Trip to Southern Egypt

A friend of mine from Stockholm, Uma, came to visit me in Cairo and when I helped them to book train tickets for Luxor and Aswan, where I had never been before, I decided in a flash second to go with them and check it out as well. It ended up becoming a five day trip and I don't think I have ever seen that many monuments and temples in my life before. That is also the reason why there is a completely ridiculous amount of photos in this post but I really couldn't bear leaving any of them out.

Day 1 - Aswan

On day zero we took the morning train down to Aswan and it took the entire day, a 14 hour train ride, but it was all right with two such talented and entertaining buddies as these two. :-P After that we spent the next day roaming about Aswan..


My travelling buddies Uma and Bram in our fancy hotel in Aswan.


View from the restaurant in Aswan where my two lazy co-travellers had breakfast. Me, I actually got up in time for the hotel breakfast like 5 hours earlier..


We went over to Elephantine Island and checked out the Nubian villages and the ruins on the southern tip of the island. The nubian culture is very colorful and laidback it seems, people were very friendly as we got lost in the winding narrow streets of the villages.


Some Nubian clothes hanging out to dry...


More labyrinthine roads, I have no idea how we eventually managed to find our way out...


I though it was pretty cool how dramatic the effect of the Nile on the surrounding land is. The rich land changes into complete desert in just a few meters..


This was the monestary we were too lazy to go to, but it looks quite nice from a distance too, don't you agree?? :-)


The ruins at the south of Elephantine Island. These were pretty cool, but the Aswan museum which was right next to it pretty much sucked.


Closeup of one of the doors to the main temple.


This is a so called nilometer, it was used to measure the water level in the Nile and to in that way predict crop yields and how high the taxes should be for the upcoming year. Pretty complicated economics at work already in Pharaonic times.


There were so many cool details to take pictures of here..


A scarab beetle.



A hand holding an ankh, the symbol of life. It must have been really cool when all these colors were still completely intact, quite different from our present day impression of these remains.


The ankh's are often attached to the rays of the sun as in this photo, symbolizing the gift of life from the sun to the earth of course.


Loads of feluccas on the Nile, and there were also loads of really irritating felucca captains on the Aswan corniche.


The tourist shopping street of Aswan, where the true meaning of "no hassle" had never really penetrated the minds of these guys. ;-)


Day 2 - Abu Simbel

On the second day we had to get up at a horrible 3am in order to get into a minivan and go with a police convoy down to the site of Abu Simbel. It was freezing when we made it there, quite unexpectedly too considering we were only tens of kilometers from the Sudanese border.

Abu Simbel was built in the 13th century BC by Ramses II to commemorate him and the famous first lady Nefertiti (I guess you must say he accomplished that goal) and also to intimidate his Nubian neighbors. Indeed, I probably wouldn't have gone further if I had run into this monument when going down the Nile... :-)


It looked exactly like you would expect it too. In the entrace hall they also had an exhibition about how everything had been cut into pieces and moved when the High Dam was built and Lake Nasser created. Well, they did an amazing job because it was really hard to see that these monsters had once been in a completely different place.


A Swedish and a Chinese monster posing in front of the other ones. :-P


From down below it is hard to appreciate how tall these guys really are, some 20 meters or so.


On the inside of the temple you could find a very impressive collection of images and hieroglyphics, which was really very interesting. Unfortunately you were not allowed to take photos there, so this was the only one I managed to shoot before the guards jumped on me.


The smaller temple which was also quite impressive. It was also made by Ramses II (or rather his slaves) and was dedicated to Hathor, the goddess of love and beauty, and to his wife Nefertiti.


The ear and skull of the poor guy whose upper body was broken. It was like this already before they moved the complex and it was decided they shouldn't try to put it back so his head had to stay in the sand..


Still guarding the waters of the Nile after some 3500 years...


Approaching Philea Island. This was a quite impressive places as well and you could see influences from both Romans and Greeks here.


Trajan's Kiosk.


Uma imitating a figure on the wall. She did a pretty good job I think.


Some ancient Christian graffiti.


Nice hieroglyphics.


The infamous monkey playing on his lute.


Tired Uma as we came back to Aswan and immediately took a train for Luxor the same evening.


Day 3 - Luxor East Bank

We arrived to Luxor pretty late and did little more than check into our hotel and run around looking for cheap apples for Uma. Apparently they are all imported and super expensive, even for Egyptians. The next day my lazy buddies didn't get up until after noon again and the only thing we had time to do was to check out the Karnak temple on the East Bank.


The entrance to Karnak. But why did they put a palm tree on top of his head?? Ha ha ha. Not funny. :-P


The hypostyle hall was truly fantastic if you ask me. It is really impossible the render the idea of what you feel like in there, being surrounded by more than a 100 of these gigantic pillars. You can't even fit them in a photo, at least not with my camera.


Huuuuuge pillars!!!


Really nicely decorated too...


Watch the ridiculously tiny people on the side here!


Another obelisk with pretty inscriptions. :-)


Still standing proud, despite some damages to his nose.


These were part of a small library of unusual flora and fauna carved into the stones in one of the rooms inside the complex.


A big party going on on the wall here.


Not often that you get to see an obelisk from this angle. :-P


Me and Uma saw some people doing seven laps around the big scarab beetle and then bow so we decided to do the same. I thought it was for good luck but apparently if you do it you are supposed to meet the love of your life... Uuups.


Uma found a new friend who was much better looking than her old ones. :)


Incredibly enough I must have had a twin back in the old days...


Giant hand holding a stick engraved with a cartouch of I have no idea who.


The Luxor temple was right next to our hotel but you could basically see all of it from the outside and I didn't feel it was worth going inside after the Karnak experience.


Ah proud Nordic country, du gamla du fria, and so on. Sweden was a big supporter of the archeological sites in Luxor, alongside with the US and Egypt.


President Mubarak was due to arrive the next day and Condoleeza Rice the day after that, so there was a huge influx of military and police preparing for their arrivals, as well as febrile activity in making the city look less shitty than before. Here six military trucks decided to park outside of the train station for some unknown reason.


We ran into this family and the dad generously offered us some tea and to sit down and watch the train station spectacle with them.


Uma was desperate to find some more handbags (she only has 20-30 in Sweden, poor thing) so poor me and Bram ran around with her in the bazaar looking for the right ones for a couple of hours. After that we abandoned her, but when we finally found her again later she knew which bag she wanted but she didn't want to go back to the shop since the guy there was a sleeze and wanted to marry her. Plus he only had one eye. :-P What to do??? Well, she sent Bram instead, impossible to recognize in his sunglasses and hat, to do the dirty work for her. And though he took forever and we were both worried he had been caught and murdered and thrown into the Nile, in the end both he and the much desired bag came back. Agent Bram saves the world again! ;-)


We celebrated the successful raid with some wine on the terrace of our hotel. This photo was taken by a police officer sitting on the terrace as well and we later found out this was the reason we couldn't finish the bottle up there but had to take it to our room instead. :-P


Day 4 - Luxor West Bank

The next day we headed over to the West Bank instead to see the Valley of the Kings and the so called Hot Chicken Soup - or - Hatshepsut Temple. I wanted to see Medinat Habu as well, but in the end we missed the closing of the ticket office with a few minutes so... ma3lish.


This is what the Valley of the Kings looks like, honestly I have to say I was less impressed with it then what I thought I would be. The entrance ticket was for three tombs and we picked the ones recommended by our faithful Lonely Planet.


You weren't allowed to take photos inside the tombs but as is customary for Egypt, by being blonde and asking if you may in Arabic, accompanied by the omnipresent baksheesh, will normally work wonders for you. In the foreground of this photo is a Swedish woman we ran into and who joined us. Her name is Ingegerd, she is 78 years old and has been virtually everywhere, including Antarctica!! She was just travelling around on her own, having with her only a tiny backpack weighing in at a bare 10 kg - "and then I have my own bed sheets and towel in there as well".


And my fears that she would slow us down were soon calmed as she would run up and down the stairs faster than any of us could, despite being fifty years younger!


Me and crazy Uma even had to take a break in the middle of the stairs.


The colors inside some of these tombs were fantastic as well.


Pretty pretty.


More prettyness.


This is the temple of Hatshepsut, which has a very cool setting, being shoved into the mountain like this, but unfortunately the inside was a bit disappointing in my opinion.


But of course I still managed to get some fabulous pictures. :-P


Ramses offering his lady breakfast on the bed??


This picture of Ramses was apparently very famous and the guard insisted I take a picture of it so I guess I'd better publish it on my blog too or he will come and yell at me.


The Atkins diet hadn't quite made it to Egypt 3000 years ago...


The whole group of the Norwegians we ran into, Super Ingegerd, me, Uma, Bram and the two Colossi of Memnon. I'll leave it to you to figure out who is who.


Kind of a stupid photo, but I like the contrast between the really fertile Nile land and the deserts. :-P And since it's my blog, I can put whatever shit I like on it.


Sunset on our way back.


We went to a restaurant with a great Nile view for dinner. Unfortunately it turned out it was expensive and the food was crap, but whatever... :-)


The sun was worth it at any rate...


Practice procession for Mubarak's visit the next day.


The put up these nice welcome signs and even painted the yellow stop lines in the middle of the night the day before the visit. Wouldn't be surprised if the paint still was wet when Mubarak drove over it..


Day 5 - Medinat Habu

Uma and Bram left for Hurghada, Sharm and eventually Sweden the next day and I was planning on taking a train back to Cairo as well, but as it turned out there was no good way of getting back until next morning so I stayed another day and went back to the Medinat Habu, the place that had been closed the day before, in the afternoon.


Medinat Habu is the second largest temple complex after Karnek, but for sure it has a much nicer backdrop.


I walked around in the rooms for a couple of hours and enjoyed it immensely. It was almost completely void of tourists this day, partly because the place it not so well-known and partly because traffic was a mess with all roads shut down for the "royal" visit.


The first pylon.


More nice details. I never really understood though why the ankh was always in a more shallow relief than the rest of the figures. Were they added later?? If someone who reads this post knows, please tell me why.


Images of ancient wars..


I absolutely loved these columns, the colors and the shapes. Fantastic!


More figures from the ceiling.


I found the ankhs with arms funny too. I wonder if the arms were there orginally or if they were added later.. This little guy is climbing right back up to the sun anyway.


Again the ankh was not made in as deep a relief as the rest.. Why? WHY??? :-)


Inside view of the outside.


A guy let me up on the roof for a handsome baksheesh and I got to see the temple from a bird's view.


He insisted on taking this stupid photo of me as well, but I refused to look happy about it anyway.


"Feed me some liiiiiife Ramsi baby!!" (Ok, I've written too many meaningless comments now.)


On the outside of the place they had a lot of numbers written, maybe the size of an army, the pharao's riches or a calender??


Ok, don't freak out now!! I have not become a terrorist yet, but I was really surprised when this guard shoved his AK-47 into my arms and took a photo of me. If an officer had seen him he would probably have been in big trouble. Anyway I got away alive and with a pretty cool photo to remember the event as well.


Panorama from the back of the site.


Last photo as I was on my way out...


And some sunset as I was returning to my hotel.


I woke up early the next morning to see some hot air balloons that they fly around with in the early morning but it wasn't as impressive as I was hoping. In fact I only got shitty photos of them so I will put this nice one of the moon here instead to wrap my southern Egypt trip up. :)