LUXOR- Down South Up River
Trip Start
Nov 04, 2009
1
10
23
Trip End
Jan 01, 2010
Luxor, Nile River Valley, Egypt
Friday, December 4, 2009
The town itself is another story. If I was maybe hasty in declaring Egypt’s honesty scrupulous, after sensing some lingering discrepancies, here is another story entirely. They’ll rip you off blind here, trying to charge you five EGP for something that normally costs one. On the other hand, there are a greater-than-usual number of services specifically geared to foreigners and their particular linguistic- and budgetary- proclivities, even posting menus and prices in English, so it’s a win/lose situation, twice removed from normal Egypt. Gone are the natural low prices and honesty of 'normalcy’ and in its place are some decent services in addition to blind rip-offs. What’s a traveler to do? Learning Arabic, of course, would be the crowning glory, but since that takes time, seeking the honest dealers and patronizing them is the best one can do (while trying to remain polite to the pests).
At least there’s not the constant blaring and honking of Cairo. If cities in general tend to have bad feng shui, Cairo carries it to new heights of squalor, yet somehow manages some dignity through it all. Dignity is apparently more important than politeness. All the hotels claim, "Come as a guest, leave as a friend." Whether they succeed or not is a matter of opinion. In general my opinion of Egyptians is still favorable, though they’re much too sensitive to perceived slights; or is that just a marketing technique to curry favor? Today is the Friday Sabbath, so even more tranquil than usual, though the line- crowd, that is- at the train ticket window doesn’t seem much mellower. Queuing up peacefully is not one of their strong points. I’d still like to know whether the Big 3 religions could agree to share the Trinity and give us three holidays a week.
The ruins themselves- Luxor temple and Karnak, at least- are not up to Giza standards, though I can’t speak for the more remote ones. Nowhere are the massive pyramids with Inca-like razor-cut foundations, though the ubiquitous Sphinx figures almost make up for it. More interesting to me are the totally undeveloped Sphinx figures lying in rows leading up to the complexes outside the gates. I wonder how many more there are- or were. It boggles the imagination, as does the architecture in general, especially the massive columns, hardly pyramidal in form or function. Were the great structures of Greece and Rome mere copies of this? They must have been well-known to them, if not me. I consider the great Indo-European contribution to history to be civilization without the cities, i.e. the sacking of Rome, not its construction, which would work well with a copy-Egypt theory. Of course that I-E fruition and ultimate dominance has only occurred recently in the technological phase of the Industrial Revolution as bits and bytes replace soldiers and guns and the rest of the world scratches its collective head, wondering what’s next.
Back here at ground zero I have other concerns, like the fact that I’m twelve hours overland from Cairo and no form of transportation will book in advance. For an Obama-like cautious person that I am, this is problematic. I have a flight to catch in a few days, and missing it because the train and buses are full is not an option. So I guess I’ll go back a couple days ahead of schedule just to be sure. That’s okay. I’m not in love with Luxor, and if I really have cojones I’ll get my act together and go spend a day or two in Alexandria, where nothing is bookable on-line and the chances of getting a room with WiFi are slim to nothing, just like the old days. That’s what I should do, as I’ll still have at least a full day of Internet in Cairo before continuing on to Yemen. Stay tuned.
