Upper Egypt and trains...

I'm pushing through my midterms and slowly catching up on the sleep I lost last week. I'm delaying my Cairo discussion because I have oodles of exciting new pictures for you.

The trip to Luxor and Aswan was lovely overall. Luxor is essentially the tourist capital of Egypt, as it contains most of the best preserved monuments from the pharaonic period... all related to Thebes, which was Egypt's capital during the New Kingdom period. Aswan is located further south at the Nile's "first" cataract (the northernmost of the six, counterintuitively... love that Eurocentrism), where Nasser built the Aswan High Dam that created Lake Nasser, the largest man-made lake in the world. Aswan is also the site of Yebu/Elephantine, an old capital of Pharaonic Egypt and the city that essentially constituted Ancient Egypt's border with Nubia. Mmm, history.

Because we had a holiday on Thursday (and the weekend is Friday and Saturday), a couple of friends and I booked tickets for an overnight train on Wednesday. Ten hours and little sleep later, we arrived in Luxor, dumped our backpacks in a cheap hostel, and set off to explore the East Bank of the Nile. Knowing it would be extremely hot and crowded in the afternoon, we hit Karnak Temple early. It's the largest ancient religious site in the world, built beginning around 1900 BCE to honor Amun, the sun god and patron god of Thebes, and his wife and son. Ridiculously impressive.

We escaped mid-morning as the crowds starting pouring in from the tourist buses. After a walk through the Luxor Museum, we visited Luxor Temple, which sits just along the Corniche. Templicious. We were repeatedly hassled, however, by men who wanted to tell us about the temple and take pictures with us in exchange for tips. It's much more annoying than helpful. Additionally, we were once again swarmed by student groups, including one all-boys high school. As I was the only girl on this trip, this was a mildly terrifying few minutes for me. There must be about 18,000 pictures of me floating around Egypt's cell phone network because of the Egyptians we've met in Alexandria, Giza, and Luxor...

The next day we joined a tour organized by our hostel (these are always quite moderately priced for the convenience, so we often take advantage) and hit the West Bank. First came the Valley of the Kings, which contains the tombs of many of Egypt's most famous rulers, including Tutankhamun and the Rameseseseses. No pictures allowed inside, so the views here are above ground. Beautiful, vibrantly colored paintings stretch along the hallways and stairways that lead you down to the burial chambers. They've left some of the stone coffins inside. Very neat, very old.

Also, Queen Hatshepsut's Temple. She was the first female ruler (an amazing one) and had to invent stories to legitimize her authority... these are depicted on the walls of the temple. She did succeed in getting buried in the Valley of the Kings, however, and had a pretty sweet monument built.

On the way out, we visited the Valley of the Queens and stopped to see the Collossi of Memnon. It was about 100 degrees at this point, so we weren't dawdling. One of the highlights of the day was talking to a couple of university students from Tokyo who were on our tour. Their English was poor, so I translated our guide's explanations for them. They were thankful and very sweet, and I was happy for the chance to practice my Japanese. It's a little rusty, but still works.

I was glad to have seen all the amazing sights in Luxor, but I was equally pleased to leave. It was not exactly a relaxing place between the heat and hassling. Anyway, we took a short train ride south to Aswan (and met an incredible German lady traveling alone who I wouldn't mind becoming in a couple of decades...), found some dinner, and crashed for the night. The next morning we started with the Aswan High Dam. The Nile to the north, looking from the top of the dam:

We proceeded to the town of Shellal, where you can hop a motor boat to Philae Island. Philae Island is actually Agalika Island; the original Philae Island was drowned when the dams were built. Tour groups used to see Philae Temple (dedicated to Isis, the patron goddess of Aswan at its height) by boat, but they moved it to a higher island before the construction of the High Dam. It's unbelievably well-preserved, despite it being underwater for a few decades, and it's gorgeous sitting in the middle of the blue-green Nile.

We then made a quick stop at Aswan's eastern quarry, where the red granite used alllll over Egypt and the Middle East was collected. There's also a famous unfinished obelisk still attached to the rock in the quarry, because the workers discovered a fault that would have made it impossible to remove. So neat to see, though. Our last stop in Aswan was Elephantine Island, which is packed with some incredible mudbrick buildings and a progression of temples that were stacked on one another. Beautiful views of the cataract, too...

Aswan was beautiful and much cooler and more peaceful than Luxor. We would have loved to stick around another day or two or 365, but classes were calling, so we hopped a train that evening, ready for our 13 hour ride back to Cairo.

Now, on the way to Luxor, we had bought 1st class tickets on the non-sleeper train. On the route home, we decided to cut the cost significantly by taking 2nd class... but foreigners can't buy 2nd class tickets except ON the train. This works out just fine, generally, but the tickets you purchase on the train don't really have seats attached to them. We were aware of this beforehand, but we decided we wouldn't mind having to move around since it's nearly impossible to sleep on those trains anyway. Ohhhh, bad choice.

We shifted around 2nd class a couple of times as people with seated tickets got on the train, then migrated to 3rd class when 2nd filled up. We were soon displaced from 3rd class and wandered up to 1st class, searching desperately for empty seats. We found one seat in 1st class that the boys let me take, so I pretended to be asleep for about an hour in order to avoid the frequent ticket checks. Eventually I was discovered, however, and I went to find the boys where they had settled in a 3-foot corridor in the dining car. We sat/stood in that corridor with about 20 other passengers for the last 6 hours of the train ride, chatting with the nice Egyptian guys around us, studying for our exams the next day, and wishing we were anywhere else. It wasn't the best night, but it was definitely an experience. Next time, I think we'll pay for 1st class...

Midterms this week, but a great field trip this weekend. I'll update when there are exciting things to share!