A walk to remember - Luxor

The previous post in this series is here..

Our boat reached Luxor earlier than planned. So we were all ready and waiting for Walid. He was also ready but asked us to wait for 20 minutes so that the rest of the crowd disperses. "we have time! we can enjoy a nice less crowded walk!" he said. It was a good idea.

We walked from the boat to the Luxor temple. It took us 30-40 minute tops including some photo ops! This is a beautiful walkway with the river on one side and the Luxor temple on the other side. 

Once we went into the temple past security (yes, every temple has a ticket counter and security), we saw the Avenue of the Sphinxes.. 150 of them lined up on either side of a wide road that goes for kilometers to connect Luxor to the Karnak temple on the other side. 

The Luxor temple itself is "small" compared to some of the other templed we had seen. It had its share of history! It was a gateway from the dock to Karnak for the kings in those days. The whole place was beautiful.

The video highlights first, so you have context for most of the photos.. 

There is a mosque on the top which had its own crowd. The whole temple was burried under the mosque and a village and was excavated recently (relatively speaking). 

Romans painted over the original murals with colored faces

Finally there was a bunch of boards describing the major faces in Egyptian history. After my co-sister and me took photos of all these boards something was off.. then we realized we were going left to right.. the picture sequence was right to left.. Arabic style! So have put the pictures in the time sequence into one composite. Each of these is a large board at the entrance to the Avenue of the Sphinxes. You can click on this pic to get the larger size version. 

We were not done for the evening.. We had booked tickets to a sound and light show that was to start an hour later. It was a narrow time window. So a van picked us up at a street corner before we hit the walkway and took us on a road parallel to the avenue of the Sphinx to Karnak... 

The night pictures from that show are proving to be an editing challenge. . . will post that next!

Amazing boat ride sunset - West Al Khazan

The previous post on this series is here..

We had reached out cruise boat and had a nice lunch. The plan was to take a nap and do an evening activity. It was optional and 4 of us opted to do it. It was 20 USD per person to do a boat ride on the Nile to the other side past Elephanine island to visit a Nubian village.

Our guide Walid, pretty much begged me not to miss it. He said "you are a photographer! the sunset here is just plain amazing! don't miss it!". So off we went. We started at ~4:30. Walid had told us that it will be at least 2-3hours to go, spend time at the village and come back to the boat by the 7:30 dinner time. 

Walid was spot on! This was the most amazing sunset we had seen with the boats, the river and the different types of huts in the villages we crossed. 

Here is a slideshow..

There were lot of pictures on the boat ride to and fro.. some highlights and "people pictures"

We got fantastic photos!

Most of these Nubians (folks from south of Egypt and Sudan) who are generally dark skinned were displaced because of the dam. They had a rich social culture of large families that lived in groups. Their houses always had a central courtyard with rooms being added as folks got married. A modular mud house structure with igloo type roofs. They put sand in the open courtyard.

there were beautiful murals on the walls..

Almost all of them had crocodiles for pets as the crocs were their main god. 

Walid told us that Crocs were their god(Sobek) for a reason. They would watch how high the crocs went to lay their eggs on the sand banks. Higher they went, more the expected flood for the year a few months later. The crocodiles were an early flood warning system for them. They saved lives. They were worth protecting! They are fed "bread"! they were veggie crocs and were mostly docile and played with the kids. We shopped around the market and were welcomed into a home for tea and coffee. The family was nice. Their kids had a 20 year old croc and a 2 year old baby. I was allowed to hold and pet the baby croc which was just wandering around our coffee table! 

it was 1 USD to pet the croc and take pictures. It was free to let it wander around near us! 

After that we were asked to check out the view from the roof.. it was like a west mambalam rooftop per the group! The village roads (sand) and the cute shops and fast running race camels made for some amazing experience.

We said bye to the village and went back to our cruise boat watching the reflected lights from the village in the Nile waters..

(our friends were the reason for this photo.. wife did the art direction, husband took the photo)

It was a spectacular evening! We were glad we went on this. . . 

Video highlights of this "optional" but should have been a compulsory trip!

After this we stopped at the local Aswan market to get some water bottles (the cruise was charging for large water bottles). Later we found out that the two regular bottles in the rooms every day were free. However there was no way to make hot water for tea in the rooms. They did give us hot water at the bar but we had to tip the guys who gave us hot water at the end of the trip(that was okay!). 

We were informed by an apprehensive Walid that we leave the following morning at 4AM and he has set up a wake up call for the group! Again a collective groan went up. There was going to be a long drive in the morning! 

When we went back to the cruise, my head was splitting because of jet lag. I dozed off and skipped dinner.. apparently they had made Dal just for the desi familes who had joined that day on the cruise (it has a 200 people capacity and was pretty much full!). There was 8 of us and a group of 6 from Mumbai and another quiet desi couple. 

It was lights out for me! 

Santorini bus tour : ending with Sunset at Oia

The previous post on this series is here..

First.. our own Sangeetha Kaif walking down the famous steps.. 

oh wait? who is that dude? My god, she is married?

now what is that? She has two grown up kids as well? say what?!

Let's just keep the pretty lady in the pic! 

Sunset in Oia was a hit and miss. The clouds moved in. There was going to be no sun visible. The possibility of a glorious sunset like the one we saw at Poseidon's temple.. was not going to happen. It was going to rain possibly for the night and the next. Still golden hour is golden hour and we got amazing family photos.

We had to stand in a long line to get to this famous photo spot, which happens to be someones backyard on the hills in Oia village. This is their walking path! How or why it became a famous photo spot and when, we don't know! All we know is that Hindi actress Katrina Kaif runs around this place in movies .. other famous actresses might have shot in same location as well.. my wife and MIL have the exact details. 

My promise was to find this location and get pictures in that spot at sunset! Mission accomplished to the best of my ability given I cannot control the clouds. Then messed it all up with some indecisiveness. For some strange reason, picked up a faint orange tinge in the clouds and thought, maybe, maybe the sun will peak out and create magic. The rest of the family was pretty sure that everything was done and dusted. The little one was hungry and I made everyone walk back and forth for no reason for a good 15 minutes. 

To top things off, we had to make a dash to the bus stop below the hill before that dude was going to take off!

We did get a few more photos..

We were all happy one moment and pissed off within 20 minutes. Finally we made it to the bus when it was still bright. There were folks who got off in Oia and were not going back to Fira and that confused our guide and driver. So we lost some time in that but eventually the bus made it back to Fira and dropped off people in different hotels on the way. 

The approach road was jammed! So our driver took a roundabout route and eventually got us in. We were starving. The kids had noticed a restaurant called Convivium.. so we went there to the rooftop to get seated. Somehow the staff there didn't think we were their customer material and were hell bent on sending us out. We did not feel welcome and walked out. Very rare for us to walk out of restaurants after sitting down. 

Eventually we wandered back to the main street in Fira and they got something to go at the McDonalds! I ate fries and made Maggi. That was good enough after a long day! Maggi noodles has become comfort food for me and the little one now!

We were just exhausted after that and crashed. We had one more day in Santorini as a local sightseeing day before flying off.. even planning for it was put off till next morning!

A very short video of our time at Oia.