Our NIGHT TRAIN from Cairo to Luxor was quiet and uneventful. Apparently, this wasn't always the case, as even now tourists are only allowed to take a limited number of trains through the Nile Valley due to past terrorist activity.
They even fed us, though I have to say that this train food brought institutionalized commuter grub to a new low. Oy.
We were supposed to be arriving in Luxor at around 6 AM, but luckily that estimate was off by three hours. This allowed us to watch towns in the Nile Valley pass by as they woke from their Ramadan celebrations.
In Luxor, our train was met by a representative from the agency - his name was Gomal, but he called himself Friday - and we were taken to the Queen Valley hotel. The hotel was entirely wonderful, with nice beds and a TV. The TV got BBC World, which was a special treat since our TV here in Florence doesn't get any channels in English.
We had six hours to kill until we had to meet in the lobby for our trip to Karnak and Luxor Temples. Husbear took his camera for a quick walk around town to get his bearings and learned that there were even fewer tourists wandering around by themselves in Luxor than there were in Cairo.
He met a cute kid on his walk who was willing to pose for a picture...
on the condition he could borrow Husbear's camera to snap this wonderful photo of his friends.
Luxor is much, much smaller than Cairo, and traditional modes of locomotion were more evident than they were in the capital.
Many of the shops were closed, it being Ramadan and all. Many of the shops had "No Hassle Here!" signs, trying to draw in tourists tired of the hard sell. Usually, the proprietors didn't heed their own signs...
Husbear was in need of a haircut, but unfortunately these guys were closed. (Don't kids do this EVERYWHERE?)
Of course, Husbear soon started missing his lovely wife (who was completely maxed out on BBC World by this time), so he came back to the hotel to gather me.
And to change his bandages! This was the first view I got of the thumb, which luckily appeared to be healing nicely. (Since this, Husbear has had the stitches removed. He still has several weeks of bandages ahead of him, but overall everything is knitting up well.)
After we rebandaged him, sawing through the new bandages with a vegetable knife begged from the bar, we left to get a little lunch before our tour.
We walked through the mostly closed souk (market) on our way to the main road. We were sort of on the lookout for dried hibiscus flowers, because in Egypt they use them to make tea. The best are supposed to be from the southern part of the country, around Luxor and Aswan, and we did find a guy who carried them in his tiny spice market. A little bit of bargaining later, we were richer by one bag of hibiscus flowers (karkade) and a little bag of cardamom pods.
The owner, Ibrahim, absolutely insisted that we come into his shop and sit for a cup of karkade tea. Once we understood what he was getting at, we were only to happy to oblige. While we were sitting, enjoying our tea, Ibrahim took off and returned a moment later with a large sheesha.
He invited Husbear and me to join him in smoking the molasses-soaked tobacco. I'm not a big fan of the harsher traditional sheesha, but I was fortunate enough to have an out, since smoking isn't ladylike in Egypt. Husbear happily joined Ibrahim on the floor.
We had next to no Arabic, and Ibrahim had the same amount of English, but we had a great time.
However, time was running short for us to eat and get back to the hotel, so we extricated ourselves as politely as we could and walked over to the main road to locate some eats.
Husbear spotted a kushari restaurant, so he grabbed a serving to go in a plastic tub, but I was more interested in what this guy was selling on the street in front of the restaurant.
The kofta, on the left, was calling me, so I got a little bit of that in a sandwich with vegetables for, I think, 1 Egyptian pound. Twenty cents.
It was good, but it made me crave a tasty Vietnamese sandwich. Gotta make it to Southest Asia.
We also stopped at another street stand to get a taamiyyah - Egyptian felafel. This kid had a little gadget for forming the patties. He filled a little reservoir at the end, then depressed a small plunger and dropped a chickpea patty into the hot oil.
You have to love this packaging. It's probably this kid's homework assignment.
Back to our hotel we went, now with full bellies. Our group gathered just after 3 - well, more like 3:30 - and the 15 or so of us piled into a couple of large vans for the short trip up the river to the Temple at Karnak, just north of town.
The Temple at Karnak is actually a giant complex that takes up 100 acres. It's sort of a jumble belonging to different pharaohs, and the work stretched out over 1300 YEARS.
The first thing you see upon entering is this long line of ram-headed sphinxes.
Around the ram-headed sphinxes are statues to Ramses the Second, who can be found all over Egypt with one favored sister-wife (or daughter-wife!) after another reaching up to knee-level.
Then, when you keep going, you suddenly find yourself in the midst of an immense forest of columns. I've never felt so short and so insignificant. The columns actually cover an area of 6000 square meters, which is enough to contain both St. Peter's and St. Paul's. Yow. Hard to conceive.
The tops of most of the columns are fashioned like papyrus flowers at various points during their life cycle. Above, closed papyrus buds, and below, open papyrus flowers.
You can even see little bits of color, here and there.
Queen Hatshepsut, whose temple we went to the next day in the Valley of the Kings, had an obelisk and several reliefs here at Karnak, until her nephew came along and tried to remove her from the historical record. (Egyptians at that time apparently weren't all about having a woman in charge.)
Hatshepsut's nephew, Tuthmosis III, covered her obelisk here with a wall and had her cartouches (renderings of her name) chiseled out of the reliefs. The end result is that her obelisk is remarkably preserved and retains some of the original color of the Aswan rose granite.
And, just to show that I'm a culturally insensitive jackass whose lack of understanding of ancient Egyptian culture (though I spent like half of my childhood at Chicago's Oriental Institute) can be directly attributed to Steve Martin's brilliant "King Tut":
Our much-too-short time at Karnak was soon over. The least lovable thing about being part of a tour group; everyone has to leave at the same time.
This tour did offer us the wonderful opportunity to see Luxor Temple at night, though. The Temple of Luxor is basically right smack in the middle of town, and there's actually a mosque sitting on top of a chunk of the ruins. Apparently the townspeople wouldn't let archaeologists tear down the mosque to get to the ancient Egyptian ruins.
The approach, at almost-night, was unforgettably dramatic.
If you've been to Paris, and you're thinking, "Hey - that obelisk looks awfully familiar!", well, that's because its twin is in the Place de la Concorde. Our guide told us that the French were offered the second obelisk as well, but getting the first one back to France was such an unholy pain that they declined the offer. In return, the Egyptians were given that clock at the Citadel that has never worked.
The colossi, like so much that we saw, are of Rameses II.
Being there at night somehow made the temple seem even more alien and inaccessible.
The reliefs in the temple, some of which were left by Alexander the Great, showed up really well under the lighting. This one depicts offerings being made.
It must have taken months to do this raised relief style, which really did and does look a lot nicer than the sunken reliefs. Lasted longer, too.
Here's another example for you:
These are the closed papyrus flower columns. The whole temple was just heart-stopping by night; definitely a highlight. And to think before we went to Egypt, we had no plans to go to Luxor!
A few more ramseses, in case you were feeling like you needed them.
We were running back out of the site, trying to meet up with the rest of our group before they ditched us, when this group of girls came up to me and started speaking animatedly, one of them waving a camera. I figured they wanted me to take a picture of them, so I reached for the camera - the girl gave it up, reluctantly, and I took a picture. As I walked back to hand them their camera, they started tugging at my arms and maneuvering me into their group; they wanted me to be in a picture with them!
I smiled for the picture, then thinking I was done, started to walk away - nothing doing. The girl who was taking the picture wanted to be in it with me, so she rotated in while another girl rotated out. I think I ended up being in five or six of their pictures, and I really have no idea why! Perhaps to show how those strange Anglo-Saxons dress during their leisure time?
But, well, now we have this awesomely strange picture.
And... that was our too-short trip to Luxor and Karnak! Next, the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens. And, I'ma gonna have to get cracking, since auntie arrives on... :gasp: Thursday! She's been packed since August, though, so I think she's ready to be here.
girlie
evry things change now in luxor
you welcome to be friends
iam from luxor and iam tour guide
Posted by: | Monday, 11 February 2008 at 04:15