Katie and Tommy: Around the World

We arrived in Luxor early on Saturday after a relatively restful 11 hour train ride. Our entire experience in Luxor has been markedly different from that of Cairo. With a relatively small local population and high tourism influx, tourists are far more vulnerable to the annoyances and discomforts of commission-seeking touts here than in Cairo. Immediately upon exiting our train, we felt as though we had stepped into a mangrove of flailing arms, each holding out countless numbers of business cards promising “great deals” on hostels or tours. Eventually though, we arrived to our hostel and after a three hour mid-morning nap, we were ready to venture out to the city again.

Throughout our stay in Cairo over the previous week, we were amazed at how friendly the locals were. Whereas nearly all the Caireans we encountered were sophisticated and honest, we literally felt as though the citizens of Luxor just viewed us as walking ATM machines. When we walked along the streets, fairly well-dressed individuals would fall in step with us, welcome us to Luxor, ask us where we were from, and after about 30 seconds or more of small talk they would ask us for baksheesh (an Arab word meaning tip or bribe) as if they had done us some favor in talking with us. That afternoon, we booked a felucca (sailboat) to take us on a sunset Nile cruise and as we approached the West Bank we were humored when we heard the children incessantly yell to us, “Hello! Baksheesh?” And though we found little amusement the first time someone asked me how many camels Katie was worth, it became intolerably annoying the time the 50th individual inquired.

Despite the frustrations we encountered that first day there, we reminded ourselves that the citizens were responding in a somewhat predictable way to the situation in which they found themselves, namely wealthy westerners constantly entering a city filled with a poor and uneducated populace, and that despite the unwelcome stares or comments that Katie received, the timeless beauty of the Ancient Theban ruins were the real reason why we had come here.

Unfortunately, not only did the locals seem to be out to get us, the local bacterial flora proved to be as well. I woke up on Sunday feeling a bit feverish and nauseated, food poisoned perhaps from the day before, so I ended up spending the entire day in bed while Katie practiced her Polish and made a few harassment-filled trips to the pharmacy. We must emphasize though– we have felt extremely safe throughout Egypt, far more than any other country we have visited thus far, so any troubles we have had here have been more of an annoyance than any real cause for concern.

The new day brought new-found energy, so we left the hostel early Monday morning and headed to the ferry so that we could cross over to the West Bank, the ancient necropolis of the New Kingdom Pharaohs! They chose a desert valley, known today as the Valley of the Kings, to be their resting place. Though they didn’t want their riches or bodies to be disturbed, they still wanted to still be remembered, so many fantastic temples exist a few kilometers outside the valley. We visited two– the ones of Ramses III and Ramses II. They were absolutely amazing. Despite having been exposed to three millenenia of sandstorms and adverse weather, the hieroglyphs are still vividly clear and those that were protected from direct sunlight are still vividly colored from their original paints (if only Sherwin-Williams lasted that long!). Also, the enormous collapsed statue of Ramses II at his temple was supposedly the inspiration for Percy Shelley’s poem, “Ozymandias.” Finally, it was a sight to see so much 19th century graffiti left by fellow travelers almost 150 years ago.

Many of the guards that have welcomed us have told us (as have other locals) “Welcome to Alaska.” When we asked one why on earth they told us that, he replied, “because it is so hot here.” Seeing as it has been coolly comfortably in the 60s and 70s here, we’re still not sure what they mean, but we’re just heaping it onto the Luxor pile along with our other favorite nonsensical phrases, “Lucky man, how many camel?” and “baksheesh!”

After having sufficiently explored the temples, we headed over to the burial sites in the Valley of the Kings. We ended up entering three tombs, Ramses IX, IV, and Thutmose III. These were even more spectacular than the temples because they have been underground for so long–the details of the frescos have been amazingly well preserved.

By this point it was late in the afternoon so we began to head back to Luxor proper. We got some falafel sandwiches and visited the also very, very well-preserved Luxor Temple. Two giant oblelisks used to mark the entrance. Now, only one remains as the other sits in the Place de Concorde in Paris.

Though we had hoped to catch the comfortable night train, when we tried to purchase our return ticket on our first day in Luxor, we were shocked to learn that all the train tickets were sold out till the 17th. We had to settle for a rumbling bus that played blaring Arab movies all night long. Right before we departed, our hostel owner informed us that if we wanted, he could have probably secured us some tickets if we had wanted. For some baksheesh, of course.

We were so relieved, though exhausted to arrive back to Cairo on Tuesday. We had about 20 hrs to kill before red-eye flight so we spent the day visiting the last bastion of Cairo we had really wanted to see, the ancient Christian area of Coptic Cairo. Having been able to save a lot of money on meals and lodging, we managed to spend only about half of our allotted budget. So before changing out our last remaining Egyptian pounds for Euros, we are planning on treating ourselves to a fancy dinner at the Intercontinental in celebration of my pick to USA Today, our past few days of thriftiness, and simply….life in general.

Photos from Cairo

And check out our finished albums:

Photos from Dar es Salaam

Photos from Safari

Photos from Zanzibar

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 6:07 pm and is filed under Egypt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.