Lessons From The Road With Ashraf Masoud

A finalist at last year’s Wanderlust World Guide Awards, Ashraf Masoud explains why a guide’s work is never done in Egypt – at least not when they keep finding new wonders…

- Ashraf Masoud

My mother is illiterate. She can’t read or write. But ever since I was a child in Egypt, she told me that language is the key to learning about other cultures. She made me study, and every day she’d say: “May god put you to use for other people.” That has always been her prayer for me. Then, when I was old enough to go on school trips and saw guides taking guests around for the first time, and what they did for them, I knew I’d found my calling.

Helping people is part of my nature. Even if it’s simple things, like providing guests with coins to pay the bathroom attendant for toilet paper, I like to help. But it can be hard. One couple I guided were in the middle of getting a divorce and I found myself stuck between them – but I heard they’d stayed together in the end.