Luxor, where the Pharaos rest
Luxor is a city with very little to offer as a city, but it does has the amazing Valley of the Kings, and the Hatshepsut temple, wich are fantastic! I arrived there from Edfu in my very posh train as you already know and started to look for acommodation.
Luckily I found one of the best places I’ve stayed and by far the cheapest, the Oasis Hotel!!
I wasn’t really in the mood to go to every place Luxor has, like the Valley of the Queens or any of the many temples that the city has, but I knew I wanted to see the Karnak temple, the Valley of the Kings with all the tombs from the Pharaos, and the Hatshepsut Temple.
I won’t try to describe the temples or the tombs, I’ll let the pictures tell you the story, I’ll tell just how I got to them!
The city is devided in two by the Nile, the west and the east bank. The Karnak temple and the city are on the east bank, and the two others are on the west. Of course you can hire a boat and a taxi to take you there, but as you guys already know I like to do it the hard way 🙂
The Karnak temple was great, it’s the biggest open air museum in the world and it’s masive! The highlight of it, are the 134 columns, that Seti I started and that then his son Ramses the second finished. They are huge!!!! they are 22 meters high and you need 35 people stanmding in front of them to surround them. WOW! The the whole temple is full of statues and interesting stuff, like a sacred lake built for the priest to purified themselves before praying. Great place to see so see it by yourselves
Now I’ll tell you the adventurous sightseing!
I took the public ferry to get to the other side from the Nile and from there a little microbus, that left me about 4 Km away from the tombs. While walking thru this very hot and dry road I found a head made of stone from a statue! It was like a pharao!!! I don’t know if it was a copy or from a new one, but just thinking it could be I don’t know how many years old made me excited!! I didn’t take it of course, cause I have already enough stuff to carry on my shoulders around the world!!
The tombs are amazing, but more or less if you see one you’ve seen them all. There’s one though, that is very different because you have to climb to the mountain, pass thru a very small cave and then go down. It was built by Tuthmosis III and he built this way to prevent thieves to get inside hes tomb.
After seeing three tombs I went to the temple. Now there are two ways to go, by car/bus/taxi, or to climb the mountain that separetes it from the valley of the kings. Which one do you think I took?? jajajajaja, yep it was an hour long walk, climbing the desert mountain, but it was definitely worth it. You have an awesome view from the Nile valley, you see very clear how it’s very green for about one kilometer to each side of the river and then plas!! desert until the eye can reach.
The temple itself has not very much to offer, but as I said, the walk and the view I got made it a very nice place.
Ok people, I’m going now, I dived three times today and I’m kaput, I’ll post the pictures and videos from the dives so stay tuned.
with lots of love from the Sinai
Simon =)
jajajajaja some people you see are so funny!!!! 🙂
Tags: Egypt, Luxor, Travel, Valley of the kings
simonuribe@yahoo.com
Nice pics mi amigo, Im on my way there tonight so this blog was actually useful to me. Dont get eaten by a yak in Nepal or anything.
G