Filed under: Egypt
Days 122 – 134, Thursday 18th – Tuesday 30th December 2008 (Al)
The trip on Royal Jordanian Airlines from Amman to Cairo was short and enjoyable enough. Seeing what I think is the Suez canal from the window was the only highlight…
Egypt had long been intriguing my imagination. Finally we had arrived in Cairo ready to enjoy all this country has to offer. In summary, its ancient sites are amazing, but the “tourist trade” that surrounds them is stifling. We attempted to stay good humoured throughout and were able to have some laughs at shop keepers offering camels for Cathy and Melanie (maybe just the first time, not the hundredth), but it definitely stopped us from looking in their shops at times! Meeting some great people on our tour and spending more time with Melanie more than made up for any annoyances we had from the Egyptian people who are just trying to make a living.
Cairo street scene – with far less traffic than usual
In Cairo, we had an overpriced evening Nile cruise, visited the wonders at the antiquities museum (King Tut’s bling), took a day trip to the older pyramids at Saqqara (Step Pyramid of Zhoser) and Darshur (Red and Bent Pyramids), where we climbed deep down inside the Red one – very claustrophobic!
Step pyramid – Egypt’s first attempt at building a true pyramid
Bent pyramid in the distance – attempt number two – still not quite right
Entrance to the Red pyramid – the first true pyramid – a 70 metre shaft to the first chamber
(the light you can see in the shaft is half way!)
The following day, on the way to the Great Pyramids, we stopped off for lunch at a perfumery filled with sweet scents and gorgeous little bottles. The glass topped coffee table in front of us had photos of previous visitors on display. After a few minutes, exclaimations of excitement came out of Cathy as she realised that her work mate from the Alfred Hospital (Steve) was staring back at her from a dated passport photo under the glass!
Cute perfume bottles
Note the red circle highlighting Steve’s photo. Had Cathy sat anywhere else in the large room she would not have seen this – another one of those “it’s such a small world” stories.
The Great Pyramids of Giza were simply wonderful, despite a run in with a local tout who complained angrily that we didn’t give him enough money for the photo he all but forced us to take with him. Fine, we’ll delete the photo and take our money back if that’s what you want!
It was surreal to be amongst the Pyramids, having seen them so many times over the years in photos and on film. The area around the Sphynx was more crowded but equally impressive. Apparently, Napoleon’s troops shot off the nose. A camel ride was included in our visit – thankfully mine did not decide to gallop away this time…
Following the long and uneventful overnight train to Aswan, we took a boat trip out on Lake Nasser to the Temple of Isis on Philae Island. It was our first of several similarly designed temples featuring a wealth of heiroglyphics and pictoral scenes of pharoahs brown-nosing the gods for after-life favours. They were all interesting and beautiful, and our experience at each was often made or broken by the varying quality of our guides and how long we had to look around.
View of the Nile from our Aswan hotel room – the desert is quite close to each side of the river
Temple of Isis
Interior heiroglyphics
Melanie, our new friend Sally and Cathy
Parting view of the temple
Getting up at 3am, we boarded the bus to convoy down to the temple of Ramses II at Abu Simbel. Ramses II decided to deify himself and basically built statues of himself that were larger than the traditional gods. All four giant statues on the outside, plus several inside are of his likeness. Even the similar nearby temple his Queen (Nefertari) decided to build has mostly statues of Ramses II – this guy was up himself big time! The engineering behind the rock cut temple from thousands of years ago, and also its piece by piece relocation above the rising waters of the Nile, were impressive. Interesting also to see lots of carved grafitti inside saying “x person was here” – particularly as it was from the 1800s!
The dinner at a Nubian village near Aswan was a lot of fun. We enjoyed seeing the village, the traditional houses the locals live in, the small crocodiles they keep for celebratory dinners (although other visiting tourists poking them with a stick bordered on animal cruelty), the dancing and singing. Our first singalong to the Nubian “Ooooohhhhhh a le le” song was particularly memorable.
Looking back to the entry of the house we spent the evening in
Cathy getting a henna tattoo
After a quick walk around Elephantine Island, it was time for our felucca cruise down the Nile. We were to spend two nights aboard, docking each lunch and dinner time before staying overnight. We aren’t sure how far we were supposed to travel, but it seems that we went less than 10km up river thanks to strong headwinds. It was a relaxing way to travel and really brought the group closer together. We played cards or Trivial Pursuit on deck, napped in the sun and sat around camp fires each night.
Relaxing onboard
Christmas day was actually spent this way – the tour itinerary said “Christmas lunch onboard” which we all eagerly anticipated. This should have actually read “Lunch onboard on Christmas Day” as it was the same sort of food on offer as every other meal – rice, pasta, chicken. Simple and tasty though it was, it was not Mum’s roast with Grandma’s plum pudding! Kom Ombo and Edfu temples were visited after saying goodbye to our crew.
Makeshift Christmas tree, complete with KK presents, our feluccas in the background
Nile sunset
Kom Ombo temple column
Edfu temple facade
My birthday (December 27th – though I’m sure you all know that already) was spent a little differently to my usual birthdays back home – it was my first away from my family which was a little sad. A suitable consellation was spending the morning in the Valley of the Kings visiting three pharaoh tombs. We knew the tombs would be long devoid of any shiny treasures, but didn’t expect to see the paint still on the walls looking as fresh as it would have thousands of years ago. Pharaohs order work on their burial tombs to be commenced soon after they become Pharoahs, so when one dies after only seven years in power – quality declines somewhat. The second tomb we entered fit this category – upon entry the heiroglyphs are beautifully carved and painted, but after a few metres they are only painted, and then only outlines. We weren’t allowed to take photos inside unfortunately.
Valley of the Kings – before the large tour buses arrive
After the valley, most of the others went for a donkey ride around Luxor. The rest of us who were either too tall or too heavy – or both, like me 
( - relaxed in the sun and had a drink. I called my Mum and was glad to here her voice. We visited the Colossi of Memnon (seated statues below), the Valley of the Workers, followed by Queen Hapshetsut’s fantastic temple at Dier al-Bahri (second photo).
That night was a buffet dinner and a show in town. The group could not help but mention to the performing belly dancer that it was my birthday. I appreciated the opportunity to be invited up to perform some belly dancing moves in front of the other 150 diners. Good times! I did receive compliments from both the girls (I have some skill apparently) and the guys (for having the guts to actually get up) which was appreciated. Here’s a photo – all video evidence has hopefully been destroyed as per my wishes:
The next day, after partying long into the night, we travelled from our hotel to the largest temple we would see - Karnak. The city is working on moving residents, demolishing houses and excavating the “Avenue of Sphinx” which runs from the Luxor to Karnak temples, lined with carved Sphinx for the entire road stretching several kilometres. Future tourists will be able to use this road which would be a great experience. Karnak is huge and has some amazing walls, columns and obelisks – but given the similar designs, we were starting to feel a bit of what’s known as ‘temple fatigue’.
Karnak – the largest but also the most crowded temple we visited (part of the Avenue is visible)
Luxor temple – the missing obelisk that matches the one you can see above is in Paris’ Place de la Concorde – a gift
Avenue of Sphinx (Luxor end)
The following day, Melanie, Cathy and I said a sad farewell to our new friends as they continued their Egyptian journey to the Red Sea coast. We travelled back on the train to Cairo. We missed them, and the sunny, water sports-fuelled fun they were having – but we did enjoy visting the citadel area of Cairo (with a fantastic mosque and views out to the Great Pyramids) and the Khan al-Khalili market. Editor’s note: It was very sad to hear that two months later a bomb went off in this very market, killing several people.
Cathy and Melanie take in the view of Cairo from the Citadel
The Great Pyramids are visible through the haze
Muhammad Ali mosque
Inside the mosque’s forecourt
Market stall where we bought a lamp
Boarding separate flights to return to London, we met back up with Melanie (minus her suitcase thanks to Air Italia) and her Mum Tilly (who generously offered to pick us up) at Heathrow. It was a whirlwind tour of Egypt – I felt like we saw the major sites, learned a thing or two, haggled for some nice souvenirs and met some cool people. Oh, and learned some new pick up lines like “aah, you have two wives, I will give you a hundred camels for one of them!”
