Exotic Egypt

Its been a long long time since I've written something in the "Khabar" series..

This time its "Khabar Egypt ki"..

After almost 6 months I had got an extended weekend - from 1st October to 4th October - Thanks to Eid al Fitr.. My Bahraini friends - Hemant & Vikas had planned for a holiday in Egypt.. I thought it will be a great idea to join them for this trip.. Karan, my roomie in Dubai, was also game for the trip.. So the plan was frozen.. Hemant & Vikas would fly from Bahrain to Alexandria (their port of entry in Egypt) and will reach Cairo by train on the same day.. Karan & I would fly from Dubai and would meet H & V at Cairo directly.. 

I'm hardly gonna put any historical facts in this khabar as its very complicated and even I wont be sure that whatever i'll be writing is true or not.. For instance - One of the Ramses kings had 200 children.. 80 sons and 120 daughters.. He married some 12 of his own daughters and had children from them.. So the mother of that child was also his sister and aunt.. The newly born will again be called Ramses.. One Ramses king ruled for 67 years and one ruled for 31 years.. Guides tried to explain but it was too heavy a dose to digest within 2 days.. If you are interested, please wikisearch for "Tut Ankh Amun", "Nefertari", "Ramses", "Tuthmosis", "Anubis" etc..  

So lets get back to the track and get involved this Egypt ki khabar.. 

October 1: 

Karan & I reached Cairo at 5:30 in the morning.. We had pre-arranged a taxi as we did not want to waste time in the day.. Mahmoud was already waiting for us with his Ferrari in the form of Daewoo Nubira.. We met H & V who were deep in sleep at Nubian hostel.. After shower 'n quick bite of felafal sandwich, we headed off to the village of Giza.. Giza, some 15 minutes drive from Cairo, is the most favorite destination in Egypt for all tourists.. 

Pyramid @ Giza! Wallah..

I was actually seeing a pyramid.. Couldn't believe it for a long long time.. All four of us decided to see the pyramids and sphinx sitting on horseback.. Deal was fixed and we were off in a flash.. There are 3 main pyramids (Kings' pyramids) and 6 small pyramids in Giza.. Pyramids are well constructed with stones weighing from 1 tonne to a max of 30 tonnes.. Angle of pyramids is 52 degrees.. 

Our next stop was Saqqara pyramid which is around 20 kms away from Giza.. Saqqara is kinda stepped pyramid and is actually the first pyramid built in Egypt.. They are in the process of doing some essential reconstruction work at Saqqara; so we just had to be satisfied with the photographs.. Next destination was Dahsour.. There are 3 pyramids in Dahsour - Red, Pink and Black.. However, they do not look to have slightest of tinges of those colors.. The only plus is you actually can go inside the red pyramid.. Theres a small entrance after climbing 100+ steps and then you need to crawl down for another 15-20 minutes through an ultra small opening.. I managed, somehow :) Dahsour and Saqqara are ,however, not amongst the popular tourist destinations.. 

After Dahsour, we again headed back to Giza where we had some arabic lunch in one of the roadside cafes.. Challenge for veggies as its difficult to find meal without meat in this part of the world but its not impossible.. In the evening, we tried to understand the history as we saw the 60 minute light and sound show @ Giza pyramids.. The show was beautifully crafted; with different light streams, lasers and audio with a good quality.. 

We had to get back to the hostel and pick our stuff immediately as we had to catch a night train to Luxor.. Train was ontime as Cairo was the first station :)

October 2:

Train journey was damn discomforting as we had managed to get only the chaircar seats and not sleeper berths for this 11 hour journey.. On top of that train was running 2 n half hours late.. Masood had come at Luxor train station to pick us up.. He had put us in a small hotel called Princess.. Luxor is anyway a very small town.. After freshening up and stuffing some pizza in our stomachs we went out to see Karnak temple in the afternoon.. Within a few minutes only, we realised that we couldnt have had the greatest of times in the scorching sun..But still we saw the Karnak temple and clicked loadsa snaps.. We decided to get back to our Princess and rest for a while before we could venture new places in the evening.. Evening 6pm.. Walking along the bank of Nile, eating some hot futaane, enjoying the breeze.. ahaahaa.. Luxor temple was looking so damn awesome with the lighting at night.. After the photosession in Luxor temple, we went shopping.. My friends bought a few souvenirs, papyrus paintings (click: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus), stones, etc.. After a good dinner, we could fianlly catch some sleep at our hotel.. 

[ East bank of Nile in Luxor is called City of Life (Logic: Sun rises from east) and similarly west bank is called City of Death.. Karnak temple and Luxor temple are on the east bank while valley of the kings and queens in on west bank.. ]

October 3: 

Well, the interesting part was that we could get only 3 hours of sleep as we had to wake up at 3 in the morning.. WHY?? We had booked ourselves for an early morning flight in a Hot Air Balloon.. As per the schedule, we crossed Nile in a small boat to go to the west bank of Nile.. A jeep then dropped us near the balloon.. Guess what! We had company of atleast 20+ other balloons and so many people around there.. Our flight lasted for about 60 minutes as against the planned duration of 35 minutes.. Our captain Wael found it difficult to find a safe place for landing.. But it was fun! 

After this particular venture, we started our trip of west bank with a visit to Hatshetpsut temple.. Its the place where embalming (mummification) used to take place.. It used to take a total of 70 days to prepare a mummy.. They had advanced tools to do that.. Egyptians strongly believed in life after death (called Afterlife).. Our next stop was at Valley of the Kings where 200+ tombs of kings from various dynasties who ruled are believed to be present underground.. 62 tombs have been found till date.. They keep open any 3 tombs open to tourists and keep on doing the maintenance work for other tombs.. All the tombs have many pictures drawn onto them with sign language.. All the colors are still very much in tact.. No photography is allowed inside the tombs though.. You can easily walk inside the tomb.. There are separate chambers built in most of the tombs.. A tomb can take anywhere between 3 to 25 years to complete.. A king used to be buried (as a mummy) in the coffin kept in his tomb and that was the starting point of his Afterlife.. So every king used to have a separate tomb for himself.. Most of the mummies have been moved to Cairo museum but Mummy of Tut Ankh Amun is still kept in his tomb @ Valley of kings.. Tombs of 2 queens who ruled the land of Misr are found in the nearby area - Valley of the queens.. Out of that queen Nefertari's tomb is supposed to be very beautiful from inside.. Most of the times it is kept under lock but if you can pay 40,000 EGP (Egyptian pounds) i.e. 3,50,000 INR they open it for a group of max 10 people and for 10 minutes only.. No photographs again!

That kinda rapped our 2nd day in Luxor and we headed back to Princess to pack our bags and to come back to Cairo again.. Our train was scheduled to reach Luxor at around 12 midnight but unfortunately it screwed our happiness by reaching Luxor only at 3 o'clock in the morning.. It was a long distance train, which had already covered 400+ kms of journey from Aswan and was scheduled to go upto Alexandria.. Just for information: Alexandria is the northern tip of Egypt (traces of greek culture can be found there); Cairo, the capital, is 3 hr train journey towards south from Alexandria; Luxor - again towards south - 670+ kms journey from Cairo and Aswan - located in southern egypt.. 

October 4:

Our train got horribly delayed and reached Cairo only at 2pm instead of scheduled time of 8am.. It totally wasted our day in Cairo.. We had kept this day to visit Cairo museum, cairo mosque and the citadel.. Quickly after dumping bags at Nubian, we headed straight towards cairo museum.. We could see some royal mummies over there.. Ramses III, Ramses IV, Tuthmosis IV and few more.. Time was ticking for our return flight back to Dubai and we did not have any other choice but to leave Cairo museum and head back to Nubian to pick our bags up.. Saying Goodbye to our new egyptian friends in the form of staff @ Nubian, Karan and I took the return flight to Dubai while Hemant and Vikas carried on to Alexandria just to catch their return flight.. 

Well guys, thats it from my side.. I had decided not to write a longish khabar but I think I've crossed that limit while writing for day 1 itself :P

Anyways, hope you guys liked reading this travelogue.. As always, your suggestions/comments are welcome!!!


Cheers,

Jd


PS: Well, I have got a small collection photos as well (chosen from 800+ photographs clicked by all 4 of us; special thanks to Hemant for providing stunning pictures of Pyramids and temples in Luxor).. You might want to have a look.. Mind you that photos are heavy files and hence you may have to wait a few more seconds to get the photos loaded.. But I assure that you wont be disappointed..  

Here you go: CLICK HERE