El Mahalla el Kubra

El Mahalla el Kubra marks the very heartlands of the fertile Nile Delta. Around the city's crisscrossing grids of traffic-choked lanes and horn-tooting roundabouts, swathes of irrigated agricultural land sweep out. It's here too, that the powerhouse mills of the Egyptian cotton industry have made their home, with looms clicking and clacking since the first boom days of the 1920s. Most El Mahalla el Kubra tour guides hence proudly lead groups around the town's bustling textile factories and the silk-touting, crochet-heavy souks that are packed with fabrics and clothing to go with them. Visitors can also look to take boat trips along the meanders of the Damietta Branch of the Nile, sailing past rolling fields of berseem and beansprouts and soy beans. This is otherwise after all, a lived-in, workaday city, where locals chatter on the street corners and ochre-colored mosque minarets tower atop the districts.