The Valley of the Dead contains many tombs of the ancient Kings and Queens of thousands of years ago. This area is sparsely populated and we discovered that we could cover enough ground with our bikes and have enough time to get back to our hotel in Luxor. There are temples and tombs scattered throughout the valley and most of them can be explored and visited. My personal favorite was in the Valley of the Queens, The Temple of Queen Hatshepsut. A temple that seems to come out of the mountain side with a huge set of royal steps leading to the temple. This particular temple was having some renovation work to it, and as we pulled upon our bikes we discovered that it was being guarded by armed soldiers. If you are not used to seeing armed soldiers, pretty much any part of the Middle East will take some getting used to. We found the whole valley to be almost abandoned and we could explore the country side at our leisure.