Aswan & Luxor

Afternoon all,

My last two weeks have been exhaustingly cultural. After a low-key New Year's celebration in Cairo, consisting of weak lager and strong sheesha, and a second visit to the Egyptian Museum, I caught a train to Aswan in Upper Egypt...also known as Southern Egypt. I spent two days around here visiting ancient ruins, ancient temples and ancient locals – I spent a few hours with the elder of a Nubian village on Elephantine Island – and another day on an excursion to Abu Simbel. The 3am start wasn't appreciated, but the temples more than made up for it. The Great Temple of Ramses II is carved into the mountain overlooking Lake Nasser – the world’s largest artificial lake at 5250km² – and has four colossal statues at its entrance. The innermost chamber has carvings of four gods on their thrones and the room is aligned in such a way that on the 22nd February and 22nd October every year the rising sun illuminates them. Historians are stumped as to how such intricate calculations could possibly have been made in the 13th Century BC. The slightly smaller Temple of Hathor contains startlingly accurate predictions about the future of Egypt. While most temples have artwork depicting men offering food and wine to the gods, this temple shows men offering mini-sphinxes and pyramids on sticks; an eerie premonition of the crap souvenirs to come. On the way back to Aswan we also stopped at the magnificent temple complex on Philae Island, dedicated to the god Isis. He is the most influential of the Egyptian gods and was once worshipped as far afield as Kent!

On Saturday I hopped on a felucca cruise of the Nile. I was with a lovely New Zealand woman and seven very nice but very American Americans! They had an unusual trait of proclaiming jokes or scenarios as "hilarious" without actually cracking a smile. The captain of the boat was called Nemo, though he was completely nonplussed when I suggested he read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. During the days on the felucca there was little to do besides talk, sunbathe or play cards, but in the evenings we moored up, started a fire on the bank and cooked camel meat for dinner. All in all it was a very relaxing couple of days and a welcome hiatus from museums, temples and touts. On Monday we swapped river for road and headed for Luxor via the impressive temples of Kom Ombo and Edfu. It transpired that we were all staying in hotels on the same strip so we went sightseeing as a group. We saw the Mummification Museum, the Colossi of Memnon, Luxor Temple, Deir al-Bahri, Karnak and the Valley of the Kings. Although the latter is in an impressive canyon setting, and contains some hugely important sites (such as the tomb of Tutankhamun), it had significantly less impact than Abu Simbel had. Karnak was superb, as was the Temple of Hatshepsut, and in both locations I was able to wander into the desert. At Hatshepsut this meant I got to see some excavation sites, and at Karnak I was able to tip my way to the top of a crane overlooking the temple complex.

My journey from Luxor to Sharm wasn't as easy to organise as I had expected. The ticket office suggested by my Lonely Planet didn't exist, and while I was looking for it a local approached me and asked where I was from. Now this is a common question from touts to establish how much they can rip you off, and the reply 'British' immediately results in a price rise, so on a whim I decided to go with 'Romanian'. However it transpired that this man wasn't trying to sell me anything, but wanted to show me where to go. I needed to get a ticket so I let him walk me twenty minutes to the bus station, during which time I had to keep up the pretext of being Romanian. Incidentally, this involved a vaguely Russian accent and some patronisingly broken English. When we finally got to the station the man decided to come in with me, so I had no choice but to continue my conceit. This meant I didn't get the information I needed to buy a ticket (I had established that I didn't understand words like "give", "me" or "tip" so could hardly enquire about departure and arrival destinations) and had to return the following day. The ticket office man talked to me very slowly and deliberately; whether this was because he was still unsure how good my English was, or because he realised that I had changed nationality and thought I was slightly special, I never found out.

I left Luxor by bus on Wednesday evening and fifteen uncomfortable hours later I arrived in Sharm, where I met up with couchsurfer Jay again. We went for a short dive yesterday afternoon and had another half-day on the boat today. I gained the 'deep dive' qualification that allows me to go down to thirty metres, so hopefully I can do some wreck diving in the near future. I am planning to be in Jordan by tomorrow night, but it relies on the bus running to schedule (giving me enough time to buy a ferry ticket and board). Maybe I'll be in Jordan on Sunday.

Happy birthday mum,
Joe x

NB. After two weeks in this country, I finally saw my first functioning traffic light in Luxor. I also saw a pedestrian crossing on which the little green man walks like an Egyptian!