Blogs from Upper Egypt, Egypt, Africa - page 2

Crocodile and other temples of Egypt -Piprey on the wheels My cousin had mentioned as not to be missed and I was determined to see these magnificent ancient temples. I went the Egyptian tourist board at the Luxor train station to book a private car. After a lovely breakfast of Brinjal (Mesaqa'ah), Ful medames (fava beans with olive oil and cumin), ommlette, red hibiscus cold drink and tea, I was picked up in style by a private car. I asked to see the Esna temple but the tourist agency said that it would be de-tour as it was on the other side of Nile. The countryside was simple with some banyan trees, tall kash grass and cultivated in a narrow strip of land by the river. At every checkpoint, the police checked the tourist permits and ... read more

Day 2 in Luxor, with this morning's first stop being the Temple of Karnak... Construction began in the Middle Kingdom (around 2000-1700 BCE) and continued all the way up to the Ptolemaic Kingdom (305-30 BCE) with most of the buildings dating from the New Kingdom (16th-11th century BCE). The temple is huge and is believed to be the second most visited site in Egypt after the Giza Pyramid complex......... Okay, this has been sitting in Saved since March, historical research holding it up for the most part, and I have since travelled to several other places and things are getting backed up...lol...time to move on... So the condensed version of this is: Karnak is cool, probably my favourite temple visited on the trip...the site itself is a maze of temples, statues, carvings and frescoes, with the ... read more

Early start today, in the van at the tender hour of 4:30am and off to today's destination: Abu Simbel...must say I really had no idea what to expect, it seemed excessive to drive four hours to a site with a two hour hang and then four hours back to Aswan, boy was I wrong! The journey started by crossing over the Old (Low) Aswan Dam, arguably one of the most famous dams in the world...built around the turn of the 20th century by the British, it was designed to provide storage of annual floodwater and increase dry season flows for greater irrigation development in the lower Nile...not much to see in the dark but still cool to say I have seen it... As mentioned the drive took about four hours, and while long it was nice ... read more

After another uneventful drive from Alexandria we were back in Cairo and headed to the train station for the overnight train to Aswan...cool! Was looking forward to this, trains are one of my favourite modes of transportation, an easy and relaxing way to both cover ground and see the countryside...as most of the trip was at night we wouldn't see a whole lot but did have the morning fortunately to catch our first glimpses of the Nile and some greenery after all the desert and sand of the previous couple of days...a good laugh as well, our cabin opened to the one beside us with Bruno and Allan, some funny times...and lo and behold there was my bag waiting for me at the station! With clothing options starting to get a little thin it was a ... read more

Early wakeup, with bags out by 6.30am as we were off to the airport early to catch our flight home. In the morning we flew from Luxor to Cairo. Then there was a wait to change planes and we flew home to Israel. Egypt-Air provided kosher meals on all the flights. Although the final flight was just over an hour long, the airline had obtained full dinner packs for us kosher passengers compared to the simple sandwich served to others. Unfortunately that meant 40 minutes to warm the food, and insufficient time to eat it. Many people including us brought home whatever we could salvage to eat later. Yesterday on the bus everyone had PCR tests for Covid and all results were negative. But today after landing in Israel, a majority of the group tested positive ... read more