Off the Couch and On the Road

After the quick bus ride to Luxor, we ate a very western meal of bugers and fries at a neaby cafe and a few hours later travelled by horse-drawn carriages to Karnak temple, where we met our local guide, Adlle (sp.) who was brilliant and mixed Egyptology with photography tips (after a while I just handed him my camera) and Australian jokes, causing general hilarity amongst the group. His university thesis was on Karnak temple itself, and he pointed out many things we would never have picked up otherwise.

‘Come and look at the amazing colours!’ he would exclaim loudly as other tourists wandered past, looking over his shoulder until they had gone and gesturing for us to huddle close to hear another ’secret’.

Moses, changed by the Greeks from the original Egyptian name of Moussa, was described in the bible as having the same ‘title’ as Ramses II is depicted in hieroglyphs within the temple, resulting in the assumption that they were around during the same dynasty; The sun God ‘Amon-Ra’ (all other Egyptian Gods are a manifestation of this one God) is most likely a literary ancestor of ‘Amen’ and other similar sounding words worshipped in other religions; The hundreds of impressively huge columns within the temple were designed in such a way that many of the reliefs form the anicent Egyptian symbol of life, Ank, if looked on from above - Adlle could have told stories and ’secrets’ all day and we would never have noticed the time go by. As it was, two hours felt like 10 mins, and by the end of the afternoon we could really imagine the temple floors of carved silver and statues of gold, the heavy stone roofs and slits of sunlight lighting the darkened temple, and the true holiness of the place, instead of a few massive stone carvings.

We watched the sun set over the temple obilisks and caught the horse-drawn carriages back to the hotel. I don’t think we could have fit anything else into one day.

-Sarah

There are few things better that laying on a cushion-covered open-air deck of a wooden Felucca, with its tall white sail gently steering you silently down the Nile. Except maybe doing it for three days.

It was a magical three days, leaving Aswan and letting the current push us north towards Luxor. We lazed around on the deck, eating traditional food cooked by our crew - Ahmed and Yassim - and sleeping, letting our fingers trail the water over the edge of the boat while watching the desert turn to marshland, green forest, and back to desert once again.

We stopped to swim with local kids, ran down sand dunes, lit bonfires at night and joined other Feluccas in traditional Nubian and Egyptian singing, guitar sing-a-longs and drumming by the moonlight while others smoked shisha pipes on the sandy banks.

We listened to Bob Marley, played games and drank beer, and sat on inflatable rings (and a giant crocodile toy) - jumping off the boat and watching it sail downstream while we floated down the river, beer (or two) in hand, meeting the Felucca downstream several hours later.

I tell you, there is something satisfying about waving to cramped tourists on massive cruise ships, groaning with the sound of smoky engines, with a beer in hand, laying on an inflatable crocodile floating down the Nile. I am not sure whether they thought they should save us or wave back. Maybe they thought if we had beer and inflatable toys we would be fine.

It was the most relaxed I have been in a long time, and none of us wanted to leave. We stopped on our second morning to visit Kom Ombo temple, the only temple dedicated to two gods - Haroeris and Sobek - and the least preserved temple in Egypt (although still stunning, with hieroglyphs and colours in abundance). The temple was great, possibly almost as good as the ice cream at the cafe next to the temple. Almost.

Our last night consisted of another bonfire on the beach and a few drinks before we collapsed into sleep in the early hours. Ahmed and Yassim, having prayed and eaten in the dark, started silently paddling downstream about 4.30am so we would wake near Edfu temple at sinrise. I was awake, watching the moonlight bathe the Nile and palm lined banks in an iridescent light, the sounds of the Koran being broadcast from speakers in the nearby towns we passed. It was truly magical, a world away from everything.

We were one of the first at Edfu temple that morning, the best preserved temple in not only Egypt but the entire African continent (or was it the world? The world sounds so much better), sorry…the best preserved temple in the ENTIRE WORLD!! (There. Much better).

Edfu was not a terribly important place in ancient Egypt, but according to the Egyptian myths it was the place where the falcon-headed god Horus avenged the murder of his father Osiris by killing Seth.

Horus was conceived after Osiris’ death, and it was only following the hardship of collecting his body parts by Isis, that Osiris was sufficiently resurrected to give life to Horus. The unity of Osiris and Horus — Osiris was often understood to continue existing by his son — climaxed when Horus finally tracked down Seth (portrayed in hieroglyphs as a hippo) and killed him in a magnificent battle.

This story was portrayed in amazing reliefs throughout the various chambers and halls, depicting everything from recipes of perfumes to the bext way to give birth (depicted in the birthhouse, or Mamissi, chamber). The temple was enormous, the front pillars alone measuring 36m high and 80m wide, and the reliefs of Isis and Horus were, prehaps not coincidentally, startlingly similar to the portrayal of Mary with baby Jesus.

From Edfu we joined a police convoy (all tourists on many of the long distance drives in Egypt were taken on police convoys due to various unrests and bombings in the past that I admittedly don’t know much about) to Luxor, mumbling most of the way about missing our Felucca. And of course, our inflatable crocodile. Because they both rocked.

-Sarah