared for a travel-poster Cairo of Pyramids and the golden mask of Tutankhamun, most first-time visitors are appalled by the noise and confusion of incessant traffic, the unending torrent of humanity, and the decrepit, unglamorous tenements.

Yet, amid the chaos are little havens of tranquillity. Cairo ranks as the greatest religious centre of Africa. A Coptic Christian community has remained undisturbed for over 19 centuries in the locality where tradition claims that Saint Mark wrote his Gospel.

Just north of Coptic Cairo is the Amr Mosque, built in 642 AD during the earliest days of Islam. Another mosque, founded in 972 AD, doubles as the world's oldest university, where students have received a free Islamic education throughout the past thousand years. Cairo continues to flourish today as the leading intellectual centre of the Arab world.

Close by are the Khan el-Khalil Bazaars, filling a huge area where the ordinary folk of Cairo go shopping. Narrow alleys are lined with shops, kiosks and workplaces that sell every imaginable item from clothing and food to furniture and household goods, jewellery, spices and perfume.

Take a cab there, and start wandering. Ever-helpful and highly plausible characters will take you under their wing, even though you insist that you have not the slightest intention of buying carpets, inlaid work, caftans, wooden camels, papyrus or violins with only one string. Courteous salesmen in workshops explain the various craft techniques and are happy for you to take pictures. If you buy anything, even after haggling, you can be confident that your helpful volunteer guide will collect his cut. Otherwise, at the end of the bazaar tour, you'll be happy to console him with the equivalent of an English pound or two.

During this haphazard style of conducted tour, you'll experience all the sights and smells of a vibrant medieval market where donkey-carts and human porters are the only possible form of goods transport.

Pluck up courage and visit the Khan el-Khalil Bazaar area in late evening. By 10pm the shutters go up, chairs are brought out, and the locals smoke hubble-bubble pipes and settle into gossip lubricated with endless glasses of tea or cups of coffee. Itinerant musicians circulate and disabled eggars are grateful for 25-piastre notes which keep them in bread. When it's too late to steer you into shops, people will happily talk with you till midnight, or play international games of backgammon or dominoes. It's a memorable part of the Cairo experience, totally missed by visitors who are reluctant to stir outside their luxury high-rise hotels along the River Nile embankment.

Rural Egypt can be seen through the windows of an air-conditioned tour coach, with a guide pointing out the crops of beans, potatoes, tomatoes, wheat, maize and rice. Camels and sheep graze among the palm trees, and water buffalo, cows and goats wander more or less free-range. Children play in the irrigation canals while women paddle in to wash clothes.

Village houses are built of mud bricks, unchanged in style from a few thousand years ago, when silt from the flooding Nile brought new fertility every year. Here was one of mankind's earliest ventures into the agricultural lifestyle, a settled departure from hunting and gathering.

Today the Nile silt is trapped in Lake Nasser by the High Dam, and farmers must buy fertiliser produced in factories powered by electricity from the High Dam's enormous turbines. An on-going Egyptian debate questions whether the Dam project was of benefit to Egypt or not. Rich shoals of fish have disappeared off the Mediterranean shores that previously were fed by nutrients flowing from the Nile Delta. Meanwhile more areas of desert are being pressed into cultivation with irrigation canals and chemical fertilisers, to provide food for an ever-expanding population.

A bird's-eye view of rural Egypt is offered by the air journey from Cairo to Luxor. The broad Eastern and Western Deserts are separated by an incredibly narrow strip of green cultivation each side of the blue Nile. Almost 60 million people must grow their food and earn their living from that green tadpole of land. Annual rainfall is virtually zero.

For anyone staying in Luxor or Aswan, it's worth hiring a bicycle for a gentle ride along paths between the fields, where camels or donkeys operate age-old waterwheels. The pace of life hasn't changed for several thousand years. An elderly greybeard, with a transistor radio held close to his ear, rides by on a donkey. Bright-eyed laughing children greet you with calls of 'baksheesh', more for the fun of it than any expectation of gain. In village schools, children are taught that begging is not a potential career.

Village houses are often brightly decorated with naive paintings, mostly of local scenes and characters. But a man who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca may record the highlights of his journey with paintings of buses, a ship, tents and minarets.

Go to the street marketplace of Aswan, and there's more delight to the eye as black-robed Nubian women go shopping for fruit and vegetables with a plastic carrier bag balanced on their heads. There is great ethnic variety in this frontier town of ancient Egypt which served as the classic trading gateway to Africa further south. When the High Dam was built, putting riverside settlements under water, thousands of Nubian villagers were relocated into the Aswan area. You can easily recognise their handsome faces, like mahogany woodcarvings.

Across the millennia, the Nile has been Africa's greatest transport route, whether for goods or people, granite obelisks or stone for temple-building. The classic 19th-century Cook's Tours sailed from Cairo to Aswan, with stopovers for temples and tombs en route.

Today there are many dozens of cruise-boats which mainly concentrate on the highlights of Upper Egypt in a range of two-night, four-night and seven-night options. Based principally in Luxor, the boats shuttle back and forth to Aswan or go north for a day to the Denderah complex of temples. A few cruise-boats are now based on Lake Nasser, offering a leisured journey to Abu Simbel as an alternative to a day trip from Aswan by air or by lengthy coach journey across the desert.

With binoculars aboard a Nile cruise-boat there is great pleasure in watching rural Egypt float by, with hundreds of little vignettes of village life. Children stream out of school, cattle cool off along the river bank, camels are laden with produce. There is rich and varied birdlife, especially during spring and autumn when migrants stream back and forth between Europe and East and Central Africa, following the Nile and the Rift Valley.

Low-budget travellers can enjoy the same sights aboard graceful feluccas, kipping overnight in sleeping bags. These traditional sailing boats can also be hired for a few idyllic hours at Luxor or Aswan. Don't let yourself be fobbed off with a motor-launch! If there's no wind, wait patiently for another day.

There's yet another Egypt: the Sinai Peninsula and the Red Sea coast, fringed with beautiful golden beaches and coral reefs that are regarded by scuba divers and snorkellers as the Mecca of the sub-aqua world. The coral-reef waters are of startling clarity, revealing all the rich colours of animal and plant life. There is enchantment even for landlubbers who prefer viewing from a glass-bottom boat.

During recent decades, tourism to Egypt has flourished, especially to Upper Egypt. Recognising the supreme value of such a valuable service industry, the government does everything possible to encourage and protect this source of year-round currency-earning employment.

However, some Muslim Brotherhood terrorist groups have occasionally targeted tourism, aiming to harm the economy. An attack on a German tour bus several years ago led immediately to cancellation of most group tours from Germany. Likewise, Britain's Foreign Office recommended that Egypt should be avoided.

The Egyptian government reacted with a great strengthening of security. Classic sites north of Denderah were declared 'off limits', and tour coaches had to travel in convoy. With slackened demand, cruise boats were tied up three deep along the main embankment at Luxor. In Upper Egypt, so dependent on tourism, nobody had any sympathy for terrorists when they were finally cornered by heavily-armed police.

Since April last year, when Greek tourists were attacked in Cairo - being mistaken for Jews - there have been no further incidents of violence against westerners. The Travel Advice Unit of the Foreign Office now simply counsels visitors to proceed with caution and follow the advice of local authorities.

It's possible this year that river cruising north of Denderah will be resumed. Major British operators are all expecting a renaissance in Nile cruising. Meanwhile, direct charter flights into Luxor are travelling full, thanks to remarkably low package prices at famous international hotels and guaranteed sunshine. Everywhere, a smiling welcome awaits.

Reg Butler contributes regularlyto five regional UK newspapers and has written 19 travel guide books, including one on Egypt published by Settle Pres.

Eygpt's Top Attractions

Cairo

The Pyramids, Sphinx and Solar Boat are the essentials at Giza; and the Tutankhamun galleries at the Egyptian Antiquities Museum on Tahrir Square.

Four Metro stops from Tahrir Square to Mari Girgis station bring you to the Coptic Museum, the heart of Old Cairo which was fortified by the Romans.

The 12th-century Citadel, built by Richard the Lionheart's chivalrous foe, Saladin, offers wide views over Cairo and includes several museums and the 19th-century Mosque of Mohammed Ali, also known as the Marble Mosque. Close to the Citadel walls is the deeply impressive 14th-century Ibn Tulun Mosque, which should feature on any short-list of Islamic sites. In great decorative contrast is the neighbouring Rifai Mosque, burial-place of former royalty.

Two islands in the Nile, Roda and Gezira, offer a calm refuge from the hubbub of Tahrir Square. There are peaceful residential, park and garden areas with palace-style hotels, museums and cultural centres. Best view is from the 600-ft Cairo Tower, with a cafe on the 15th floor and a revolving restaurant on the 14th. For a taste of sumptuous lifestyle, visit the Cairo Marriott Hotel, built around an Arabian Nights' palace originally constructed for Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III.

Art lovers should short-list the Islamic Art Museum on Ahmad Maher Square, containing the world's largest and rarest collection of Muslim art. The Mahmoud Khalil Museum features a remarkably rich collection of Impressionist paintings, including works by Pissarro, Toulouse Lautrec, Monet, Corot, van Gogh and Gauguin. The Egyptian Modern Art Museum, close to the Opera House, shows work by 20th-century Egyptian and foreign artists.

The ancient sites of Memphis and Sakkara, even older than the Giza Pyramids, make a worthwhile half-day side trip, 20 miles south of central Cairo. The Step Pyramid, burial place of King Zoser of the Third Dynasty, dates from 2700 BC.

Most hotels are spread along the East Bank, within easy walking distance or carriage-ride of the Luxor and Karnak Temples, which rate as the greatest monuments of ancient Egypt. The scale and magnificence of these temple complexes is awe-inspiring. The historic and religious significance of every gateway, pillar, statue, obelisk, courtyard and inner temple is brought to colourful life by tour guides.

Visitors can hone their haggling skills in the tourist bazaars that cluster around the Luxor Temple.

Ferries cross the Nile to the West Bank, where donkeys, taxis and tour coaches transport tourists to a selection of the rock-cut tombs of kings, queens, nobles and priests, enriched by the fantastic detail of paintings that illustrate every aspect of life in ancient Egypt. Hieroglyphs give a precise guidebook to the underworld.

Dedicated enthusiasts could spend an entire holiday exploring these monuments. But a single morning's sightseeing tour would just feature some of the highlights: the major temples of Queen Hatshepsut and of Ramses II (the Ramesseum); two or three tombs in the Valley of the Kings - depending on the length of the queues, a choice probably of Ramses III, Seti I, Amenophis II or Ramses IX (Tutankhamun's more modest tomb is often closed) - the Colossi of Memnon, the Valley of the Queens and the Tomb of Ramose.

The 20th-century monuments are the Aswan Dam of 1902, and the High Dam completed in 1971. They have harnessed the flow of the unpredictable Nile, and brought controlled irrigation and electrification to rural Egypt. As engineering achievements they are breathtaking.

The Temple of Philae was a great pilgrimage site, dedicated to the goddess Isis. Threatened with total submersion, a rescue operation sponsored by UNESCO has relocated the Temple onto Agilkia Island between the two dams. The hieroglyphs and carvings are superb. A half-day excursion is usually combined with sightseeing of the dams, and a visit to an ancient stone quarry famed for its Unfinished Obelisk - an enormous monolith, abandoned when it was found to be fractured.

On the West Bank is the modern Mausoleum of the Aga Khan, the 6th-century Coptic Monastery of St Simeon and a group of rock-cut Tombs of the Nobles. Transport between these sites is by donkey or camel.

Easily reached by felucca is Kitchener's Island, dedicated to 16 acres of Botanical Gardens, rated as the finest in Africa and including plants of equatorial origin.

The principal resorts are Sharm el Sheikh on the tip of the Sinai Peninsula, and Hurghada on the Red Sea coast. A few smaller resorts have been established, such as Al Quseir.

For a memorable and contrasting view of the great monuments, attend a Sound and Light performance at the Giza Pyramids, Karnak Temple or at Aswan's Temple of Philae. In the cooler night air, take a sweater!