As has been mentioned in previous entries the Egyptians like their tourists to be watched over. This, in some respects, is a great way to secure your nation's largest revenue source, but in others it severely limits your freedom of movement.
Catching a train for example is not actually as easy as it could be. Between Aswan and Luxor there are trains that depart every two hours or so, but tourists can only purchase tickets for 3 of these trains, which I think it's fair to say, are at about the least convenient hours imaginable. Technically this should stop foreigners from jumping on one the other dozen or so departing when they would like to. Except it doesn't. Well at least not for us. As you can buy your ticket on-board if you want to. We hopped on one and then (Cassidy the cynic speaking) found out why they liked to corral all the visitors on to select trains.
It's so they don't have to travel on the one we did and be subjected to a possibly negative view of the country. (The Egyptians are very particular about you only taking away positive images of their country.) We boarded a second class carriage, without modern aircon. I'm not saying it didn't have aircon; it did, though this was comprised of the carriage doors (not the ones that separate the carriages; the ones you actually board and alight through) swinging open (seemingly at will). Furthermore, folk on the train rolled down the windows to allow the desert dust to come flying in at an alarming rate. This peppered the back of your throat and eyes with wee particles of the desert that you'd prefer had remained just that, rather than becoming some parasitic drying component blasted in to you. Note to all: If a cosmetic sandblasting is anything like this, don't do it, it's not much fun. Now, it could have all been all right if this was the extent of the train experience (and of course you weren't unlucky enough to be standing next to a door as it flung itself open) but it wasn't. The journey was made worse, uncomfortably so, for a big softy westerner like me by three things:
1) The foul smell that was emitted from the toilet / sewer at the end of each carriage which was also framed by an independently opening door.
2) The grotesque spitting of a man who was either about to expire from TB, had swallowed far too much in coming sand or who just happened to have the world's most over active salivary glands. My stomach still turns at the noise and image.
3) The odious aroma and appalling sight of the pair of feet that were thrust about half a meter from my nose. They smelled like a huge pyre of burning rubber (what could possibly cause that?) and were encased in enough prime Nile silt to plant several dozen spuds.
Let's just say, when the train pulled into Luxor, about four hours after we left Aswan, we could have been visiting the Black Hole of Calcutta and I think we'd have been fairly relieved. Still it could have been worse, at least it was a very cheap journey and we could have traveled in third class. Shudder! The fact is it is an "experience", not one we'll be rushing to repeat, I'll grant you, but one to be lived nonetheless. Of course such a journey just made a trip to the pub for a refreshing brew obligatory, so all in all, not actually such a terrible way to spend 240 minutes!
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Finding a gargantuan temple or the tomb of an ancient Pharaoh around Luxor is about as tricky as locating a Starbucks store on the streets of Seattle. The area is literally covered by mighty monuments and under the cover of the great hills on the West bank of the Nile there is an enormous subterranean network of tombs. It is a veritable warren of mummies out there (although in the Valley of the Kings most of the mummies were once daddies, and some were super daddies at that; Ramses III sired over 200 sprogs, albeit with about 40 different wives. I wonder if he was as practiced as a Hollywood celeb at the pre-nup?)
There is an East - West divide in this ancient city, which modestly calls itself the "birth place of civilization" (well way back some 7000 odd years ago they did serve beer and warm beer at that so I suppose they were reasonably civilized). On the East bank the Temples were built and religious sites that proclaimed the awesome god given power of the Pharaoh sprang up as quickly as a whoopee cushion victim. This east bank clustering is, apparently, because the sun rises in the east so it is all about birth, light and hope. There is no doubt about the cunning, or massive delusions of grandeur, of some of the Pharaohs. The bigger the scale of the temple they had constructed, the greater their standing with the people; as clearly only one who was the human link between the deity and humanity could organize the erection of such splendor. Some Pharaohs, who while ostensibly dedicating temples to the gods (through themselves of course) worshiped by the people, created "new gods" by effectively merging two or more existing big gods into one mega god. I suppose it's a bit like the major pharmaceutical companies, all big in their own right, becoming GlaxoSmithKlineBeecham or whatever they're called this week. These new uber gods were just a bit powerful and I suspect anyone who just happened to be their public image would have no trouble showing everyone who had the most "bar presence" and thus was able to get the first pint of warm ale. As I say, very civilized. The largest of the Temples is that at Karnack, which is actually several temples tacked together and covers an utterly enormous area. To say it is of a staggering scale would be to sell it short. Suffice to say, if you were to walk over the entire site you would have serious blisters, a very sore neck from craning to view the gloriously intricate art work and probably heat stroke too… as apart from in the very heart of the temple network where a plethora of mighty columns create a glorious shaded zone it is bread bakingly warm… and this is only January.
Over on the West Bank (not the occupied one up in Palestine, the touristy one in the middle of Egypt) the Tombs are built; as here the sun going down represents the end. There is currently a Valley of the Kings where, surprisingly enough, the kings, along with all their golden finery were buried. Interestingly there are two female kings buried here too. I'm not suggesting that women shouldn't be given the chance to rule but it is a little odd that they had to call themselves kings as the title of queen wasn't befitting the actual head honcho. Perhaps the British monarch should change her name to King Lizzie I? If she did maybe she wouldn't need all those jewels, I know Heide quite fancies any that could be going spare. It is believed that there are at least 120 more tombs of the Pharaohs awaiting discovery and it is also believed that there will be an enormous treasure trove, a sort of deluxe city dump, containing all the booty that was buried with the kings. That find will just make some archeologists day / week / life won't it? Along side the Valley of the Kings, there is the Valley of the Queens, which as best I can tell, never contained any male sovereign but is the resting place of many young princes. All the tombs, regardless of which site they are carved into, are decorated exquisitely, though the grandiosity of the individual tomb would be directly proportional to how long the "resident" was an important figure in life. As soon as they died the tomb work halted and the body was interred at the deepest point and then it was on to work on the tomb of the next in line. There are also several magnificent funerary sites which may, or may not, have ever been used for the mummification process to take place within the splendor of the chambers.
Luxor, I'm delighted to say, wasn't as heaving with pushy touts, hawking all nature of things you desperately don't want, as I had been led to believe it would be. For that I am deeply thankful and while I hate to sound like a philistine I think that I'm actually now feeling relieved that we've reached the end of our "cultural" tour around Egypt. I think viewing any more temples or other significant sites would begin to diminish both my enjoyment of what I was seeing and the wonderful impressions I have of that which we've already viewed. So now it's on to the famous backpacker and scuba resort of Dahab on the Gulf of Aquaba, which is a mere 17 hours on the bus. Still at least the bus has "real" aircon!
