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Published: July 20th 2006
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Sunrise
Yes, we were up in time to see the sunset on the way to the Valley of the Kings. We said fairwell to our Nile boat today and had an early morning off to the Valley of the Kings. We were up early enough to get a piccie of sunrise, so it was quite early and I was not full awake until we got to the place where we met our mode of transportation to the Valley of the Kings - donkeys. Now, I've had a little experience with horses before, but donkeys are in a whole league of their own. There are no such things as stirrups, the reigns were a thin piece of rope that apparently was more for decoration than anything else and 'Ooush' was supposed to mean stop but really had no affect and you ended up saying 'Oooush-sh!t' instead when the donkeys decided to go for a little run. Our tour leader also warned us of the dangers of a donkey-sandwich, so very important rule: do not let your donkey smell another donkey's butt - and that's all I'm going to say on that matter.
My donkey seemed like he was ticked off the entire time with his ears pinned back and as much as we tried to stay to the right of the
Donkeys
James on his wee-donkey with me taking the photo with the camera over and behind my head (was too afraid to turn around and let go of the 'reigns'). road (to avoid the cars and other traffic) my donkey had a mind of his own. I was also a tad worried when another of our group, Steve, kept threatening slap my donkey's butt and watch as it cantered off with me hanging onto it. Thankfully we all got there in one piece, though after an hour my butt was a tad sore. James was still feeling a tad ill, so he really relish the experience either but looked quite amusing as donkeys aren't very tall and he could almost put his feet down and walk along with it.
So, we finally go to the Valley of the Kings and were able to have a wonder into 3 different tombs. We saw the tomb of Merenptah VIII - the son who succeeded Ramses II (the one who built Abu Simbel from the other day) which was great. The friezes on the walls still had colours from thousands of years ago and this tomb still baffles egyptologists and scientists today. The reason is that in the middle of Merenptah's burial chamber is of course his sarcophogus which houses his sarcophogus which is made totally out of red granite and is
Valley of the Kings
Picture of part of the Valley of the Kings - doesn't look too special, but it's what's underneath that counts! massive, but the tomb itself is carved into a limestone hill and the sarcophogus is bigger than entrance into the chamber. They still have no idea how they got it in there after x-raying the whole tomb and finding no cuttings or marks to show that they removed any stone and put it back. Tricky little people weren't they?!
After the first tomb James was still suffering, so he had a lie-down in the shade while I wondered into the tombs of Rameses I and Rameses III. Both had incredibly intricate friezes with bright colours of gods and offerings, and were really quite extensive which surprised me.
We all met back up again after visiting different tombs and then by bus we made our way to Deir El Bahri - the temple of Hatchepsut, the first Queen of Egypt. The place was impressive with fantastic views out across the Nile and the dessert. A lot of the temple had been damaged and the name and pictures of Hatchepsut had been defaced by her evil toad of a son Tuthmosis III, but he could not undo the incredible architecture or sculptures.
From there we made a few minor
Deir El Bahri
Me in front of Deir El Bahri - the temple of Hapchetsut, the first ever Queen of Egypt. stops and then went to the hotel which we would 'camp out' in until we had to leave for our overnight train back to Cairo that night. We had a quick rest and then went out in search of shopping!!
Now, we'd pretty much held off until this point as everyone said the markets in Luxor are pretty much the same as everywhere else, but Luxor is also well known for it's gold and silver. We went to the 'moderately' priced market and the place was pretty dead which was quite surprising. We had been worried about getting hassled a lot so James told the first guy to back off and we were just happy to look for a bit, but he managed to charm us and we made our first purchase from him. Turned out that he and his uncle pretty much owned most of the market, so we just stayed in his little air-conditioned shop drinking free drinks while he sent people out into the heat to find us what we wanted. Turns out bartering wasn't that hard after all and we did quite well I think!!
We sweltered a bit on the walk back to the hotel (about 50 degrees again at 3-4pm) and chilled out before our last dinner with the whole group. Half the group moved onto the Red Sea and the rest of us were off back to Cairo on the train and we did not have high hopes for arriving on time the next day...
Shopping in Luxor and then overnight train back to Cairo - we were prepared for the worst.
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