Egyptian Interlude

by Neil Harris

A two week 'package tour' to Luxor, fourteen days of glorious African sun, seemed like a great way to avoid winter for a while. Situated 650km south of Cairo, on the east bank of the Nile, Luxor has a surfeit of ancient tombs and temples. A short hop across the Nile to the west bank takes one within a short taxi or cycle ride of the Valley of the Kings and numerous other antiquities.

While the tomb of Tutankhamun is a disappointment, almost empty, the treasures in the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo, the tomb Amunherkhepshep, a son of Ramses II who died at the tender age of nine, is decorated with pictorial splendour, the freshness of the artwork belying its age of over 3000 years. My choice, as a keen photographer, is the above ground temples and tombs built on the grand scale. The great Temple of Karnak, constructed over many centuries by various walls, is covered with carvings - hieroglyphs, cartouches and various types of relief depicting the life and times of the honoured Pharaoh. In the low winter sun these are highlighted and cry out to be photographed.

In Luxor and its immediate surrounds, there are enough monuments to fill a week of viewing, although 'temple fatigue' could well set in before then. Using a service taxi, I took the 215km trip south to Aswan, staying two nights. The main reason for this excursion was the chance of an early morning dash by minibus, across 300km of barren desert, to the incomparable temple of Abu Simbel. It is best seen in the early morning sunlight. The scale of the four cotossi of Ramses II fronting the tomb can only be appreciated when standing close by. The same can be said for the interior. The UNESCO funded project to move the temple away from the rising floodwaters of Lake Nasser in the sixties, can only be marvelled at. There are no signs of any 'joins' between the dismantled blocks that make up the reconstituted temple.

Aswan is more laid back than Luxor, less touristy and arguably more picturesque, with views across the Nile to Elephantine island and on to the rock tomb-strewn hills of the west bank. The Old Cataract Hotel, featured in Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie, has retained the feel of Thirties elegance. Tea on the Terrace provided a relaxing view towards the ruins of the Temple of Khnum on Elephantine Island.

I returned to Luxor with three days left before returning to the English winter. What to do? I hired a bike to look around the back streets of Luxor; this almost proved a costly mistake! The cycles for hire in Egypt could loosely be described as death-traps - brakes NOT an optional extra! Whilst innocently riding along a crowded side street, I suddenly realised that a pair of donkeys, pulling a large cart, had bolted and were bearing down on me at a great rate of knots. I braked! Not a lot happened, except a sideways skid, which sent me under a wheel of the cart. The bike had changed shape! Luckily, apart from a little grazing, I was in one piece. A spectator grabbed the cycle while muttering 'repairman, repairman' and hurried off down an alleyway - I limped in pursuit. After about 20 minutes of feverish hammering, the bike had returned to something like the correct shape, but with one slight hiccup; the chain wouldn't stay on. Thanking them for their help I offered some baksheesh - they refused to take it!

Egypt, by western standards, is incredibly cheap, even though tourists pay prices well above those paid by locals - a policeman earns just E£40 a month, that's £8 sterling, plus baksheesh of course. As a destination for a winter sun break, I can highly recommend both Luxor and Aswan, but only if Third World standards can be accepted. The Egyptians themselves are very friendly although many have become tainted by the lure of the tourist dollar.

First published in VISA issue 22 (autumn 1996).