CAIRO
We arrived bright and early on Monday morning in Cairo. It was a national holiday and the city was quiet as we drove to our hotel in Zamalek, a peaceful suburb on an island in the middle of the river. Not wanting to waste any time, we went almost immediately to Giza - an area just a short distance from the city center where Egypt's most famous pyramids and the Sphinx are located. The pyramids are huge and quite well-preserved. They seemed strangely anachronistic, standing there on desert land, with the skyline of the modern city right behind. I had not appreciated that they were so close to town.
We were able to enter one of the pyramids and made our way through ascending tunnels to the burial chamber. It was hard work. The tunnels were low and there was almost no ventilation - very hot and sticky. The burial chamber itself was unspectacular. Nothing left there after generations of grave robbers had been through. It was dark and, in the gaps between each batch of arriving tourists, there was an eerie silence. We spent several hours around the Giza site, admiring the Sphinx (looking exactly as it does in the tourist photos and carved from a single piece of limestone) and walking around the rocky sand hills.
Later that day, we went to the Coptic area of the city with its numerous churches and monasteries. It is an area of great significance for followers of the modern Coptic church and there were lots of relics on display. The Coptics seem to co-exist comfortably enough with the larger Islamic population of Cairo. Finally, we successfully negotiated our way back to the hotel using Cairo's efficient metro system
Next day we had to spend some time trying to organize visas for some of our future destinations. Then we were off to Egypt's national museum, an enormous collection of objects from antiquity including many items from King Tutankhamun's tomb famously discovered in 1922 and a large assortment of mummies in varying conditions. There was a lot to absorb and we had to agree with the criticisms we had heard that the collections are not exhibited in a very viewer-friendly way. Nevertheless, we persevered, knowing that we were seeing some remarkable artifacts. Some almost 5,000 years old. It makes the Western European history we learned seem like it happened only yesterday. It was astonishing to realize how sophisticated and advanced the ancient Egyptians were so long ago.
We spent our last day in Cairo looking around the medieval section of the city. A collection of peaceful mosques interspersed with the frenetic activity of various bazaars and markets. Also very striking was a series of immaculately restored medieval period houses. There seemed no end to the rooms and nooks and crannies in these very spacious buildings. Our last stop was a climb above the only surviving gate in the city wall. We were able to ascend one of the minarets for a panoramic view of the entire city - at least as far as the hazy conditions would allow.
The we boarded an overnight sleeper train bound for Aswan. This is one of the world's classic tourist train journeys - people don't often travel like this any more. We had a very comfortable bunk cabin and managed a good night's sleep. The motion of the train and the rhythmic noise on the rails combined to produce a somniferous effect.
ASWAN - ABU SIMBEL
The sun gets up early in Egypt. We were up at 5 am as our sleeper train moved through Luxor and on to Aswan. People were already at work in the fields - tending crops of sugar cane, wheat and palm trees. The land was surprisingly green and fertile. Not the desert landscape we had been expecting.
After arriving in Aswan, we found our hotel near the river and took an orientation walk around the city. It was incredibly hot. It felt as if we were walking in an oven. The temperature was over 40C and we were told that it can reach 45C. No wonder there weren't so many people walking around.
Later in the day, when it was a little cooler, we took a felucca trip on the Nile. The idea was to sail to one of the islands on the river and then cruise around as the sun set. There were just two of us on the felucca, a heavy wooden boat which could carry about 40 people. Things didn't go quite according to plan. The headwind was quite strong and the boat man had to struggle on the oars. There was no motor to make his job easier. We finally reached our island destination, a botanical garden created by Lord Kitchener. It was beautiful and green against the backdrop of the barren desert on the other side of the river. We got to see the sunset as we returned to Aswan - but, with wind and current against us, the night darkness had descended long before we disembarked.
Next day we had arranged to visit the temple complex at Abu Simbel. There are two major temples in Abu Simbel with some of the largest statuary in Egypt. But getting there is also an experience in itself. Tourists have to travel by bus convoy for security reasons. And the main convoy of the day leaves from Aswan at 4 am. It was also the day on which Egyptians put their clocks forward for summer time (which we didn't know until someone called us very early in the morning), so we didn't get a lot of sleep.
It's a three hour bus trip to Abu Simbel and we arrived a little after 7 am. The good news was that we avoided the heat of the day and were able to see the two temples in relatively comfortable conditions, albeit with the hundreds of other tourists in the same convoy. The temples were worth seeing. The more impressive of the two is a temple built by Ramses II, fronted by statues of himself which tower 30 meters high. He was not very modest. Inside are many chambers with carved hieroglyphs. A second temple next door is a little smaller, and again fronted by giant statues of Ramses - but his wife Nefertari also gets a couple of statues this time. Both temples are not on their original sites but were moved there out of the way of the flooding associated with the Aswan dam constructions. It must have been an enormous job to move everything.
On the way back to Aswan, we stopped on the dam walls and learnt more about the scale of the dam work undertaken to control the flow of the Nile. The Aswan high dam is only the latest in a series of attempts to control the Nile that has been going on for many generations.
We also visited the Ptolemaic-Roman temple of Philae, another relocation from the dam path. The original Philae island is now under water, so the temple is on a different small island. It is also quite impressive, though very different in its origins from what we had seen earlier in the morning. When sightseeing in Egypt, one has to jump backwards and forwards by centuries and even millennia.
LUXOR
We boarded a local train for the 4 hour journey from Aswan north to Luxor. Nothing as fancy as the sleeper train on which we had arrived, but it turned out to be pretty efficient and very economical. We were in Luxor by early afternoon and spent the rest of the day visiting Luxor temple and Luxor museum, both near the center of town. The temple is huge and impressive and, like several temples in the area, is a combination of the work of many different rulers, each of whom adds something to it (or, in some cases, obliterates something from it). These are not just rulers from the ancient Egyptian dynasties. The Greeks and Romans have also left their marks - and there is even an Arab mosque within the temple walls. Amazingly, new discoveries are still being unearthed on the temple site.
The Luxor museum is a fantastic museum. In contrast to the Egyptian national museum in Cairo, it is very selective in what it displays and everything carries excellent descriptions. We know when we've found a good museum - and this is one of them - because we don't get museum fatigue after a couple of hours. Exhibits cover all of the civilizations which touched Luxor (or Thebes as it was formerly called). We also paid a quick visit to a mummification museum where e learnt more than we necessarily wanted to know about how the mummification process works.
To round out the day, we went to a sound and light show at the massive Karnak temple. We didn't have high expectations, but it proved to be very well done. Viewing the columns and obelisks against the night sky served to emphasize just how huge they are and marvel at how they were ever constructed and assembled. As with the Luxor temple, it seems that successive rulers have added their own "renovations" over a period of about 1,500 years. We are looking forward to going back in daylight!
We next took a day to visit the West bank of the Nile - across the river from Luxor. Here is a vast series of archeological sites including the most famous Valley of the Kings where many regal tombs are located. We cycled from site to site, inspecting many of the tombs which ranged in style, condition and complexity. There is a lot of exploration work still going on and I wouldn't be surprised if there are more tombs there still to be discovered. This area retained its popularity as a burial site for several dynasties and we could see how tomb architecture evolved from modest to larger and larger edifices - all hewn into the sides of the cliffs and entered via long chambers adorned with hieroglyph carvings. The place was so popular with Egyptian kings that we even found an instance where the chamber of one tomb accidentally ran into another. There is also a Valley of the Queens where the tombs are a little more low-key and the Tombs of the Nobles which are plainer still. With a few temples in the vicinity to complement the tombs, this is an archeologically rich area and we covered a lot of ground. We were back to Luxor's east bank in time to observe the sunset and get an early night.
We arrived bright and early on Monday morning in Cairo. It was a national holiday and the city was quiet as we drove to our hotel in Zamalek, a peaceful suburb on an island in the middle of the river. Not wanting to waste any time, we went almost immediately to Giza - an area just a short distance from the city center where Egypt's most famous pyramids and the Sphinx are located. The pyramids are huge and quite well-preserved. They seemed strangely anachronistic, standing there on desert land, with the skyline of the modern city right behind. I had not appreciated that they were so close to town.
We were able to enter one of the pyramids and made our way through ascending tunnels to the burial chamber. It was hard work. The tunnels were low and there was almost no ventilation - very hot and sticky. The burial chamber itself was unspectacular. Nothing left there after generations of grave robbers had been through. It was dark and, in the gaps between each batch of arriving tourists, there was an eerie silence. We spent several hours around the Giza site, admiring the Sphinx (looking exactly as it does in the tourist photos and carved from a single piece of limestone) and walking around the rocky sand hills.
Later that day, we went to the Coptic area of the city with its numerous churches and monasteries. It is an area of great significance for followers of the modern Coptic church and there were lots of relics on display. The Coptics seem to co-exist comfortably enough with the larger Islamic population of Cairo. Finally, we successfully negotiated our way back to the hotel using Cairo's efficient metro system
Next day we had to spend some time trying to organize visas for some of our future destinations. Then we were off to Egypt's national museum, an enormous collection of objects from antiquity including many items from King Tutankhamun's tomb famously discovered in 1922 and a large assortment of mummies in varying conditions. There was a lot to absorb and we had to agree with the criticisms we had heard that the collections are not exhibited in a very viewer-friendly way. Nevertheless, we persevered, knowing that we were seeing some remarkable artifacts. Some almost 5,000 years old. It makes the Western European history we learned seem like it happened only yesterday. It was astonishing to realize how sophisticated and advanced the ancient Egyptians were so long ago.
We spent our last day in Cairo looking around the medieval section of the city. A collection of peaceful mosques interspersed with the frenetic activity of various bazaars and markets. Also very striking was a series of immaculately restored medieval period houses. There seemed no end to the rooms and nooks and crannies in these very spacious buildings. Our last stop was a climb above the only surviving gate in the city wall. We were able to ascend one of the minarets for a panoramic view of the entire city - at least as far as the hazy conditions would allow.
The we boarded an overnight sleeper train bound for Aswan. This is one of the world's classic tourist train journeys - people don't often travel like this any more. We had a very comfortable bunk cabin and managed a good night's sleep. The motion of the train and the rhythmic noise on the rails combined to produce a somniferous effect.
ASWAN - ABU SIMBEL
The sun gets up early in Egypt. We were up at 5 am as our sleeper train moved through Luxor and on to Aswan. People were already at work in the fields - tending crops of sugar cane, wheat and palm trees. The land was surprisingly green and fertile. Not the desert landscape we had been expecting.
After arriving in Aswan, we found our hotel near the river and took an orientation walk around the city. It was incredibly hot. It felt as if we were walking in an oven. The temperature was over 40C and we were told that it can reach 45C. No wonder there weren't so many people walking around.
Later in the day, when it was a little cooler, we took a felucca trip on the Nile. The idea was to sail to one of the islands on the river and then cruise around as the sun set. There were just two of us on the felucca, a heavy wooden boat which could carry about 40 people. Things didn't go quite according to plan. The headwind was quite strong and the boat man had to struggle on the oars. There was no motor to make his job easier. We finally reached our island destination, a botanical garden created by Lord Kitchener. It was beautiful and green against the backdrop of the barren desert on the other side of the river. We got to see the sunset as we returned to Aswan - but, with wind and current against us, the night darkness had descended long before we disembarked.
Next day we had arranged to visit the temple complex at Abu Simbel. There are two major temples in Abu Simbel with some of the largest statuary in Egypt. But getting there is also an experience in itself. Tourists have to travel by bus convoy for security reasons. And the main convoy of the day leaves from Aswan at 4 am. It was also the day on which Egyptians put their clocks forward for summer time (which we didn't know until someone called us very early in the morning), so we didn't get a lot of sleep.
It's a three hour bus trip to Abu Simbel and we arrived a little after 7 am. The good news was that we avoided the heat of the day and were able to see the two temples in relatively comfortable conditions, albeit with the hundreds of other tourists in the same convoy. The temples were worth seeing. The more impressive of the two is a temple built by Ramses II, fronted by statues of himself which tower 30 meters high. He was not very modest. Inside are many chambers with carved hieroglyphs. A second temple next door is a little smaller, and again fronted by giant statues of Ramses - but his wife Nefertari also gets a couple of statues this time. Both temples are not on their original sites but were moved there out of the way of the flooding associated with the Aswan dam constructions. It must have been an enormous job to move everything.
On the way back to Aswan, we stopped on the dam walls and learnt more about the scale of the dam work undertaken to control the flow of the Nile. The Aswan high dam is only the latest in a series of attempts to control the Nile that has been going on for many generations.
We also visited the Ptolemaic-Roman temple of Philae, another relocation from the dam path. The original Philae island is now under water, so the temple is on a different small island. It is also quite impressive, though very different in its origins from what we had seen earlier in the morning. When sightseeing in Egypt, one has to jump backwards and forwards by centuries and even millennia.
LUXOR
We boarded a local train for the 4 hour journey from Aswan north to Luxor. Nothing as fancy as the sleeper train on which we had arrived, but it turned out to be pretty efficient and very economical. We were in Luxor by early afternoon and spent the rest of the day visiting Luxor temple and Luxor museum, both near the center of town. The temple is huge and impressive and, like several temples in the area, is a combination of the work of many different rulers, each of whom adds something to it (or, in some cases, obliterates something from it). These are not just rulers from the ancient Egyptian dynasties. The Greeks and Romans have also left their marks - and there is even an Arab mosque within the temple walls. Amazingly, new discoveries are still being unearthed on the temple site.
The Luxor museum is a fantastic museum. In contrast to the Egyptian national museum in Cairo, it is very selective in what it displays and everything carries excellent descriptions. We know when we've found a good museum - and this is one of them - because we don't get museum fatigue after a couple of hours. Exhibits cover all of the civilizations which touched Luxor (or Thebes as it was formerly called). We also paid a quick visit to a mummification museum where e learnt more than we necessarily wanted to know about how the mummification process works.
To round out the day, we went to a sound and light show at the massive Karnak temple. We didn't have high expectations, but it proved to be very well done. Viewing the columns and obelisks against the night sky served to emphasize just how huge they are and marvel at how they were ever constructed and assembled. As with the Luxor temple, it seems that successive rulers have added their own "renovations" over a period of about 1,500 years. We are looking forward to going back in daylight!
We next took a day to visit the West bank of the Nile - across the river from Luxor. Here is a vast series of archeological sites including the most famous Valley of the Kings where many regal tombs are located. We cycled from site to site, inspecting many of the tombs which ranged in style, condition and complexity. There is a lot of exploration work still going on and I wouldn't be surprised if there are more tombs there still to be discovered. This area retained its popularity as a burial site for several dynasties and we could see how tomb architecture evolved from modest to larger and larger edifices - all hewn into the sides of the cliffs and entered via long chambers adorned with hieroglyph carvings. The place was so popular with Egyptian kings that we even found an instance where the chamber of one tomb accidentally ran into another. There is also a Valley of the Queens where the tombs are a little more low-key and the Tombs of the Nobles which are plainer still. With a few temples in the vicinity to complement the tombs, this is an archeologically rich area and we covered a lot of ground. We were back to Luxor's east bank in time to observe the sunset and get an early night.
Simon
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