Day 17: 01/09: Cairo Museum + Mohammad Ali Mosque + Khan El Khalili market

After an okay breakfast with pita and 'usal' (that was the only good thing), we checked out of the hotel - we absolutely hated this Tiba Pyramids hotel. Our friendly guide greeted us and was off to a drone about the day's schedule. We told him that we want really shop - so only the Egyptian museum and then shopping.
Our first stop was the museum. It has got a great collection from various pyramids and many other artifacts spanning many centuries - from 2500BC with old kingdom to 100BC Greco-Roman period. Our guide was very knowledgeable about Egyptology and Hieroglyphics and we asked him many questions and walked with him for almost 2 hours during which we saw many statues, sarcophagi, paintings and a room full of mummies. But the most prized possession of the museum would be King Tut's treasure - and boy it was magnificent. So much gold!
We saw the gold plated huge Russian-doll-style sarcophagi inside which was kept the real sarcophagus. Then his possessions like clothes, bed and chariots. And then inside a room they have kept his golden mummy weighing 110kg and his golden face weighing 18kgs of pure gold! Simply amazing.
Funnily enough, he was the least known Pharaoh who ruled barely a few years and died at a young age of 17. So his tomb and treasures were the smallest - and yet so much gold. We cant even imagine what must have been there in the bigger tombs which unfortunately have been robbed. Because of Tut's anonymity, his tomb was never found.

Feeling dazzled by all the ancient gold we saw, we left the museum and our guide convinced us a take a quick stop and the citadel and Mohammed Ali mosque. The mosque is very beautiful and our guide explained a few things about Islam religion in general. We came out around 3 pm (took longer than expected) and headed towards the famous Khan-El-Khalili market. Our friends had told us about an Indian restaurant in the market and Manasi had been longing for some familiar food for sometime. Fortunately, we found the restaurant Taj Sultan immediately and had a very good lunch there. The food was tasty, the ambiance good, but the service was very slow and we came out on the road at 5 PM, which left only 2 hours to do our shopping. We had waited the entire trip to shop at this market - what a pity :( .
We hurriedly went on a bargaining frenzy. We had gotten a little better at this thanks to a little coaching by Tushar, who met us in Luxor. We bought papyrus paintings, t-shirts and a hookah! That's it, time ran out and our driver was waiting to take us to the airport. We felt really sad that we could not have a "shop till you drop" experience here and reluctantly went to the airport.
By now, airport is a familiar territory. We took all the connecting flights: first to Beirut (were really jet lagged at 3 AM), then to Frankfurt and then to SFO. The landing was great and immigration was easiest ever. To our pleasant surprise, all the bags came just fine. Cleared customs and Yogesh came to pick us up and drove us home!
A perfect end to a very adventurous and exciting journey. Didn't know we would have a tough time easing back into our work schedules. :)

Day 16: 01/08: Cairo Darshan

After the overnight journey from Luxor, the train gently landed at the Giza station. Our FirstClass sleeper compartment wasnt too bad and we got a small breakfast as well. Immediately upon coming out onto the platform, our local representative Mahmoud picked us up and we were greeted by our guide Mustafa. We had a very jam-packed plan for the day and started off towards Memphis.

He kept droning incessantly much to Manasi's displeasure. When we reached Memphis, we were surprised to see only a small park with a few monuments on display - thats it! Coming from magnificent temples in Luxor, this was mundane. But we saw the phoenix of Memphis and a huge statue (broken) of Ramases II. We moved on quickly towards Sakkara. On the way, we stopped at a govt authorized shop making a Cartouche. We bought silver cartouches for ourselves and also watched the process by which they made them. It was a shade expensive, but a very good and unique buy!
Heading on to Sakkara, where we saw the world's first pyramid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saqqara) built by the famous architect ImHotep for his King Djoser.

Before Djoser, kings' tombs were just under a square shaped box structure. But since Djoser wanted something fancier, ImHotep just arranged the boxes on top of each other to give the world the first pyramid (ca 2600 BC). In front of the pyramid, there is open ground fortified by walls. The original walls are still standing! Our guide told us that the king used to battle an Ox in front of everybody on the open ground every 30 years to renew his credentials to rule another 30 years. Funnily, it didn't matter if the King lost - he would still rule, except that they would make a statue of the king and bury it at the south corner of the ground, while the pyramid would stand at the north side. Just before visiting this pyramid, we briefly went to the new Imhotep museum where we saw the statue of a reading scribe (Ptah-Shepses) and a very old and well preserved mummy of one of the kings of earlier dynasty.

After the stepped pyramid, we visited the nearby pyramid of Teti and here Rohit went inside. It was fairly steep down with a lot of paintings of the king giving various offerings to various gods (a very common theme) and at the end of the tunnel was a sarcophagus. Near the pyramid was a tomb of a nobelman Ka'gmni that had amazing carvings on the walls depicting the day-to-day life then. It was very interesting to see the fishing, farming etc.

After Sakkara, we started towards the main destination for today - the Giza pyramids. On the way, we stopped for a quick bite at Felfela - an Egyptian fast food chain (like Joshi vadewale). Felafel was extremely cheap (only 1 Egyptian pound = 20 cents), but we could tasted that the oil was bad :( Our momentary disappointment vanished when we saw the spectacle of the great pyramid. It is HUGE made of HUGE rocks... it rocks :) . We took a few Patel shots quickly and also climbed up a bit to go towards its entrance. We did not go in since there was a special ticket for that and most of the things which were in there are either stolen or in the Egyptian museum. We came down and our guide told us that people routinely used to climb the pyramid with a particular man who climbed it multiple times a day in only about 10 mins! When that man died (of natural causes) and there were a few fatalities, they banned climbing the pyramid.

We walked to our car and drove around the 3 big pyramids:

The Great Pyramid of Khufu - the first and the tallest, with biggest stones

The Pyramid of Khefre - the second and a little shorter than Khufu's (out of respect for his father Khufu) but very well finished

The Pyramid of Menkaure - the third and the smallest (out of respect for this father and grandfather).
Behind the Great Pyramid, there are in-turn 3 small satellite pyramids for Khufu's wives and mother.

We went at a nearby vantage point and shot a picture with all 3 pyramids in the background . It was very hazy and the visibility is not that great. But you get the idea :) . From there, we came by car to the

Tired of the overnight journey and the long exciting day, we went to the great Sphinx (with Lion's body signifying strength and man's head signifying wisdom) guarding all the pyramids. It is magnificent piece of work and pretty amazing that it is still standing. An earthquake around 27BC damaged some overhanging parts on the face, but otherwise its so well-preserved and timeless! Khefre built it and hence the sphinx has his face. We took some funny pictures, observed it in awe and started back to our hotel which was thankfully nearby for a brief rest. We were tired.

After 2 hrs of rest (in which we watched a bit of "Dillagi" playing of local channel), at 6:30 PM we went back again to a nice gallery facing the pyramids and the sphinx for the Sound and Light show. The show was great and to see the pyramids lit up with powerful lights and lasers was out of the world - they have been standing there for 5000 years! The oldest man-made gigantic structures which have weathered multiple earthquakes, floods and extreme temperatures. It indeed gets very cold in the evening in Cairo and good thing we had carried thick jackets. After enjoying the show (amidst loud prayers from the minarets), we grabbed a pizza at a nearby Pizza-Hut and went to the hotel. Slept on a bed after 2 days.

Day 15: 01/07: Tour De Luxor

Memnon statues, Alabaster factory, Valley of Kings, Hatshepsut's temple, Karnak and Luxor temples:

I know ... it was a jam-packed day! Also the day when we checked out of the cruise and met with Amal (guild in Luxor) with a driver and a van. Xferred the luggage into it and started a busy day.

Visiting Memnons: Their story here.

Alabaster: commonly found stone in the local quarry + at Aswan. This is the main stone used inside the tombs of kings/queens to build statues as well as their sarcophagi. Extremely light material yet very sturdy. The factory we visited also had artists working with basalt.

Valley of Kings/Queens(also children)/Nobles/Workers: If you are wondering what they stand for... they are the (not so) secret spots to find tombs of Egyptian pharaohs and their families. Nobles would be famous Egyptian scripts and other artists; while workers mostly consisted of people working inside the royal tombs among others.

We visited 3 tombs: those belonging to Ramases I, III, IX. Saw the tomb of King Tut from outside (it was under restoration).

Amal explained very interesting story behind each of these tombs: The pharaohs/queens, right after coronation ceremony had to have an idea of where to build their tomb. They would order hundreds of workers at a time after choosing a secret place (inside the valley of kings). The workers would be slotted (each group with their own task), some wall-painters, some architects of the tomb itself to decide interior, some actually building the sarcophagus, etc etc. The depth (underground) of the tomb would be proportional to # years the king ruled Egypt. King Tut (distinctly famous for his wealth found intact inside his tomb) died very young (age 17) and ruled Egypt only for 7 years. So his tomb was one of the shortest ones. Sadly this theory behind the depth was unknown to the robbers and thieves during that time who turned a blind eye to King's tomb and so all the gold remained intact unlike rest of the tombs.

The paintings inside the tomb were not very different from what we saw inside various temples except lots of them showing: boat of life, Anubis(god of mummification), starry ceiling and Nut(goddess of night/day), carefully crafted designs/pathways towards the holy sarcophagus.

Right after this visit, we went to see Queen Hatshepsut's temple; one of its kind! Simply gorgeous! This is located right behind the mountain of valley of kings. Most interesting fact: This is a queen(ruled for 20 years) who called herself a pharaoh and was very brave and powerful too. Queen's sarcophagus was found inside the temple but not her mummy... archaeologists found out a secret underground passage connecting her temple to the valley of kings where the queen's mummy was found next to mummies of other pharaohs! Hats off to her!

Later in the day we arrived at Karnak temples: collection of 16 temples built over a period of 400 years of history, first dedication starting with God Amon Ra (Sun god). Most noteworthy monuments include: statues of Ramases II, Hypostyle Hall (134 columns:simply unique and awesome), 2 of the remaining 5 obelisks (in Egypt), The statue of scarab, the cachette where 23 mummies were found by archaeologists.

Luxor temple: Located very close to the Karnak temples this temple is famous for its sitting colossus of Ramases II, multiple columns all made with single piece of granite imported from quarries in Aswan, an obelisk and near the holy of the holiest wall paintings full of Alexander the great shown as a Egyptian pharaoh (offering goodies to different gods). There are 2 beautiful marble statues of King Tut and his wife Ankh. Today was truly memorable ... So much history and such a clairvoyance of the old Egyptian Pharaohs and their Queens... we were totally impressed!

We had a day-use hotel room close to the railway station ..which was very helpful to relax after a long day! We were booked in a first class cabin in an overnight train to Cairo tonight. The journey was good.

Day 14: 01/06: Edfu temple, Luxor

We did not have much on agenda today luckily :) We now started getting home-sick(wanted to go back soon)....

Early in the morning, the cruise docked at Edfu port and sitting in a horse-carriage we reached the temple of Edfu. The carriage man proudly displayed a picture of Amitabh Bacchan ... quite a funny coincidence!

Temple of Edfu is dedicated to Horus, the Phoenix God. The most interesting thing about this temple is the vivid depiction of story showing battle between God Horus and God Seth (his uncle).

Apparently Isis (mother of Horus) told him about how his father (Osiris) died and how Seth was responsible for it; Horus promised her to take the revenge by killing Seth.

The paintings on both sides of tall walls in a narrow path surrounding the main temple are simply mind blowing .. the kind of details carved through them, Seth taking shape of a hippopotamus/snake while Horus in a boat with his army men bent upon to kill this poisonous water snake/hippopotamus ....

Inside the temple, the main story depicted is between Horus and his wife Hathor showing lots of men carrying both of their 'boats of life'. Ancient Egyptians had a strong faith that in your after life, one has to travel in his/her boat of next life and have to defeat all the hurdles (in the form of slaves and poisonous snakes that would come to attack you during your journey) before one can get 'nirvana'!

There is a model (copy, not sure if the original boat model is at British museum), of such a boat believed to be boat for both Horus/Hathor(after they got married) kept in the holy of the holiest (the innermost part of the temple).

We got back to the boat by 10 am and right after started the journey towards Luxor (our final destination). At the same time, came to know that our guide Mr. Nassr had a family emergency and we were going to be greeted by yet another guide when we reach Luxor.
There was still sunlight (5 pm) when we reached Luxor harbor. We had met another couple Tushar and Bijal on the boat and all of us decided to go to the local 'Sukh' market in Luxor. Common (public) taxi was cheap (1 egyptian pound per person) each way and we enjoyed the short ride. Later realized that Mr. Tushar was the best haggler ever ... with his smooth and sweet talking he made the shopkeeper sell me a a beautiful Egyptian (Nubian) scarf for 20 pounds (originally rated at 58 pounds) :) I was extremely impressed! Hail Tushar! They were such a nice couple ... we got along just fine ... enjoyed a nice movenpick ice cream and got back the cruise after 2 hours.
Got ready relatively quickly to go for 'Karnak Sound and Light show'. Amazing! Totally recommended.

Day 13: 01/05: Abu Simbel, Set sail, Kom-Ombo.

Quite an experience to get up at 2:30, carry breakfast from cruiseship and out to a checkpoint at 3 am and finally out of Aswan towards Abu Simbel (along with fleet of tourist vehicles + military convoys)! Reached the temples around 7:30 am.
Brief story behind Abu Simbel Temples:
Both temples at this place were built by the great King Ramases II; one for himself and one for his most beautiful wife NeferTari (Nefer means beauty). He had > 50 wives and > 200 kids; but she was indeed special and most dear to his heart. The bigger of the 2 temples is dedicated to the king himself. One interesting thing I commonly observed was that all the Egyptian kings liked to please various Gods and Goddesses by offering them lots of stuff ranging from food/clothes/incense/wine and other drinks etc. all in all to get their blessings. They almost always got blessings from both good(kind) gods(like Osiris/Horus) and evil gods (like Seth) to make sure everyone was pleased with them.
Ramases II was a big narcissist too and had most of the statues self-dedicated. Sometimes posing similar to God Osiris or sometimes acting as one of the Gods himself!

The smaller temple is supposed to be built for Nefertari; but 4/6 statues at its facade belong to Ramases II and only 2 for Nefertari. Inside the temple lots of them featuring her in the form of goddess Hathor(like a cow with horns and sun disk in the middle). Also shown are paintings and carvings of the queen seeking blessings of gods and goddesses inside the temple.
For more details see this wiki.
We zoomed back to the cruise ship (only briefly waiting at a Egyptian cotton store 'Kardish' for some souvenirs) by 1 pm. The ship set sail by 2 pm finally. Met with a couple from Mauritius and one from Germany who shared the table inside restaurant with us. Post lunch enjoyed the sun deck of the cruise, followed by tea+cake around tea time and got ready for the next half of adventure for today: Temples of Kom-Ombo.

Brief story behind Kom Ombo Temples:
Kom Ombo (the hill of gold) is famous for 2 temples (One for Horus, Phoenix god) and one for Sobek(crocodile god). In the past gold was found/mined in Aswan, which came floating via Nile to Kom Ombo and was later used to export via Mediterranean sea to the Red sea and countries beyond. Hence the name. These temples were built by both Greeks (inside construction), and Romans (outside construction). Among the most noteworthy paintings we saw:

• The very first (and the only one evidence of a) calendar and counting system (we are talking of 1200 BC here): It also comprised of 360 days in total to work + 5 holy days (each one for 1 god/goddess including Osiris, Isis, Seth, Neftis, Horus).
• A dedication by roman king Trajan to the famous architect IMHotep (who built the very first 'step' pyramid at Sakkara): This displays various surgical instruments including those for birthing chairs, enema, scalpel, knives etc
• A secret passage for the high priest to go in/out of the temples. The priest used to sit (see the picture) in an enclosed room (where no one but the high priest was allowed access) and make noises (to make common people believe that the 2 gods Horus and Sobek are talking angrily and people would bring in more offerings to appease the gods (ultimately the high priest)). How intelligent!
• Cleopatra XII's bath house
• A 'Key of life' shaped Nilometer
• King Ptolemy and his offerings to both gods and their blessings to the king.

Day 12: 01/04: Philae Temple and High Dam

Cairo to Aswan domestic flight was only for 1.5 hours or so. As soon as we arrived at the airport, our local guide(who we later thought was a taxi provider) Mr. Hamada met with us and assisted us on a drive from airport to our cruise-ship. The cruise ship was not very big at all. It could accommodate a maximum of 200 guests + a few more crew members. No point comparing this to luxury cruises in Hawaii/Florida etc.
We were pleasantly surprised though to see a relatively large sized room/bath. We quickly finished our lunch inside a restaurant in the cruise (there was only 1) and met with Mr. Nassr who was going to travel with us on this 3 night Nile cruise and be our local guide in Egypt. On second thoughts, he was quite nosy and over-friendly. I did not like him that much.
Post lunch our agenda was to go to High Dam and visit Temple of Philae.
High Dam was built under direction of Mr. Nassr(one of the former presidents of Egypt) in 1960. British (when they ruled Egypt) had also built a dam in 1902 (old dam); but high dam is indeed build very ingeniously. On one side it has now created Lake Nassr (feels as big as sea). Nile has sooo much water!

Apparently Egypt was still a poor country back in 1960 and when Mr. Nassr asked UN and others for loan to build this dam, they denied suspecting Egypt's ability to pay back the money. So Mr. Nassr came up with a brilliant idea to charge all the cargo/ships using Suez canal a cut (to Egyptian government). This turned out to be quite profitable in the long run and using this money they built high dam.
After this visit, went to see Temple of Philae (using a small boat ride). This temple was transferred over from Philae Island to Algelica Island when high dam got built and the original temple risked getting submerged in Lake Nassr.

Story behind Philae Temple (briefly):
Temple is dedicated to goddess Isis (goddess of love, compassion), wife of God Osiris(god of death). It is from Egyptian mythology that she was his favorite wife. Much after his death, during 'New Kingdom' era, the Greeks (who were then ruling Egypt) found his penis in Philae and built this temple. Egypt's history is divided into Old Kingdom (3000 BC, when pyramids and sphinx were built), Middle Kingdom (not much construction happened), New Kingdom(all the temples got built by multiple pharaohs and queens). Philae temple has beautiful paintings of Osiris, Isis and their son Horus (Phoenix God) and lots of other depictions of the love/hate relationships between Osiris/Isis and Osiris/Seth (2 brothers).
We got back to our cruise-ship by 6 pm, went out to walk through a local market (quite entertaining to see lots of mildly aggressive shopkeepers), had an early dinner and rolled into the bed early. Sadly there was some stupid dance program in the bar (right on top of our room) and was too loud and disturbing. After several complains also things did not improve a whole lot. We wanted to sleep as early as we could since tomorrow we were going off to Abu Simbel (starting 3 am from the cruise ship).

Day 11: 01/03: Jaffa + Israel -> Cairo

Nothing concrete on our agenda today .. so decided to work out in the morning. Enjoyed some very innovative exercise equipment at the beach and later walked for over 1.5 hours. As part of our daily ritual enjoyed full breakfast and checked out late around 11 am. Stored our bags in the luggage room for time being.
The day was warm yet lots of cool breeze, so both of us decided to walk towards Jaffa city. The beach was so clean and pristine .. reminded me of Ft. Lauderdale beach, Florida (where we spent the time during Thanksgiving 09). I loved our walk and was extremely happy with Tel Aviv ... We reached Jaffa in an hour. Jaffa was also conquered by Romans; but much before them around 1200 BC Egyptians came in here too. There is not much to see in Jaffa except for the hanging orange tree, the gardnens, wishing bridge and the old flea market. On our way back we decided to go to Allenby Street for lunch followed by more walking and coffee before reaching back to our hotel at 5:30 pm. We had walked > 8 KMs today and our legs got the cramps. Sosh Eie came in on time and we reached Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv close to 4 hours ahead of our international flight to Cairo.

Lots of people back in the US had scared us about long waiting in the security at the airport. But we found out that it was rather painless. In fact the baggage screening officer saw us and asked us if we liked Bollywood. He was a big fan and got a DVD out of his pants' pockets featuring 2 Hindi movies. Hail Bollywood!

Arrived at Cairo International Airport quite late (11 pm) .. it was bit chaotic and completely undisciplined. Met with our local guide Mehmood and we together drove to our hotel Tiba Pyramids, Giza (the worst hotel in the whole trip). We are staying here for 1 night and later keep extra bags in the luggage room. From tomorrow, 3 night cruise on Nile and we return back to this hotel to spend 1 more night before ending our trip. Tomorrow flying early to Aswan. Its 2 am almost and we better sleep.