Just recently I decided to take a day trip to the inland city of Luxor on the bank of the Nile, about 4 hours from where I currently live in Hurghada. Through a friend of a friend, I managed to get a hook-up for a driver to take me there and back for a decent price and meant that I wouldn’t have to survive the tourist buses for the day! My plan was to visit some of the ancient temples and also the Valley of the Kings – an ancient burial site for Egyptian Kings from roughly 2,500 years ago.

Egypt has a lot of similarities with Australia: they both have perfect sunshine all year round, good beaches and same type of desert landscape that continues forever. The culture is hugely different, Egypt being one of the oldest cultures/civilizations on the planet. The Valley of the Kings is immense & visiting the tombs gives you a good idea of how together the ancient Egyptians were with the story of the dead King drawn in hieroglyphs that you can still see today. Makes you wonder if anything that humans create now will still be around in 2500 years time??

From the Valley of the Kings, I drove out to visit a few other sites including Al-Bahir Temple and the Colossi of Memnon that were built about 3400 years ago. Huge and awesome, all of it built without the technology that we use today & photos never do things like this justice. The city of Luxor is constantly busy, but without all the tourists that Hurghada has so it does feel a little more “Egyptian”. Markets and Bazaars everywhere, you can buy pretty much anything you want for very little.

The trip home was uneventful, my driver constantly beeping and yelling at other drivers in Arabic and dodging the various herds of goats that are being moved along by their Bedouin shepherds. I’m hoping to next visit the pyramids in the coming weeks so stay tuned…

Talk to you soon,

Shane.

Yo yo !!