March 9th, 10th and 11th – Luxor

We had a lazy morning and ate breakfast on the hostel's comfortable rooftop. We also did a load of critical laundry. By early in the afternoon we were ready to head to Karnak temple, meant to be the finest in the city.

Luxor is the modern site of the city of ancient Thebes. It's concentration of archaeological sites is unmatched in Egypt. It's levels of bus tourist also highest and thus the most hassle from vendors wanting an extra buck of any city we visited.

We arrived at the temple by way of public minibus and bought tickets. I convinced the guys to spring the extra bit for a guide and he was worth every penny. The nutty guide took us on a whirlwind hour tour where we got more info than perhaps the rest of our trip combined. It is quite an interesting temple, in that it had been used or lived in pretty much consistently for thousands of years. There was evidence of Egyptians, Greeks, early Christians and British exploitation. After the tour we walked around a bit more to take some photos and a closer look.

We wandered the city after and then returned to the hostel. Our evening activity just consisted of dinner and then off to a quiet bar for a beer and sheesha overlooking the Luxor temple near the center of town.

The next morning we went on an organized tour to the Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, Hatshepsut's temple and the colossi of Memnes. It was overall a good day and a whole lot of sites packed in. The guide, however, was more or less a useless mouthpiece spouting memorized information and thus provided little in the way of analytical information. It was also blazing hot at all of these locations.

The Valley of the Kings was certainly interesting and was more than well known to me before the trip. The site itself was not particularly beautiful, but the concentration and complexities of the underground tunnel network really amazing. We visited the interior of 3 tombs and it is pretty amazing how well preserved the color is on some of the wall hieroglyphs. As all of the things that glittered were either plundered or on display, the architecture and wall ornamentation were the highlights. We next visited the temple of Hatshepsut, the famous female pharaoh. It was grand in scale, though deteriorated. All the temples statues depicted her as a man as that is how she needed the people to view her in order to maintain her power. The valley of the queens followed and was basically an exact copy of the Valley of the Kings. Finally, the Colossi of Memnes were simply along the side of the road, very strange juxtaposition.

That evening we ate dinner with a group of travelers we met on the tour. It was a nice group of similar age and one of them would join for our trip the next day to Alexandria. After dinner we stumbled upon one of the most random, strange and interesting things we encountered. Just next to our hostel, we were invited to a wedding party in the alley. Think rehearsal dinner...Egyptian style. There was a band and I think the whole neighborhood would come by at some point. We stayed for just a couple hours, listened to the band and watched some of the men dance with a staff. The older men about were all having a great time drinking and smoking hashish. It was a brilliant sliver of real life in southern Egypt, but after a while, unsure of our place in the whole thing, we bowed out and left the partying to the Egyptians. We could hear the music from our room late into the night.

We spent the next day hanging out around the city, arranging that evenings train tickets and fussing around on the internet. We didn't accomplish much aside from eating and taking a few pictures. We boarded a nice train seat headed for Cairo and I was quickly out for the night.