We spent a couple of days in Luxor, visiting the Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, the Hatshepsut Temple and a few other places. We met some real characters along the way, including a guide named Aladdin and a hotel proprietor who was a clone of Ben Kingsley in the House of Sand and Fog...
First and foremost, we wanted to escape from the heat of Aswan and Abu Simbel (which we later found out is right on the southern border of Egypt with Sudan). So we took the train north to Luxor... we escaped from 40 degrees celsius (108 Fahrenheit) in Aswan to 41 degrees celsius in Luxor - not quite the relief we expected - from the frying pan into the fire (and this is the cool season)! Apparently, it goes up to 50 degrees celsius (126 Fahrenheit ) in the hot season. Our guide was telling us about a couple who wanted to take advantage of cheaper rates in the summer - the couple came to Luxor in the summer, rented bikes and set out for the West bank of the nile. They came back an hour later completely dehydrated and dazed...
At the train station, the proprietor of the Hotel Fontana insisted on meeting us and escorting us to his hotel. He turned out to be very focused, controlled and deliberate in all his words and actions which was somewhat disturbing - somewhat like Ben Kingsley's character (the Persian major-general) in the film "The House of Sand and Fog". He would say things like "And now you will have your breakfast" instead of "Would you like to have your breakfast now?"...he would also say things like "you will now go visit the Hatshepsut temple and you will have fun." O.K. Yes, Sir!
Apparently, his hotel business was doing really well as he had just repainted the hotel and was adding new floors to it. Almost all residential and commercial buildings in Egypt are unfinished - almost all have construction work being done on the roof to add new rooms. Our guide told us that this is the case because the tax laws in Egypt require owners to pay 40% tax on the cost of finished buildings. Hence, nobody has any incentive to officially finish constructing a building - quite bizarre. We got a room (the only finished room!) on the top floor of his building.
Our guide was another extreme personality altogether. Just like all the other guides we met in North Africa, our guide in Luxor boasted of having done a whole lot more than just being a guide - he boasted of having a carpet-selling empire, exporting to the US and Europe, having multiple wives etc. etc. His name was Aladdin and his manner of speaking English in an Arabic accent was quite comic - he'd say "Excuse me" every 2 seconds and repeat everything he said two or three times. An example: "Excuse me, you see to my left some sugarcane fields, yes, sugarcane- tall plant, now, excuse me, and sweet, excuse me, at least 400 metres away, yes, excuse me, from the road. Excuse me, in 1997 when the terrorists killed the Greek tourists, excuse me, they hid in the sugarcane - tall plant, yes, excuse me, on your left. So the government now makes a rule that sugarcane is not to be nearer than 400 metres from the road, excuse me, you know, excuse me!"
Next morning, we had breakfast downstairs with a couple of Germans and a Canadian. The Germans (a mother and her son) were called away early by the proprietor to get on a tourbus to go to the west bank of the nile.
We set off in another microbus for a 45 minute ride to the west bank of the nile which is where the valleys, tombs etc. are. The extreme and dry heat and limestone rock makes the place ideal for tombs. On the way, we saw a canal - our guide said that all the local farmers dumped their dead animals into this canal because they had nowhere else to dispose of the dead animals - the canal supposedly also had crocodiles and tons of bilharzia worms. Right after that, we saw an overturned tourbus - our guide said that this was the tourbus on which on German friends from the Fontana Hotel had been... he tried to find out over his mobile phone as to what had happened to them.. the police cordon around the tourbus was too tight.. We drove on to the temple of Hatshepsut.
Here's a little overview of what our guide sounded like... Quite funny!
Our guide gave us a mnemonic to remember the name of the temple of Hatshepsut - he said "Excuse me, excuse me, this temple is like hot chicken soup, you know, excuse me, Hat-Shep-Sut can be pronounced like Hot Chicken Soup. remember that, excuse me!" The temple was somewhat destroyed in an earthquake but has been rebuilt and is very impressive. This was the site of the 1997 shooting of 50 Greek tourists by the Muslim Brotherhood. We saw the bullet holes in the walls. It turns out the Hatshepsut was the only female Pharaoh of Egypt - in fact, her face on her statues have beards which she had put to make her look male. It also turns out the Hatshepsut was the step-mother of Tutankhamen who, supposedly, was killed in his sleep by Hatshepsut's husband.
From the Hatshepsut temple, we drove to the valley of the kings which is where over 50 tombs have been found. Tutankhamen's tomb is here but is not very impressive - this is because he was very young when he was killed/died and the Egyptians had a rule that a tomb could only be worked on (excavated, expanded, painted, etc.) while the Pharaoh (for whom that tomb was being built) was alive. Since Tutankhamen died young, his tomb was not very long and had nothing on the wall. Consequently, we went to the tombs of Ramses II, Seti (his father) and others. The longer the reign of a Pharaoh, the longer the tomb.. also, the tombs sometimes take right turns or left turns - this is because there are so many built into the Valley that sometime, while excavating, one tomb would run into another tomb and would have to be diverted elsewhere! Also, most of the tombs were looted immediately after the Pharaoh's mummy was interred there... this was because the looters were mostly the priests and others who officiated in the burial ceremony and therefore knew where the tomb was. The photo above shows the entrance to one of the tombs and also shows our guide Alladin pontificating in front of the tour group.
We stopped off at a bunch of shops which were selling pots/figures made of alabaster stone. The shops were all named after celebrities such as the "Princess Diana Alabaster Shop" etc. In addition, the pots, they sell lots of oddly-shaped figures, such as shown in the photo above! Apparently, the Egyptian government wants to kick out all the shops and houses in this village. This is because they believe that a number of unexcavated tombs exist below the village and that the villagers are secretly digging below their houses to find treasures in unopened tombs! The Egyptian government has cut off the water of the village for the past 3 years, yet the villagers refuse to leave.
We also went to the Valley of the Queens which is similar in the nature to the Valley of the Kings. The tomb of Nefertari is supposed to be the most beautiful one. It turns out that a couple of years ago, some German and French tourists came to blows with each other and with the ticket officials over being denied entry to the tomb because there were too many people inside the tomb. The European tourists smashed the glass of the ticket office and threatened violence - the Egyptian police stepped in .. and from then on, the tomb has been closed to all tourists.. Quite a shame.
From here, we drove back to the east side of the nile and to our hotel. Thankfully, we saw the two Germans sitting in the lobby as we walked in. They seemed quite shaken from their tourbus ordeal. Ben Kinglsey the hotel proprietor was sitting with them, apparently trying to calm them down. The Germans were silent and listening. When the German mother saw us, she started telling us about the overturned tourbus. Apparently, the driver of the tourbus, in the middle of driving, got up from his seat and came into the back of hte bus to investigate some noise. Nobody took over driving the bus and the microbus went off the side of the road and overturned! The driver ran off but was later arrested. Nobody was hurt but everybody was shaken and shocked. Ben Kingsley kept telling the Germans to forget about the incident, that fate had been kind to them, how this could easily have resulted in their death but it did not so they should be grateful! He talked about he 50 tourists killed at the Hatshepsut temple and the person who fell off his bike but was not killed. Apparently to his surprise, the Germans were getting quite agitated hearing this sort of "comforting" talk. My guess is that he was very frightened that the police would associate this incident with his hotel business and would perhaps shut his hotel down. I told Ben the proprietor to stop talking and let the Germans talk about their experience.
We also went to the Temple of Luxor. Here's a little view of the great hall:The next day, we took a flight to Sharm-al-Sheikh which is an Egyptian resort on the Sinai Peninsula/Red Sea.
-dev
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