EGYPT – Nile Cruise, Day 1

As regular readers of the blog will know, I don’t like long flights or boats so a cruise along the Nile complete with felucca rides and the dodgy Egyptian ferries doesn’t seem the obvious choice, but what a fabulous trip!



The long flight on a Monarch charter (just under 6 hours) was just about as hideous as I’d imagined, but as we came in to land over Luxor, we were treated to a fabulous sunset through the clouds, with a view of the Nile below, and I knew we’d made the right choice.



After a scrummy buffet breakfast onboard, we set off for our first visit which was Karnak Temple. It’s difficult to describe the sheer size of the monuments in Egypt and I’m sure I would have been struck with awe if my attention hasn’t been caught by the group of men comparing machine guns from four random armchairs in front of the temple. EEK in capitals.



Karnak is a vast open-air museum and the largest ancient religious site in the world. Apparently it is also the second most visited historical site in Egypt, but we’d already realised that our guide was a bit of a cretin, so who knows!



All the temples in Egypt follow the same general layout; the pylon which is basically the exterior of the temple and which is nearly always covered with scenes of battle between the Pharoah and his enemies and the God that protects him. Inside is an open courtyard and the Hypostyle Hall which is one of the most impressive we saw of all the temples.



The Hypostyle Hall is a collection of 134 columns arranged in 16 rows, all of which have been decorated with Hieroglyphics and colourful designs. Beyond this is the Sanctuary, but it looked like it’d been built by Corsican builders so I was very wary of standing inside just in case!!



After out guided tour, we had free time to wander about and just drink in the atmosphere. Like in France, these are living monuments so you can touch them and walk amongst them which makes the whole thing seem somehow more real.



As we left, we past the line of Cryospinx which I must have noticed when we went in, but I suspect my attention was diverted elsewhere. We learnt that statues are only referred to as Sphinx when they have the body of a lion and the head of a human, so as these had lion bodies but sheep’s heads, they are called Cryosphinx.



Back on the coach, we saw our first glimpse of the sunset over the Nile on our way to the Luxor Temple. We’d seen this temple on our way to Karnak earlier in the day, but hadn’t been overly impressed. However, in the evening when the whole place was lit up it was something else, and although it is vastly smaller than Karnak, the Luxor Temple proved to be one of my favourites.



The temple was built by Ramses II and like Karnak, there is a decorated exterior, open courtyard lined with identical columns and immense colossi (statues of the pharaoh). The place was really busy and I got told off by the guide for lagging behind to take photos which weren’t full of lemmings (other tourists).



Opposite the temple is the Avenue des Sphinx which originally connected the Luxor Temple and Karnak some 3km away and would have included approximately two thousand sphinx. These days, the avenue only runs for a few hundred metres but is still impressive, and I managed to get a really moody shot of one of the statues.



Of course, in front of the temple were the sellers who accost you at any given opportunity. Years ago, I noticed that every item in Monsoon costs £55 no matter what it is, and the same principle applies in Egypt where everything seems to cost 10 Egyptian pounds!



Although it wasn’t late when we left Luxor, we were all shattered after all the travelling the day before and the early start for Karnak, so we were looking forward to dinner and the entertainment which we were told would be a Whirling Dervish.



Two blokes - one rather too portly to be prancing about - started with some strange Tommy Cooper ‘Just like that’ style dancing by two blokes in Fez hats who kept popping off to change clothes. I was starting to get a bit bored, but eventually one of them returned in his whirling dervish outfit and put on an impressive show.