Blogs from Egypt, Africa - page 291

We moved to the West Bank of Luxor and have found ourselves a gem of a place called El-Fayrouz. It's a lurid apricot palace with spacious and cool tiled rooms with a fantastic rooftop area and a very pleasant garden outback with seating under the shade of creeping plants and vines. I am sorry now that we stayed on the East Bank for the first 3 nights, although it was convenient for the things we wanted to see on the east bank like the Temple of Luxor and Karnak. I think after the two and the previous ones in Aswan and Cairo, I am just about getting to the 'all templed-out' point and they are all melding into the 'yet- another-Pharaonic-temple' syndrome for me. Rob is still raring to go... The west bank seems to be ... read more

Luxor is where a whole lot of tourists were killed in 1995, but also the famed home of the Valley of the Kings. I did decide to brave the 5.15am donkey ride to this one. To my surprise I was not allergic to these little beasties and have decided that I want one for London. It would be so handy to just tootle around on. Would have to permanently wear a sports bra though. My donkey there I named Mark Berger after an ADHD ex of mine. I got on him and he just took off leaving everyone else behind trying to get a head start. I was a bit worried because I didn’t know where I was going, but turns out it doesn’t matter because they go on auto to the Valley of the Kings ... read more

We arrived in Luxor this afternoon after 3 days and 3 nights on a felucca, sailing between Aswan and just outside Edfu Village. We had a great trip despite my initial misgivings about dealing with a man called Captain Washington and travelling on a single decked boat for 3 days, or more importantly, sleeping, on a barely covered deck with no heating and also no toilet facilities. The Egyptian winter may be mild but it still gets pretty chilly at night ( although the daytime temperatures are perfect - sunny but cool). The felucca is a wide-bottomed, single deck boat with a very large distinctive sail and no canopy. When we get to our moorings for the night, a light cotton sheet is wrapped around 3 sides of the deck and that's about it as far ... read more

Temples and early mornings not really being my thing I decided not to go to Abu Simbel. The Australians on the MS Melody were outraged, and convinced me that it was an absolute must see. So I did the tourist thing and got up at 3.30am to join a convoy through the desert to this monument. For those of you who (like me) have never heard of the Abu Simbel temple it was erected by Ramesses II and is dedicated to himself. However besides being a large monument it’s claim to fame is that when the Nasser damn was built it was going to be submerged, so UNICEF stepped in, chopped it up into little pieces and carted it up the hill thus bringing it into the spotlight this century. The convoy out there was pretty ... read more

After spending whole Sunday in Ras Mohamed, this breathtaking spot with its nutrient rich waters which attract hundreds of thousands of living species to its immensely diverse coral reef, I decided to see the desert as well. The Sinai Peninsula (in Arabic, Shibh Jazirat Sina شبه جزيرة سيناء) is a triangle-shaped peninsula of about 60,000 square kilometers, lying between the Mediterranean Sea (to the north) and Red Sea (to the south). In Arabic, Sinai is written as sena'. Because Sinai looks like as the surface of the moon one theory says that the name Sinai derived from the lunar deity Sin. Early inhabitants, worshipping the Trinity: Sin (Moon), Shamash (Sun) and Ishtar (Venus) named the peninsular after the moon-god Sin. But Bedouins of south Sinai today assert that the name came from the Arabic word for ... read more