The land that time, and progress, forgot

Luxor, Egypt

20th November 2009

When I put together the photos of Luxor for this blog, I could have only used ones from the historical sites but I chose to add in a few showing the Luxor which doesn't appear in tourist publications as well. This city is two worlds in which one cuts straight through the other.

My journey started in Amman, Jordan. I caught a flight to Cairo and then connected onto a second flight to Luxor. The first flight was full of Arabs but the second was full of Germans and French-speaking Canadians. This was my first hint that some destinations are a bit more authentic while others heard white people like sheep into the hands of street hustlers and bent cops. Jordan was a really relaxed and mixed a modern Amman with an ancient Petra. Egypt feels, in comparison, like the land that time, and progress, forgot.

When I arrived at Luxor airport, my bag didn't. A man came to me like he knew who I was and told us to come with him. I was really wondering what was going on, was he customs or the police? Turns out my bag couldn't be transferred from plane to plane within 45 minutes in Cairo. The man took me to a smoky office to fill in paperwork to get it back the next day.

When I finally left the airport, there was no one in sight. All the Arabs trying to sell taxi rides were gone, all the unsuspecting tourists had gone off with them. It was just a massive empty parking lot. I got on the phone and re-ordered my taxi. The street leading to my hotel had massive holes filled with water and garbage due to some sewage works and various barricades to stop people driving mopeds down the street. Mixed with the garbage, this made it difficult for me to climb through, let alone if I had a suitcase to tow along.

I could have stayed in a four star but I was told this place, at 12 pounds a night, was an authentic experience. The people there were friendly and the whole feel of the building reminded me of my hosteling days. Back then, I didn't care about the state of anything, it was just about making friends with others who were traveling around the world.

There were several posters on the walls trying to convert people to Islam, the bathrooms were about 1.5m x 1.5m with the shower pushed up high and spraying on to everything. The shower water would take ages to drain away and flood the whole bathroom in the process. The temperature of the water and the rate at which it flowed was never under my control. There were three settings which would switch at random: (1) fast and freezing (2) drizzling and almost warm (3) fast and on fire. Needing to plan a showering strategy is what lets you know when you're roughing it. I only burnt my hand twice so it looks like my strategy was a success.

Egypt Air told me they would ring when they were going to deliver my bag. With this false sense of security, I set out to explore Luxor. The Temples of Karnak were really incredible. About two weeks before I left home, the Egyptian Tourism Ministry launched a new ad campaign on the tube in which they showed a woman in Karnak saying the stones were speaking to her. It's all well and kind to let people with mental health problems roam around their historical sites without their faces covered but I thought the photo must have been heavily photoshopped and that the light would never hit stone like that. I was wrong. This really was an amazing place to walk around. I couldn't stop taking photos. I have a rule that I won't put more than one or two photos of any place of interest up but I could have posted 20 or 30 more easily.

The police guarding the site are bent like a banana and were trying to offer themselves as tour guides. I got them to explain which kinds of assault riffles they were armed with. I then tried to get them to hold them up like Rambo while I took some photos but they refused.

During the walk between Karnak and Luxor Temple, I walked along some market streets. There was a point where people stop trying to sell you stuff because your white and you enter a area where the Arabs are only doing business with one another and look at you like a pink elephant walking through the crowds.

The smell on the street was horrible. At times, I didn't even try to hide the fact I was breathing through my shirt. People just put stuff down on the dirt, crouched down next to it and tried to haggle it away to passing Arabs. It was busy, donkeys pulling carts, animals walking through, trucks full of produce and men on scooters all were pushing along the dirt streets honking and shouting their way through.

I a few phone calls, got the word from Egypt Air had my bag in Luxor. I caught a cab to the airport and to my luck, the taxi driver also worked for Egypt Air. We spent two hours walking between offices, filling out paperwork in Arabic and dealing with an insane bureaucracy to get my bag back. Eventually I was given clearance to re-enter the arrivals baggage collection and customs area. As I passed through the metal detector to get in, a man was struggling with security as he forced his way through screaming. Backup rushed in and they began to beat the man to the ground. He was dressed in traditional robes screaming and crying as he laid on the ground with his hand to his head. This incident seemed to distract customer services as I asked how to get to the arrivals area.

In the arrivals area I got my bag back and, after customs searched it, they let me leave.

I was keen to leave Luxor with some photos that most tourists wouldn't get. The more adventurous I could be, the more unique the final gallery. The most adventurous I was feeling was to loiter outside a Mosque and wait for an Aman to invite me in. I knew even these guys weren't free from bent capitalism so I made sure I only had a few pounds in my pocket. Eventually an Aman invited me in, I made a small donation to the orphanage and then we made our way up the minaret. There I got some very interesting photos of Luxor.

When we got back down the steps of the minaret the Aman refused to open the door back into the Mosque. Suddenly, a man appeared behind me. The Aman demanded fifty Egyptian pounds for the tour. He hadn't ever told me that it would cost money. I knew they were going to do this so I just stood my ground and said that I didn't have that much money. They got aggressive but after the stressful day and stressful few weeks in the Middle East, I was up for a confrontation. They were being persistent. I said, here is five Egyptian pounds and forced my way past the Aman, throwing open the door. I marched through the Mosque and finally through the exit. I knew the situation would happen but I still felt upset at the end of it.

It's really hard to not have a shesha in the evening. Nothing relaxes you more and nothing makes you think harder and draw perspective about the world that surrounds you. The sheshas I had in Luxor were out of this world. They didn't taste very sweet but I felt stoned after a few puffs and I could hardly do ten or twelve puffs before calling the bill over. In Amman, they would blow through the bottom of the brown piece which holds the tobacco and to blow the smoke out before refreshing the coals. In Sharm El Sheikh, the flavour would disappear after the first replacement of coals and in Cairo, it seemed like the pipe would never stop smoking. In London you could probably expect to pay about 10 to 12 pounds for a pipe. I paid between 1 to 4 pounds per pipe and heard that in Alexandria, you can get them for 10 to 12p each.