Day 2

Walking among those great impressive columns of limestone, all covered with hieroglyphs signs, some still in perfect condition and even preserving the colors they were painted in more than 4000 years ago, was something indescribable in words. I grew up being fascinated by the ancient Egypt, with its pharaohs and queens and Gods and pyramids and temples and mummies and legends… Its all! Who thought one day I would walk the streets of Thebes, the old ancient capital of Egypt, the present Luxor. On these dry lands, my favourite ancient culture was once risen, flourishing in the old times, and now, in the new times, I was here, simply living a childhood wish. I was more enchanted than a kid could ever be in a candy shop, while walking around Karnak Temple, staring countless minutes in front of Ramses II statue, of every wall or column or block. Everything had a camel color, all was covered with hieroglyphs that I could even touch if I wanted so. The temple was changing its shades as the sunlight ruled upon it in the afternoon, beautifully contrasting the blue sky above. From the reddish colors around me to the blue sky above me, my eyes followed the perfect straight shape of the old Obelisk, this pointed pillar representing then and now the petrified ray of the sun God Ra. I walked the Avenue of Sphinxes to the great Temple of Amun, resting by the Sacred Lake after circling around a statue representing a scarab for 7 times. This is a superstition for good luck. I already felt lucky. I was in Luxor.

3am that day

Traveling and going to dreamy places means not just beautiful photos and fresh looks. It’s also about LOT OF sleep deprivation and LOT OF energy squeezed out of your body.

I woke up feeling deadly tired. The previous 2 nights with almost no sleep and the crazy first full day in Egypt consumed too much of my fuel. But the temples with pharaohs statues and colorful hieroglyphs were waiting. Luxor was waiting. I jumped out of bed and on my way out of the hotel, through the ringing screening machine at the entrance, I grabbed my breakfast in a bag handed by the guy at the reception. He was so sleepy too. Also sleepy and even grumpy were the 3 Egyptian guides in the bus. A big bus with only few people inside. Even so, I was not allowed to stay on one of the seats in the front. Saying don’t sit there to a sleepy person is like saying don’t touch that to a hungry one. Made me furious but I let it go and fall asleep. I was woken up to make some room for a Chinese girl who wanted to sit right next to me. I thought why the hell she wants to sit right next to me in an empty bus and I offered to move one raw in the back so I can still enjoy 2 sits. I was told it will be a full bus that day. This was after one hour of picking up people from all the resorts in Hurghada. Jesus! I realised it will take forever to finally leave for Luxor. After another 2h, the sun was rising and we were still driving from one place to another to get the people in. Three women came and occupy the seat I first wanted. Just great!

At least I realised 2 things: 1 – Hurghada was way bigger than I imagine the first day, when I said is huge and 2 – my hotel was the poorest. Still, was the most central and I wouldn’t have traded it for none of those 5 stars resorts placed in the middle of the nowhere.

After more than 3h spent together in the bus while picking up the entire group, a breakfast served on our laps and another 3h on the road to Luxor, who wouldn’t became friends? Even myself and the Chinese girl did.  Nice, talkative, a little messed up up, enough for me to liked her. She was actually a Canadian, moved there with her family when she was 7. She was in love with scuba diving and traveling through Egypt all by herself. She was teaching kids with special needs in London and her name, which I wasn’t able to remember, signified, in Mandarin, yellow firebird.

She takes terrible photos though. She and many others I met in Egypt cause I came back home with so many photos in which one of my feet didn’t make it entirely. Just details…

11am that day

We arrived in Luxor after a more than 3h ride, on a dusty road filled with old cars. Every time we were entering and leaving a city or a village, there was a small security point where army men wearing bulletproof vests and rifles were looking at every car passing by. Some cars were pulled over for checking. We passed through large cities like Safaga and Quena, but most of the road was through villages. Not much of a difference anyway. Cities or villages, they all looked the same: dusty, filled with people looking the same and dressed the same, in shades matching that unbearable dust that was everywhere, kids running and waving to us, old houses, some bearing old marks of arabic words written on their walls, other looking as if they were waiting to be demolished soon, stores selling barely nothing with no customers seen around. So many people rushing everywhere as if life itself was entirely developing on the side of this very road. Very few women, like small moving black dots wandering unnoticed in that permanent mist of dust. If inside the cities some women were only wearing a hijab, leaving their faces uncovered, in the rural area no woman face was to be seen.

Men were outnumbering women by far. Always men, on every street, in every car, in front of every store and in each small gathering, in front of a house, sitting on the remains of what once was a wall or simply on the ground, smoking. Everybody was smoking, even our driver inside the bus. Egypt looks like a country of men. As we were driving through this spectacle of life in Egypt, I didn’t wanna miss any detail of it, of any street or any corner. I reached far, looking on the little streets, going deep among the houses, searching for small gestures or faces, having only 1-2 seconds until we drove further. We stopped at one point blocked in the traffic. A man was vomiting on the side of the road, another left the car to see if he’s ok, an old car in front of us was full of sheep, from another one laud Arab music was filling the air, a little further a young man and a women were changing sights, smiling and in love. I had no idea where one city or village ended and another started, they seemed all connected by the canal of water running on the left side of the road. On some portions I couldn’t see any water in the huge amount of garbage down there. I wished I could be invisible, get down the bus, walk unnoticed, cross the street, walk the streets in that village, enter its houses, see the women faces left uncovered maybe, listen and understand what people talked about. And tell them I was already regretting to stay there 5 days only.

Out of the blue the dust was gone and green fields of clover replaced the dusty villages we now left behind as if they never existed. It looked similar to the rice fields in Indonesia, with people in light clothes and bare feet working those fields. Tens of white egrets sit on those fields and the water canal that now looked clean enough to drink from it. Green palm trees and bushes of pink, orange and white bougainvillea beside the road. My Chinese friend just woke up and her reaction “Where did all this green came from?” made me laugh. Indeed, it came from nowhere. And then we saw the Nile. Everything there was a gift of the Nile. Luxor was beautiful, green and fresh and intense, filled with marks of what once was the capital of the ancient Egypt, Thebes.  

Mandy, one of the guides, was so pissed off because we were constantly leaving the group like two lunatics, wandering around the site at Karnak Temple. He started yelling at me that he didn’t wanna lose us there. Egyptian manly personality… Mine is also far from being better, so we yelled at each other for a few minutes, in the middle of the site, in the middle of a sea of tourists.

We left Karnak Temple as I took one last look at its wonderful columns we left behind.

We soon arrived at the backs of the Nile, this gift from God which is, in its turn, offering us all, since forever, this amazing country. Dahabiya boats with large white sails were moving up and down the Nile.

We crossed the river to get to a restaurant for lunch. One hour later, we left to Hatshepsut Temple, driving for a while through a desert valley of limestone, with straight walls where old tombs were built inside. The story of queen Hatshepsut is fantastic and so was her temple. Daughter, sister and wife of a pharaoh, she takes the role of a pharaoh when her husband dies and her son was still too young to rule. She somehow manages to rule Egypt for 21 years, becoming the first great woman leader that we know of in history. She was the only woman buried in the Valley of the Kings.

This was supposed to be the next destination, The Valley of the Kings, a place I could not wait to see, the place where all the pharaohs were buried. At one point, after leaving Hatshepsut Temple, the group was split in two by the guides. I had no idea why, no one did. My Chinese friend was sent together with other people in two small busses. I was sent to our previous bus, with a few people already waiting there. It seem strange so I went to the guide again before leaving and ask why were we split. He waved his hand in a rush and sent me back to the bus. We left a few minutes after the two small busses with the rest of the group. After driving for about 15 minutes we stopped. And so I find out that I was in the Valley of the Queens not the Valley of the Kings. I have never even heard before about this place. I was ready to explode. I was told that, apparently, the price I paid was for the cheaper version of the tour, for the queens not the kings. I had no idea there was such a difference since I was told from the hotel the program included the Valley of the Kings. I was too angry and pissed off and I didn’t enjoy at all this Valley of the Queens, which was actually really nice.

We went deep down, inside two tombs with empty square rooms, all covered with hieroglyphs. All that was found there was now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. In one of the tombs was found the sarcophagus with the mummy of the daughter of  Ramses. One of the Ramseses actually since there were no lett than 18 pharaoh named like this.

Even if all the other few were feeling just as angry as I was for missing the Valley of the Kings so stupidly, I was the only one making a big deal out of it. Because for me it was a big deal. The entry price was 100 Egyptian pounds for the Valley of the Queens and double for the Kings. A difference I would have paid with no hesitation if I only knew. I felt disappointed and fooled but determined to argue about it and bring the subject back in discussion constantly for the rest of the trip. And so I did. Soon all the 4 Egyptian guides realised I wasn’t going to get over this as they thought and started apologizing for the misunderstanding. It didn’t help either and I was ready to fight the guys in my hotel for messing this up.

This seem to be the leitmotif of every place I like and I wanna go back to: I somehow always skip something I really want to see.

We ended the tour on Banana Island, a small island on the Nile. We met here the rest of the group and had guava, bananas and oranges, all produced organically right there, on the island. It was so green and lush. Eating those delicious fruits finally made me just a slight less angry. Seeing the photos taken by the Chinese girl in the Valley of the Kings also helped. It looked similar to the place I was unintentionally taken to, an open valley of limestone, with tombs carved inside the mountain.

On our way back, the sun setting behind Banana Island made the entire Nile look as if it was on fire. The red sky, the black tall palm trees on the island we left behind, white boats with large sails floating on those endless orange and dark blue waters and a hypnotising Arab song played loud. I reached my hand down the small boat and touched the Nile. It was an unforgettable sunset!   

We drove back to Hurghada on the same dusty road, through the same villages, filled with people. Only now, at night, there were even more of them outside, on the streets. This time gathered around fires. So many fires lighting that dark dusty mist and thick smoke filling the air. It was an unbelievable atmosphere of feast for no reason. Of celebrating nothing or maybe everything: a day was ending, a new one was to come. So celebrating life itself.

I reached my pocket and pulled out a little white paper with my name written in Hieroglyphs, by one of the guides: 3 birds and a river.