West Bank Luxor, Egypt - channeling our inner Indiana Jones

Late on Christmas Eve we flew from Cairo to Luxor, which was once the ancient city of Thebes and is apparently the world's largest open air museum. We were met at the airport by Abdul, brother of the owner of our hotel (the Little Garden Hotel) and our self-appointed tour guide. The Little Garden is away from most of the chain hotels, in the more 'local' area of town, and while a little noisy (especially when some Americans arrived) it was clean and functional and staffed by friendly people. Abdul helped us check in, and then promised to meet us in the morning to help draw up and organise our itinerary for the trip.

Christmas morning dawned, and we wandered down to breakfast to exchange our Kris Kringle gifts (Sarah got a 'universal timer' which tracks everything from the time until the weekend to the time until your next holiday, Stephen got 'Tescopoly - the Tesco story', Belinda got some romantic fridge poetry magnets and some earings, and Andrew got a head torch (very useful later when we were tomb-raiding) and a 'swiss army card').

After breakfast, Abdul came to help us work out our itinerary. We were a little apprehensive, as we hadn't asked for his help and if there is one thing that felt constant in Egypt, it is that unsolicited help is generally a con. We were pleasantly surprised by Abdul's ability to set us up with a great itinerary for the next few days - he even switched our proposed train trip to Aswan for a bus trip via some monuments (at a lower price!). Even better, he came along to make sure that we weren't ripped off...

We spent our Christmas afternoon cruising the Nile, and stopped off at Banana Island for a mid-afternoon snack of (you guessed it) bananas, fresh off the tree. Sunset over the Nile was simply brilliant.

Sunset over the Nile

That night we headed out to the Sound and Light show at Karnak temple, the largest ancient religious site in the world. The opportunity to walk through such a site at night was simply unmissable. The lighting as we traveled down the avenue of sphinxes, and through the 134 giant papyrus-shaped columns in the great hypostyle hall at night created a fantastic atmosphere, although some of the commentary was a bit impenetrable (our understanding of ancient Egyptian theology being a little rusty) and the second half dragged a bit (as you moved to sit in a grandstand and it became more about sound than light, and the audio was about the aforementioned theology).

The temple during the 'sound' phase of the sound and light show

The lighting made it incredibly atmospheric

Boxing day saw us don our fedora hats and take up our whips (metaphorically speaking of course) - we were heading to the West Bank of Luxor and the Valley of the Kings. After a few generations of pyramid-building, the Pharoahs of Egypt realised that their tombs were unlikely to be secure for eternity (they were, perhaps, a little conspicuous). They thus changed strategy, building in hidden tombs in the desert around Luxor, with obvious temples and hidden graves.

This valley was chosen because of the natural pyramid shape - note the paratrooper in position to protect the tourists

These graves have now been uncovered and although they were mostly plundered in antiquity, the paintings of the 'book of the dead' and other guides to the afterlife remain. The smooth-walled, vividly painted tombs extend far into the rock and are still extremely well preserved, although I fear it will only be a matter of time until the constant flow of tourists destroy the paintings (when we saw the cave paintings in France they only allowed 200 visitors per day, and carefully sealed the entrance - there were that many per hour in these sites, and plenty of sunlight at the entrances)

An intrepid tomb raider, about to head deep into the valley (Tutmoses was one of the few deep tombs - most of the others went straight back into the cliff)

From the tombs (we saw Ramses II, Ramses III and Tutmoses III) we had intended to walk over the hill to Queen Hatshepsut's temple, but as Sarkozy (the French president) was visiting some of the rarely-opened tombs, we had to postpone this (there was apparently a SWAT team in the hills above us). It was at this point that our guide told us that a few years back a group of terrorists killed 60 tourists at that same site...but of course it was safe now

So we took the mini-train back to the tourist centre and our minibus around the corner to Queen Hatshepsut's temple. It was like something out of Indiana Jones (if you excluded the tourists), carved sheer out of the cliff. We climbed up part-way up the hill to get the view that we would have gotten if Sarkozy hadn't gotten in the way...it was hard work but very worth it.

From up here, the people looked like ants - the temple was immense and cut directly into the cliff face

Next stop was the incredible monument of Ramses III's funeral temple, the first of many we would see in this style, and one of the most impressive. Shaped in a series of tiers, from the huge outer gate to the single tomb in the middle, it was almost unbelievable that this could have been constructed not long after Stonehenge, it was so much more advanced.

Medinat Habu Temple, the funerary temple of Ramses III

One never thinks of the colours lasting this long

Our guide was brilliant - by the end of it we knew enough about the stories and ancient Egyptian theology to be figuring out the artwork on our own (she had a degree in Archeology from Cairo University, too...)

We left the Valley of the Kings via the Colossus of Memnon, two statues of King Amenhotep III which dominate the landscape and guard the entry to the valley - they are all that remain of this king's temple (the rest of it was used as a quarry to build the later king's temples.)

Sarah by one of the Colossi - I had to put this photo up because it cost us LE10 (the man made us pay him for the privilege)

That evening we crossed back to the West bank for a camel ride - it was surprisingly fun, and quite spectacular with the sun again setting over the Nile. We headed back to the hotel for an early night - all that tomb-raiding really takes it out of you, and we had an early start at the East Bank temples the next day...but I'll save that for another post!

Sarah was a natural

While we all managed to stay on the whole way...