My Birthday Trip to Luxor

I hadn't planned it that way, but it turned out that the itinerary for my trip to the southern part of Egypt had me spending the night on the felucca and waking up on my birthday somewhere on the Nile River. This was an exceedingly pleasant thought, once I realized it. The first part of the trip had been difficult. I was left wondering why I had even come to Egypt. The place was really seeming a lot like crap. I wasn't having a particularly good time. Things were badly organized and poorly executed. And I hadn't been really surprised after how the first two things I had booked through the hostel had turned out.

Then we got to the felucca. The felucca captains were very relaxed. But the best part about them was they seemed to understand what people who come to ride on a felucca want. They don't want to worry. They don't want hassle. They just want things to go smoothly. They chatted with us. They fed us. They made sure we were comfortable. They listened to what we wanted and then did their best to provide it. Compared with much of the rest of Egypt, this was new. And consequently, my experience of the trip, of the Egyptians, of the country changed. I hoped it was going to last.

The felucca ride was very relaxing. We lounged on the deck long into the night. The crew put up covers around the deck and there were mattress-like pads where we could lie down and then eventually sleep. It was a great place to let the stresses of the poor management and bad guides of the past few days slip away and down the Nile. And it really seemed to do the trick. Much was different after that boat ride, short though it was.

Dawn came up and I woke up and got up just as the sun was coming over the mountain beyond the river. I went out on the river bank and wandered around for a while. I managed to get a photo of the sunrise over the mosque across the river.

There were also some interesting tracks in the sand. They looked like bear tracks, but I didn't think they could be. When I asked Hamada, one of the felucca captains, he told me they were fox tracks. They were still prowling around the banks around the spot we had moored for the night. I wondered if they ever came onto the boats and attacked people. Nah. Probably not.

Because we had arrived at the felucca so late the previous day, and because we were due to continue our journey down to Luxor early this day, we only had a few minutes after dawn to enjoy the peace and tranquillity of the Nile before we had to cross the river to a pier and get in a bus. We said goodbye to our captains and got in the bus. And we were on our way, the four of us: myself, Kei (from Japan), Frances (from the United States), and Isis (or Qian Xue, a Chinese student studying in the United States). There were two other guys on the felucca with us. They were from Spain, but they had set up their time to stay on the felucca for two days. They stayed behind for what we were sure would be a nice day on the river.

The four of us headed down the road with our driver. He stopped shortly thereafter and picked up four more passengers. Then he stopped again and picked up four more. We were now twelve. It was a bit of a tight squeeze in the bus, but everyone seemed to be nice people, so it was all good. The last four were just taking transport down to Luxor, but the rest of us were going to be visiting two temples between Aswan and Luxor. The first temple was called Kom Omdo, and it was a hybrid temple to the crocodile god Sobek and the fertility goddess Hathor, but also to the god Horus. This makes it a rather interesting temple, historically, but I knew none of this when I visited it. I only knew that it was cool for two reasons. One, a lot of the paintings and carvings were very well preserved. Second, there were not many people there and so it was relaxing.

There was even a copy of the Egyptian calendar on one of the walls. It was quite interesting.

It is also when I discovered that the Chinese girl was a bit naughty. She clambered up on the walls at one point and went to try take a photo. She was called down, because it was not allowed to climb the walls, but she ran around on the top, avoiding the guys who were chasing her trying to get her to come down. It was very funny to watch. I thought she might be a good distraction from the trials and frustrations of the first week in Egypt.

One of the entertainments at Kom Omdo Temple was avoiding the pitfalls of the people “looking after” the temple. There were people at various spots around the temple. They were apparently there to make sure that nobody was going places they shouldn't go or doing things they shouldn't be doing. But what they were really doing was trying to make some easy cash. I was beckoned to several times. “Come here,” they would entice. “I will show you something.” They would lead the unwitting person who followed them to some corner of the temple with some carving or painting on the wall and show it. Then they would stick out their hands for a consideration. Of course, this is a common tactic all over Egypt, and I don't know how many people still fall for it by the time they are reaching this temple for a visit. They did get Kei, the Japanese guy though, so I guess it must work often enough for them to still think it's worth the effort of trying.

After the visit to the temple it was back to the van to continue. We had been told to take about 30 minutes at the temple, but by the time we were all out (including the Chinese girl who hadn't been led away in chains), it was a good hour that the visit had taken.

We headed down the road to the next temple, a temple for Horus called Edfu (that was sometimes written as Idfu). When we arrived at the temple, we were told to be back in an hour. We walked in and it was really big. I wasn't sure we would be able to limit our visit to just an hour.

Horus is the son of the gods Osiris and Isis. When Osiris' brother Set had killed Osiris, Isis had become afraid for her unborn child, who was to be Horus. She went to Edfu to have Horus, and in some kind of exchange amongst gods, Horus was given the head of a hawk when he was born. The mythical place of Horus' birth is in front of the temple.

Beyond the birthplace stood the temple itself. As mentioned it was huge. This may not look very big here...,

...but if you compare it with a photo with people standing down in front of the temple entrance you get some idea of what it required in the building of the temple.

Inside the entrance, there was a courtyard. This is where the common people were allowed to come and worship.

As with other temples, the next area was where the priests and king and queen were allowed to be.

And the innermost spot in the temple was the spot where only the high priest and the king were allowed to be. It also held a conveyance that I think was meant for Horus.

Around this inner sanctum area was a corridor with scenes, many of which showed battle scenes between Horus and his uncle Set. In a rage over Set's killing of Horus' father, Horus battled Set many times trying to kill him. The corridor showed many of these battles.

There were corridors and rooms all over the inner part of the temple. Some sets of stairs led up to a balcony on a rooftop giving views down into the temple. Unfortunately these balconies were closed off by gates and were inaccessible. But the corridors leading up and down were maze-ish and fun to explore.

At the end of our time in the Edfu temple, I got a photo with Isis, as the Chinese girl called herself. Then we headed back to the bus, but we had been in the temple for quite a long time and we were more than a half-hour late. The driver was very pissed off. It seemed that he had to return to Aswan that night, and we were taking so long that he was in danger of not being able to return in good time. There was little else that I could say other than, “Sorry.” But that seemed to deflate his anger, and he gave a kind of irritated laugh. We got into the van and finished the trip to Luxor. Isis, wanted to try to convince the driver to stop at another temple, but there was no way that was going to happen. This was fine as it was getting a bit late and we had been supposed to be doing something in Luxor after arriving. It was late enough that that now seemed impossible.

When we arrived in Luxor, we were taken to our hotel and a couple of “handlers) were there waiting for us. I made up with the van driver, gave him a little tip and entered the hotel. The handlers sat us down and explained the itinerary for the next day and how we would be going around to see the temples and other spots of interest. We were given the option of doing it all in one day or of taking two days to do it all. The original plan had been to do one set of temples after arriving in Luxor and the rest the next day. That was now moot, but it didn't sound like that was what they had planned. It didn't matter. We all decided to do it all the next day. Then it was up to our rooms and time for a rest.

I'm not sure what it was. It may have been that it was my birthday. It may have been some kind of internal decision to relax. It may have been the way the day had proceeded with us being more or less in charge of how long we were in the temples. It matters not. I had a really good day. I enjoyed the temples we visited and the road along the way. There were hassling touts, but they are easy to deal with. (One just keeps one's feet moving and they have no particular defense against that unless they become physically involved in getting you to listen to them. Actually, keeping one's feet moving seems to solve 70-80% of the day to day types of problems one faces in tourist areas, maybe more.) I was entertained by my tour mates and by what was around me. I had this feeling that things had changed.

Abu Simbel

Abu Simbel is one of those iconic images of Egypt. Aside from the pyramids of Giza, it is one of the most recognizable symbols of Egypt. It is another temple that was affected by the building of the dams on the Nile. It would have been submerged completely by the raising of Lake Nasser. So in the 1970's a project was initiated to save it from a watery grave. Engineers surveyed it all and figured out where it could be moved. A buffer dam was built to protect it from the rising waters of the lake and then it was cut into thousands of pieces, making the cuts as narrow as possible so as to minimize rock losses in the conservation process. It was moved, piece by piece to the top shore of the lake and reassembled with an exactness that is actually quite a marvel. The process took four years to complete and left Abu Simbel safe from Lake Nasser and available to a visiting public.

It is located a couple hundred kilometers up the shores of Lake Nasser from Aswan and required a long bus ride to reach. It also is quite close to Sudan's border and thus it seems to require special precautions for all visitors. There are only specific times of the day that groups of vehicles are allowed to travel up to the town of Abu Simbel. One of those times is at the early hour of 4:30 in the morning. Given our itinerary for the rest of the trip, in order to make the boat trip on the Nile below the dams on a felucca (a boat), we were going to have to be in that early morning convoy.

At the ridiculously early hour of 3:00 in the morning, I got a wake up call and got up. I packed my stuff and headed down to the lobby. I put my bag there for safekeeping until our return and got my “breakfast” of a couple of buns, a hard-boiled egg, and a wedge of cheese. I only ate the bread. We were to be back at about 1:00 in the afternoon, so it shouldn't be too bad. It might even turn out that there would be reasonably priced food at the temple, so I might be able to get a snack there. I don't know what I was thinking that allowed me to believe that, but I should have known better than to think a tourist area, particularly in this money hungry country, would have such an animal as a reasonably priced bit of food.

Our van arrived and we piled in to go the convoy grouping area. And once again, we were told that at the end we would be expected to give the driver a tip. I piped up at that, having had enough of that kind of thing, and said that it wasn't really a tip then since it was an expected thing. The guide just looked at me and asked if I was listening to him. I asked him if he had anything else to tell us. He didn't. So it didn't really matter to be listening any longer, did it?

Once all the vehicles had arrived and assembled, we all set off. It was a weird convoy. We barely travelled together, with the distances between vehicles becoming ridiculously large before very long. But I guessed they knew what they were doing.

We got to the temple site well after daybreak, but it was still quite chilly. We were told we would have until 9:45 to visit the temple. Hmmm... Nobody was going to go with us to explain things? Hmmm...

We went and got our tickets, for the grand total of 95 pounds, and this included three fees, one of which was for a guide. I asked the people at the gate what that was about. They told me we could get a guide to show us around just inside the entrance. We passed through the security checkpoint. No guides were in evidence. Hmmm... We headed along the path towards the temple. Still no evidence of anyone who might be a guide. At the temple, we looked about and, although there seemed to be groups who had guides, there didn't seem to be any place to meet up with one and make a group. I found this to be really, really annoying. We had been forced to pay a guide fee, but there was nobody about to fulfil that duty. Yet at places where there is no such fee, they are tripping over themselves to take tourist money to show them around. I was a bit sickened and more than a bit angered and embittered by this. Photos were welcome outside the temples, but inside there was not photography. We wandered around inside and looked about. With no guide, as we still could not locate one. It turned out that Isis, our Chinese tour mate, had done a bunch of reading about Egypt before coming here and she could tell me a bunch of things about the temple and the gods and stories associated with it. So she was more useful than these phantom guides at the site. It was actually quite amazing inside, more for the sheer enormity of the task of moving the temple than for the actual carvings and such inside. And despite the prohibition of taking photos, lots of people were taking photos. Anyone caught was reprimanded, but only until they coughed up a bit of cash, Then it became okay. Stunning hypocrisy! And much more overt than in other countries I have visited.

There were two temples. One was for Ramses II, one of the ancient Egyptian kings. The other, smaller temple was for his wife, Nefertari. Both were quite large, with the Ramses temple being much the larger. Wandering through we got a good impression of the artwork of the time.

And towards the end of our allotted time at the temple, people had wandered back to the parking lot to catch buses for the convoy back. This left us with the opportunity to take photos with nobody present and in the way. Yea!!!

Then we rushed back to the van to make sure we weren't too late. But I dropped back a bit. I was still seething at the being forced to buy a guide ticket, only to find no guides doing the job of guiding. I yelled at the guy at the ticket counter who basically shrugged and told me I hadn't looked hard enough. This just incensed me all the more. I asked for where I could go and lodge a complaint. He told me to go and talk to the tourist police. I just looked at him and shook my head. I asked him why he would want me to go home after my trip to Egypt and tell everyone I know that the country is shit and suggest they don't bother spending their money by coming here. I suspect he didn't really understand what I was saying because he just had a blank look on his face after I finished. But it is what I am feeling at the moment. I'm sure there are parts of Egypt that are lovely. It's even possible that one can have a great time at spots like this. But there are so many people who don't give a crap about the experience of the visitor, and only care about getting the money. They are going to end up with people not coming to the country and their tourism will never recover from the blow it received because of the revolution in 2011. And they don't get it. They don't understand that even a place as well-known and on the must visit lists of so many people could possibly get such a bad reputation that they could be stricken from the must visit itinerary of the world.

Upon returning to the van, we found that it was not ready to leave. It turned out that the road to Aswan had been closed. It was unclear why. It seemed there was some kind of people blockage between Abu Simbel and Aswan. I wasn't sure, but I understood from the driver that it might be bandits. This would necessitate some kind of military response to restore safety to the road and we were going to have to wait until the all clear was given to return to Aswan. Initially we were told it would be about half an hour, or around 11:00. But that got lengthened until 1 in the afternoon. We did get moving about that time, but this meant that we wouldn't be back in Aswan until 4:00, three hours after we were scheduled to return. So much for getting to have a good sail on the felucca. But there was nothing to be done about that. I would rather have sat in the parking lot until the next day than be subject to some kind of dangerous situation with thugs on the highway. The only thing that was a problem was that we were hostage to the food sellers in the parking lot. I opted to starve rather than give in to them, or to put any more money into the area given how nonchalant they were to their visitors.

When we got under way finally, we didn't stop anywhere to get a snack. This made the decision final about not giving the driver a tip. It was going to be three hours back and some of us were hungry. If nobody was going to acknowledge that and try to fix it, screw them. No tip. Look after your guests folks!!

After finally getting back to the hotel, we were herded onto another van and taken to the felucca. The felucca staff were justifiably wondering what had happened to us. When they learned of it, they were sorry, for we were only going to have a short time for sailing around on the river before it got too dark to continue. There was no help for that, but they seemed to be much more relaxed about everything than everyone else I have been encountering of late. It was nice to have people with us who seemed to be more interested that we have a good time than just getting our money.

And so we sailed out on the Nile and had some food. We watched the sun go down and the lights of the city come up. And we relaxed. It turned out to be a nice end to the very frustrating day. I hoped the next day would turn out better, for it was going to be my birthday.

Aswan

After the profoundly distressing hire of the driver and car to go visit the pyramids, and then the much too high-priced trip to the White Desert, I was quite apprehensive about the 5 day trip to the southern archaeological areas in Aswan and Luxor. But having made the decisions first and having paid before going to the pyramids, it was money spent and I had to go with it hoping that it would turn out all right.

So at about 6:30 in the evening after arriving back in Cairo following the desert trip, I set out with another Mohammed to the train station to catch my sleeper train. I found out that the train ticket was 60 dollars. That was really high, in my humble opinion. I really wondered if there was a lower class ticket for a sleeper. But since it was done, I figured I would be experiencing a first-class train. I was right. I was in a cabin with two bunks. I had the top bunk. My roommate turned out to be a man from Tunisia. He was a travel agent and he was really interesting. He spoke French, so it was also a chance to practice my French. He told me about the tourism areas in Tunisia and about what it was like to be a part of the revolutionary time there. It sounded like a great place. He also seemed to understand that, although I may come from a “rich” country, that only means that I also have higher expenses and it does not make me “rich.” He lamented with me the supposition of these people from lower income countries that I am a wallet with virtually unlimited funds. That was nice. He left the train in Luxor, but gave me his contact information so I can get in touch when I decided to visit Tunisia. And I will. It sounds fascinating.

Although somewhat bumpy and jerky, I got a good night's sleep on the train and awoke refreshed and ready for the day. I was met at the station by Mahmoud, who took me to my hotel, again somewhat higher class than I would choose myself. But maybe not. I don't know what the room rate was, so maybe it would have been in my range. It is so hard to tell sometimes. He gave me the details of my itinerary for the next couple of days. I was to have a tour of the sights of Aswan in the afternoon. And bright and early the next morning at the ridiculous time of 3 am, I was going to have a wake-up call for the program of the next day, a trip out to see Abu Simbel. But I had until 2 pm to do on my own. I spent most of it in my room catching up on my journal. But then I took a short walk about noon along the waterfront. There were lots of touts there and it was a somewhat difficult walk.

I went back to the hotel and got ready for my tour. The group assembled and we got in the van and headed off. But one of the first things the guide mentioned was that at the end we could give some tips if we liked the tour. I really dislike that. When I worked in the casino, we were told never to do things like that. It's bad taste. I guess bad taste is an art form here. It automatically gets my back up when they do it.

We headed off and down the road. We passed a Coptic church on the right hand side, which our guide pointed out. But I guess it wasn't worthy of any more than that, certainly not a photo. We drove right on by. Perhaps there was no money in it, so it automatically became unworthy of more than passing mention.

The same went for the Muslim cemetery nearby. Mentioned, but no stops of time to take a photo.

Our first actual place of interest was the Old Dam of Aswan. Built in 1902, it created a reservoir that controlled flooding above the town. It looked quite interesting, but we didn't stop. Again. This was beginning to be somewhat annoying. And the guide didn't even pay attention when asked if we could stop for a look. No money in it I guess.

Following that, it was on to the High Dam, the one that created one of the first large man-made reservoirs in the world, Lake Aswan. It was built in the 1960's and was to both control flooding and to generate electricity. It is located 6 kilometers upriver from the Old Dam, which seemed silly to me. That pretty much made the Old Dam useless, I would have thought. So there were two reservoirs right next to each other. And the High Dam was apparently worth a stop for there was an entrance fee, which the guide virtually demanded from us, 20 pounds. It didn't look very interesting though. The Old Dam had character and had been built with what looked like red sandstone. The newer dam was built of earth and rocks and had almost no character. It didn't matter though, for we only stayed in one little area on the top of the dam. We didn't go to a viewing area off the dam. We didn't go past the visitor area where we stopped. And we didn't see much of the dam at all or its generating area. It was boring. I was getting less impressed.

We were told about the dam and how it had been built and its effect on the river down into Africa. But it wasn't very much information. The guide was not much of a guide. And what made matters a bit more annoying for me was that there was a man in a wheelchair on our tour. They made it exceedingly difficult for him to participate. He needed to put his wheelchair in the van, and he and his girlfriend knew how it would work, but the driver wasn't listening and didn't want to follow their directions. Then when we got to the dam, the guide told Daniel to stay in the van. I guess it was more trouble than he wanted to get Daniel and his wheelchair out of the van to be able to look around with the rest of us. It began to make me angry to see him treated like that. What was more was that he was so interesting. He came from South Sudan, the newest country in the world. He was there during the whole independence achievement. And he had travelled to all these different countries in the region. When I asked a question about the Nile, the guide couldn't answer, but Daniel spoke up and answered it for me. He had travelled along much of the length of the Nile and knew volumes about it and the political ramifications of what is happening to the river. I was very interested in talking with him more. In addition, Daniel actually knows where Calgary is. He even lived there. He might be back in a couple of months and I might be able to meet him when he is there.

After the boring High Dam visit, we headed back down the hill to a temple on an island in the lower reservoir. Philae Temple is a temple to the goddess Isis and sits on an island. It originally sat on another island in the river, but with the dam that were built, the temple was submerged. In order to save it from destruction by the waters, it was cut into pieces and pulled up onto the new island where it now sits. The only way to visit it is to take a boat from the entrance kiosk across to the island. (Although our own Isis, a Chinese girl on the tour who had taken to using the name, thought it would be fun to swim across to the island.) We took the boat across, and about halfway across, our guide mentioned that this was not part of the entrance fee and we should all contribute 5 pounds to pay him for the trip. I don't know if it was included or not, or if we were just being asked to give him a consideration for the trip, but I again considered it in extremely poor taste to be doing that. It is getting to be a fairly sickening part of my experience here in Egypt.

At the temple, the guide showed us the temple and its various parts. He showed us the number disks used to keep track of all the pieces while they moved the temple to its present location.

There was a public area. This area was outside the temple itself. It had lots of columns, in the Roman style. These were erected during the Roman rule. Even though the temple was Egyptian, it had a couple of different influences.

The next area was inside the temple itself. Beyond the entrance, only priests and the king and queen were allowed in there. Inside was a courtyard and some carvings and reliefs showing some scenes from the Egyptian mythology.

Then it was on to the inner sanctum of the temple, where only the high priest and the king and queen were allowed. The columns in here were highly decorated at one time, but time and religious change had taken their toll. When the Coptics came along, they eradicated many of the faces of the Egyptian gods, and they put Coptic crosses in many places. It was a sad bit of desecration. But it was all quite an interesting temple and I did enjoy walking it after the guide had finished his talk, in the first really useful bit of business that he had done, in my opinion.

This was the one piece of the day's tour that I really felt was worth the effort. I really wished we had been able to stop at the other couple of interesting spots, but that the guide had deemed to be uninteresting. I was already a bit suspicious of how this easy bit of touring was going to turn out. I really don't want to dislike my trip through Egypt, but I don't know that I will be able to avoid it. I may have to really do my own thing for the last few days and listen to absolutely nobody who tries to “help” me.

But as we prepared to leave the temple and head back to the shore, I did see the sun setting against some of the pillars of the temple. It was quite a nice way to end the visit and did leave me a bit more sanguine about the whole deal.