Let Loose in Luxor

Day light. A family of taxi drivers swarmed onto the bus and plucked me up and told me that we had arrived in Luxor. The desert night was far behind me, and I found myself in the middle of lush Nile Valley. We were on a busy road next to a stretch of fast floating stream, and the ride into town on a gentle breezy early morning was relaxed an scenic, passing power poles and palm trees, rich green paddies framed by deep purple bougainvilleas, mule carts, cattle, commuting locals and sporadic concrete and mud houses amongst the dusty side lanes.

Typically, the driver and his three young brothers were in fact employed by another hotel in town, and they, along with the hotel owner and two of his staff (that got into the car with me on separate occasions) wasted at least 40 minutes of my time trying to convince me to stay at their hotel, rather than the one that I specifically asked them to deliver me to. They drove me around and around town, pretty much in circles, no matter how much I protested. It was through pure determination and threats of going to the police that I was finally taken to the hotel I originally specified.












I ventured into town after a fantastic breakfast of Egyptian pancakes and a catch-up nap. It felt like I’d finally walked out of the manufactured paradise of Dahab into a real snapshot of Egypt. Just after midday in downtown Luxor, city life was in full swing. Shops and side-walks were set up with fresh produce in cane baskets, or on carts or simply in piles on a sheet of rag, many of them attended by veiled women. Shoppers with young children bartering and filling their arms with bags of food, young people with school bags and books wander and chatter in small groups, old men sitting cross-legged on the side walk leaning on their walking sticks, observing the lives of others.












The streets were crowded, often wet with waste water poured out from shops or homes, small clusters of rubbish and rotten food changing colour and smell every so often left unattended and trotted upon. The soundtrack was one of loud yelling from both men and women, cars and motorcycle horns tooting, the occasional but loud and distressing complaints from a donkey, and the rusty loudspeaker of the nearby mosque reminding the faithful of prayer time. Dusty and unkempt buildings of undefined architectural genres falling against each other, and every block or so there was a space of half demolished or half created building sites, rising and falling between spaces left available from the untouchables of historical and religious significance – the ancient Egyptian Luxor Temple, the grand Mosques and their minarets, the Colonial-era riverside mansions, and the timeless river Nile.


Fantastic rotisserie meal I had for 10 LE (1 GBP) – Quarter Chicken, rice, zucchini & eggplant stew, bread and eggplant dip, small salad (below left) ; The Train (below right)









My nose started bleeding on my way to the train station, these two lovely little girls gave sanctuary to me in their shop and looked after me












Valley of the Kings

This is the quaint and cute Kom Lolah village, just outside Habu Temple

The West Bank of Luxor is rural and quiet, with a few little villages scattered around. Surprisingly this sleepy atmosphere co-exist with one of the most important collections of ancient Egyptian heritage that is left today. Tourists and their buses buzz in and out around them, hardly ever spending a night here or even have a meal here after their quick sight-seeing, so apart from the obligatory souvenir selling which occurs mainly at the bazaars set up on the sights itself, the villagers just keep on living their normal lives like they always had.










In Ancient Egypt, Luxor was known as Thebes, and was the capital of the Middle Kingdom from 2055 – 1650 BC. It is hard to comprehend that one of the greatest civilisations of humankind once thrived here in this now quiet valley, with such advanced architectural technology, language and art that no modern societies today can directly make links with – and then for it all to perish again, just leaving traces of stories, mystical monuments and unsolvable puzzles for us to fascinate and ponder over. Along with another Kiwi traveler (a driller who lived on an oil rig in the Timor Sea), I visited Valley of the Kings – the sacred site of the comprehensive collection and system of royal tombs of Ancient Egypt, and subsequently gained world wide fame (or infamy) in the 1920s Egyptomania, after the discovering of King Tutankhamun’s Tomb and the ‘Curse of the Mummy’ saga which followed. Temple of Hatshepsut was ofcourse glorious and grand, most suited particularly as she was arguably one of the most powerful and capable woman rulers to have lived in both ancient and modern worlds. My favourite though was Habu Temple, a very aesthetically intriguing temple with different parts constructed in different styles as different rulers and inhabitants added/refurbished it through out the ages, until a plague was said to have wiped out the town that thrived around it in 9th century AD.