Valley of the Kings

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After a delicious breakfast of pancakes, banana & honey onboard the felucca, it was time to say farewell to our hosts and head off to our next destination.
Luxor, the ancient Egyptian town known as Thebes, holds 22%!o(MISSING)f the worlds monuments including highlights like Karnak Temple, the worlds largest temple complex and Valley of the Kings, tombs of the ancient Kings, Queens and Nobles. En-route to Luxor we stopped off at Edfu Temple for an unscheduled stop. I've already mentioned our delightful British travel companion and today she was at her very best. With the group having decided to only stop at one temple on the way to Luxor, rather than two, she was already in a bad mood. Everything that we don't do always turns out to be a "highlight" and the reason she came to Egypt. Funny that its always sites that were never on the itinerary to begin with! Once we were finished touring the temple and had had our free time, she just disappeared. We needed to stay on track that day with time as it was already 11:30am, with another three hours drive to Luxor and we had plans that afternoon. Turns out she had wandered off to the visitors centre and decided she absolutely must watch the 30 minute film on the restoration of the temple, yet again without a single care as to what the rest of the group wanted. Our tour leader Mohamed told her the group was waiting and she needed to come quickly. She stormed down to where we were all standing and started screaming right up in Mohamed's face, expecting us to back her up. Virginia, an older Canadian lady pointed out that we all were ready to leave and she had yet again kept us waiting. This didn't go down so well and she started ranting to us that we are holding her back by not allowing her to see the film. It's just one thing after the other and it's getting hard to not to show our frustration with her. When on group travel you need to be flexible and what you want is not always going to be what the rest of the group wants. It's all about compromise and keeping the group dynamics working. We enjoyed our time in Luxor, though the touts were particularly relentless and despite the monuments being as incredible as they are, Jess and I are starting to get "templed out". The visit to Valley of the Kings however, was a definite highlight. Being hidden under the shade of the mountainous landscape, the colours on the hieroglyphics are still holding strong and it was our first opportunity to see them in all their glory. Ancient Egyptians were all about the afterlife, not the present. For the ancient rulers, much time and effort went into building their tomb before death and it just reaffirms what I've come to believe - they were really just a self indulgent bunch! Intrepid travel has a responsible travel philosophy and they sponsor local not-for-profit projects to give back to the communities we visit. In Luxor there is a UK run charity called ACE, Animal Care Egypt, which provides care for sick & injured animals as well as education on animal care & sustainability to the locals. ACE was unfortunately closed the day we wanted to go, so instead we visited the SunShine Project, an orphanage which is doing great work for the one hundred children it currently houses. The facilities were very good, far better than I have seen across Asia, Central America and the Caribbean, and we left feeling optimistic about the care and resources available to the kids. We hope our donation of school supplies will help to go along way once the new school year starts in a few weeks. That evening we were scheduled to take another overnight train to Cairo, before transferring to the Mediterranean seaside city of Alexandria. We arrived to the loud & chaotic Luxor train station with 45 minutes to spare. Our previous overnight train from Cairo to Aswan had actually left 10 minutes early, so we wanted to make sure there was plenty of time to spare. Shortly after getting comfy sitting on the dusty train platform floor (note the sarcasm!) a seemingly friendly session of banter turned into a full blown riot on the platform, just metres from where we were standing. Chairs were being thrown, snack carts toppled over, people pushed off the platform onto the tracks and it just continued to get louder, with more and more people getting involved, pushing and punching this way and that. Jess, Dave, Jack and I were quickly ushered into the nearby Station Masters office by some friendly locals where the doors and iron bar windows were promptly locked until the police and army broke it up. Our poor tour leader Mohamed was frantically running up and down the platform looking for us, unaware we were completely safe and sound in the locked office.We were later escorted to the Tourist Police office to where the rest of our group was manned with ten or so Army and Tourist Police officers. A lot of resources are put into protecting tourists and I've felt nothing but safe the entire trip. Even through this, I never felt overly uneasy, just presumed it would break up as quickly as it started. Still waiting patiently in our armed room for the now late train, Mohamed received a call informing us that the train wouldn't be arriving at all as locals in a nearby town had blocked the railway lines in protest on the fuel shortage. There is a major fuel storage currently sweeping across the country and it is causing much frustration and anger. The government claims enough fuel is being produced, but that because the government subsidises the fuel for nationals, it's now being sold on the black market for profit and this is the reason for the shortage. Without the government subsidising the fuel, there is no way locals could afford to pay the actual market rate. We have seen time and time again petrol stations closed, burned down or lines of cars stretching kilometers waiting to get in. The first time we saw such a line was in Aswan, and we could not believe what we were seeing and the terrible affect it is having on everyday life. For instance, a local taxi driver, who needs to work all hours of the day, 7 days a week to make a living, would need to line up every other day, often sitting in line all day and night, sleeping in his car just to get a tank of fuel. I will never again get impatient when there is a line of one or two cars in front of me at BP!!! With no train scheduled to arrive anytime soon, we needed a plan B. After many phone calls it was decided a bus would pick us up from the station and drive us the 12 hours to Cairo. Already being 12:45am, it was going to be a long and uncomfortable nights rest and bus ride. As soon as we got on the road, we were instructed by the Tourist Police we could not travel that night and would need to wait until the morning to leave Luxor. We headed back to the same hotel we had checked out of only hours earlier for 3 hours of sleep before our departure time. An hour into our sleep, there was shouting in the hallway and a knock on our door. The train was now on its way to Luxor and we had 10 minutes to get back to the station. Through the daze of sleepiness, we jumped out of bed, grabbed our packs and ran down the stairs to where our bus was waiting. Of course once at the station the train was yet again delayed and it was another wait until the train finally pulled up at about 3:30am. We quickly jumped onboard and collapsed into our beds for the night. It has been a chaotic and exhausting day but despite all of it, this is the joys of traveling and it makes for one good story!!! X

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