Egypt

Friendly people, exposure to ancient historical monuments and an insight into why the Nile is the giver of life to so many people. These were our first insights into Egypt last week when we flew into Luxor to experience a little of what we'd read so much about.

We stayed in Luxor for 2 nights in a wonderful Hotel of only 12 rooms which was set in the outskirts of the city. The owner was an Irish woman who has lived there for 7 years and is a wealth of knowledge about the area and about the needs of people who don't want to be caught up in large tour groups but instead want to explore the district on their own or with guides who don't take you to places to buy products you're not interested in.  It is a very poor country and one of the down sides was that everyone is very helpful and they want to do things for you, but for money of course. This got tiring after a while but you couldn't take offence knowing how underdeveloped most of the country is and what little money they earn.

Luxor is a bustling city, but with a country feel set on the east bank of the Nile River. Along the corniche there were many high end hotels and it had an organised feel about it but a kilometre away you saw the real Luxor with donkeys used extensively for transport, women carrying huge baskets of goods on their heads and children playing in the dirty, dusty and rubbish filled streets.

The west bank (Thebes) is a farming district and an important area for agriculture on the fertile plains of the river. It was also important during ancient times because of the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens and the Tombs of the Nobles. This is where the Egyptians Kings and Queens from as far back as 1600 BC were buried and archaeological diggings continue to this day. The tomb of Tutunkamen was discovered here earlier this century and to date they have found over 62 burial chambers. These are long corridors tunnelled into the Valley with ornately carved and painted walls with areas set aside to house goods and riches for the afterlife as well as the sarcophagus' in the antechambers at the end of the tunnels. The riches have all been stolen by the 'tomb raiders' over the years despite their attempts to hide the entrances to the tombs. The mummies that have been discovered are now mostly housed  in the Cairo museum.

From Luxor we caught a local train down to Aswan about 220 kms away and joined a river cruise which was to take us back up the river to Luxor over 3 nights.

We were waiting at the station 15 minutes before our first class train was due to arrive and 3 hours later the train still hadn't come!!!    After some enquiries we learnt that it was pretty normal for them to be between 1 and 3 hours late but on that particular day there had been a train derailment in Cairo which meant the train was running about 7 hours late!!!!  After some negotiations between a guard and a train driver of one of the local trains, we hopped on the next train that came through and made it to Aswan about 4 hours late.

In Aswan we visited the High dam which was started in 1962 in a joint venture between the Soviet Union and Egypt and it took 30,000 workers 10 years to build. It's a hydroelectric dam but now, despite it's size, it's falling short of the electricity needs of the district.

We visited Philae temple a Greco Roman designed temple built for the Egyptian gods.  The temple is on a small island which is not its original home but it was moved when the Dam was built to save it from being submerged. We also went sailing in a felucca on the Nile and enjoyed the peace of tranquility of being transported along the river by wind power as has been done by generations of Egyptians long before.

We then transferred onto our cruise ship and travelled along the Nile stopping to visit ancient monuments and temples such as Kom Ombo and the Temple of Edfu. Relaxing on the boat watching the people going about their business on the fertile banks of the river was an absolute highlight.  The scenery changed constantly bringing so many photo opportunities which I hope I've been able to capture through some of the photos you'll see in the smilebox below.  We passed through a lock at Esna then sailed on in to Luxor where we were transferred to our hotel then on to the airport to catch our flight back to the UAE.

It was a wonderful experience and we feeling very lucky to be living and working so close to so many  countries with such colourful and long histories.  We hope one day to go back there as there's so much more we haven't  seen.  This is the story of our life...................