Wrapping up the Egypt leg

The last post in this series is here..

We had finished the Karnak temple sunrise, visited the tombs at the valley of the kings, seen the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut and were on our way to three more stops before being dropped off at the airport.

Our bags had been in the back of the van since the morning.

The next stop was to see the giant statues of Memnon. However the group was tired and did not want to get down. Only I made a dash for it with Walid. He explained the place to me and I took a quick photo and video and we jumped back and and moved. 

We were in West Luxor and had to cross the Nile to East Luxor to get some Egyptian cotton and or linen. We crossed the Winter Palace hotel in Luxor where a lot of celebrities had apparently stayed over the years.

We were told Egypt had the worlds best cotton and linen and shops in East Luxor were authentic for quality (might be pricier than the street shops outside every attraction but autentic and great quality).

Walid stopped at one such shop and we did see the quality and price. We all shopped for what we thought was a good deal given the time. We were given 40 minutes and we came out exactly in 40 minutes. 

The last stop was at an Indian restaurant. We had told Walid that we wanted Indian food at least once. He told us the only Indian place that he knew was in East Luxor and it was the New Taste of India.

We were almost going to be disappointed after reaching that place. They had been reserved for lunch for a group coming from India in one of the ships. That group was late. We got lucky. There was only a buffet with fixed menu (as they were catering to a group). So we had that same fixed vegetarian menu.

The chappati ended up being Pita bread (same as in the cruise) , the gulab jamun was the local egyptian sweet that has a hard shell and no syrup! Still the vegetable dish, channa and daal were Indian. The owner was Egyptian but his father had opened the restaurant after learning desi cooking or so we heard. The lassi was good per family. 

We gobbled up things as fast as we could and were off to the Luxor airport which was on this side of the city. 

The desi group from our ship was waiting outside the airport and told us "bad news. flight is very delayed". Fortunately they were on a different flight and our flight to Cairo was not delayed. 

We were harrassed a bit by the security folks at Luxor aiport. We were security checked every 10 feet by a bunch of folks who had nothing better to do. We questioned why were being checked just after being checked and there were some irate guys who were trying to show they were boss of their station. We just shook our heads and went through with these checks and pat downs. 

The saving grace was the small lounge at the airport which had wifi and charging stations and hot water. We made some Wagh Bakri chai with the hot water and sat there for an hour. Then we were off to Cairo for the night.

There are no direct flights from Luxor to Amman in Jordan. So we had to go spend the night in Cairo and fly out the following morning. 

We said buy to Walid at the airport in Luxor and were met by Latif again in Cairo airport. There was no time for dinner. So we wanted to pick up some veggie falafal sandwitches and rice. Had to wait a good 40 minutes for the order to be made.

We were to go stay in a hotel a little away from the airport. It was more of an apartment type hotel.

The facilities were great with the rooms having a fridge, kitchen and microwave. We ate the dinner in the breakfast area of the hotel. Some rooms away from the freeway were great. We got a room facing the freeway and the noise was deafeneing. It was a bad room. We complained but they had no other rooms or rooms with similar noise! San decided to sleep in the kitchen area in a fold out bed. I was too exhausted to care. It was going to be a short stay anyways as we had to wake up yet again at 3:30 AM to head to Cairo airport at 4AM for a flight to Amman. The drive was a good 20 to 25 minutes and we had to load all the suitcases.

We gave Latif a list of things that were great and the few things he could change for future guests and he was appreciative of the feedback. 

A video highlight of the last few things we did in Egypt..

and that was that..  it was bye bye to Egypt!

If my family allows me to stay glued to the laptop later tomorrow, might finish blogging about the Jordan leg as well.. that is another 1200+ photos and videos to review.

Patriarchy at its dumbest..

The previous post in this series is here..

Have already mentioned Queen Hatshepsut in detail in the post on Karnak temple's sunrise visit. 

After we left the Valley of the kings and the various tombs, our next stop was the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut, which was way outside the original city. 

San finally takes a moving selfie.. that turned out pretty good!

It was literally carved into a mountainside with three visible levels and chambers and corridors that went six deep (when I zoomed in with my iPhone through a restricted gate).

This is one of the few places you can see her beautiful face carved as is without a Pharoh's fake beard and head dress. 

She went to the land of Punt and got back a lot of interesting plants, animals and riches by trading. They are currently guessing that this is somewhere in Somalia or in the Indian ocean as warm water fishes are portrayed in the murals. you can see it in the video highlight.

the usual kings and gods at the entrance.. here she has the fake beard in place..

The temple itself was beautiful but it pained us to see most of her relief on the wall carvings chiseled out completely. Not sure exactly who did this. They think her stepson did it. No matter who did it, it was a dumb move to not celebrate this lady and her accomplishments. 

You see the typical murals of the various gods blessing what was once Hatshepsut's carving.. 

This temple is a good 1/2 mile or more in from the ticket gate and they do have a golf cart service to take us to the ramp that goes up to the temple entrance. 

There are side temples for the jackal headed god Anubis, the godess Hathur and their most beloved giver of live, Amun Ra. We went in and out of those hallways and sanctums in 30 minutes. 

Again when we came out, there was a market and you had to go through it to get to the parking lot for vans. We were back on the road. It was getting tight to squeeze everything in.

A video highlight..

Thousands of years.. the pharoh's are gone. their gold is gone.. their mummies and tombs and temples mostly destroyed.. a few preserved with great luck.. but male chauvinism and keeping women down... that survives the ages!

Did I say the clock was ticking.. We still had three stops before the airport..

Time levels everything..

The previous post in this series is here..

In the middle of writing this post about how time makes sure nothing can survive it intact, it was pointed out the the time and effort spent in writing this blog is an absolute waste! If the great Pharoh's of Egypt and their secret tombs with hidden labryinths, sweet smelling poisons that would emit when tombs were opened, granite stone coffins that would not be easy to move in confined spaces, were still looted successfully.. this blog.. okay, I get it. 

Then again, the intent of this blog was never to survive even 20 years. My first post on this blog was originally done on Jan 1st 2005 after we had come back from a trip to Zion and Bryce canyon.. when the Tsunami hit! After coming back home, my cousin BIL told me about this thing called Blogger started by google. It was just a homepage creator. I wrote a "Hello World!" post but realized "who is going to know about this?". Then blgoroll came along and others started blogging and I jumped on it a good 6 months later. 

In a few days it will be 20 years of blogging! Never thought it would go on for 20 years. Mostly wrote for myself and the kids.. so someday they can go back and read it! Back to Egypt... 

It is true that majority of it is looted. Anything that was pure or gilded gold is just gone! If the local thieves and invaders didn't get to it, the Brits and French took it to their museums in the name of preservation!

We had 2 hours and Walid was not going to join us. He gave us directions to go and and out of the tombs. there was only one way in and out and all of them went down to a chamber at the bottom through narrow channels. 

All this time we were color blind. This tomb visit showed us what all those temples must have been like!

Words are not adequate to describe this. You have to go visit it. Hopefully the pictures and video do it some justice!

the caption for the photo below "what is the point? it still got looted!" 

A bigger, grander coffin.. still looted!

Museum piece now..

The tombs in the valley of the kings are many.. Our ticket gave us access to 3. We also got a special extra ticket to see the Rameses V and VI tombs which are extremely well preserved and the colors are still there on every wall. It was totally worth the extra price!

thank you sand for saving some history for us..

there was a stream of people.. so the one way to get a clean photo was to stand across the whole thing..it was also a rare thing for San to take this group photo.

took this pano shot inside one of the tombs. it was difficult to manouvere and iPhone and get a shot here. not sure how they painted all this in that confined space.. maybe the ceiling was open when they painted it before closing.. maybe kids or dwarfs painted it! who knows!

The rest of the photos are in two slideshow galleries..

Vertical shots..

And a video highlight of the tomb visits..

This is yet again a thing not to be missed. We now understood why folks bypassed the boat ride from Edfu to Luxor and came by bus instead to have more time in Luxor! 2 hours was not enough to see everything here, but we went in and out of the four tombs pretty quickly and we got a decent idea of it.

There was a brief power cut when we were inside the main tomb and everything went pitch dark for a few seconds till Phone flashlights went on everywhere. They restored it in 5 minutes and we got to continue taking pictures. 

Once we exit the place there was a wait for the shuttles. There were two groups fighting over the next shuttle and people had to be physically separated! Things got heated.. we just watched it from a distance, waited a few more minutes and were at the entrance. There was a large shopping area outside. We walked through it and got to our van. The vendors here were very pushy and in our face and blocking our path at instances. Walid helped navigate it expertly. 

We were still racing time as there were 4 more stops to go before hitting the airport..