A sound and light show - Karnak temple

We left the Luxor temple and went straight to the Karnak temple by van. 

The previous post in this series is here..

Walid told us exactly where to go, where to sit and how to come out of the show as fast as we can to get ahead of the returning crowd so we could be at our boat before dinner time closed.

This is my first sound and light show. Apparently a lot of historic venues do this thing. 

it was an interesting experience. We go as a group and walk through the temple at night with things being projected on the walls. 

Somehow the lighting was not optimal and the sound was all garbled for a third of the walking show.

There was also a dog that kept sittiing at my foot and walked with me the entire time. San was freaking out about the dog. It was dark and an animal at your feet is not exactly comforting if you are scared. 

Still we enjoyed the show given we could see the stars in the night sky. You can see orion in this picture right above the temple!

from a distance I thought this was a row of sphinxes.. turned out to be Ram's! 

a few more pictures.. 

that part where we sit on a gallery watching things light up randomly over the lake was not that great. It was more like something from Disney and more American than ancient Egyptian. Shakespearean voices don't set the right tone for this show. 

A video highlight of the walk through show..

We raced out to Walid's surprise. We were the first ones out to the parking lot. Have never seen a guide be so proud of his group! We went back to the boat. Was trying to shop for magnets in the shops when Walid said "don't bother. We come back here first thing in the morning. You are here at a special time. There are only two days in the year when the sun shines through the line at the Karnak temple to make it look like it is rising from the sea! Tomorrow is one of those days! you can shop then"

we were dropped off at the dock and we had to walk a block towards our boat. The walkway along the dock in Luxor is well lit in night and looked even more beautiful. 

We were back in the boat and the group was already having dinner. We joined in. The dining room team was very nice and wished us well. It was going to be our last night in the boat. 

The next morning we were to be in the reception area with our bags packed by 5AM. We told them there was no need for wake up calls. We had been up before 4:30 almost every day! Our original van was going to be back. We were going to cover a lot of places in the van and head out of Luxor.

We were given guidelines on what to tip and how. Having had local currency helped. It was interesting how they expected a larger tip when in dollars than in local currency. 

It was time to hit the bed early one more time! 

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!

Choking the mighty Nile at Esna

The previous post in this series is here..

We had breakfast on the boat after visiting Edfu. Surprisingly the area was only half full. Turns out we were going to Luxor from Edfu but through the Locks at Esna.

There is a 30 foot height difference(?) in the water levels of the Nile on either side of the locks. So only two boats go at one time through the locks to the other side. There is a long queue. Each set of boats takes almost 15 minutes to go through the locks. So all the boats race to the locks from Edfu temple.

So did our boat!

We saw a bunch of vendors hitch their small boats to ours and throw towels and shawls to the people on the deck to sell it. It was intersting. The curiosity of buying something with this method alone got them some business from our group! They were selling what was a table cloth? shawl? towel? for 3-4 dollars depending on the size and bargainer. 

we did have fun in the rooms where our cleaning crew did more towel decorations. The king Tut one was hilarious! We spent a lot of time on the rooftop. They were selling full body massages for 25$ for 50 minutes. So I did go for the massage. It was pretty good and relaxing. 

A video highlight reel including a timelapse of the ship going through the locks. My hands hurt after holding the phone in the same place for the entire duration.. but you can see the whole process.. 

We did go dock at Luxor 30 minutes earlier than the 4:30 PM estimate. We waited for the boat to clear before getting down and walking to the Luxor temple..