A pyramid or a mountain? (Day 8)

As I have already mentioned in my previous post, all those temples were slowly beginning to bore us. I knew that later on I would be sorry for leaving out any one of them. It would be ideal if we could get to taste as much of genuine Egypt and at the same time see all the spectacular old buildings. In reality it is quite hard to squeeze all that into two weeks.



We started Day 8 with a tour of the Valley of the kings. It is situated under this pyramid-like hill. Historians suggest that when the old kingdoms didn't do all that well anymore, their pharaohs couldn't afford huge man made final resting places like the pyramids.

This place with a natural pyramid was obviously just a perfect substitution. Many pharaohs chose this valley as their final resting place.

We visited some of the more interesting underground burial chambers in the valley and moved on. We went to the Valley of the queens on foot. When we told Osama (our Egyptian guide) of our intentions, he was just shaking his head in disbelief and announced:

Nori Slovenci! Matjaz and his group of nori Slovenci!

That literally means "crazy Slovenians". In Slovene obviously.
Supposedly not many visitors choose to walk up that hill in midday heat. Strange isn't it?

We just had to laugh at his jokes - he knew a few words of Slovenian and used them repetitively in English sentences. He also understood quite a lot of Slovenian. You don't see that too often even when traveling around Europe.


So we went to the top of the hill where we could enjoy a beautiful view of the Valley of the kings on one side and the Valley of the queens on the other. From there we descended to the other side of the hill to the Temple of queen Hatchepsut in the Valley of the queens.


We had a gorgeous view of the Queen Hot-chicken-soup Temple (as our local guide Osama renamed the Queen Hatchepsut temple). On the way down we went by a couple more recent tombs. They were supposedly used by people living nearby.
Osama, as a true Egyptian didn't accompany us but instead took an air-conditioned bus to the temple.


The temple is very well preserved. There is still original paint on some of the walls and statues. It was scorching hot, so we didn't hang around for too long.

When we got on our bus we thanked God (Allah in this case) for the air-conditioning. The bus took us to the town of Hurghada (Al-Ghardaqah).

It stretches for many kilometers along the sea. Once a Russian airbase stood there, but now the only types of buildings are hotels, look-alike shops and ugly residential buildings for the hotel and shop personnel. In my opinion Hurghada has no soul whatsoever.

We ran into many groups of Russian tourists. We were told that many of the shops were owned by Russians. In some of them even fur caps and coats were on display.
I guess I don't need to stress the temperature outside was around 45 degrees Celsius at that time.

With my girlfriend M. we both agreed that this was the most unpleasant place on our trip and would not want to see it again. That is quite unfortunate, because beside Sharm el Sheikh it is the destination most frequently offered in Slovenian travel catalogs.

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The last meal on the Nile (Day 7)

We woke up to find ourselves at a totally different place from last night. We had been sailing for quite some time that morning and have reached Luxor by that time. Our Nubian crew had already prepared a nice breakfast for us. We enjoyed our last meal on the river Nile.

On our itinerary for the day were a couple of nearby temples. First we stopped at Luxor Temple. It is quite huge and hieroglyphs on the buildings are very well preserved. We were slowly getting tired of with different kinds of temples, so after a short while we moved on to our next destination - another temple.


Our next stop was the Karnak Temple. It is even bigger then the one before. Here we also saw one of the magnificent Egyptian obelisks.

Today there are 28 known ancient Egyptian obelisks scattered across the globe. Only 8 of those are still in Egypt. Others have been moved (mostly stolen) by various countries. 11 stand in Italy, 4 in UK and the others are owned by France, Israel, Poland, Turkey and USA. Egyptian government tries to claim them back but is not very successful in doing that.

In the evening we took a walk around the city of Luxor. We tried to find the Bazaar to annoy local merchants. We got so ruthless in our haggling that on some occasions we were even thrown out of a shop. Nevertheless I am pretty much sure that we didn't always get what we wanted by local prices.

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The Nubian Nile experience (Day 6)

The first part of our day on the Nile (described in my previous post) continued with some more relaxing and soaking up the positive atmosphere.

Crew members constantly kept doing something I didn't dare. When they were thirsty, they simply reached over the edge of our boat for a fresh glass of Nile.
If I did that, I guess I would still have diarrhea today. Thanks, but no thanks!


After we finished with our lunch (for more details you can check out the previous post) it was time for a swim in the Nile. The water was surprisingly clear and we enjoyed every part of it!
I did it despite reading in a couple of years old guidebook that if someone happens to fall into the river Nile, he should seek medical attention as soon as possible.
Even one of my readers here shared a story about an aching finger after dipping it in the Nile (you can read about that in comments to this post).


Before the night crept upon us we tied our feluka to the river bank and watched some local boys playing soccer. They were quite good and were obviously having fun.


I went on a short walk through the nearby fields and took a few nice photos. One of them was with this local, doing some field work. Of course afterwards he wouldn't go away without some baksheesh.

After a beautiful sunset the Nubians built a fire and grabbed their drums. People say they are born with a musical ear. I had to agree.
We danced around the fire and tried to sing along. Music lasted long into the night and died out hours later together with the fire.



After some time sitting in the dark by the river, watching millions of stars, we went to our feluka to catch some sleep. I went to sleep thinking of the excitement a new morning might bring us.

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Curse of the Pharaohs (Day 6)

First thing in the morning we boarded a feluka in Aswan. The plan was to get down the Nile with an occasional stop.

Our first stop was in a Nubian village. It was much needed, because the effects of the Curse of the Pharaohs were just kicking in.

It was a simple village, with colorful walls around the houses. We were invited into one of those to have tea. It is a habit in Egypt to offer a glass of tea to a guest. Usually one can choose among a few different ones: karkade, mint, black or black with fresh mint. Low quality black tea blend is the most common. They all come with a load of sugar.
I usually have my tea without sugar, so I had to adapt to the Egyptian way.

The Nubian house we were visiting also had a large yard enclosed inside a wall. On the sandy floor there was a half made feluka sail.
In one of the yard's corners stood a toilet. I am not exaggerating when I say that our party of 13 visited it more then 15 times in half an hour. I think you can figure it out yourself.
No, it wasn't that pretty and yes, it was the good old Pharaoh's curse. The tea after our camel ride the day before was definitely the thing to blame. Oh well, what could we do - when it's there you just have to live with it for a few days. It just meant we had to start taking anti diarrhea pills and everywhere we went, toilet paper went with us. I didn't go so far to try to use the local water hose way of cleaning myself.


This didn't stop us from tasting more interesting local dishes and drinks. On one of our next stops it was time for some freshly prepared local food by our Nubian crew. We had aish (local flat bread), vegetables (cucumbers and tomatoes), feta-like salty cheese and bean kofta (fried green-bean balls).


I took a few photos of those dishes - you should have no trouble guessing which is which.

We followed our guide's example and stuffed the bread with different combinations of those dishes. It was a simple yet very delicious lunch.


There was even a large amount of watermelon for desert. I flushed it all down with a cold beer. Ahhhh... it felt good. It is not always easy to get hold of a beer in Islamic countries, so we took every opportunity we could.

Later in the afternoon we were about to meet the Nile from up close and personal. But more about that in my next post.

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