Valley of the Kings

Like many things in Egypt we didn't really know what to expect. The Valley of the Kings was no exception. We were certainly in a real adventure mood having survived the donkey ride and made the decent into the valley on foot.

Our tickets enabled us to go into three tombs and our guide made some excellent choices as each was diferent from eachother. Each brightly painted and it was also possible to see the changes in the degree of detail in types of decorations over the years. It must've been quite an experience to be an early explorer and to come across the tombs - even better if you found one with treasure.

Perhaps one of the more memorable moments was, having climbed a long staircase up a cliff, wandered a passage in the light, then decended into the dark caverns, over the planks over the traps, down another tunnel into the first of two chambers in the tomb the power went out. No lights, no fans, total darkness and a lot of heat... all of a sudden the suicial donkey didn't seem to bad (although the power was shortly restored and we made it out safely and there were no replays of scenes from Indiana Jones or The Mummy).



View when walking into the valley.


A map seeing as we were not allowed to take photos in the tombs.


... the digging continues...


The view back up the Valley.

Donkey ride into Valley of the Kings

The idea of entering the Valley of the Kings was too good to turn down. Made it feel a lot more like a real adventure (particularly as my vertigo was not helped by the fact that I was sure my donkey was about to run off ovr the side of a cliff...)

We all named our donkeys, there was Simon, Eeyore, Falafel, and "Oh-my-god-stop-don't-go-there".


Valda and her donkey


Fran making her donkey look like a real show pony.


Paul and Amy


The cliff path

Luxor and the entrance to Thebes

Luxor is the ultimate places for locals hassling the tourists.


View from the roof of the hotel to Luxor Templee


Luxor Temple at night (quite a neat experience to wander the passages in the dark)


Entrance to ancient Thebes

Karnak Temple (Luxor)

Back on dry land we started to explore the temples in Luxor.

First stop was the large and impressive Karnak Temple.

The scale was very impressive, large rooms full of large pillars, giant obelisks, and the complex just went on and on and on...

It was the first time I had ever seen something of that age with so much colour. I don't think it had ever really registered before that when these temples were first built they were covered in such bright colours.


Valda and Kay outside the temple complex.


Obelisk


Another view of the complex


To get a feel for the size of these thing, think of the trunk of an 800 year old kauri...