Day 7 West Bank/Luxor

The next morning, we rose normally and after the last breakfast, we got into a bus and drove through green Nile and canal flanks to the Colossi of Memnon, the huge statues of Amenhotep III, sitting in guard of the larger necropolis that lies beyond. I decided not to get off the bus -- both statues were imposing enough from where I sat. For some reason, I was desperately sleepy and I needed something quick and strong to wake the hell up. From here on out, we entered possibly the most desolate lifeless patch of planet I have ever seen. Between every horizon line, it was an inexorable replication of brown and shades of brown, limestone and sandstone relief with our narrow metalled road snaking quietyly and carefully through it as though not to wake some huge lumbering creature of the Theban Hills up. I sat amazed until, sadly, our vehicle turned into a profusion of tourists at the entrance to the Valley of the Kings.

A tiny patch of valley on the West Bank nestled within a horseshoe bend of the Nile, this is part of the larger Theban Necropolis that includes the Valley of the Queens. Probably most famous for King Tut's tomb, the VoTKs is a week's observing if you had the time. Home to a profusion of tombs of kings and nobles of the New Kingdom (18th, 19th and 20th dynasties), the VoTKs lies directly below the pyramid-shaped al-Qurn peak. Historians say the shape didn't pass the pharaohs by, and their choice of resting place in the New Kingdom was specifically to ape the Old Kingdom's use of colossal pyramids as tombs as in Giza.

After a short brief from Melek about why most of the tombs are shut to the public (restoration work or the danger of caving in with too many footfalls), we are advised to enter the tombs of Ramses III, Ramses IV and a later king Siptah, who ruled from 1194-1188 BC and was likely the son of King Seti II and one of his Caanite concubines. The latter, possibly the finest we saw, the colour of the inlay and carvings still fresh, the blues and reds of vultures and Anubis almost perfect. The tomb, a straight axis one, dipped down to a sarcophagus room, though his mummy was not found in the tomb, but rather with a bunch of others in the tomb of Amenhotep II, buried a few hundred yards away in the same stretch of necropolis. We didn't go into King Tut's Tomb either because it was closed, or because we were advised by our guide that there was nothing see inside. Either way, what the....

From here, we took the tuf-tuf out to the main entrance -- I noticed how starkly cold it was in the shade of the bare mountains and warm it was without them -- and took our bus to the Temple of Hatshepsut, nestled in a cradle beneath a wall of high weathered limestone mountains in Deir el-Bahri. It was in this serenely grand expanse of dirt that on November 17, 1997, Islamic terrorists massacred 62 people, including 58 tourists (35 of them Swiss), an incident that has come to be known as the Luxor massacre, even though Luxor technically lies on the opposite side of the Nile to the East. Before the majesty of Hatshepsut's magnificent temple -- Egyptologists from Poland are restoring the sanctum -- tourists were chased with machetes and beheaded like sacrificial animals not ten years ago. The massacre, coupled with the September 11 attacks, have simply quartered Egypt's tourism inflow and crippled development that remains stubbornly dependent on revenue from foreigners. You can imagine, if visa fees are still going toward repaying UNESCO for the $40 million relocation of Abu Simbel.

A throng of schoolchildren from Luxor thronged past us up the temple steps, their teacher telling them not to shout toward us. They'd come to see Hatshepsut, the original feminist, the carfully vandalised statues of her and the supremely kept coloured inlays of Anubis and Horus on the right flank. Hatshepsut is known to have thrown everything else to the wind and declared herself pharaoh, insisting she was a man and assuming the title Maatkaare for it. Papers have been written drawing pseudo-psychological lineages linking Hatshepsut to Biljana Plavsic and Maggie Thatcher. It is obvious now that mortuary workers during her time themselves laughed at the idea of a woman pharaoh. A cave above the temple has carved graffiti depicting what appears to be Senenmut, her chief advisor, engaged in an subjugating sex with Hatshepsut -- either a politico-sociological dig, or the world's earliest known pornography. Or both. From here, we were driven across the Nile to the immediately enchanting city of Luxor, formerly the seat of Thebes and now a precariously luxurious hamlet, fed, like everything else by tourism with a bit of agriculture on the fringes. We drive straight to a restaurant on the Nile for lunch. I watch feluccas float past from the restaurant vista -- I realise that this restaurant is owned by the same chaps (Abou Zeid) who own the first two restaurants we were taken to in Cairo and Giza.

The next thing, and this every book tells you is the finest thing you'll see in Egypt beyond the pyramids, is the Temple of Karnak, right there, smack in the middle of a modern city. Consider this: "Approximately 30 pharaohs contributed to the buildings, enabling it to reach a size, complexity and diversity not seen elsewhere. Few of the individual features of Karnak are unique, but the size and number of features is overwhelming." We walk up the portico lined with rams-head sphinxes and enter the pylon into an open courtyard and a hall of lotus pillars, followed by two huge obelisks. I cannot speak for the others, but the meticulous complexity at Karnak struck me more than the even the pyramids did. There was something here that reached up and said look, look, look how old and strong. Only one of the four parts of the temple -- the Precinct of Amun-Re -- is open to the public. We walked through walls of heiroglyphics to a museum of stone shaken down by an earthquake, a fallen obelisk, a bath and a scarab for fertility wishes. If I could recommend just one place to see in Egypt, this would probably be it, though Cheops will probably want to strike me down. I did not visit the Luxor Temple, which ir an extension of the Karnak concurbate, but am told it is more of the same splendour but smaller. I sat in the bus instead, shooed off curio sellers and reflected on Karnak and how the sun bounced off yellow stone before turning pink and dipping off.

We sat in a cafe near a mosque for over two hours after the Luxor Temple after cruising around the city in our bus. We ate there and then left for the Luxor station to catch our train back to Cairo. It had been our most crushingly tiring day yet, so there was no scotch evening on the train though I would very much have liked a couple of larges. Oh well.