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Poring over stories in our dog-eared Childcraft volume 10, "Places to Know" in my primary school days, Egypt seemed far too exotic to be a real place. Even though it induced wonder and awe, I didn't really grasp the immense weight of history that would exist in the actual places and I almost believed that they could only exist in books and photographs. Until we got there!
"Mind blown" is the only way to describe the sensations of walking through the sandy outskirts of Giza and gazing upon the majesty of the Great Pyramids for the very first time. It was like a movie when the pages of a book come alive. We marvelled at the sights of all the pyramids from all angles as well as the Sphinx and soaked up the atmosphere for hours before having a quick local lunch then continuing our brain explosions by viewing the treasures from Tutankhamun's tomb at the Egypt Museum along with other mummies and priceless antiquities. And this was our first day!
Let's backtrack just a touch and set the scene. As previously mentioned we'd booked a trip to four countries in the Middle East, staying about a week or so in each, give or take. Egypt was first, and we'd made the arduous plane journey from Sydney to Abu Dhabi then onward to Cairo where we survived a calamitous cowboy taxi ride through Cairo's less than salubrious suburbs after the tour company failed to collect us from the airport, stayed the night at a flash hotel, then met up with our guide Ahmed the next morning only to discover that it was just the two of us with him and a driver for the week...much to our delight as we were dreading the "small" group of up to 14 people! We'd elected to do the guided tour for these regions, as they would have been near impossible to navigate using our usual method of totally independent travelling. We were to travel on an overnight sleeper train, catch various internal flights, do a 4 night cruise on the Nile and travel deep into the desert via minibus.
Romantic visions of fine china, champagne, dining cars and gently chugging locomotives whisking us to our next destination were quickly dispelled when we dived onto a barely stopping, screeching relic of a train, jammed into an impossibly tiny cabin reminiscent of a public toilet cubicle and tried to get ready for a night onboard the Cairo to Luxor "Express". It was an experience! Toilet at the end of the carriage shared by dozens, an airline style meal of questionable origin and hours of bashing, banging and screaming metal meant little sleep was had and the guard gave us only a few minutes warning to get off meaning we were literally throwing our bags off and leaping out after them!
This drama belied the serenity that awaited us at Luxor's magnificent Karnak Temple where we arrived at sunrise, toured on foot extensively before moving on to the equally impressive Luxor Temple. We spent hours at both venues continuing to marvel at the storybook images suddenly coming to life in front of us, from towering columns, vast halls and meeting places and carved obelisks to avenues of sphinxes. We then rendezvoused with our Nile River cruise boat, the MS Premium to embark on our four night, 200 km drift down this ancient waterway to Aswan.
Ensconced in a delightful cabin, fed royally for breakfast lunch and dinner, we interspersed languid sitting up on the top deck watching the Nile reliant population going about their daily work and lives, watching local kids playing and swimming in the water or just gazing as the desert landscape drifted by, with tours off the boat to various other famous and unforgettable sights. We passed through locks and island channels, even fending off entrepreneurial local boatmen who hooked up to the moving ship on flimsy craft trying to sell some wares or other!
The Collossi of Memnon were two 17 meter high statues on the west bank and a majestic entree to the astounding Valley of the Kings. We braved the queues in a baking sun to travel deep into the hills and tombs, down precipitous steps and into chambers cracked open only by grave robbers or Howard Carter, antechambers and dummy chambers protecting the precious cargo. The intensity of the colour in the drawings and symbols has to be seen to be believed: thousands of years old and with the lustre of yesterday's painting! Later in the day we toured the Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, equally impressive yet aboveground.
Later on our cruise we arose before dawn to take a journey of some hours deep into the desert to visit the incomparable Abu Simbel, the 1200 BC temples built by Ramses II and transported piece by piece to higher ground just a few hundred metres away to avoid being inundated from the building of the Aswan High Dam. Another Childcraft story that had me mesmerised in my childhood, these incredible temples were a sight to behold, even though they were infected with tourists like the locusts in biblical stories destroyed the crops. Thousands upon thousands! We visited the Temple of Isis by tiny motor boat later on, located on the island of Igelka and also relocated to avoid the rising waters of the Nile. It was impossibly pretty and Cassy was "encouraged" to buy a necklace from the craggy boatman on the way out to the island....probably a good idea to buy as we also needed him to pilot us back to the mainland!
We flew from Aswan back to Cairo the next day and spent the night at a hotel before joining our group for the flight to Amman, Jordan. Could we again scam a private tour? Time would tell. Egypt was a dream start to our holiday and worth the entire price of the trip already: anything more would definitely be a bonus. Next stop, Jordan! (Egypt photo album here)
Books: Cassy is reading Claire Sestanovich's Objects of Desire and David is reading John Banville's The Singularities