Grand Tour of Egypt: Into the Western Desert

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Everyone was excited because, once we left Luxor the next morning, we were on our way to the desert. We had been driving for about two hours through real desert, with no traffic, when the bus stopped so that we could help Pamela and Julio celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary. Mamdoh had organised a double heart cake and a crepe paper heart to keep, and made a touching and emotional speech. We all sang the Flintstones version of Happy Anniversary and Julie presented the card we had all signed, drawn by Jeff. Jeff is a very talented artist – a great asset to have on a tour – and we have all admired photos of the work from his exhibition. Julio said that the secret of being married for 35 years is to share the suffering and the joy, and also to take showers together.
A feature of the nine hour trip was the way we developed excellent techniques for going to the toilet in the desert, despite quite strong winds, no bushes and often uninterrupted flat sand. Suffice it to say that consideration of wind direction, the slope of the land, and a team approach ensured comfort for all. Mamdoh had told us to bring food on the bus for lunch, as there was no plan to stop at a restaurant. At around lunchtime we stopped at our first oasis town, called Kharga Oasis, for a toilet stop and for people to buy food at the local market. We already had dry biscuits, cheese, bananas and oranges so we just went for slow walk through the market. As with most Egyptian markets, it was mostly in a long, narrow street, with stalls on both sides, consisting of either the front room of the buildings, a cart parked at the side, or just a few goods spread out on the ground. Many people said, “Hello, welcome to Egypt.” Children often called out, “Hello!” and some asked, “What’s your name?” A few times we asked them, “What’s your name?” in return and more than once the answer was, “Ben.” We wondered if this was a common Egyptian name, but when we asked Mamdoh about it he said they would have been asking us for a pen. He told us that there is no P sound in Arabic, so any attempt at a P sounds like a B.
At the end of the market street we kept walking and passed numerous small businesses. A small business here consists of a room with an open door facing the street, stocked with a few car parts, or some rope and hoses or even toilets and pipes. The lanes are not paved and a cloud of dust is left behind each vehicle, whether it’s a car, a motor bike, a bicycle or a donkey cart.

As we approached the meeting place to return to the bus we passed a bakery and bought a piece of bread that looked a bit like a small pitta but it was about 6 cm thick, to eat with our cheese. It turned out to be the most delicious bread we have had for a very long time.
It was nearly tea time when we arrived at Darkhla Oasis. Basing our ideas on movies, we thought that an oasis was a small lake surrounded by palm trees, with rolling sand dunes in the background and a camel train stopped for the night as it travelled to exotic places. So far this has proven to be incorrect, with ‘oasis’ meaning that there are natural springs that can be accessed and used for irrigation of many crops over a wide area, and that there will be a reasonably large town built in the area.
We joined three others of our tour group for a relaxing stroll through the streets of Darkhla. There was little traffic, and plenty of children, and sometimes adults, greeting us.
As we neared the edge of town we came upon an area that looked like it either had the remains of a settlement, or it was being excavated. As the five of us climbed up the hill for a closer look, a man walked towards us and indicated by his presence that we should leave, so we did.
After dinner in the hotel we walked down to Abu Mohamed’s restaurant and internet café to have celebratory drinks with Pamela and Julio. Abu Mohamed showed us the books of comments that his patrons have left and some of us wrote ones of our own. It was sad to read the entries that focused on what people didn’t like in Egypt and how things weren’t exactly the same as home, and we warmed to those who had left messages that echoed our enthusiasm. Since Abu Mohamed’s had an ‘Internet Café’ sign out the front, Keith decided to catch up on some emails etc. As the one and only computer was busy, he had to wait, only to find that it was painfully slow and not worth the price being charged, which was double the normal price in Egypt (usually $2 per hour).
We washed our clothes by hand as usual before we went to bed and we were thrilled to have a balcony to hang them out to dry. Hotels offer laundry services but my whole wardrobe would not make a machine load and of course, it costs money. We have just lowered our cleanliness standards along with everyone else on the tour and washed by hand every couple of days.
Gathering our washing next morning, we realised that my blue shirt had blown out of the tree near our balcony and disappeared. We went down and searched and eventually the soldier (there is one, or a tourist policeman, at every hotel) came out of his mud brick post so we told him our problem. He disappeared and reappeared with my shirt, neatly folded, but made no attempt to give it to us. Keith paid him E₤2 (about 40c Aust) and he handed it back to us. I wonder what he would have done if we had not come down searching.

Despite having real palm trees in abundance, this town has fake steel palm trees as median strip decorations.

Grand Tour of Egypt: Karnak Temple, Luxor

Next morning the others were able to have their hot air balloon flight and had a fantastic experience and a very soft landing. We took things easy for once and at 10 am we were all setting of in horse-drawn carriages to the Karnak Temple. Our hotel was in a one-way street but our driver, the first in the line, steered his horse into a U-turn and set off at a fine pace, disregarding the rules. I was not aware of what was happening (a fairly regular situation) and we happily enjoyed trotting along in the sunshine. When we arrived at Karnak Temple the last horse and carriage took about ten minutes to appear. Ed said that it was because they had had a ‘flat horse’ but really it was because one policeman had turned a blind eye to all the carriages going the wrong way in a one-way street and another policeman had come along and torn strips off him. The result was a long hold up while they argued and finally a longer route for Ed’s carriage since the second policeman held sway.
Karnak temple is simply immense and was built over different eras by various people. On part of the walls the decoration shows events outlined in the bible in Kings 1. There were enormous ‘pylons’ (each consisting of two gently sloping parallel walls) which originally supported roofs, lots of examples of colour, and columns that could have 100 people standing around their capitals. The heights of the columns showed that there were originally two levels of the roof, providing natural air conditioning.

There were obelisks and plenty of evidence of defacing anything to do with Hatshepsut by Tuthmosis III. In one courtyard there is a large sculpture of a scarab beetle, which was a symbol of good fortune for the ancient Egyptians. People were walking around it and we were told that people make a wish and walk around the beetle seven times, chanting the wish in their heads to ensure that it will come true. Mamdoh said that this is the invention of tour guides. I did it but lost count so if my wish doesn’t come true it will all be my own fault.

The purification lake is about 40 metres by 150 metres and was teeming with fish. Stripy stone-coloured lizards played in the sunshine on the rocks. It was an incredibly interesting site but we were feeling a little lethargic and took our time strolling around slowly and really looking carefully at the bits we saw.
After a visit to a jeweller’s, where we saw the craftsmen at work and some members of our tour made purchases, we enjoyed lunch at a Koshary restaurant. Koshary is made with two kinds of pasta, lentils, fried onions and a tomato sauce and is delicious. Later Keith and Julie and I went to find a book shop and then strolled through a market, trying to buy a blank CD and some socks. Somehow my four pairs had reduced themselves to two and the pressure to wash and dry them every day was too much. We were hit by a carriage pushing its way through the crowded market and although I was knocked off balance, no real damage was done since I fell into a sock display. This close encounter with the socks enabled me to make a selection but when I haggled over the price to bring it down to about $5 Australian a pair – way above real Egyptian value – the owner said that I had broken his heart and carried on dramatically. Not so dramatically that he allowed us to walk off without a sale being made. We were offered many ‘black’ cds and eventually we successfully completed our shopping list. Keith was complimented on being a lucky man having two wives! Unfortunately as we were walking back to the hotel we realised that we had forgotten to go to the museum, but by then it was too late. It is amazing how long everything takes – we were still eating lunch at 3.30, finding the book shop took ages, deciding not to buy a book was another half hour and agreeing to a price for the socks took about five minutes, etc etc. After a meal in the hotel it was an early night (after some blog typing – a chore sometimes because there is no time to do it and even worse because I am always way behind.)

Grand Tour of Egypt: ‘King’ Hatshepsut

While donkey riding, for me, is far preferable to camel riding, the previous 45 minute stint had been perfectly satisfying. My dear little donkey, now that he faced home and a downhill slope, had a complete personality change and raced along, barging rudely past anyone in the way and ignoring cries of ‘Keep right!’ when tour buses rushed upon us. (They drive on the right hand side of the road here so ‘Keep right’ is the equivalent of ‘Keep left’ for us.) Shouts of ‘Hoosh, hoosh!’ (Donkey for ‘Slow, slow!’) had little impact and before we knew it we were up near the front and back in the Egyptian Marathon. This time we raced several men, boxing them in and outpacing them, then dropping back when they tried to go wide to escape us, all unintentionally. The race appeared to be being called with the speakers on the minaret of the local mosque. Sensible double use of facilities, I thought, until I realised that the tenor, fervour and length of the call were over the top if a description of the progress of a few veteran marathon stragglers was the actual content. Then we realised that it was Friday – the day for sermons to be broadcast by local Imams. By this time even these entertaining distractions were not enough to prevent me realising that I was likely to pay physically for this little jaunt on the donkey for days to come, so it was with great relief that we turned off the road, left our donkeys and started walking to the temple of Hatshepsut.

She was the regent for her stepson, Tuthmosis III, and enjoyed it so much that she usurped him and ruled for 20 years. She did a great job, turning from military endeavours to commercial interaction with neighbours, and her lover showed his appreciation by building an absolutely enormous temple for her. Statues of her show her with a false beard because she had to be ‘King’ if she was to be ruler. The term ‘Queen’ was only used for the consort of a king. When she died, her stepson finally got to be king and he seems to have spent all his time paying her back by desecrating anything that depicted her and gouging out any hieroglyphic cartouches that contained her name. Obsessive rancour led to him even trying to hide an obelisk at Karnak that she had erected, by building a wall in front of it.

We were whisked away to an alabaster workshop in ‘local buses’ which were like built-in utes with seats along each side and handles to hold onto out the back if you were unable to get a seat.

We saw several craftsmen working by hand on alabaster vases and listened to a short talk about the process.
They showed us factory made alabaster (very heavy) to compare with the fine, hand made pieces they sell at their shop, into which we were then ushered.
At about 3.30 we rode in our ‘local bus’ to a riverside restaurant where we enjoyed the most delicious feast, which was very welcome, especially for the other members of the tour, who had risen very early for their hot air balloon ride.
A visit by ourselves to the Luxor Temple during free time was fascinating, but really brought home how lucky we have been to have Mamdoh explaining things to us everywhere we go.


Armed police, soldiers or tourist police are in abundance wherever there are tourists in Egypt.



This is a view of the East side of the Nile at Luxor, showing Luxor Temple, some moored luxury liners and several feluccas (sailing boats).

Grand Tour of Egypt: Valley of the Kings, Luxor

Ancient Egyptians always built their cities on the East of the Nile and their tombs on the West of the Nile, representing birth and living as the sun rises in the East and rest as the sun sets in the West. Archaeologists had suspected the presence of tombs opposite the city of Luxor (ancient Thebes) and just dug in a likely spot, eventually finding 62 tombs so far.

The tombs were originally built during each king’s life, with decorations, treasures and sarcophagus all prepared in readiness. If the king died early, sons might complete the tomb or it would be left as was. The main thing was to hide all evidence of the presence of a tomb by covering everything with sand, particularly the entry. The whole undertaking was supervised by priests, who knew and passed on the location of the tombs to the next generation of priests. To guard against tomb robbers, the second section of any tomb was a deep pit, but over the years, all the contents of the tombs were plundered.

The tombs have had concrete entrances built around their openings in recent years.

Only the last tomb to be found, that of Tutankhamen in the 1920s, was discovered with everything. It was found by accident when the tomb above it was being excavated and a donkey’s foot went through the floor, revealing a step. At some stage priests must have gathered up the mummies of many of the kings to protect them, because they were recently found all together in one particularly well hidden tomb.
Alighting from our donkeys, we laughed at the cowboy gait that many of us had all developed, and set off on a small motor train for a 200 metre ride into the Valley of the Kings. Mamdoh gave a fascinating talk on the tombs in general and at each of the three tombs that we visited. That belonging to Tusmes III was unusual in that the entry was high up in the mountain and the connecting passages led downwards inside the hill. The ‘well’ (robber trap) was clear, being only partially covered with boards. The air was hot and oppressive. A constant stream of tourists climbed the ladders and filed past each other and the decorations to the sarcophagus chamber. Most decorations are carefully done and can be attributed to a period by their artistic style and merit as well as by the content that they depict. In this case the drawings were extremely simplistic and poorly executed, but they were very well preserved and the colours were startlingly bright. In the cartouche shaped sarcophagus room (oval shaped – the shape used to enclose a King’s name in hieroglyphics) the ceiling was painted blue with yellow stars so that when the king awoke he would feel that he was looking at the sky in the afterlife.

The Tesnaut/Setnakht tomb was interesting because there were two burial chambers. Seknakht had taken over the tomb, erased a few names and details and made it his own.
The tomb of Sety 11 featured beautiful reliefs created in a sophisticated and careful way. On each side of the entry passage the same scenes were depicted with the matching pictures made in reverse relief; one had all the backgrounds dug away and the other had all the foregrounds dug away. Deeper in the tomb this standard drops and some urgency to complete the task must have developed. This resulted in some more slapdash drawn pictures in colour and ultimately in some rough sketches that were never completed. We waited while some members of the tour inspected Tutankhamen’s tomb at an additional cost and then it was off to find our donkeys again.

In the centre of this picture is a line of people making their way along the narrow valley to visit various tombs.

This boy was one of several selling postcards and souvenirs illegally in the Valley of the Kings. He had run away from the police and was biding his time up a steep hillside waiting for an opportunity to come down and resume selling.

Grand tour of Egypt: Luxor

We spent the latter part of the afternoon strolling around the market in Luxor, where fresh produce from the farms was displayed on carts, often with the donkey still attached. Small birds sat cowering on top of a basket and whole carcasses of animals swayed in the breeze outside butcheries. People were friendly and polite and no-one was urging us to buy anything. We did buy some delicious looking bread to have with our cheese for lunch and experienced a new taste sensation when it turned out to be a large sweet pastry.

A stroll along the corniche (Nile waterfront on the East bank) showed us the richer side of the tourist experience with the grand Winter Palace Hotel standing out. Agatha Christie wrote ‘Death on the Nile’ partly in that hotel and partly when she stayed in Aswan, no doubt in between dining on small birds and strawberries and sailing about on feluccas. We ourselves dined with our tour group in a Chinese restaurant where there were two waiters, a bit like the funny man and the straight man in a comedy team, with the straight man treating us like school children and insisting on checking our orders. No doubt he has had plenty of experience with the frustrations of dealing with large groups of tourists in holiday mode and, in our case, when he read back the orders, some of us had already forgotten what we had asked for. We enjoyed the meal and retired at a reasonably early hour.
A ferry captain came to pick us up in the lobby next morning but we were unable to open our door to get out. Keith rang the reception desk and, after a couple more calls, someone came up to help us. Meanwhile I was jiggling all the handles and managed to burst through the door just as our rescuers arrived. Later that evening it turned out that the handle was for looks only and that there was a different knob for actual door opening – just a little tricky since the non functional door handle acted just like a broken one. We sailed over to join the rest of the tour on the West bank of the Nile. They had risen early to take a hot air balloon flight but were unable to go up due to the windy conditions.
Our mode of transport this time was the donkey – much closer to the ground and no roaring. My little white donkey was gentle natured and initially showed a great preference for walking sedately at the back of the group. Keith’s, in contrast, was a born leader and insisted on passing every donkey ahead of it in the same weaving and speedy way as a Cairo taxi driver. We trotted alongside tour buses and local traffic for a while as we worked at mastering steering, staying on and pretending to have some control over speed.

It was a great relief when we turned off onto a rural road and a most enjoyable and interesting trip passing through the farms beside the irrigation channel. Cane trucks and motor bikes regularly drove in the opposite direction and drew anxious calls of ‘Keep right, one line,’ from the donkey owners who accompanied us. At this stage my donkey decided to have a second speed and galloped forward, forcing its way between other riders and bouncing me up and down rhythmically. As with the camel ride a few days earlier, I couldn’t help thinking about how useful stirrups would be and why hadn’t the Egyptians thought of that. Later Mamdoh said that stirrups are bad because, if you fall off, the donkey keeps going and you would be dragged along. He also said that people regularly fall off and that one woman riding at the front in another tour group fell off and all the donkeys behind kept going, luckily stepping over her so she wasn’t injured.
Leaving the rural track we were back on a major road, which seemed to be partially closed and had some bunting and a crowd lining it. People were waving, which we thought seemed to be an excessive reaction for a group of tourists struggling to trot along on donkeys. We all waved back and smiled graciously anyway. Suddenly a group of about 30 in-line skaters, decked out in matching lycra, flashed by. Next we trotted past a sign announcing that the Egyptian Marathon was on and, unable to leave the road, we mingled with a group of veteran runners and appeared to be racing with them. One poor lady could not outrun our donkeys and was trapped by us for at least a kilometre or two. One of our donkey riders even collected a free bottle of water at the drink stop. We continued to confuse the crowd by waving to them, and the contestants by making encouraging comments in English. At about this stage we could see the desert and mountains opening up ahead of us and knew that we were close to our destination – the Valley of the Kings.


We never found out why this sign was so prominently displayed in Luxor.

These goats were grazing on the roof of a house in the market area of Luxor.

Luxor caters for many wealthy tourists and some businesses make sure they feel right at home. The sign on the right is for Murphy's Irish Pub.

In some Egyptian towns there is a display showing how long it is until the traffic lights change colour.

Gand Tour of Egypt: Kom Ombo and Etfu

Waking early we were back in the tour bus and off to visit some temples. Kom Ombo Temple is in a loop in the Nile and is dedicated to the Gods Sobek, who is represented wearing a crocodile head, and Horus, who has a falcon head.

Etfu Temple, one of the best preserved in Egypt, is also dedicated to Horus. Some interesting relief sculptures depicted surgical instruments, detailed fruit and vegetable offerings and a ‘birthing chair’.
The drive was fascinating since we passed through rural villages with buildings and yards made of mud brick and tiny joining plots of crops with irrigation streams from larger irrigation channels leading to them.

The main crops were sugar cane, onions, clover, something that looks like long grass, cabbages, strawberries, zucchinis and dates. We have also seen oranges and olives. One small area will have several plots of about ¼ acre or less with a larger spot for sugar cane. All labour seems to be by hand with the aid of donkeys and carts, although we have seen tractors occasionally. The cane is cut, stripped back a bit, loaded on small carts and taken to a central spot where it is loaded onto cane trucks to go for processing.

The stubble and waste is burnt. Some cane is consumed locally as a sweet treat to suck on, or, after going through a juicing machine, as a drink. As there are no fences between plots or adjoining farms, cows, goats, sheep and donkeys grazed under the supervision of young shepherds, most of whom looked like they would have been school age.

Some wall structures made of palm leaves or mud brick act as wind and sand breaks, with some enclosed for keeping animals in. The Bedouin woman we spoke with in Jordan was horrified to hear that our herds are kept in fenced paddocks rather than being shepherded about the countryside in search of food, because she felt that the Australian animals were not having a good and interesting life. Unlike Australian rural scenes, people were everywhere working together. The fertile strip along the Nile is not wide but it is certainly strikingly lush, vividly green and productive. Since the construction of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s there has been no annual flooding of the Nile Valley. This has saved many lives, but it also means that there is no annual addition of fertile soil to the farms, so fertility will inevitably decline over the years. All the mud that annually flooded over the Nile Valley is now slowly but inevitably filling up Lake Nasser.
The trip to the temples and eventually to Luxor was in a military convoy, so at each spot the many tour buses lined up and disgorged their contents with strict instructions to be back at a certain time. While this makes for a crowded experience, it is an initiative to ensure the safety of tourists and the continued support internationally for visiting Egypt.

Grand tour of Egypt: Felucca sailing, Aswan

Later that day the beautiful felucca picked us up and we spent the rest of the day until sunset lazing about on cushions and drowsing away.

In former times those needing to go to the toilet on a felucca had to hold on, go over the side or ask the captain to pull into the shore for a visit to ‘the big toilet’ (the desert). We were one of the first groups to have the benefit of the ‘Mother Ship’, a diesel vessel that provides toilets and dining for those on related feluccas.

Mostly the Mother Ship was out of sight and when we did pull in beside her it involved major manoeuvring and sailing skill so it was no surprise that no-one on our felucca requested a toilet stop and then there was a big rush for the rest rooms as soon as boarding for dinner was organised.
We moored on the Nile bank – sand dunes and palm trees with a village far off in the distance. Setting off to gather wood in the dark by torch light was entertaining and good exercise after a lazy afternoon. There did not seem to be anything we would describe as wood; mainly palm fronds and small prickle bushes, but a long excursion across the soft sand produced some prickly sticks and branches, enough for a bonfire later in the evening. We dined on the mother ship while another tour group dined upstairs and then we got together around the fire. Some of the Nubian crew performed on drums and sang, encouraging us to join in with clapping, singing and dancing.

Gradually the crowd dwindled as the weary passengers left to set out their sleeping bags and be rocked to sleep by the waves of the Nile. We underestimated how cold it would be and didn’t put on enough layers of clothing but, despite that, we got in a reasonable amount of sleep. Another passenger unluckily slept just where the wake from a passing cruiser swished up over the side and his head got splashed. Travelling by felucca is so relaxing and the night on board just topped off a very enjoyable day.