Cairo has a second city that most visitors never think about, a long ribbon of tombs on the southern flank of the old town known as the Qarafa, or City of the Dead. Families live in some of the funerary courtyards, there are shops and bakeries between the mausoleums, and in the middle of it all stands the tomb of Imam al-Shafi'i, the scholar who founded one of the four great schools of Sunni law and died in Egypt in 820. The big domed mausoleum you see today was raised in 1211 by the Ayyubid sultan al-Kamil, and the dome carries a bronze boat-shaped ornament on top that you can spot from surprising distances.
Riding here is an exercise in patience rather than pleasure. The streets around the necropolis are narrow, the surface changes without warning, and the traffic follows its own grammar of horns, nudges and eye contact. Speed is irrelevant; awareness is everything. Go early, ideally just after sunrise on a Friday, when the city is quieter and the light comes low and gold across the domes. Midday in summer is brutal, with heat bouncing off limestone and dust in your teeth.
Fuel is no problem, since you are inside a metropolis of many millions, with Giza only a few kilometres to the west and the centre of Cairo not much further. Park where someone you can see is watching the bikes, and ask before wandering into the courtyards, because they are both sacred ground and, for some, a front garden.
From here the rides head south toward the ruins of ancient Memphis, the first capital of a united Egypt, and the pyramid fields of Saqqara and Giza. That is the pleasure of this start: within an hour the tomb-city gives way to canals, palm groves and farmland along the Nile, with the pyramids of different eras standing on the desert edge like a family portrait spanning two thousand years. Carry water, cover your shoulders when entering the shrine, and leave your helmet at the door with someone who looks reliable.