All in all, we drove about km miles. It was very fun. I will just tell you what we did and how β use your own judgement if you decide to follow in our footsteps. Note: we landed in Terminal 1, and the rental office was in Terminal 3.
During day hours starting at 7 am there is an automatic people mover between the terminals. If you land earlier like we did , take a free shuttle bus β it stops outside on the left, people will show you. We waited for about 20 min. Driving Egyptians drive in a very organic, chaotic way β they overtake on the right, drive on the wrong side of the road, without lights, and rely on beeping instead of indicators. There are also pedestrians jumping out at you at random, tons of speed bumps, donkeys everywhere, trucks with amazing arrays of green and blue lights instead of turn lights, etc.
Yet, the traffic flows, and there are no real jams as such β even in Cairo. You just have to a be an extremely good, confident, experienced driver with a taste for danger like my husband and b drive like they do β and beep like they do. My husband enjoyed the experience a lot especially driving in Cairo β he was laughing all the time, basically. The whole starting and stopping thing in the rural areas is tiring, though. Very quickly we started overtaking on the right, going on the wrong side of the road, and beeping incessantly.
Would I recommend it to everyone? It is definitely dangerous. But if you are really, really good, then there is no reason not to try. Actually, we found Cairo easier than Beirut or Colombo, for example. Just get a collision damage waiver. We did that on several occasions without any issues β because we were never stopped at any checkpoints.
Many road signs are in Arabic only, lots of roads are not marked. However, Google Maps made navigation very easy. The rental company agent did tell me that driving to Sharm el Sheikh would be a problem, though.
