Writing this piece in the weekend right after I spent six days in the land of Pharaohs and Mummies. History from 4000 years ago still hasn't died down in the country and lives on in the form of tourism.
(Disclaimer: Please use Google incase you want to know the history behind these places.)
I started off with an evening flight from Frankfurt to Cairo via Munich. Things were pretty laid back at Cairo International Airport (CAI). While my European friends had the luxury of getting an on-arrival visa, I had to arrange for a visa through the Embassy of Egypt in Frankfurt. I must say, it was one of the easiest visas I have ever obtained because it involved a post with my passport and a bunch of usual documents and the passport+visa stamp came back to me in five working days. You can find more details here (http://www.egyptian-embassy.de/konsulat/visa-auswahl-formular). It was about 12.30 am when I finished immigration and was heading to baggage claim, when a middle-aged guy dressed in a suit approached me to ask if I was traveling alone or with a group. While I was only meeting my friends later in a few hours, I chose to tell him that I was with a group which led him on his own way with no further interference. I waited for the next two hours at the arrivals hall and later met my friends around 2.30am. The trip began.
Day 1. Luxor, Egypt
We took an early morning EgyptAir flight out of Cairo to Luxor and reached around 6.30 am which gave us the entire day to go around Luxor. Our tour guide (Mohammed 1) met us at the airport with a local car he arranged to take us to the first spot- Luxor Temple. We were the first to enter the temple before it could be filled with tourists that mainly travelled in large Volvo buses. This ancient sandstone monument from 1500 BC got our breadth from the very beginning. Walking through those papyrus framed pillars makes you feel royal in every step.
From there we headed to the Karnak Temple also on the East Bank of the Nile. Although most of the temple is ruined, you still get to walk across the carefully etched pillars of great halls built thousands of years ago. The pillars keep the visitors at bay and suddenly you might find yourself alone in the temple, standing in the middle of a site where it is believed only the Gods and Goddesses of Egypt once roamed.
By now I was counting on more than 30 hours without sleep. I was tired only when I realized it because everything in front of our eyes was nothing like anything we've seen before. We left the temple around 11am to check in to our cruise for the next four days. I had two thoughts in mind: Sleep. And the fact that probably ancient Egyptians were very tall, to match their massive structures of Gods and Goddesses.
Our cruise was ready for us, thankfully. It was elaborate enough for us, luxurious and very comfortable. I don't think we felt that 'Miss Egypt' (the name of our boat) was great just because we were extremely tired, but she had pretty much everything we needed for a laid back vacation: Extra comfortable tea rooms, glass walled rooms with the view of the Nile, sundeck with a swimming pool and the most elaborate restaurant buffet. We enjoyed an amazing lunch, tucked ourselves in and rested for the evening.
It was interesting to see how these cruises over Nile were organized. There are N+1 options that one can choose from. There were so many more fancier and luxurious boats than Miss Egypt, but they all followed the same schedule: From Luxor to Aswan (Saturday to Wednesday) and from Aswan to Luxor (Wednesday to Saturday), docking in the same locations one next to each other, passing the lock region in the Nile overnight and reaching destinations at chosen times- all of it were coordinated between different companies. And the amazing part? It works!
Day 2. Luxor, Egypt
We were still docked at Luxor and were set to sail in the after around 12.30pm. But keeping up with the tradition of visiting places early, we had a good breakfast at 6.30am and by 7.00am we hopped into a car with our tour guide to the most famous West Bank of river Nile, where the Kings and Queens of Egypt have chosen to been buried, in Tombs, deep inside the valleys hoping to never have been found. Years of excavations in the early 1900s, by Europeans, helped identify what is now 63 tombs in the Valley of the Kings. We chose to visit 3 as part of our tickets. While the famous tombs can be entered only with an extra fee, it was more than awesome for us to visit these three Tombs. All of them were either narrow or steep or humid. But all of them had extremely beautiful decorations and inscriptions depicting stories from the lives of the kings.
We did not visit the Valley of the Queens, but maybe that is also worth a visit. At the Valley of the Kings, we visit the tombs of Rameses III and IX and tomb of Mentuhotep. The day itself was foggy and the sands from the area blessed us as we entered one tomb after the other.
After almost two hours here we went on to see the very famous temple of Hateshepsut (it took me three days to pronounce that word; only after one of my friends broke it down for me to remember, like, hat-ship-suit). The history for this temple is quite interesting- the story of how a woman came to rule the Kingdom. You can read about it in Wikipedia. The scale of the temple is hard to explain through just pictures. From a distance it was hard to appreciate the significance of its works. But once you walk up those stairs, to two different floors, you get sucked into the vortex of fainted paintings and a blushing Queen Hatshepsut still standing there almost two-thousand years later.
On the way from the temple back to our cruise, we passed by the Colossi of Memnon. These massive structures of pharoahs Amenhotep III, partially ruined over the last 3000 years. While these two were the only almost full standing statues, there were many more stretching over kilometers what I could only imagine as grand entrances leading a the Temple spanning not an area but probably was an entire city at a time.
In the afternoon we set sail towards Aswan. The most interesting thing happened this afternoon. We were told to expect something called a 'floating market'. This was insane. There were a couple of guys in a boat right next to our cruise throwing up clothes in plastic bags to people in the cruise. Our choice was to have a look at them and if we like it, throw back money in the plastic cover or the dress itself. In the ten minutes I witnessed this sale there were two bags with clothes that didn't reach our cruise but fell into the water instead. They were gifts for the Nile. Somehow in the end it is profitable. How? I don't know. Over expensive clothes perhaps? Not really. 100 pounds (5 euros) was a knee-length top perhaps. After a loooong day, we stayed up to play some cards and later had a good night's sleep.
Day 3-4
Edfu and Kom Ombo Aswan, Agypt
The next few days we visited the Temple of Edfu, Kom Ombo and Temple of Philae in Aswan. All of them belonged to the Ptolemaic Kingdom (I had to look that up again). In fact I would say that Temple of Edfu was one the best temples we toured during the trip. A lot of the carvings of the temple still remains and our tour guide told us the entire story or Horus and his family in the form of role-play. We walked through the rooms and corridors of the temple for about two hours and rode back in our horse chariot to our cruise.
The last day at Aswan was more about having a ride around the city with our tour guide in the car. We stopped at Aswan high dam which was built in part with the Russians and visit the Temple of Philae in a boat. We wanted a bit of an experience from the city, so we walked across the market in Aswan, picked up a few souvenirs and nuts. We had our last few hours to rest in the cruise and later back for our journey back to Cairo. We decided to take the 13-hour trip by railways instead of flying (mostly because it was 10-fold cheaper). This was an interesting experience but definitely not for everyone. Our half broken sleep was blessed with an early morning view of sunrise from the train as we approached Cairo almost close to 9.30 am the next morning.
Day 5: The days in Cairo's traffic.....
After the long night train, we freshened up at the local restrooms in Cairo Railway Station and went directly to the Egyptian Museum. Cairo is a city that is engulfed by traffic (nothing European, but being a Chennai-ite it's what we see everyday) and you have to be smart enough to Uber yourself between different spots that you would like to see. We spent about 3 hours in the museum. By this time we were already familiar with the names of many of the Kings and Queens, visited their tombs in Luxor and seen their temples in Aswan and so 'The Mummies Room' in the museum made the experience an entirety. We knew who was who, else it would have just been a very cold room to walk in. The world-famous Tutankhamun's mask was rich. Pictures I saw in history books in class 7 came flashing by. The jewels were royal. As we walked out, all the experience from the last few days came flooding. It was like we were familiar with the whole Egyptian civilization. It was like we knew the Pharaohs and the Gods. We went to a nice local restaurant for lunch (highly recommended- Abou El Sid, Cairo) and walked a bit around the city to buy some sweet stuff to bring back for friends (Salé Sucré, a chain of patisseries). The night was well spent with amazing home cooked food by my friend's family and laughing at childhood pictures.
By then the trip had turned out to be like nothing any of us had expected. We had early mornings, seen history, ate to content, cruised our way through Nile, talked about life.... there was just one more thing to do before taking the flight back home... see the Pyramids.
Day 6: Giza, Egypt
To keep up with the tradition of waking up early every day during this vacation we were ready to leave home to travel to Giza to see what I have only heard too much about.. The Pyramids. I must tell you, we were really excited. As our Uber driver was navigating through traffic towards Giza we were peeping to the left and right hoping to catch a glimpse of the pyramids from a distance until one of us said.. 'I see it!'. I was super excited by this time, and yes, we saw two cones or pyramids, I mean, we always called the shape a 'pyramid' right? It was a fan-fare moment in all honesty. It doesn't look any different than in all the pictures you would've seen. But believe me when I say, you cannot image the scale of it unless you are there. We took pictures from different angles and the size of the pyramids was so misleading. I can show you pictures where the second big pyramids looks twice as big as the tallest one. The entire area is hard to cover just by foot, also because of the scorching sun. So we took another horse chariot ride, our second on this trip, and went to this panoramic view place where we took pictures that I would save for life. The sphinx was no where to be seen, until we walked a bit further and there it was amidst the polluted air surviving for thousands of years, staring back at you.
This was a trip like no other. Hence the long vivid descriptions of some things. Maybe I will forget the tiny details with time, but the experience is worth stories that I could tell for a long long time. It felt like I was in another dimension (referencing The OA) and I knew I was back in reality when I could use restrooms in Frankfurt airport that had more than one toilet paper roll.
Ending this post with what one of our tour guide told us. Egypt is a safe place for tourists to visit. Get yourself a private tour of the country organized for a week and see the wonders.
Cheers,
Swetha
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