It has been a long long wait to visit Petra

Previous post in this series is here..

Ever since we watched Indiana Jones and the last crusade and heard about Petra, my brother and me wanted to visit this place someday. He got a chance to visit Israel for work like 15 years ago and he saw Petra. Being a man of few words he just said "I went and saw Petra on a weekend. It was good". Was thinking of him when I walked through the site entrance that morning.

Finally after a week of traveling, we got to sleep from 10PM to 6AM. We could have slept longer but the entire group showed up at Breakfast right after it opened at 7 and everyone was giving a sheepish grin. No one could sleep longer and we were all hungry! The breakfast area in Le Maison hotel is awesome and there was a guy making pancakes and omlettes on demand. Given there were a total of 16 people in an area set for 200, things moved fast. 

Our guides had told us that we were to leave our bags at reception and walk through the site after exchanging the online passes for physical tickets. There was a horse ride for the first 1/2 mile included in the ticket (but you tip the guys who hold the horses) and a free shuttle from the last point back to the entrance. 

It was a 10 mile distance to cover. He told us that if we walk briskly we should be done by 1 or 1:30 PM and meet them at the hotel reception before 2 PM. We had to start driving latest by 2PM to see the sunset at our next stop..

When the group questioned it later that day, I reminded everyone that people can wait, the sun won't! 

We were the first tourists to enter the Petra site that morning as soon as the ticket place opened. San and me decided to walk even the first 1/2 mile instead of taking the horse.

There is a Madras trail in Petra!!! 

The idea was to go through the canyon and meet everyone at the Treasury building.. which is the face of Petra that is one of two highlights. 

A video of the first part of the walk all the way to the end of the roman road (execpt the approach to the treasury.. which is in the second video)

There were two well decorated camels (which you also see in all pictures) and a kid who bargained with us for taking photos and videos. We went with it and the kid did an outstanding job with the videos. 

This kid was really good. The artistic parts of the video were all taken by him on my iPhone 13. DO NOT MISS THIS VIDEO and if you do go to Petra, do pay this kid to take your video! 

The moon going down into the canyon was amazing. The Sun was still coming up when we were walking through the canyon.

We spent a good 30 minutes trying to hike the trail to the ritual site on top of the hill called the "High Place of Sacrifice". The map did not clearly show how long that trail was and there were no markers or signs to tell us we were on the right track. Once we went high up and did not get a comfortable feeling, we decided to come back down. Either we missed a turn or it was not a short distance hike as suggested by the map. 

this is my friend doing a victory pose when we walked up the sacrificial high place..

The plan was to go all the way to the top to see the Monastry. This is the second highlight of Petra. 

In between the group stopped and said "we dont want to go up to see the Royal tombs". so I ran by myself and got a few photos and ran back.  Missed seeing the Church and tiles but my BIL and friend went up for those while I was running back. I got a short break to catch my breath, eat some well deserved Parle G biscuits and we were off to go up. 

Then there were the cats and kittens.. lots of them everywhere. They smell food in the backpacks and jump up from every gap and crevice. We later asked one of the locals why so many cats in Petra. He said "out here we either eat animals or let the inedible ones go..it is a desert!". Guess cats were inedible for some reason in those days and that worked in their favor. You can see them in the second video. will add a separte slidshow for them in the next post..

We did buy some Myrr and Frankinsense from one of the shops. The guy selling had a beautiful turban and he let me take his photo. Told him I could buy the same cloth, but would not look good in that turban. He said I could pass for a local because of the copper tone in my skin. Didn't know what to make of it.

We got to see a very old living pistachio tree on the walkway. Then there was an attempt at a bench photo.. Had to squeeze through the gap to get this one..

The shops were cute.. after we had bought stuff another store vendor showed us photos of Sadhguru in his shop and was marketing his shop as Sadhguru certified! We told him we already bought incense and walked on..

Once the entire team made it to the end of the colonaded street and saw what an earthquake does to large stacked columns, we took in the view from the Nabatean cafe.

By now other tourists who had taken the golf cart and mule service had beat us to this point and enjoying drinks. We were already late. 

So we started hiking up the steps to the monastery. . . 

There are close to 900 photos from just Petra alone between the iPhone and Canon DSLR. Here are a select few in slideshows. A lower back sprain is killing me. Before this break is over, want to finish writing about this trip. So the rest of the photos will show up every now and then on FB! 

and another slideshow in portrait format..

The monastery and leaving the site.. another story!

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..

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!