A trip to Upper Egypt- Luxor and Aswan

Last week was El-Eid al-Kabeer, the big holiday- Eid al-Adha. Since all of Egypt was pretty much on vacation, Flagship decided to take us on a special trip down south to Luxor and Aswan.

Factoid: the south of Egypt is called Upper Egypt (much to the confusion of us westerners) because the Nile flows from south to north. Upper Egypt was the religious and spiritual center of Ancient Egypt and most of the temples and monuments are located in this part of the country, and it is therefore an ideal tourist attraction for most visitors

So we packed our bags and after 12 hours on a freezing cold air conditioned train, we made it to Luxor!

Luxor:
Day 1:
First stop- Karnak Temple. Karnak was built over 1300 hundred years and about 70 or 80 kings contributed to its building. According to my Rough Guide, it can hold about 10-12 cathedrals and is just enormous and awesome.

 

 Roommate picture! (Plus our honorary roomy, Katelyn)

Luxor Temple: Ramses II built this temple supposedly to a god, but if you ask me, he was just way into himself and built it so that people could worship him. There are enormous statues of him everywhere! (we get it, guy, you conquered lots of territory). But it was also huge and awesome and we loved wandering around and refreshing our knowledge about Isis and Amun and Osiris and all of the other gods and their mythologies.(another factoid- Naomi Campbell plans on having her wedding here).

Then we all passed out in our hotels. We awoke in the night to do a little real Egypt exploration and we found the sha3bi market, made some friends, sat in an ahwa and chatted with the people who actually live here, trying to get a sense of what most of the residents of Luxor do, the major problems they face, and of course, reveling in their gracious hospitality.

Day 2:
Valley of the kings. My fav. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take any pictures, but take my word for it. It was awesome. The group visited 3 tombs- Thutmas III, Ramses IX, and Ramses IV. We explored their burial chambers, tried our best to read the hieroglyphics and figure out the stories (who are these monkeys! and what do the crocodiles do! and why are there so many stars on the ceiling!) And then, a group of us paid a little extra and got to visit King Tut's tomb. It was the only tomb in the Valley of the Kings that was found completely in tact and his mummy was still there! So we paid our respects to one of the youngest kings of Egypt.

Hatchepsut's Temple: Hatchepsut, the first queen of Egypt, had a lover. And he decided to build her a temple for her to be buried in. But she was like, "forget it, guy, I'm a king! I wear a kingly beard like all the rest of them! I'm getting buried in the Valley of the Kings, yo!" So she left this not-so-wimpy and not-so-small and no-so-ugly temple to be buried with the rest of the kings of Egypt. Way to go, Hatchepsut- sticking it to the man thousands of years ago!






Collosi of Memnon: 2 giant statues (literally that's all I know)



Then after a bit of rest, those friends that we made the night before invited us to their cousin's wedding. We learned that a wedding in Upper Egypt takes place over three days (we arrived for day 1). The first day is a celebration in the street with the men of the community. The bride and groom watch from their balconies as the community gives them gifts and sings and dances, most of the time, all night. The next day, the women have a henna party while the men drive around the city announcing the wedding all over town. The 3rd day is the actually wedding, when the bride goes down into the street in her white dress and the couple is considered man and wife. Our group, getting a little agitated at the tourist game, was thrilled to be able to see a piece of real Luxor. So we were led out of the touristy area and down an alley. As we turn in, we see the entire street decorated with lights, chairs filled with the men in the neighborhood, children wandering around, and a band set up at the front. After seating us and serving us tea and shisha, we got to watch the band greet every guest of the wedding (including a special shout out to the Americans present). We watched the dancing, the singing and just tried to take in everything around us. But us American women quickly noticed that there really weren't any Egyptian women seated at the wedding. It was really all men. Although we are fairly used to this (men usually gather in public while women gather privately inside their own homes), and we are used to being somewhat culturally inappropriate by glimpsing a bit of a man's world in Egypt- sitting in ahwa's, smoking shisha- activities women rarely take part in, we all felt a desperate need to get to know more women. Fortunately for us, as we looked up and glanced the balconies around us, we found the women. They motioned to us, "come upstairs!" and we obeyed. What ensued is difficult to describe. For the next several hours we jumped from apartment to apartment, meeting the women in the community, chatting with them, dancing, smoking shisha, drinking tea, greeting the bride, playing with children. It was the first time that we felt we got to really get to know the women and felt like we were culturally in the right place. As always, their graciousness was astounding. After a minute of chatting, we are best friends. We hug, we kiss, we dance, we act as if we've been friends for decades and as if this encounter is nothing unusual. They are touched by our Arabic skills, by our eagerness to learn about them and learn about their lives and their culture. And we are equally moved by their hospitality and their openness.

I will share a bit of what I wrote in my journal the following morning, just to give you a sense of my sensory over-load and feelings:


All of our senses are stimulated at once- you have the ear droning music that makes you deaf- the guy's voice, the tablas, the horns, the speakers. Then you have the flashing lights, colors and colors of lights and you have the people to stare at who are staring back- the men on the stage, the kids dancing, the galabiya men, the western men, the women on the balconies, the women in black smoking down below, the decorations of the buildings- the blood hand-prints from the eid, the graffiti, the pictures, the windows, the balconies, the campaign posters. And then the smell, the smell of the reef, the garbage, the manure, the animals, the people, the puffs of shisha smoke, the cigarettes, the hashish, the tea. so many senses get overloaded. and then the language, you try and hear what they are saying, how they are saying it, what they mean by it, how its different than what they say up north, what you should say, how you should respond, what facial expression do you use, what hand gestures. what questions can you ask, how should you answer their questions. so many things go into the experience. and then there's the experience itself. the women motioning to you, looking around their house as you go up the stairs, the greeting, the kissing, the juice, the tea, the tying the scarf around you and telling you to dance, the trying to move, the embarrassment when you really just can't belly dance like they can, the shock when they bump chests with you, take your hand, hug and kiss you, kiss you on the mouth. the shock when women are smoking, breast feeding in front of you, insisting that you drink more, sleep over, come again, take my phone number, have my phone number, whats your phone number, play with my baby, talk to me about your world, listen to me about mine. don't laugh at our modest kitchens. we know your life is better in america. know that this tea i'm giving you isn't cheap for me. we are ordinary people, but this is our life and we are happy. and we say, no, please, ma'am, thank you for sharing this with us. we want to know you. this is why we came- to get to know you, to get to know the real people of egypt. and sometimes they don't understand. and sometimes we don't understand. but then we hug, and kiss, and look each other in the eye and thank each other from the bottom of our hearts and recognize how amazing it is that we can come from so far apart and sit here together.

So that was the wedding.

Day 3:
A free morning for Alberto and I to explore the museums. First stop- Mummification Museum. Ancient Egyptians- thank you. It is so so so cool that I got to see a mummified crocodile, monkey, cat, ram, ibex, and person! It is so cool that the tools that you used were so teeny teeny tiny! Really? You used tweezers to pull out entrails? Teeny tiny little tweezers that I use to pluck my eyebrows!? And a teeny miniature little blade to pull out kidneys and livers? Ancients- hats off to you. Your brilliance astounds me.
Next- Luxor museum. More statues and pictures and bows and arrows and learning about my favorite ancients.

Then, we boarded the bus and headed to Aswan.

We spent the night in the giant tourist market buying Christmas presents and cool tapestries that we hope to hang up when we move out of our parents homes and get our own apartments!

Day 4:
The High Dam: In the 1970s, the Egyptian government decided to build a dam in the south of Egypt and make one of the world's largest man-made lakes- Lake Nassar. The dam, though it has helped Egypt develop in so many ways- bringing electricity and agriculture all over the country, it also has its downsides. For instance, the dam building displaced around 50,000 Nubians as their homes got flooded with Nile water. In addition to Nubian displacement, the dam flooded several thousand Ancient Egyptian temples and monuments- the most famous of which are the Philae Temple and Abu Simbal. But, with the help of an enormous project funded by UNESCO, most of the remains were preserved and moved, stone by stone, to higher ground and didn't suffer tremendous water damage. So most of the remains that we saw were not in their original locations.


Philae Temple: A temple built for the goddess Isis. This temple also was the only Pagan temple left open after the Christians came and conquered Egypt, but it was eventually changed into a Church.
Generally- awesome.

Unfinished Obelisk: Exactly what it sounds like. For 4 years, these builders toiled to build the world's largest obelisk, but unfortunately, a blemish in the stone at the top spoiled their plans.

Botanical Gardens: Beautiful!!! And great views of my next big purchase- a falluca.

Day 5:
While most of the group went to a Nubian village, Alberto, Katelyn, Fatima, and I were going to try and go to Abu Simbal, but the plan didn't work out, so we decided to hit the Nubian museum- learning about Nubian history from prehistoric times until the present. Then, we rode on a falluca. A falluca is basically a sailboat, but really, there is nothing like riding on the Nile with the wind in your face and not a care in the world.

But after our joy ride,  it was time to get back on the freezing cold train and ride 17 hours back to Alex- back to homework, back to cheap food, and back to real life.