To Upper Egypt in a Handbasket: Travels and Travails in Aswan, Luxor, and Abu Simbel

In order to fully appreciate the context in which this post was produced (and therefore its tone and general content), either be prepared to read it through twice, or skip ahead to the final section. Be advised, this may... nay, will, spoil the narrative.

In an effort to distract Egyptians from their country’s nearly catastrophic defeat in the Six Day War, Egypt has chosen October 6th, the first day of the war (initiated on Yom Kippur, but don’t put Mohammad in cartoons), as a national Holiday. National Armed Forces day, or, National half-of-the-population-of-Egypt-who-are-guaranteed-military-positions-by-the-govment-so-they-don’t-have-to-apply-for-real-jobs day, granted me a day off of school this week. This Wednesday off + Every Tuesday off + skipping classes Thursday = 5 day break. And so I set off down to Upper Egypt (so oxymoronic ow) to explore all the old touristy ruins in Luxor, Aswan and Abu Simbel along with my distinguished colleagues: Michelle (Roommate, fellow female, and most likely to git’er done), Seth (Resident old man, most likely to protect me from creepy Egyptian guys, and designated jump shot picture taker), Ihsaan (Most likely to be like wtf is going on, but then not care anyway), Jacob (MVP, Tour Guide, Amateur film maker and Egyptologist) and Jonathan (Most likely to disappear/ the new guy). This is gonna be a picture-dumping post and captions will be either scarce or relatively unrelated to the historical merit of the subject because seriously I’ve seen way too many ruins in my lifetime and all that crap starts to look the same after the third or fourth fluted column.

So we departed Cairo Tuesday evening at 10pm on this gem of a vessel and arrived in Aswan around noon the next day.

Gandhi got nothin on us.

Little did we appreciate the luxury of our surroundings at the time. Read on.

Seat numbers are officially indicated by sharpie on the wall. Look closely.

We trudged over to our accommodations, the Keylany Hotel, very clean and highly recommended. They even had birds in the lobby.

(Left) Hallway of the Keylany (Right) I miss you Holly! And Tycho and Loki too

We shed our baggage, splashed water on our faces, and headed out to explore the surroundings.

Surroundings.

After consulting our various travel guides, ranging in publication date from the late 1980’s to 2004 or so, we decided to head to Elaphantine Island, home to a small village of Nubians (Aida!). We got slightly ripped off on the ferry over but yeah. Whatever.

The island

An Egyptian doing... work?

I'm just pretending

Aswan: Aswan Museum

The Aswan Museum was a little overpriced and in dire need of the attentions of someone with more than ‘professional packrat’ on their resume. Some stuff was cool(mummy toes), but in the end it just tended to give off that air of oh look more neglected Egyptian artifacts.

A truly professional display

Mummy toes

Good looking excavation site! Litter and barbed wire, nice touch

Aswan: Temples of Sati, Khnum, and Pepinakht-Heqaib

To the side of the museum are the remains of a large ancient community including housing and temples, distinguished only by its excellent view up and down the surrounding Nile. Let the picture dumping commence:

After this adventure we wasted a pretty remarkable amount of time trying to figure out what to do next, culminating in half of us going to a museum and half of us (Me, Michelle, and Seth) going to a nearby hotel in search of some drank. After a long walk up to said hotel, we were utterly disappointed in the selection and so took a cab to a restaurant that we’d all agreed to meet at later. Seth unwittingly offered the driver Le10 for a 30 second cab ride and when we tried to ask him to take 5 instead he had a little hissy fit so we just said forget it and gave him 10. We ended up being in that restaurant for a very long time, having ordered dinner before the other three even arrived..

Eggplant and minced meat stew thing

...and it was night by the time we headed out. In search of more drank. After touring a number of potential locations we got an Egyptian with really good hair to lead us to this secret location:

...where we got some sauce. We later chilled out by the pool and spent the evening talking about sensitive subjects like politics and religion.

In retrospect it probably would have been smarter to just go to bed since we had to wake up at 2:45am to catch our tour bus to Abu Simbel.

-insert sleep here-

So we woke up at this ridiculous hour, I put on my mommy shoes, got an adorable complementary boxed breakfast from the hotel, and stored all my stuff in the basement since we had to check out. The minibus was cramped, and alternated between freezing cold and unbearably hot the entire time. Because of relatively recent terrorist attacks on tourists near Abu Simbel (because its so near the Sudanese border) tourist trips to the area head out in caravan style and must have a police escort (from what I’ve seen of Egyptian police I feel like this is likely to do more harm than good). I assume this is what caused the 40 minute hold up where all the busses and vans just stopped in the middle of the street and we all got out and were just milling about. I could have been sleeping. Those jerks.

This was also my first course in paying for toilet paper 101. I paid one pound for four little sheets of TP. I’ve never been so careful in my life. Or so miserable. About 3-4 hours and some severe whiplash later we arrived at

Abu Simbel

then overpaid for entrance tickets and took some sweet pictures. I think it would be totally cool to tell you all about the historical background of the place but why bother plagiarizing Wikipedia when you can just look it up yourself? As if anyone reading the blog is gonna care whether Ramses II or Thutmose III built this stuff. Ya’ll have no idea whats going on. I will however tell you that everything in these pictures was originally built on land that has now been submerged by the Nile as a result of the ecological disaster known as the Nasser dam. The pretty looking water in the background is Lake Nasser. That jerk.

Antique graffiti

We made some Chinese tourists take our picture

Inside the above temple

and again

Since we paid Le10 extra for the ‘long tour’ we left Abu Simbel excited to subject ourselves to a few more hours of extreme torture and wasted cash. First on the list of pointless sites was the infamous Nasser dam itself. So awful omg.

Aswan: Nasser Dam

No seriously this place was such a ripoff

Egyptians must persevere AGAINST THE CHALLENGE OF THE SILENT NATURE

I guess the next thing wasn’t so awful. But the water taxi guys tried to rip us off too. We (Michelle) told em’ what was up Arabic style and we ended up with a pretty ok deal. This is yet another site that was rebuilt on higher ground because of the Nile’s rising waters (Thanks Nasser!)

The transportation

The last extra site included in our package was the unfinished obelisk, but we were so close to the hotel and everything at this point that we were all more or less like hell no and just told the driver to take us back home. Contrary to my expectations, we didn't rest at the hotel at all. We grabbed our stuff and caught a cab to the train station to purchase tickets to Luxor, the next stop on our itinerary from hell. As is to be expected from a trip such as this, tickets were unpurchaseable and we were told to just get them once we got on the train. We found a nearby restaurant and chilled for a while, then hopped our train North. As, I assume, often happens in such cases, since we didn't purchase tickets from the ticket office we were forced to move to a new seat every time someone who had an assigned seat boarded the train. Thankfully this was a relatively short trip (2-3 hours) and we happened to choose good seats, such that we only had to shift 2 or 3 times before hitting Luxor. Upon our arrival people from our Hotel were there to pick us up. And by pick us up I mean just kinda grab a taxi for us and pay it themselves. It was confusing. Still not sure what really happened. But we got to our abode safe and sound. Friends, I introduce to you

Luxor: The Bob Marley Hostel

The beds were absolute crap but no really this place was pretty sick.

The entrance. Che and Bob go hand in hand I guess. Damn commies.

Guests have decorated the walls of the place

The roof. An amazing place. With hammock and tonss of chill spots.

Our hotel.. manager?.. One of the dudes that worked there anyway, organized a sweet deal for us whereby we would have an entire minibus to ourselves to take us wherever we wanted to go the next day, in addition he would buy our train tickets back to Cairo for us since it's reportedly impossible for tourists to get tickets on any train but the 11pm night train (because its the only one with security and they don't want us to get kidnapped), and just to save us time in general. This was all negotiated for a relatively decent price and post koshary wa MegaBar(Ice Cream oh man) we tucked ourselves in. Wake up was at 630 the next day (ow my life) and we headed out at 7. Initiate picture dump part II:

Luxor: Valley of the kings

Ok actually no dumping here because they don't allow you to take pictures in the Valley. I've heard horror stories of people getting arrested for taking pictures..? It was pretty awesome though. Point of reference for the noobs, this is where Carter discovered King Tut's tomb etc. Stuff looked really Egyptian and the tombs were deep underground, well hidden, difficult to access, and hot as bawz. We saw the tombs of: Sati II, Tausert/Satnupht(not sure which), and Thutmose III.

Luxor:Hatshepsut’s Temple

Luxor:Colossus of Memnon

Luxor:Madinat Habu

Lunch

More hellishness. Our driver took us to one place, we thought it was too expensive so we walked across the street to another place which actually wasn't open but they 'opened' for us and we were sitting all alone in this restaurant while they were trying to find some food for us. Eventually we were like uhh no thanks and just got up and left. At which point the owner chased us down and walked us to another restaurant, presumably his friend's, where the prices were just as bad as the first place. We were just gonna give up and go in but our amazing driver pulled up out of nowhere to save us, as he was wont to do that day, and took us to a sit down koshary-kofta-kabob place which wasn't really that good, but when you're four restaurants in you don't care anymore. No pictures, sorry, just precious memories.

Luxor:Karnak Temple

Lining the road before the temple

Also part of the entrance

More old graffiti. Darn Italians.

There were bats in here!

Original temple pool from the olden days

One of the exits from the temple

I'm immature

The guys tryna fit in with the statues

View as you depart the temple

31 hours and 50egp worth of coffee later, here's where it all began..

Post Karnak we head back to the hostel to pick up our train tickets from the hostel manager so as to conclude our vacation and head merrily back to Cairo.

Mushkila raqm wahid: We had the driver till 5, so our plan was to pick up our tickets and have his final job be to take us to the train station. When we arrive at the hostel, however, we're informed that they DON'T HAVE THE TICKETS. Oh, but they're working on it. And they promised to take us to the station so we could dismiss the driver and wait in the hostel lounge instead of the train station.

Waitin.

Mushkila raqm ithnaan: So the train doesn't actually leave at the time they said, it leaves a half hour later. Not that big a deal I guess, but crappy nonetheless.

Too exhausted to keep enumerating mushkilas. But just follow along. So near the time when we thought it would be most appropriate to depart for the station, they still haven't come up with our tickets. So we (Michelle) start hounding them, as politely as possible. Amid the essence of weed (viva la Bob Marley) the manager hails a cab and goes with us to meet up with his ticket-purchasing counterpart at the station to help us figure stuff out.

We didn't actually fit in the cab

Of course by this time everything is just screaming sketch and we're tired and hungry and frustrated. There was some talk of giving us three tickets and half our money back. I was adamantly opposed to this, which didn't end up mattering anyway because they only had one ticket- so they gave us all our money back. And there we were, standing in front of the station, half an hour before the train leaves, ticketless, with a large wad of cash in hand. At which point via collective action we made the decision (@#$%^&*) to pull that trick where we pay for our tickets once we get on the train (i.e. forego the luxury of assigned seating). Look, I'm not blaming anyone, but I was against it from the start. It was either hop on that train (7pm) or try to buy tickets for the 11pm.

So whatever.

We got on the train, and thus it began, 11+ hours of shifting from seat to seat to floor to seat to creepy space between carts to seat to floor to seat. Dragging my bag over multiple Egyptian toes as I nomadded my way back and forth from one end of the train to the other, facing the humiliation of snagging a seat only to have someone come up and claim it for themselves via reserved ticket. The majority of the trip was ultimately spent in the company of the people sleeping on cardboard and curled up inside the luggage racks. The smokers, the homeless, the grouchy Egyptians waiting for the hamam. Sitting on my bag, curled up in a corner, my head banging against the carriage door as the ancient train bounced across ancient tracks. Temporary marriage to old man to get indecent Egyptian creepsters to stop taking pictures of me. Haram alekum. Freezing cold. Aching back. Consideration of covering head. The observation was made by a wise old man "if only our mothers could see us now". If only. This was maybe the worst night of my life. With the exception of that one cast party. Could it get any worse you ask? Mumkin, mumkin, I reply.

ahhhaha Ihsaan...

Not sure if the sarcasm in the smile translates

As I'm fond of pointing out, one of the better decisions I've made in the past few months was to live downtown. In this particular instance I laud my decision because of my apartment's proximity to the train station. After that hell all I could think of was getting home and collapsing in my bed (we arrived around 5 am). So I drag my belongings for the ten minutes or so it takes to get to my apartment, nab the gimpy elevator that only goes to the 6th floor, carry my bags up to the seventh, open the door and am unexpectedly greeted by the awesome smell of a freshly fumigated apartment. This isn't the smell of the-exterminator-was-here-and-you-can-come-back-now. This was the smell of.. like... the-exterminator-might-still-be-here-and-even-if-he's-not-you-best-get-the-hell-outta-here. Blinded as I was by exhaustion, I wasn't about to just turn around, so I at least went to see if my room was equally affected by the stench so as to evaluate the possibility of opening a window, crashing and waiting out the dissipation of the smell. Then I opened the door to my room.... and the beds were gone lol. So I did the only sensible thing.. and sat down, opened my computer, and used my last 15 minutes to call everyone in my family (thanks for picking up parents) and cry. I simultaneously checked some emails and found the message letting my know that the exterminator was coming and we needed to be out of the apartment for three days (till Sunday night). lol. Around this time Holly (dear Holly) smacked some sense into me and had me call the roommates (who's doors were taped up ha), when they didn't pick up I just packed up some crap and exited the fumigated area. I got down to the street in a daze, was this really happening? And got on the metro planning to just spend the day at Cilantro, a sort of glorified Starbucks wannabe type place thats a little more restaurant-y. Of course when I got there they weren't even open yet so I went across the street to the old AUC campus instead where I wandered around the buildings looking for somewhere to sit and plug in. Eventually I found something kind of like that and ended up falling asleep on the floor in some hallway for about two hours. I hope no one saw me. By the time I woke up, Cilantro was open and I've been here all day typin and droppin mad cash.

Good Lord someone get me a bed.