Walk Like an Egyptian...

---

Seriously....

There's an art to walking like an Egyptian. Not like the Bangles, no, that's not it at all. Here it's all about crossing the road. There are lights but they don't always work; there are traffic police but they don't always work either; there are crossings but they are ignored. The art is in crossing a four lane road with six lanes of traffic in it without getting killed. It's definitely an art. Anyway, on with the story!

This whole trip started badly. It really did. So many little things went wrong that I should have expected what came next! First off, our Lonely Planet guide to Europe went walkabout in the cleanup of the house. We don't know where it went either. So we figured we'd pick one up in London on Monday afternoon before we had a drink with the flatmates and stuff. Well, turns out that on top of the tube strike that started on Monday night, there was a signal failure at Acton Town and there was no way we could get into the city at a reasonable hour. So we had to say goodbye to Michael and Laetitia over the phone. Bother. So, fast forward to Terminal 2 at Heathrow and we found a new guide book in W H Smith only to discover that their tills had gone down and they couldn't sell it to us! Should have known. However, we figured we'd be able to find one sooner or later so no great concern.

We flew Swiss to Zurich and on to Cairo and I can safely say that I will never, so long as I live, fly Swiss again. The service was abysmal and the staff so surly that it beggared belief! They forgot Jen's veggie dinner, along with the veggie dinners of the four Brits sitting in front of us. Doesn't sound like much to make me hate Swiss, but there's more. We arrived in Cairo and discovered, to our absolute horror, that our bags were still in Zurich. You just wouldn't read about it. And it wasn't just us either. There were another 30 or so passengers whose bags had been left behind, including a bloke with a two year old, a Nigerian who had an early morning flight on to Lagos and an Egyptian whose bags had been lost going to the UK as well as coming back. He was really good though and shouted a lot at the airport people for us and others! There was a small silver lining. This appears to happen a lot in Cairo. I think Swiss (and Alitalia) manage to cock up their connections in Zurich and Milan respectively so the guys at the airport were pretty well organised about reporting and locating the offending articles.

However, that didn't help us much. So we caught a cab out to the hotel and got our first taste of Egypt. More on that later, for the moment we'll continue the baggage saga. We are staying in a really lovely 1930s hotel in the Midan Ramses that once played host to George Bernard Shaw of all people. Downtown is only a few blocks away and so we wandered until we found some clothing shops, bought a couple of dreadful polyester tops (bad idea!) and some toiletries and retired to wallow in the airconditioning. Day two was the first day of the tour and our travelmates were very sympathetic to our plight, offering all manner of assistance. We went out for our evening tour and came back to the hotel hoping that our stuff had arrived but it wasn't to be. Neither of us was particularly thrilled as we were off to the Pyramids the following day and then off down to Aswan that evening and if our kit hadn't arrived by then, we were a bit stumped on how to deal with 5 days away. Mercifully the Egyptian Baggage Tracing Service (and full props to them for doing a great job) delivered our bags at the slightly rude hour of 4:30 the next morning. They had arrived on the afternoon flight from Zurich, it just took them 14 hours to get them out of the airport! Thus the holiday was saved and I was saved from an impending mental breakdown!

Right, now that I've dispensed with the bad part of the story, I'll get onto the good bits, telling you all about Egypt and our Intrepid tour. First off, my thoughts about Egypt, it's people and that sort of stuff and then what we got up to on the tour and finally a few thoughts about where we go from here, courtesy of our guide on this trip. I read in the Swiss airline magazine that Cairo is one of the biggest booming cities that you didn't know about and one is immediately confronted with this new growth as one sees the enormous new airport that is being built around the old one. It's going to be huge and so much more modern than the current one. The city itself is a mass of construction and skyscrapers that wouldn't look out of place in the west are beginning to dot the skyline. On the other hand, it's still hot, loud, overcrowded, poverty-stricken and filthy. I loved it. Our first really Egyptian experience, and perhaps one of the most enduring memories I'll have of this nation are it's drivers. By all accounts one has to pass a rigorous driving test, but that all appears to be forgotten once one gets on the roads. Egyptians drive in three or four lanes when there should be two, they don't give way to emergency vehicles, they toot instead of indicating and I remain amazed that there were no accidents even on the 20 minute drive to the hotel. According to our guide there are very few accidents on Egyptian roads and even fewer fatalities. It's really beyond belief. Having said that, as I write this missive on the first night of Ramadan, Jen and I have just come back from using the free wi-fi at the local McDonalds (of all places!) and Cairo is dead. There isn't a soul about and crossing roads was actually more dangerous as the drivers cruised around at a ridiculous rate of knots! It's really quite eerie in a city that has been bustling ever since we arrived. We're both quite interested in what it'll be like tomorrow night!

Egyptians are interesting too. For a country that is as overtouristed as Egypt, the people are surprisingly friendly. We got lots of hellos and “where are you froms?” coming from just random people sitting on the side of the road around our hotel. This lulled me somewhat into a false sense of security as it felt like just about everywhere else we went, they weren't being friendly and just wanted to sell me something. Now I know I'm being uncharitable, but it gets real tired real quick. One of the guys in our tour seemed to be the real exception - he was off having coffee with the locals at every opportunity! I'll get into this whole thing a bit later. It's part of visiting Egypt and one simply has to get used to it. We met a lovely old bloke on the street this morning who was very chatty and friendly and we wandered around the city with him for a bit until he directed us into his son's perfume shop and it was all over from there. We've never told so many outrageous lies!

Our hotel is, according to one guidebook, a two star hotel with all the bonuses of a four star or some such nonsense. It still retains a great deal of the charm of a 1930s late-colonial English hotel. It still has a bar and restaurant and even a hairdresser on-site! It's not in the flash part of town where the Hilton and other nobby hotels are. It's near the railway station in a typical Cairene area we've nicknamed the “Street of people who sell parts for air conditioners” and around the corner from the “Street of the Forklifts!” We have an excellent falafel joint round the road which will probably be our local for the next few days - dinner last night set us back an outrageous 75 pence. Of course, Ramadan kicks off tomorrow evening, so that should complicate life a little, but nothing too serious I should think. It's a nice little place to stay, the staff are friendly and helpful aside from one bloke who I don't like since he was the one who kept telling me our bags hadn't arrived.

So, onto the tour. First our guide. Wahid is an Egyptian native and a thoroughly nice bloke. Trained in Egyptology he proved to be not only a great source of information and history, but a really good travelling companion and mate. He has an excellent sense of humour and could extract quantities of the Michael in as good a measure as any of us! Secondly, the group. We all confessed over dinner in Luxor that we had all been concerned about what sort of people might wind up on the tour and we all dreaded the appearance of fat Americans wearing matching pants. Fortunately we were all saved that particular ignominy and in fact gelled really well and enjoyed each other's company. Jen and I were joined by another Kiwi, Sean, an Air New Zealand pilot; Dione, a chemical engineer from Australia in the midst of a NINE MONTH holiday; Michael, a PhD student and Aisling, an Occupational Therapist, both from Dublin; and Tom, a sales manager, and Gini, a psychologist, from Arizona. Sean, Gini and Tom were all in their 50s and the rest of us were in our mid-20s. Of course the older trio put the rest of us to shame fitness wise. Tom and Gini were especially lucky as they acclimated so much more quickly than the rest of us - temperatures in the mid-30s were nothing for them. Admittedly, when it hit 42 at Karnak, that knocked us all for six.

Okay, day one. We met in the hotel lobby for a little meeting where we were introduced to Wahid, Sharif (Intrepid's man in Cairo) and the rest of the group before we went off for a tour of Islamic Cairo. We were taken for lunch at a popular little joint in downtown Cairo where we feasted on shwarmya and fries. I kid you not. Fries here are so common that it's not a western barbarian thing to order them! Wahid was rather partial to a sandwich of tahini, baladi salad and fries. It's good too. Shwarmya is kind of like what you get in a Turkish kebab back home, just without being wrapped up in anything. It's very tasty. Jen had fool (sometimes spelt foul, but pronounced fool) and beans and frankly we all left feeling very well fed. In fact, the food here has been outstanding. It has knocked most of us a bit digestion wise, Tom suffered quite badly and he and Michael got hours of entertainment discussing their bowel movements! That said, Wahid took us for koshary when we were at the Pyramids and we'll definitely cook it up for you all when we get home. It's great stuff - pasta, rice, fried onion, chick peas, a spicy tomato sauce with a dash of garlicky vinegar on top. The salads, tahini and fresh pitta bread have been wonderful.

We strolled up the road in the heat and sun to the Al Azhar mosque. It's the largest mosque in Cairo and was built by the Fatimids after they invaded and conquered Egypt in the 10th century. It was built as a symbol, a gift to the city and a location to teach their version of Islam. It was an interesting structure, particularly the interior. If you have a look at the photo it looks very like the sort of structure one sees in Spain - most of our group commented on this. It makes sense really, as the Fatimids came from Morocco and were part of the same Muslim group that delivered the Moors to the Iberian Peninsula. Wahid took the opportunity to give us a rough guide to the basic tenets of Islam, the form of prayers and the significance of the symbology that was all over the mosque. The chuckle for the afternoon was that Jen and Dione were already dressed in pants and long sleeves and both had scarves to wear. Gini and Aisling on the other hand had to don these full on polyester dresses (for want of a better word) that went over the head and were zipped up to the chin. Sadly, I don't think I have a decent picture!

Wahid took us through the local market next to Al Azhar, just to get a rough idea of how the regular Egyptians go about their daily lives and it was quite an enlightening experience. The sheer variety of foodstuffs was incredible - the fruit, nuts and especially the livestock reminded me very much of markets I've been to in China! At this point, our camera gave up the ghost (adding to the stress!) but we managed a couple of pictures. I've included my favourite one - that little lorry was having a 'mare of a time trying to get through the narrow streets. We walked out to the old Cairo city walls and admired the thousand year old iron gates and one of the many public wells that used to adorn the city.

Back through the markets and just across the road, next to the Al Hussein mosque sits Khan al-Khalili - the tourist bazaar. It was here that we learned one of the enduring phrases from this trip. The hawkers and touts would simply come up and ask you “how can I take your money?” The conversations went something like this:
Tout: “Here, you have a look, 5 Egyptian Pounds!” (The inclusion of Egyptian is important. If they just say pounds, they mean Sterling!)
Me: “La Shokran” (That's No Thank You in Arabic.)
Tout: “Then how can I take your money?”
Me: “Exactly!”

That went slightly better than another conversation I had later in which a guy rattled off a spiel at me and I replied with “No parlo Inglese!” at which point I got the same spiel in Italian. They're sharp, I'll give them that! The market was mostly a learning experience for all of us. Wahid suggested that if we really wanted to shop, it was much easier and cheaper to do it in Luxor before we came back - it saved carrying stuff all the way to the bottom end of Egypt and back. It was nice to have a look around, but I must confess to not wanting to buy anything at all. Maybe it's because I'm too cynical, maybe I'm too cheap or maybe I was just getting annoyed with people calling me “hey you.” I know I'll answer to it occasionally, but geez!

Finally, that evening we went to see a Sufi dancing performance. It was really rather good. The music was fantastic - a drum combo led by a great performer with little finger cymbals, a group that played those horn/flute things that snake charmers are always depicted with and a couple of singers who had a really interesting sound. Arabic doesn't lend itself to particularly melodic music, but it works beautifully with a good beats and drawn out vocals. The dancers were simply beyond belief. Can you imagine being able to spin around, on the spot, for 45 minutes without falling over? I think perhaps I was even more amazed when he stopped and didn't even stagger. Incredible. It was quite hard to sit thorough as we were both still pretty stressed about our kit and the theatre was so so hot. Spotlights in 30 degree heat are wholly unreasonable.

The next day, finally in clean clothes, we were off to visit the Pyramids. I'm not going to bore you with one of my long winded historical lectures like I usually do. Suffice to say that they're around 4000 years old and we were all left wondering that while the Egyptians were mastering geometry and building these things, what was going on in the rest of the world. Not a whole lot! I think, like many modern tourists, we were a little surprised to see the Pyramids towering over the rapidly encroaching Cairene suburbs. It wasn't so long ago that these monuments existed in the quiet splendour of the desert but now they just look down over the tenements of outer Cairo. Anyway.....they really are amazing. They are so much bigger and more impressive than I ever imagined. To give you a rough idea, Napoleon calculated that if he took all the blocks from the Great Pyramid, he could build a wall round France that was three feet high. That's how big it is. Honestly, they're really very hard to describe. We were able to go down into one of the small ones for free and so we all attempted it but both Dione and I didn't get far down the shaft - it was much too small and too much hot for both of us but Jen made it and she and the others said that for the most part there wasn't really a great deal to see. Hieroglyphs and tomb paintings didn't exist at that point in Egyptian history.

Next stop was the panorama point to take that photo of the three pyramids that is in every publication everywhere. I've included the one that Michael took of Jen and I instead of the nice panoramic one, just to prove we were there! Check out Cairo in the background. Finally, we cruised down the hill to see the almighty Sphinx. It really is as cool as it looks in pictures and despite the tourist police busily beating the hawkers, it's hard not to enjoy the sight of the great beast set against the the biggest of the pyramids.

A quick warning if you're ever there. If one of the tourist police offers to let you up close to the Great Pyramid to get a good look at it and take some pictures, politely decline. It's just yet another scam. One doesn't expect that from the tourist police and in some respects I was a little disappointed. Not surprised mind you, given that we were being hit up all the time for stuff. Zahi Hawass, the head of the Antiquities Department, is doing his best to keep the touts away but in Egypt, it's just the way I think. Some of it is pretty funny though - Jen and I were wandering back from the furthest pyramid and this young kid was trying to get us to buy postcards. He was doing okay until he suggested that I looked like an Egyptian. It's a common enough line, but to a white, freckled, red head...that was never going to work!

The afternoon involved a trip round the Egyptian museum. Now I will confess to being a little disappointed in the state of the museum. Like so much in Egypt, it's been run into the ground by the thousands of tourists that flock through it every day. It's not climate controlled and the heat and humidity can't be good for the artefacts. It's really in desperate need of a spruce up and a jolly good clean, although I can't see that happening any time soon. Nevertheless, it does of course house some, if not all, the great ancient Egyptian relics. The Louvre and the British Museum have the rest! The two most important that Wahid showed us in the museum were the Narmer Palette, depicting the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt by Narmer (or Menes) around 3100 BC and the hoard from the tomb of Tut-ankh-amun. Tut's gold is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen and the sheer scale of the treasure assembled for a boy who ruled a mere nine years beggars belief. One can only wonder about what would have been in the tombs of great pharoahs like Ramesses II, Amenhotep III or Thutmosis III. His sarcophagus was like the most enormous Russian doll and I really enjoyed being able to look closely at the chariots, seeing how they were built and how they worked. The pectorals and bracelets were beautifully crafted but by far and away the highlight was that mask. You know, that mask. 11 kilograms of solid gold, crafted with a care and skill that I simply cannot describe. Until you've seen it in person, you don't realise how amazing it is. I think the bit that Jen and I most enjoyed finding was a small room with four colossi of Akhenaten, the heretic king. These statues represent a huge divergence from more traditional pharaonic art, depicting Akhenaten as having a pot belly, a pointy nose and huge lips - leading to a myriad of theories about whether this was inspired by his physical condition, his gender or whether he simply didn't like the stylised art of his predecessors. After a quick trip back to the hotel for a beer and a shower, we drove out to Giza station to take the train 900 kilometres south to Aswan.

The sleeper train from Cairo was really really nice. None of us were sure what to expect but the train was clean, comfortable and just plain nice. The food wasn't that crash hot, but no worse that what we got on Swissair! We all slept very well, although Tom, at 6 foot 5, wasn't the most comfortable. We arrived on time in Aswan and I must confess that while I thought Cairo was dirty, Aswan was a wholly new and interesting level of filthy and the local Works bureau were digging up the road outside our hotel. Suffice to say that none of us were too pleased to have the diggers going at 11 o'clock that night.

Anyway, back to Aswan. After a quick shower and change, we headed off in our van to see some of the sights of Aswan. Just up the road from the hotel we visited the Unfinished Obelisk. Like most places in Egypt, there was no text to tell you anything about it, but Wahid came to the rescue with a fascinating lecture about ancient Egyptian methods of stone cutting and shaping. The remnants of these methods are all clearly visible across the granite surfaces of the quarry - you can still see the holes where sycamore wedges were driven in and soaked to split the stone. The obelisk itself is still mostly part of the mountain. Had it ever been extracted, it would have been the largest one ever built, standing a whopping 42 metres tall. However, half way to completion, it split and since obelisks must be a single piece of stone, it was abandoned.

From there we cruised south into the desert towards the Sudan to see the great marvel of Egyptian engineering - the Aswan High Dam. Honestly, it's not so much high (not like Hoover Dam) but still hugely impressive and Lake Nasser is beautiful. It looks completely out of place in the deserts of upper Egypt. The dam provides all of Egypt's electricity and they are even able to export energy to Libya and Jordan! The 12 turbines process about 350 cumecs each, which is equivalent to the Hutt with a fair whack of water in it, and the lake itself contains 169,000 million cubic metres of water. That's quite a lot. The lake itself is about 500 kilometres long and runs well into the north of the Sudan. By damming the river, the Egyptians have ensured that the Nile will never flood like it did back in the day, but also they have been able to create an entire fishing industry based on Lake Nasser. The random pointy structure in the photo here is a monument built by the Egyptians in recognition of the help they received from the Russians building the dam and the lake and contains a great portrait of Gamel Abdul Nasser, who was in charge when it was built and Anwar Sadat, who was in charge when it became fully functional.

Our final stop for the morning was the temple of Isis at Philae. This was one of the most important temples to be rescued after the creation of Lake Nasser. Philae is largely not Egyptian and aside from some late period bits, notably added by Nectanebo (one of the Saitic Pharoahs) it was mostly built by the Ptolemies and the Romans. Both Trajan and Hadrian built extensions to the temple. It was used to celebrate the rites of Isis until the late Roman period, when the temple was taken over by Copts, who busily defaced most of the sculptures and chiselled crosses into the walls. Philae is also a fascinating source for graffiti. On one door jamb you can read B Mure Stultus Est or “B Mure is stupid” along with snide comments from Napoleon's soldiers after they defeated the Mamelukes nearby in 1799.

We returned to the hotel to wallow in the air conditioning for a bit before we wandered down to the waterfront to meat a bloke called JJ who was taking us out on the river for a motorboat tour of Elephantine Island. JJ is a member of the most famous Nubian river family in Egypt - the Jamaica Family. They are well known amongst the tourists in Aswan as they have been taking people up and down this part of the river for years and done very nicely out of it thank you very much. The Rough Guide doesn't have anything nice to say about them, but we all really enjoyed the afternoon out. We were guided by Mr Habibi, chief of the local Nubians on the island and a very well read and erudite old gentleman. He told us all about the history of the Nubians on the island as well as that of the Egpytians and the third Aga Khan, who is buried atop the hills above Aswan. Around the island one can see a Roman nilometer as well as the cartouches of Psamtik I, one of the Saitic pharoahs of the late Egyptian period. It was a very pleasant little cruise, the food was fantastic and Jen had the dubious pleasure of leaping fully clothed into the Nile to go swimming

After Mr Habibi's guided tour of the lands around Elephantine we were deposited in one of the Nubian villages to take a camel ride through the desert to see the Monastery of Saint Simeon, famous as it's monks used to tie themselves up to the wall so they wouldn't fall asleep while they prayed. It's a stunning site out there in the desert, sadly we weren't able to get close. Now to be quite honest, I loathe camels. My record with being spat at by the beasts is fairly consistent and I expected this time to be no different. How wrong I was! This camel instead simply tried to chuck me off by standing up when I was barely in the saddle. At that point, I had to borrow from Terry Pratchett's book “Pyramids” and christened the inconsiderate beast You Bastard. It was a most appropriate name as it wouldn't do anything I told it to and it's ability to ignore both me and my attendant led to the most famous quote of the entire trip - Michael the Irishman shouting, as my camel voided itself all over his camels toes, “For God's Sake Alex, control your camel!” What a hoot. You can see Jen's camel Ferrari (which it wasn't!) in the photo here - You Bastard wouldn't even deign to look at the camera!

Day four meant a really really early start. We were outside the hotel at four am (and being accosted by taxi drivers, even then!) to pick up our ride to Abu Simbel. We had to go early as it's a three hour drive down to the far end of Lake Nasser where the temple was reassembled. We waited in the middle of Aswan while all the vans and coaches met for the convoy to the temple and were accosted by the single most annoying person ever. Tom managed to pick up a mad bloke from Northern Ireland who stuck his head in our van and preceded to insult the nationalities of everyone inside. He told us he was on his cruise by himself to meet people. We didn't think he was likely to meet with much success. Anyway, if one wants to go to Abu Simbel one must go by convoy with all the other vehicles. The army provides soldiers to ride along in the larger coaches just in case. The Rough Guide to Egypt insinuates that this is because the enormous force of tourist police and soldiers has stuff all to do otherwise. Whether or not that's the case remains to be seen but frankly if we were going to be attacked by terrorists then the convoy wasn't going to save us as all the vehicles travelled at their own pace, we didn't have any soldiers anywhere near us and frankly, what's the point of a convoy that leaves at the same time every day and drives the same route to the same destination? It's not really going to fool anyone! This is perhaps one of the mysteries of modern Egypt. I think they still fear a repeat of the shootings at Deir el-Bahri in 1997 that halted the tourist industry for six months and left it crippled for a couple of years afterwards. Jen suggested that it was a case of being seen to do something. She's probably right.

Abu Simbel was one of the things I most wanted to see in Egypt and it was worth the drive. We were only able to spend an hour and a half there before we had to join the convoy (!) for the drive back but even at 7.30 am when we arrived the temperature had crept well past 30 and any more than 90 minutes in that heat would have been too much! The temples were built by Ramesses II (I prefer this spelling to Ramses. Just me!) after a campaign in Nubia to remind the Nubians who lived further south towards the Sudan that he was a god and should they invade again, they would have to travel past the temple and be reminded that they would be opposed by a god. It's a magnificent temple and so much care was made putting it back together that one would hardly know it was moved. The great statues of the great man are really a site to behold and the sheer scale of the undertaking really amazed me. It was a real buzz to see such a magnificent structure in the flesh, as it were.

Sadly, there are no pictures of the inside, but I can tell you that the paintings were amazing and still retained so much of the colour. Bear in mind that the temple was built about 1270 BC, so they've survived remarkably well. For the most part it was Ramesses smiting his enemies and making offers to the gods - particularly Horus and Amun-Re. Wahid had impressed upon us at the Egyptian museum that we should be able to look at these paintings and offer some kind of sensible interpretation. We got as far as Ramesses offering lawnmowers and his record collection to the gods. Sadly, like many Egyptian sites, Wahid was unable to enter and there was no information provided onsite. This remains one of the chief disappointments of many of the sites here. Now I know a little about Ancient Egypt and probably more than anyone else on our tour, but that still didn't help when I was completely stumped. The smaller temple to Nefertari was not as exciting externally, but the interior was probably the most beautiful of all the historical sites of Egypt. Much of the painting was of Nefertari making offerings to Hathor, as well as umpteen portraits of Ramesses doing the same. The man was an egotist and no mistake! Described by Barker and Bodley-Scott as the most overrated Egyptian general ever, he seemed intent on reminding people that he actually was as great as he said. Many of the paintings depict him worshipping himself. Anyway, the paintings in the smaller temple were in even better shape and the ceiling looked like it had been painted yesterday. The two temples really are one of the jewels in the Egyptian tourist crown and despite the cost and hassle of getting there, it's one of those things you simply have to do!

We polished off our stay in Aswan with a drink at the famous Old Cataract Hotel, overlooking Elephantine. We all paid the outrageous LE£85 minimum spend and sat and drank cocktails as the sun went down over the desert hills. The Old Cataract is famous simply for being - it's a terribly colonial Georgian-Moorish edifice that still has a dress code and plebs like us are not permitted on the terrace, well normally anywho. These days you can tip one of the bellhops and they'll take you up to see the room where Agatha Christie wrote Murder on the Nile, regardless of whether anyone is staying there or not! Such is Egypt.

Day five was by far and away the most sedate day of the tour. We ambled out of the hotel mid morning and down to the waterfront where we met Mr JJ and a couple of his crew who took upriver on a felucca. Well, I say upriver, we went about two kilometres up to the river police station who told us it was too windy to sail. So apparently we got them to sign the permit for sailing by telling them that we were just going to sail over to the west bank and wait for the wind to ease before coming back. We sat patiently in the sun till about midday and then floated out into midstream and just drifted down the Nile. We made surprisingly good progress and once we were out of sight of the river police, the sails went up and we were off. These things can really motor when the wind is up. We tacked back and forth across the river for about 30 kilometres, about a quarter of the way to Luxor. It was a really nice way to travel. We just sat around and talked, read and ate for most of the day, just enjoying the peace of being on the river. I should mention the food - Mohammed, our 2-i-C was a most excellent chef and cooked us some fantastic meals. I've really come to love Egyptian tahini salad and baladi salad. Their felafel is better than the Turkish we got at home too. Whether it's as good as actual Turkish remains to be seen!

We spent the night under the stars on the boat and got a nights sleep, although not a great one before crossing the river and leaping in a van for the drive to Luxor. Here we discovered that there was another convoy and we stopped at Kom Ombo City to wait for it to catch up from Aswan. This convoy was much worse as it actually had a police vehicle escort and we were only able to drive as fast as the cops wanted to go. It wasn't the most comfortable trip and we were glad to arrive at the hotel in Luxor just after 11 in the morning. Luxor is much much smaller than Aswan, with a population of around half a million. On the other hand, it's probably the busiest, tourist-wise as the cruise ships that head down to Aswan and back all dock along the Corniche so the tourist parts of town are fair bustling a lot of the time.

We started off our tour in Luxor with a visit to the great temple of Amun at Karnak. Karnak temple is probably the single most magnificent monument in all of Egypt as it was the premier site of worship for most of the New Kingdom, Libyan and Saitic pharoahs and all made additions to it during their reigns. As a result, it's a positively enormous structure! I really liked the Avenue of the Sphinxes alongside the entrance and couldn't help but be impressed by the Hypostyle Hall, at the centre of the temple. The hall contains 122 columns around 80 feet high and is simply breathtaking. Much of the paint and colour still remains on the surfaces at Karnak and one is really left wondering how magnificent it must have looked when it was still new and shiny! Wahid gave us an excellent tour but we really struggled to appreciate the parts of the temple that weren't in the shade as it hit a whopping 42 degrees in Luxor that afternoon. We spent a couple of hours ambling through the precincts and had no choice but to retire to the rooftop terrace at the hotel for a couple of beers in the early evening and we were all far too hot to do anything else!

The following day we were up early to drive out into the Western Desert to visit the Valley of the Kings. This is probably the most well developed of all the tourist sites in Egypt. Karnak will soon also have more modern entrance facilities but for the moment, the valley is it. The centrepiece of the little visitors centre is a scale resin model of the valley showing where all the tombs were cut into the rock, how big they are and how far they stretch. The valley itself was home to pharoahs of the 17th, 18th and 19th dynasties and you'd certainly be familiar with a large number of them! The tombs are opened on a rotational basis to try and keep the amount of damage done by hot sweaty tourists to a minimum. One is allowed to see three tombs on the entrance ticket and so we chose to see Ramesses I, Thutmosis III and Ramesses IV. The two Ramesses were both reasonably small, just a single corridor and burial chamber but Ramesses IV had some vibrant tomb paintings and a ridiculously large sarcophagus as well as some entertaining Coptic graffiti and Ramesses I is much more finely detailed and carefully painted. Thutmosis III was the best one we saw - his tomb contains the entire Book of the Dead, painted in stick figures - he died before it could be completed. It went deep underground and was astonishingly hot but well worth it. The ceiling and borders in the tomb were exquisitely painted. Sadly, the tomb of Seti I, the best in the valley, is still off limits to tourists due to the amount of damage it's already suffered/

While out in the desert we also stopped at Habu Temple, just north of the Valley of the Kings. Built by Ramesses III, it's a really interesting little site and I think we probably learned more about temple life here than anywhere. It's chief point of interest is that on one of the outer walls, the priests recorded everything that was given and sacrificed to the gods within the temple and the volumes are quite staggering! The temple itself was based on the Migdol Fortress and bears more resemblance to that fortress than to more conventional Egyptian temples. It also contains a small palace for the Pharoah himself, something otherwise unknown in Egyptian temple precincts. The toilet was the subject of much investigation by Tom and Michael! The paintings and carvings in the temple are also largely intact and we were able to amass a nice collection of photos of the Egyptian deities. It's an great temple and it comes highly recommended.

Finally that afternoon we went off and did a bit of shopping. Perfume, papyrus and silver were the order of the day. Luxor was described by the Lonely Planet as the capital of hassle. It's true. If you ever come here (and you should!) be prepared for it. We were constantly being asked if we wanted a carriage ride or a taxi or the best one ever - when we were walking to the tourist bazaar these shifty looking young men would amble up and tell you that that market was closed and that they would take you to a “special” market where you could buy anything you wanted for cheap. Well this is, of course, a load of absolute nonsense. They're quite funny though, having only learned a simple script in English and are completely confounded when, for example, I told them that I could see the bazaar was open or when Tom, on being told this for the second day in a row, uttered the immortal “if it's closed again, how do these people expect to make any money?!” The result is always a return to the beginning of the script and starting the whole thing again. Having said all that, the shopping in Luxor is excellent and probably better than anywhere else in Egypt. We bought a couple of papyrus prints for next to nothing, the non-long term travellers all picked up some perfumes and oils and some really interesting cartouche-based jewellery. The bonus with travelling on the tour is that we went to some places where we weren't hassled to buy anything. Jen and I noted that we didn't want to take perfume as we couldn't guarantee it'd get home in one piece and they were totally okay with that!

I guess I'll leave the tour with the final nickname that Michael the Irishman had been given by Tom - a bikini-wearing, potato-eating, constipated Irishman bellydancing on a camel. Don't ask because I cannot for the life of me remember how that started! 😊 Suffice to say that we had a really good time and aside from a few little things that were a bit uncomfortable, we were both happy to have been and seen what we've seen and done what we've done. It's amazing to think that we're already more than a week away. This really is going to go so fast it won't even be funny. So now we're in Cairo for a couple of days before we kick off tour number two. Jen seems to have developed a cold (work that one out!) and I think the Egyptian food is disagreeing with me a little! We're waiting to see how things develop between Israel and Syria as the Israelis are making mischief and they'll be getting a very grumpy letter if they ruin our holiday. We'll see though. I think if they really wanted to start a war they would have.

Coming up in my next edition will be Nuweiba, where we spend two days on the Red Sea just enjoying the serenity and the snorkelling, the great rock city at Petra and the best castle ever at Krak des Chevalliers. In the meantime if you feel inclined, drop me a line on the old email. It's always nice to be able to sit down and just read things from home. I promise that if you write, I will answer. It might take a couple of days, but I will. Hope you all enjoyed the photos. There are lots more! In the meantime, I'll return to my audio Egyptology lectures that I got from Wahid before Jen and I step out for felafel again and leave you all to your jealousy.

Expect the next update in about three weeks from Istanbul!
Talk then,
Al and Jen

---

Photos

el-Gomhurriya Street
Cairene Traffic!

Our local mosque
Pretty!

Crossing the Road
Cairene style...!

Al Azhar Mosque
Quite Moorish right?

The Local Market
More mad Egyptian driving!

The Pyramid of Kephren
Big. Very big.

All the Pyramids
SEE! We were there!

The Sphinx
Set against the Great Pyramid. Love it!

A Memento from the Egyptian Museum
No cameras inside. Bugger.

The Sleeper Train
Looky comfy enough right?

The Unfinished Obelisk
Sorry for the mental angles!

Kalabsha Temple
Rescued from Lake Nasser, it now stands just behind the dam.

Everyone!
Sean, Dione, Gini, Tom, Aisling, Michael, Jen and me.

The Pointy Thing
Egypt and Russia! What a combo!

Philae Temple
from atop Lake Nasser.

The Philae Facade
The large stela at the bottom was placed by Nectanebo from the 29th (or second to last!) Dynasty.

Jen and a couple of crocs
Only the market guy thought the one on the head was funny. His tip reflected that....

The Tomb of the Aga Khan
This was about as close as we could get!

Camels
That's Jen and Ferrari and me and You Bastard. Oh the hijinks!

Abu Simbel
Just magnificent. What can I say?

Us at Abu Simbel
Gini, Dione, Tom, Aisling, Michael and me. Jen took the pictures!

Abu Simbel again
This is the smaller temple and the larger crowd!

The Felucca
Cute isn't it!

Avenue of the Sphinxes at Karnak
Amun Sphinxes and no mistake!

The Lotus Column
The only one of 8 still standing!

Ramesses II at Karnak
Cheeky. This used to be Amenhotep III until Ramesses appropriated it!

Obelisk of Hatshepsut
Her son, Thutmosis III walled this up after she died so no-one could see it!

Jen and I at Karnak
42 degrees people. 42 degrees!

Valley of the Kings
Most people were hiding from the sun at this point, and it was only 8am!

Towards the tomb of Thutmosis III
He tried to hide it, albeit without success!

The group at Medinat Habu
Admire the Migdol facade. Go on!

A column from Habu
One of the ones in the best condition that we saw.

Habu Arches
Designed to look like a pyramid on its side. Odd.

Egyptian Lunch
On our last day in Luxor. This was Mr Sams house, he's Intrepid's man on the ground there. Left side: Michael, Aisling, Jen and Dione. Right side: Sean, Tom, Gini and me.

Comments

[A Hewitt]

Alex Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii Jen Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
Hi guys Fran kindly passed on your blog link to me and its most interesting reading - even if I did skip a few paras (sneaking internet usage at work). Sounds like you guys are having an aboslutelty AMAZING time. Looking forward to updates of Israel and Turkey. Take care and travel safely Michelle (Smellie) :o)