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.

Day 10: 01/02: Massada + Dead Sea

Our tour bus picked up a few passengers from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and then straight onto highway 1 towards Massada. Passed the fork for Allenby Bridge (border crossing between Israel and Jordan which we had used just a few days back), and went past Qumran to reach Massada. The topography, the plants (mostly palms) which can thrive in the desert + the green house vegetables that the Israel government is trying to grow (as a surplus to help with winter times in the inland when not much can grow).... the colors looked very much similar to the landscape of Zion National Park, Utah.
The famous fort of Massada, 400 mtrs higher than the dead sea level (so pretty much at the sea level) was built by King Herod. King Herod was very brave yet brutal and shrewd. He wanted to make sure that he was making the roman king (Caesar) happy and yet build him some refuge in difficult times.
Originally the fort was built as a winter home for the king and his friends and had 3 step like structure. Saw multiple artifacts including water ducts and cisterns, roman baths, main square, columbarium(where the doves roosted and were later cooked as main source of meat by the king), the roooms where the dead sea scrolls were found. The scrolls were written in Hebrew which tells us how the language has no barriers of the rulers and how it survived for > 2000 years. The famous tale of mass suicide by the original inhabitants before becoming slaves of Roman empire was quite impressive! We still had the glorious memories of Massada when we arrived at Qumran and stopped over for lunch.
Post lunch we arrived at Kaalia beach to enjoy the dead sea, 470 meters below the sea level (the lowest point on the Earth). Jordan river feeds in water and nothing goes out of the dead sea. The waters are enriched with minerals and salts and are supposed to have medicinal values. It was so hard to believe at first, but indeed you float in the water ... nothing can ever sink in there and nothing can survive. The sea bed is full of sticky mud ... we played in the water + mud for about 2 hours and then it was time to go back to Tel Aviv. One more night to go home and retire early. Tomorrow we leave Israel.

Day 9: 01/01: Visit to Yad Vashem and back to Tel Aviv

Happy New Year! We decided to not continue our stay in Jerusalem and go back to Tel Aviv right after trip to Yad Vashem (on our own). We had fallen in love with the beach and the Hotel Metropolitan, Tel Aviv and in comparison Park Hotel was completely lackluster.

We decided to use local transportation (buses) to get to Yad Vashem (in 12 NIS vs 30 NIS with taxi) for both of us. Reached Yad Vashem, the holocaust museum around 9:30 am.
Yad Vashem memorial is very beautifully constructed and has a wealth of information during Nazi Regimen and how brutal Germans were towards Jews during the World War II. We highly recommend for you to visit it. The entrance is free. There is an underground museum hosting hundreds of information boards, visuals, interviews with the victims, Hitler and his Nazi empire. Some of the exhibits were so vivid that Manasi felt sick in her stomach. There are models of concentration camps and how Jews were mass murdered by fervent Germans ..It is maddening and you stay in awe and wonder how can someone be so heartless and merciless ... We felt very fortunate having come here in person and doing the tour of the museum on foot. The Hall of Names is also not to be missed.

After spending around 3 hours at the museum we took a bus back (Bus # 27) (12 NIS together) and re-used it within 1.5 hours to go from hotel to central bus station. We then took a inter-city bus and reached Tel Aviv, Hotel Metropolitan around 3 pm.

Extremely satisfied with a sense of achievement to have come on our own using public transport all the way .. we were feeling ecstatic! Ate lots of falafel + shawarma at a local joint off Allenby Street (spent a whole 60 NIS) and then decided to walk through local market to enjoy some Shabbath bread (sweet Jewish bread baked on every Friday before the holy Friday begins).

Bought some fresh fruits and later walked on the beach for an hour to retire early (8 pm) that night.

Day 8: 12/31: Jerusalem (old city) + Bethlehem

Our bus picked up few people from Tel Aviv (including us) + few from Jerusalem city and the tour started around 10 am. We checked out of our Hotel Metropolitan today morning. We had liked this place so much.

Our first stop was a vista point on Mount of Olives. This gave us a panoramic view of the old city where so much history and religions evolved. This is where Jesus hid for some days before crucifixion. From this spot, looking down we saw active Christian and Jewish cemetery where slots are very expensive to buy. It is said in the holy Bible that on Judgement Day, all bodies will roll towards Jerusalem where the God will decide their fate (similar references in the holy Quran too). So we guessed the people buried here would need to roll much lesser.... Beyond the Christian then Jewish then Muslim cemetery, stands the wall surrounding old city of Jerusalem. The old city divided into 4 quarters (Armenian, Jewish, Christian and Muslim) with limited intermingling.

From our vantage point, we could see the Dome of the rock in front of us surrounded by a rectangular platform. This is a holy place for all 3 religions. King Herod had flattened this out (what used to be Mount Moriah) to build the 2nd temple for Jews. Today it hosts the golden dome and the Al Aqsa mosque (also known as the 'far mosque', 'near mosque' being that in Mecca). From the rock inside the golden dome, Mohammad had ascended to heaven with Angel Gabriel according to the holy Quran.

The western wall of the platform is adjacent to the Jewish and Muslim quarters however only a small portion of the wall is actually accessible to the jews also known as 'the wailing wall'. Jews had cried at this wall remembering the destruction of the 2nd temple. Beyond the wall we saw the holy sepulchre, the tomb of King David where Jesus had his 'last supper'. Also saw a beautiful Russian church with golden domes and a church where Judas gave treason keys that led to capturing Jesus and killing him later on.
At the entrance to the Jewish quarter we saw lots of people dancing to the occasion of a 'Bar Mitzwah' ceremony (similar to 'thread ceremony in Hinduism) where a young Jewish boy should read scriptures in Hebrew. Then visited the western wailing wall where hundreds of people were praying. Later walked through narrow alleys full of shops towards the tomb of David (died 1000 BC). Jesus chose this site for the last supper and according to old Jewish traditions blessed bread and wine during the supper. The original structure got destroyed with fall of Jerusalem; but was later reconstructed when Muslims took over the city. They now have built a place facing towards Mecca for Muslim prayers at the same place.

We now proceeded to walk on 'Via Dolorosa', the path taken by Jesus during crucifixion. We proceeded along this holy alley towards the Holy Sepulchre. On the way there were the last 4 stations (1: where Jesus's clothes were taken off, next he was crucified, where his body was cleaned and finally buried). Different parts of the holy church are owned by different (a total of 6 churches) and we entered through the Ethiopian Monks church. This is the poorest of all 6 where monks live in destitute conditions. We saw the Golgoatha, the stone of Anointing and finally the tomb of Joseph of Aramethia where Jesus's body is buried. Our guide told us that Jesus was buried in a Jewish tradition - by digging a cave in the rock. Since the main burial place was very expensive Joseph of Aramethia gave up his own tomb for Jesus and later was buried close to Jesus. While Jesus's mausoleum was restored multiple times (during all the crusades in Jerusalem), Joseph's tomb was not and gave us a glimpse of how Jesus's tomb might have looked like.
Now our morning siteseeing was complete and we proceeded to get some falafel lunch.

After lunch we were planned to go to Bethlehem, on the Palestine side. We crossed the border on foot (quite an experience). Compared to Israel, Palestinian side was quite poorer and our organizers not so disciplined, so it took a while before we reached the Church of Nativity (birthplace of Jesus Christ). The Greek orthodox church holds the actual birthplace, the altar where the 3 kings came to see baby Jesus. Next to this was Roman catholic church, much richer! This is where they conduct midnight mass on Dec 25th that gets broad casted all over the world. Then we went to the Shepherd's field, where Shepherds saw the star (an Angel) and followed it to meet baby Jesus. We proceeded to our return to Israel, followed by overnight at Park Hotel. I absolutely hated the hotel for some weird smell inside the room and we both decided to change plans and go back to Tel Aviv the next day. Completely exhausted and sleepy we skipped the dinner and dozed off ...zzzzz..

Day 7: 12/30: The tour of biblical sites

Trip to the Biblical sites: Nazareth, Capercana, Magdal, Tiberias, Capernaum, Mt. of Beatitudes, Tabgha, Yardenit

After a round of heavy breakfast we started our journey with a larger group of people in one of the big tourist buses after 8:20 am today. In the early morning, both I and Rohit had made more progress in reading our respective novels (Swami and White Tiger) and I had finished reading mine and was sort of in a somber mood. The world had lost a very powerful, talented and a very emotional personality of ‘Shreemant” Madhavrao Peshwa and his ‘sati’ wife Rama. I was very much touched by the author’s style of depicting all the scenes of the wars, the strategy planning meetings and the innocent love between Rama-Madhavrao.

Back to our trip… Today’s guide was really good – kind of an old man but was enjoying his job thoroughly and throughout the day educating lot of us with all the interesting stories from the holy bible that happened at these locations.
A little bit about Israel first. The whole of Israel has 7M (million) people; Jerusalem being the largest city hosting over 700K and Tel Aviv the 2nd with over 500K and Haifa the third with 300K. Everyday about 2M people come for work to Tel Aviv. We drove a very historic road: Via Marice has 5000 years of history. Back in the time, it used to be the only road connecting Egypt with Syria/Babylon. King Solomon ruled here in the valley of Sharon which had citrus groves in the past. Israel’s #1 industry is to cut and polish diamonds, #2 is agriculture + hitech economy. In the valley of Sea of Galilee, the land is very fertile and produces bananas, mangoes, olives, avocados, cotton, and vegetables. Also saw Israel’s power plant – from coal most of it. Lots of coal gets imported via ships from over the world and get moved into the power plant via conveyor belts. Israel is a fairly small country: 600km x100 km. There are lots of migratory birds (cormorants, storks, pelicans) that fly to and from South Africa. Our guide was explaining the ~5000 years back the area was covered with crocodile infested waters. Then only 120 years back under Turkish empire, the Jewish settlers got eucalyptus trees from Australia. They sucked the swamp water which help it drain completely from the area that now grows lemon groves and vegetables. Nobody can say looking at Israel of today that not until 200 years back it was nothing but sand dunes + desert. Lots of hard work + strong ambition of Israelis have paid off!

On the way to Nazareth (our 1st stop of today) we passed by the hills of Samaria (remember the phrase ‘good samaritan’ -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Good_Samaritan ) and saw of bunch of minarets (indicating a Muslim village) around us. Square shaped towers with bells indicate a Christian village, those with pointed pencil shaped apex are minarets/Muslim inhabitants and the towers with none of these are the Synagogues for Jews. We also crossed valley of Jesara (blessed by god). There are 3 most holy places for Christians: Bethlehem where Jesus was born, Nazareth: where Jesus spent his childhood and finally the church of sepulchre in Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified.

The day was very cloudy and it had started drizzling when we got out of the bus in Nazareth. Saw the main Church of Annunciation which was 2 storied. Lower level is what used to be St. Mary’s house, upper level being the actual Church with beautiful paintings, ornate stained glass work and mosaic on the floor overlooking the lower level where people have mass services.


Later visited the neighboring church of Joseph, which had Joseph’s carpentry workshop and this is the place where Jesus grew up and learnt from his father. The workshop gets worshipped and devout followers offer money on the old ruins even today.
The story of why Mary and Joseph move from Nazareth to Bethlehem – Angel Gabriel came in St. Mary’s dreams telling her that she will be the mother of the God. During this time King Herod was ruling and came to know about it and planned to destroy the couple before they give birth to the child. So to seek a safe shelter the couple fled to Bethlehem where Jesus was born by immaculate birth. Only after the king died, the couple and the baby moved back to Nazareth where Jesus was raised. When he came of age, he declared that he was the descendant of King David and that we would be the next messenger of God. The Jewish settlement around him did not approve of this at all and outcasted him and ordered him to get out of Nazareth. That initiated the great journey of Jesus from Nazareth down south towards the sea of Galilee.

Our bus hummed along through the super-fertile Jordan valley to the see of Galilee. On the way to Capernaum (St. Peter’s town), we also passed through little town of Migdal from where hailed Mary Magdalene. At Capernaum, we saw St. Peter’s house – actually his mother-in-law’s. He was very poor and she was a rich lady, so he stayed with his wife at her place. The site seems to be well preserved and they have constructed a church on it. On the side of this church was a synagogue where Jesus taught his followers. At Sea of Galilee, there is a famous tale of St. Peter's fish which we ate for lunch near a restaurant at Capernaum.

Following this site we went to visit Mount of Beattitudes, Tabgha (where Jesus performed the miracle of multiplication) and Yardenit, the baptismal site for Christians on the banks of Jordan River.

Day 6: 12/29: Tel Aviv -> Rosh Hanikra -> Akko -> Haifa -> Caesaria

We both got up early (3:45 AM). This jetlag is rather funny and we are now following (what we call) ‘Pothi-vachan’ .. he he.. Today, plan is to be ready in the lobby by 7:20AM for a nice long trip to Haifa, Acre and Rosh Hanikra.
The breakfast was simply exquisite at Metropolitan – 3 types of cakes, rice with beans, fresh cut fruits, lots of salads, juice, tea-coffee, cereals etc. It was a complete meal. I kept eating from 6:30 – 7:15 AM … hahaha..was way too full. The bus arrived at 8 am and we started our journey with the driver, who was also going to be our guide, in a group of 13 people.

Rosh Hanikra: Northern-most point on the Israel-Lebanon border. Took around 2.5 hrs to drive from Tel Aviv. Rosh Hanikra is famous for its grottos which are naturally formed when the Mediterranean sea water comes gushing and bursting against the soft rock making natural caves/ channels into the rocks. Over several years such waters have dug holes quite deep and now the Israeli govt. has built nice tunnels for visitors like us to walk through the grottos themselves. While inside, the color of the water looking most amazing blue-green. It reminded us of the ‘Grotta Azura’ at Capri Islands near Naples, Italy. The model there was to sit in a small boat and pass through the grotto. That color was more beautiful than the present one, but I liked the accessibility more here. Being right at the border, we saw a lot of Israeli military folks with massive guns armed, and navy boat at the sea for surveillance. The sea water was quite clean and transparent and we could see through the shallow sea bed near the shoreline.

Later sitting in the car, we visited Acre/Akko/Acco, which according to a website is “one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world dating back to the time of Pharaoh Thutmoses III (~1500 BC)”. Once a leading port in the Middle East during the Roman times, it was a hotbed for crusader battles and was home to the Knights Templar faction (remember Da Vinci code?). Today, its just a small city.
We walked through the citadel, Turkish market (reminded me of Tulshibaug), the templars’ tunnels and saw the prison of Al Jazzir, the mosque (only from outside, though watched a video showing how ornately decorated it was from inside). Acco is a city bustling full of life, with lots of interesting people. Often conquered by Romans at first, then crusaders then an evil king Al Jazzir, it later declined into oblivion until was a declared a world heritage site (UNESCO). We saw lots of restoration efforts underway everywhere.

Driving through Mt. Carmel we then visited hilly Haifa - the industrial harbor of Israel. It boasts lots of tech companies including Google, MS, VMware, Marvell, Hitachi among others. We made a quick stop at Baha’i gardens – very nicely done on the hill slopes overlooking the Haifa bay (Haifa is also the world headquarters for the Baha’i faith). Soon it started pouring. It rained cats and dogs for about 5-7 mins, it opened up and our driver stopped in front of a falafel stall for lunch. Our first falafel + chicken shawarma in Israel! Enjoyed every bite of it.

Our final monument of the day was Qasseria/Caesaria, a city built by King Herod (of biblical times) for the Caesar then. This was an important place for trade 2000 years ago, but later destroyed by arabs/crusaders and remained unnoticed under ruins for a long time until it was recently restored and is now a World Heritage site. We saw the roman theatre accommodating ~3000 audience, a hippodrome, ruins of the city fort, the wall built by King Herod and later on expanded by Byzantine dynasty. It was very impressive to see the wonderful planning and execution of a harbor built by Herod to make it easy to travel to Rome for the ships rather than taking a long route through Alexandria in Egypt. Finally we were back at the hotel by 6:30 and almost immediately crashed on the bed (skipped dinner) … so tired and jetlagged still!

Day 5: 12/28: Jordan to Israel via Allenby Bridge

Rohit kept rolling in the bed for an hour more and joined me in reading. Started with the ‘White Tiger’ and was quite enjoying it. I was reading ‘Swami’ – a a celebrated Marathi novel by Ranjit Desai, which I started in the flight itself. It was quite gripping now with Madhavrao’s battle scene with Hyder Ali. We both read until 4:15AM and again slept for couple more hours. Then by 8:30 we checked out of the hotel to start a long ride from Petra to King Hussein Bridge. On the way we bought ‘Zatr’ (which has a great fragrance) as a memory of Jordan. Afram bid us goodbye at the departure gate on Jordan side around 12:30 pm and we transferred to Israel by 1:30pm by a bus.

Things to remember: You pay 5JD per person as departure tax when leaving Jordan + 2.75JD/person for the bus+1.05 JD/per bag. So indeed it’s a good idea to travel light :P. Due to unforeseen delays at the immigration on both Jordan+Israel sides, we met our driver Sosh Eie exactly 3 hours after the theoretical time of arrival. Mohammed from Discovery travels in Jordan had done a bad job of communicating with Sosh Eie that we will be late. Guess what that meant for us later on? She asked us for $50 as a tip when we got off at Hotel Metropolitan. We gave her $30 saying we did not have more. I was quite frustrated.

The hotel was really nice – located almost right next to the beach in Tel Aviv and also quite close to Allenby street (another version of Lakshmi Road + Hong Kong Lane in Pune). It was 4:15pm now and we had to eat lunch. We decided to go eat at Burger King and to my utter dismay 1 chicken sandwich meal + 1 fish sandwich cost us 64NIS ~ $20. Israel indeed seems expensive L !

After the lunch, we walked to the beach and enjoyed the lights show in the sky after a beautiful sunset. Finally I am back in the hotel, in my bed at 6:15 PM J J. Looking at the prices we have decided not to buy water here + at lobby we confirmed that it is safe to consume tap water.

Day 4: 12/27: Petra

William from work had told me to make sure we reach early at Petra before the crowds start flocking. So after an early breakfast at 6 AM, we started walking from Amra Palace (our hotel) towards Petra visitors’ center. Ticket was 21JD per person. We had already saved 57JD by not taking a private guide and denying the donkey ride . Turned out, it was the right decision. At the visitors’ center, we picked a copy of a map + information brochure for us and started walking down the road at 7:30 AM. There were people ahead of us, but not too many. Some were walking like us with a map, some with guides, some on donkeys and some on horses/chariots. In about 500m through ‘Al Siq’ (a deep and narrow gorge formed between the sandstone rocks), we reached Al Khazneh – The Treasury. Entire Petra formations have been built by the local Nabatean people somewhere between 100BC to 200AD, before the Romans came to the area. Al Khazneh was magnificient indeed!
Also surprisingly met my senior from PICT: Bhagyashree with her husband there. Later, we followed the map and saw bunch of monuments including royal tombs, the great temple (1 AD) excavated by Brown University in 1993, the colonnade street, the monastery ‘El Dier’ at about 1500 ft. It quickly became very hot by 9:30AM and our earlier buy (4JD) of an umbrella proved priceless. On the way back from the top, I saw lots of envious looks from hot/tired/sweating folks going upwards – but we enjoyed our umbrella none the less – it was the neighbor’s envy & the owner’s pride!

For more useful links/history for Petra – www.google.com is your friend. On the way back, I and Rohit bought a small sized sand bottle (highly recommended by lots of websites) with our names inscribed on it. It was so pretty and indeed a great memory of Jordan-Petra. We were back in our room at Amra Palace at 2 pm and were wondering what all people can do in Petra when they buy 3 days pass! I like what Rohit said - You need more than 1 day if you plan to excavate the area yourself. Again following our routine, we slept yet again for 4 hours and then had a hearty dinner in the hotel at 7:30PM. It was not hard for us to go back to sleep and so we did only to reach a new record time for me to get up at night (after a satisfying sleep) at 1:45AM. There I was happy and wide awake.