Thebes

From Aqaba we cruised overnight back down the Gulf of Aqaba and across the Red Sea to moor at Safaga, Egypt's closest port to the Upper Nile, in particular the significant tourist destinations of Luxor, Karnak and the Valley of the Kings. 

Once over the mountains and into the fertile Nile Valley ....

it made a pleasant change from the desolate mountains between Safaga and our destination of ancient Thebes, modern day Luxor. For mile after mile we passed irrigation channels, all carefully fed from the mighty Nile, and huge numbers of relatively small fields all being tended by men and women as they must have been for, not just centuries past, but for millennia. Transport of loads seemed to be predominantly by donkey drawn carts, with ancient tractors making rare appearances. 

Near the Nile itself, our main road heading south from Qena to Luxor was punctuated by frequent crossroads, each of which had significant speed bumps and an armed police presence, which was sort of reassuring given the recent (28/12/2018) terrorist attack on a tourist bus which killed four people, but it made for very slow progress and it got very boring after a while. 

Eventually we disembarked into a fairly hot plaza where our guide showed us around the remains of the magnificent Temples of Luxor, which are incredibly complicated with temples within other temples and so much to see and take in. This reconstruction (and a 3D fly-by/through here) from the Discovering Egypt website shows how magnificent it must have been when first built 3,000 or so years ago.

The scale is just so impressive when you see one of the two obelisks shown in the above picture for real: 

Note the figures to the right of the obelisk, they're quite big: 

Leading up to the entrance to the temples is the Avenue of Sphinxes, originally some 3 km long linking the temples at Karnak with those at Luxor. About 1,350 quite large sphinxes lined this route originally and have only relatively recently been rediscovered: 

This is how they probably looked originally (also from the aforementioned website): 

And are still impressive .....

Further into the temple the detail in the engraved pillars and walls is so fine.... 

One reason for much of it lasting so long is that the annual Nile floods brought layers of silt into the temples year after year after they ceased to function as such, and gradually a new ground level was formed many metres above the original floor level. 

With much of the temple buried under the protective silt, the land was used for other purposes including the mosque of Sufi Shaykh Yusuf Abu al-Hajjaj which was built over part of the temple. The entrance door to this mosque shows how deep the silt layers were .....

Not all the stonework fared quite so well as this depiction of the boy king, Tutankhamun and his wife (older sister), shows.

This statue though ....

still has an incredible level of detail .....

The grandeur of the whole place is just wonderful and overawing, and as with Petra, one can touch these intricate carvings and feel the skill of the stonemasons' work from 3,000  years ago  .....

We didn't have very long there and had to move on after about 45 minutes, nowhere near long enough really, but our particular trip had other things to fit in and even with relatively short stops, the overall trip would take some 13 hours. 

Lunch was to be aboard a felucca. Most of us didn't really know what to expect except that it would be on/by the Nile. The bus took us a short distance to a fairly posh (and big) riverside hotel, the Steigenberger Nile Palace, where we were led through to a large (artificial) grassy area with a splendid view of the Nile:

But this was only the route to our feluccas which we boarded with interest. Three of our hardworking crew members joined the five passengers on our felucca and needed to prove that they'd been there with a selfie, even if they didn't get the 'T' shirt ....

And with that we were off into the centre of the Nile at a fairly decent pace. A nice breeze ensured that we were able to make good but safe progress, and the sunshine kept us all warm, but shaded from the direct sun by a cloth canopy. Here's one of the other boats with the pink hotel in the background. 

It was a lovely sight, a fleet of feluccas with their lateen sails billowing in the wind and shining in the bright Egyptian sunshine .....

An interesting (none of us knew what we were eating) three-course lunch was served by an attentive waiter while two or three other crew kept the felucca moving skilfully through the water, at times appearing to race some/all of the other boats while expertly turning up- and down-stream trying to catch the best wind. Eventually we were dropped off, feeling very well fed, on the west (opposite) bank where our bus was waiting, the driver having driven quite a long way to get down to the nearest bridge and back up again to take us to our next stop.

The Valley of the Kings, where Tutankhamun's glorious and undisturbed tomb was discovered by Howard Carter less than 100 years ago, was next on our agenda. This excellent hour-long drama/documentary film about his discovery is well worth seeing (thanks again to the Discovering Egypt website for this). 

A relatively short bus ride got us to the entrance and to save a bit of a hot walk we were put on a little train up to the tombs of many Pharaohs ....

Again, our time here was limited and our tickets only allowed us entry to two of the tombs (Tutankhamun's was available only for an extra fee). This is the entrance to a typical royal tomb in the centre of the picture  ....

We were allowed into the tombs of Rameses III and Rameses IV, both of which had been long since robbed of all of their valuables and stripped of the less saleable stuff. But the walls were still very impressive. This is inside Rameses III's tomb: 

Cameras are not allowed into the tombs, though strangely, mobile phones are, but no photographs are allowed unless an extra fee is paid, so I bought a nice book instead with much better photos than I'd have been able to take. The above is one such example from the book and shows the slightly faded, but still very obvious, colour engravings lining the long walls in most of the tombs. It also shows nicely on the roof, the starry night sky effect present in quite a few areas.

The tomb and its entrance passages are surprisingly long:

Plenty of space for many coloured engravings ....

This text from the book says a bit about this particular Pharaoh:

More illustrations from the tomb:

On the way out, in the retail opportunity area, was a very nice 3D scale model of the whole Valley of the Kings with each of the many tombs shown in its relevant location .....

Even better than that though was the translucent ground level material could also be viewed from underneath, where each tomb was modelled in great detail showing how it had been cut deep into the rock:

Back then to the bus for a four hour night journey to the ship, boring but at least we had a nice dinner to look forward to on arrival. 

Rock City

It was a moderately long bus ride from the quayside at Aqaba to get through many miles of desert and mountains to our remote destination. There was little of interest other than signs to 'Wadi Rum', a desert area (to which some other passengers were going) which is so hostile to life that it has been used for many films featuring extra-terrestrial landscapes, including 'The Martian' (2015, director Ridley Scott, lead, Matt Damon) due to its supposed similarity to the terrain on Mars. 

A welcome toilet stop (the bus loo isn't usually to be recommended!) at 'The Desert Castle Bazaar' .....

provided some brief retail therapy as well, but there wasn't really enough time for any serious haggling. It was a nice enough place though with acceptable toilets. 

Then more miles of rubbish strewn desert; for as far as I could see, the desert either side of the road was littered with plastic waste, bits of tyres and vehicle parts and seemed to be used as a general waste tip for all travellers. 

The mountains at least provided better views with the road exceeding 5,000 feet in height in places, until eventually we dropped down a bit into Wadi Musa. This is a sizeable town which has grown up to the east of ancient Petra; presumably all of the 8,000 or so inhabitants are there to serve the nearly one million visitors annually to this remarkable place. There is little else in this remote and desolate mountainous part of Jordan. Quite where sufficient water comes from for the local and visiting populations is anybody's guess. 

Once through the entrance and having avoided the equivalents of pushy taxi drivers - horse-drawn cart operators - our excellent guide led us towards the Siq, a natural canyon formed many millennia ago when an earthquake left a jagged cleft across the rocky terrain. 

Even before we'd got into the Siq proper, there were obvious signs of ancient habitation all around with caves of varying sizes cut into the relatively soft sandstone .....

Everywhere we looked there were amazing things to see, our group for instance looking at one impressive group of massive carved blocks ... 

While behind them were even more impressive things to see ....

Many of the rock constructions, dwellings or whatever, had a curious mirror-image set of steps above them such as these .....

But in this instance, there was still virgin rock below the steps implying this was an unfinished project. From this, archaeologists have worked out that the carving/construction of these tombs and dwellings must have been from the top down, very logical when you think about it. It beggars belief though that tons of rock must have needed removing for even the smallest of such constructions. 

It's difficult to imagine how long it must have taken with a mallet and chisel to create this burial chamber (shown from a different angle) ... 

Even the poorer dwellings would have involved a lot of work ...

A little further down into the Siq it's not just dwellings but art that has been carved into the rock as well. More than one camel train is depicted in the descent to the main centre of Petra. 

"Camel?" you may ask, "What camel?". Well, it's been somewhat eroded by wind and sand but to the right of the green pointer our guide is using is the camel-herder, at least his lower half is still visible. Then to the left of him are the remains of one camel's front legs/feet and further left its hind feet, and between the front and hind legs the outline of its belly is still visible.Out of shot further to the left is a second camel and to the right is another set of camels going the other way. 

Now  into the Siq proper it gets progressively narrower as we go downhill and the sky gets ever more distant.

It becomes very obvious why this was such a well protected city; an army of thousands could be repelled by a small group of well armed men in such a narrow passageway. Note also the ledges in the rock faces on either side, these are water channels providing a constant supply of piped water brought from hundreds of kilometres away, a major engineering challenge which made it possible for this city to flourish in an otherwise arid area. 

Even further down the Siq gets darker and more claustrophobic but the light at the end of the tunnel glows with a pinky/reddish hue .... 

All of a sudden the narrow Siq ends in a large open area with throngs of people, camels and horses, and the most amazing view: 

I think most people will have seen pictures of the amazingly well preserved 'Treasury' facade which was mis-named by early European explorers who rediscovered this lost city. In actual fact it is properly known as 'Al Khazneh', probably the mausoleum of Nabataean King Aretas IV constructed relatively late in the city's long history, when its population peaked at an estimated 20,000 inhabitants about 100 AD.

Quite how this particular tomb survived as well as it has when other structures have been significantly eroded, is not well understood. In fact, the relatively soft sandstone should not survive long at all so the archaeologists think that the Nabataeans must have found a way of preserving the incredible detail, but quite how is a mystery to modern science. 

Sadly, 'Al Khazneh' used to be even better than it is today as portrayed in this beautiful painting by David Roberts who made a very difficult Arabian trek during the 1830s to draw/paint many works of art around this fantastic city of rock. This is how the tomb looked in 1839 with the figures and urn at the top all intact.  

Unfortunately men with rifles have, in the past, used the site for target practice resulting in significant damage to the urn (which was wrongly believed to hold treasure) and the figures. Most of the figures have been totally destroyed and this is the scarred urn today:

Moving on from  'Al Khazneh'  are many other monuments of such incredible scale and grandeur that it's difficult to portray just how amazing this site is, and we only saw a small part of the centre of the city, which extends for some considerable distance up various valleys. Here are just a few examples:

As can be seen, tourists are free to clamber all over these remarkable and ancient (1,000 to 3,000 year old) structures - a situation which surely can't continue indefinitely? 

For anyone considering a visit here, set aside two or three days and see the whole site close up before everything gets sealed off behind fences as Stonehenge now is. 

Highly recommended!

Cruisers cruising

'Aqaba Sunset Cruise' was the title of this trip the afternoon/evening of our arrival in Aqaba, Jordan's only seaport. We were blessed with perfect weather for it luckily, because it had been cloudy and not so wonderful earlier in the day. 

We'd been bussed down the short distance from the quayside where Boudicca had a relatively solitary mooring ...

and after a slightly tortuous walk across a building site found our alternative cruise boat, a little smaller than Boudicca ......

but rather elegant I thought. No sign of a name outside but we discovered a small plaque above the cabin: 

The aft end looked, if anything, even smarter than the bows:

Once everyone was seated, the more flexible amongst us happy to have the low-level seating again, we were ready to cast off ......

Hang on, seasick already? We're still tied to the jetty! 

Actually, he wasn't and we weren't, and I wouldn't have photographed him if he was. 

From the off we all found it interesting and enjoyable. This for instance is the Israeli-Jordanian border, intentionally intimidating presumably. 

The Egypt-Israel border and the Jordan-Saudi border were pointed out as well, but it was the views we'd come for and they didn't disappoint ....

I think it's fair to say that everyone was enthralled ........

Then back to our glowing mother-ship .....

for a sumptuous poolside barbecue .....

It's a hard life but someone's got to do it!