In the company of Kings at Luxor

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We were woken fairly early the next morning by the smell of pancakes cooking, which was a nice change from the standard breakfast of bread, cream cheese and fig jam. Our minivan met us on the other side of the river from our camp and we joined the tourist convoy to Luxor. We arrived in time for lunch and then headed off to Karnak temple. The temple is very impressive with many massive decorated columns and a few obelisks (although Ahmed mentioned that of the 60 or so that exist only 6 are in Egypt as the rest were pillaged by various European powers). He also told us an interesting story about an Archaeologist in the early part of last century who thought it would be a great idea to remove the outer dam and let the river flood the temple to “clean” it. Unfortunately what did happen was that the water caused all of the columns to collapse and he spent the rest of his life trying to fix the damage he’d caused - nice work.

After our trip to the temple we went to a papyrus shop where they showed us how it’s made before we checked out all the designs. I think pretty much everyone got something. We got a cool design of the Pharaoh Akhenaton who, during his reign, decided to change just about everything in the culture, from art to religion. Unluckily for him the next Pharaoh, Tutankhamen, just changed everything back. After a trip to a jewellery place (outside of our budget) we stopped off for dinner before heading back for an early night.

The next morning we were up early and off to the Valley of the Kings. We met up with some of the group who went on an early morning balloon ride and then got on our donkeys (Karen’s did not look to happy about it) for a trip up the mountain. It was more comfortable than the camel ride and we got a great view down into the valleys from the top of the mountain. When we arrived we said goodbye to our donkeys and Ahmed gave us some history on the tombs and the artwork inside before we walked down and started exploring. We saw a few tombs, the best of which was Ramses VI which was enormous with amazing art and a huge sarcophagus. Mick also went into King Tutankhamen’s tomb which is right next to Ramses VI and dwarfed by it but has his mummy inside. After the tombs we visited the Medinat Habu temple which had some intricate hieroglyphics and art and Hatshepsut’s temple. Hatshepsut was a queen who ruled while the next Pharaoh was a child and got to like it so she built herself a temple so she could be worshipped like all the other Pharaohs.

By now we were tired and starving. We headed to a local family’s house for a fantastic feast before spending a little time in the local market and getting ready for our overnight train trip. This was not as luxurious as our last one with seats rather than beds and some fairly rank toilets. We arrived in Cairo mid-morning and had a last breakfast together before saying goodbye. We were still exhausted so didn’t do much but met up with some of the guys for dinner that night. On our last day we wandered around a few of the sights in the city before catching a taxi to the airport for our flight home.

Overall Egypt has been a challenging but incredible place and definately worth a visit.

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Photos

The Colossi of Memnon
Over the mountains are the valleys of kings and queens

Scarab at Karnak
Legend has it that if you walk around this 3 times it brings good luck. It didn't work for our tourmate Peter though as he fell off his donkey the very next day!

Mick and his donkey
They got along very well, and it was hard to say goodbye...