Xploring Luxor, Egypt

At trip to Luxor will make you feel like you have unwrapped one of the mysteries of the ancient world. From the moment you arrive you will notice that this is not just another ordinary middle eastern town. Luxor is a walk through history and a place to experiment Egyptian culture at its best. If you are a fan of ancient architecture you may not be able to find a better place on this planet to explore and discover such old structures, still in surprisingly decent shape. Tombs and monuments honoring the dead and the slow flowing Nile that separates Luxor from the dry valley of the Kings and Queens are among the best highlights.

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Luxor is not very huge town and if you arrive by train as most tourist do, you will be greeted at the station by taxis and other modes of transportation to your hotel. This particular trip we secured a hotel that was serviced by a mule and cart, so we ended up clip-clopping through the streets of Luxor. The next day we opted for touring the city and ruins by renting a bicycle which are commonly found everywhere. No matter what your style of touring is, you will probably find them all here.

There were four of us traveling in Luxor and we all decided that we'd stick to a vegetarian diet for safety reasons so as to avoid any possible illnesses while traveling. We were pleasently surprised to find one of the most delicious dishes in the area was easy to find and vegetarian! It was called "Kusheri" and we ate it every day. It was nutritious and extremely cheap to buy, too. We could get a big bowl of Kusheri and a Coke for under a buck. What is Kusheri? It consists of rice, lentils, pasta elbows, spaghetti and fried onions, topped off with a tomato sauce and salted to taste. Delicious! The dining experience was another thing. This one restaurant we ate at was on the second floor of the building, the only problem was that the ceiling of the dining room was not even 5 feet tall, when we sat down to eat the ceiling was a couple inches above our head. To get in and out of the room, naturally we had to crouch. See photo.

The Temples are impressive. Knowing that the temples are thousands of years old and seeing what the Egyptians were accomplishing so long ago gives you goosebumps before you even enter the grounds.

The long row of lions that flank the entrance to the Temple of Luxor help one appreciate how grand this temple was at the height of its time. The architecture is very symetrical as you approach, and you will immediately notice that there is only one towering obelisk where you would expect two. Soon, you read and discover that the other one was taken by the French a long time ago and now stands in Paris in the Place de Concorde.
Finders keepers?
The Temple of Karnak is impressive simply because of its size.

As we toured the Temples we quietly reflected on the James Bond movie that was made in the vicinity with one of the screen's favorite bad guys, Jaws.

Having visited so many corners of the world, I will always look back to our visit to Luxor as one of the best. We decided we wanted to rent bicycles and explore the city and ruins in this fashion. The four of us that were traveling found a shop that rented us four old bikes that I would estimate as being 20 or 30 years old. They worked and that was important. The scary part was that to take them we had to leave one of our passports as a "deposit". We were on our way.

Touring by bike enabled us to see parts of the city and countryside that otherwise would never have been seen. We drove through the country and had little kids running, following us for long distances, fascinated that a tourist had rode past their home. Homes that consisted of mud and cardboard. Kids, that even though they had no material possessions seemed to be some of the happiest, most content children I'd seen. We explored parts of the country that was frequented by cattle and cart, instead of cars or trucks. The bicycle gave us the kind of freedom that is usually not seen in a place such as Luxor where the local conditions are pretty rough and not one of the typical stops on the organized tours. The people are extremely friendly and anxious to assist.

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.

Luxor sits on the edge of the Nile River, a wide, but shallow river that separates Luxor from the Valley of the Kings and Queens. We had rented bicycles and had wandered way off the typical path when we decided we wanted to cross over to the other side of the river. We had no idea how to accomplish this but we knew there was more stuff to see on the other side. As the four of us sat on the side of the road pondering this problem, an Egyptian man walked up to us and asked us if we needed any help. He spoke a very broken English but enough for us to communicate.

We told him we wanted to cross the river. He told us he could help us and he led us down river a few yards to a spot where he could scream out to another man on a little boat out on the Nile. The man came to shore and they talked for a moment. We negotiated a price to cross, mounted our bikes into the little boat and waited to see what was next. We barely fit on this boat and as I sat on the edge, I noticed that the edge of the water was about 6" below the edge of the boat. The owner of the boat was a man that had to be at least 90 years old. Even though the boat had a tall sail, there was no wind whatsoever that day. The old man pulled out a long pole and started pushing us across the Nile.

It took almost an hour to cross and we thought the old man was going to pass out on us, but he proved to be a hardy old man. We thanked him, paid him the set price and unloaded our bikes at the bottom of a muddy bank that was at least 10 feet tall. We struggled to the top, dragging our bikes to a nearby road. Later on we discovered that about a mile further down the road there was a ferry that could cross us for half the price and only took 5 minutes to cross! The experience was well worth it.