Tombraiders: Luxor, Part Two

With our options exhausted at the train station, Mike and I joined the rest of the group and headed for the hotel. We walked along wide dirt streets without sidewalks. Shops, restaurants, and vendor stalls lined the sides. The streets were much less crowded than in Cairo, but far more chaotic. When I first arrived in Egypt, I was overwhelmed by the rush of cars clogging Cairo's roadways and the lack of traffic control. But the sheer amount of traffic tends to limit the speed at which vehicles travel, and the flow is fairly predictable. It's also helpful that virtually all streets in Cairo are one-way. This was not the case in Luxor, where there seemed to be no method to the madness whatsoever. Vehicles of all shapes and sizes careened haphazardly in and out of our path on the bumpy, unpaved roads. The motorcycles were the worst, driving in both directions on both sides of the street and zooming unsettlingly close to pedestrians.

We eventually caught sight of our hotel, the Nubian Oasis. The place was packed, as several groups of AUC students were visiting Luxor this weekend, and the this hotel was the residence of choice. Unlike the rest of our group, Mike and I didn't have reservations. All the hustle and bustle made me worried about getting a room, but we were quickly shown to a nice, air conditioned place on the third floor. Everyone settled in, and we headed out for a nice dinner.

Mike and I got back to the hotel around 11:00 and were informed that we had to move. More people with reservations had shown up and they needed our room. Ok… so what now? Foreseeing the possibility that the hotel could be booked when we arrived, we had a backup plan: the Bob Marley Hostel. As enticing as this sounds, it was pretty late in the evening and we weren’t exactly sure where the hostel was. I was tired and not keen on going to look for it. The hotel owner felt bad for us and offered to let us sleep on the roof for the night. For free. Score.

Now when I say we slept on a roof, the wrong image probably jumps to mind. The roof of the Nubian Oasis is furnished with benches, tables, chairs, and a TV, and many guests spend their evenings socializing up there. Most of the rooftop is sheltered by a latticework overhang, and a large area covered in blankets provides an adequate (although quite public) place to sleep. There’s even a comfortable hammock that I napped in a couple of times during the day.

The next morning, we got up and started touring the sites. Tim and Ariel, who’d arrived a day early, had a bus lined up to take us around for the day. Our first stop was the Valley of the Kings, home to the tombs of many ancient Egyptian pharaohs and one of the most famous landmarks in Egypt. I don’t have a lot to say about it. The place was positively packed with tourists, and we were herded through the tombs we visited. Some people were upset by this, but it didn't bother me too much. The truth is, I’m shallow and uncultured and all I saw was a bunch of old paint and carvings on a wall in some dank caves. I have no knowledge of the symbolism involved, nor have I studied pharaonic history. The thing that struck me as most interesting was the fact that the ceiling of every tomb was painted with identical white five-pointed stars. It surprised me to see this motif so well preserved over the course of centuries. And I felt sorry for whoever got stuck with the job of painting them all.

As unimpressed as I was with its contents, I thought the valley itself was pretty sweet. The area surrounding the tombs was comprised of sandy mountains, and our rugged band hiked over them in order to reach our next destination, which was some other temple thing that may or may not have had a name. As I scrambled up the dusty mountainside along with my companions, I made occasional forays off the path to explore what looked like promising alternate routes. Upon returning from one of these deviations, I rounded a corner to find myself with a full view of Andy urinating on the mountain fifteen yards in front of me. Awesome. Not realizing I had wandered off on my own, he had waited until everyone else had passed before going about his business. He didn’t notice me, so I passed without comment and waited until later to broach the topic. A true stoic, his only comment was, “You haven’t really been somewhere until you’ve peed on it.”

When we reached the mountain’s crest, we were accosted by a thirty-something year old Egyptian man who looked happy to see us. I can’t blame him. As far as I can tell, his job was to sit on top of the mountain all day long and point out the path down to the other side. The guy followed us around for a while and kept offering to take group pictures (in exchange for money, of course). He was also talking to Camille a lot, paying her the awkward, heavy-handed compliments to which Western women who visit Egypt are constantly subjected in markets and on the streets. After spending much of the train ride to Luxor getting to know Camille, I felt somewhat protective. I approached the pair of them from behind and squeezed between them at an opportune moment, then asked Camille some inane question that lent itself to a longwinded response. Her escort was not particularly pleased. He said something to me about how I should go ahead with the rest of the group. I pretended not to understand what he wanted. He grumbled a bit and fell back for the moment. He later apparently offered her something like ten million camels and fifty donkeys for her hand in marriage. Impressive. He must have been either very lonely or very into Camille, because that’s the best offer I’ve seen so far. Most fall into the one hundred-to-two million camel range, with no donkeys included. The only thing that really compares is the time in a Cairo market when I heard a vendor told my friend Jessi, “I kill my wife for you.”

View from the mountain overlooking Luxor. The transition between desert and cultivated land was surprisingly stark.

We finally made it to the other side of the mountain, took some pictures from afar of the temple thing, and boarded our bus again. It took us to the nearby Valley of the Queens, which kind of sucked. It was a lot like the Valley of the Kings, but smaller and less exciting. The coolest part was a preserved skeleton of a queen’s miscarried baby, which was on display in one of the tombs. A shadowy thing lying next to it under the glass looked like an umbilical cord, but further inspection unmasked it as a rubber hose.

When we got back to the hotel in the mid-afternoon, Mike and I were informed that we now had a room. We were in a triple on the first floor with a guy named Phil who also goes to AUC, but wasn’t part of our group. The quality of our lodgings had decreased noticeably when compared to the third floor room. We no longer had air conditioning, although there was a ceiling fan. The bathroom sink was clogged. Our room had no doorknob. But it was a place to sleep and keep our stuff, and I was happy to take what I could get after the night on the roof. Everyone was hot, hungry, and tired, so we ate a relaxed lunch and then slept until evening. Before I dozed off, I walked around outside for a bit and stumbled across a small herd of goats foraging for edible material around a dumpster. I couldn't decide what was more strange: the sight of goats munching trash on a public street in the middle of a city, or the fact that this scene had seemed completely natural to me until I stopped and thought about it for a few minutes.

We enjoyed a pleasant dinner that evening, and then whiled away the night on the roof talking and playing card games. I went to bed fairly early since we had big plans for the next day. I'm glad I got the rest, because Saturday was a real workout.