Luxor and the
Valley of the Kings

U.S. Government map of Egypt.

Luxor is about a full day's train ride south from Cairo toward Upper Egypt. The rail line follows the Nile, the river is within sight of the train for most of the trip.

First-class trains are an excellent way to travel along Nile Egypt. They're the only way to travel if you're taking a long trip like Cairo to Luxor or especially Cairo to Aswan.

Second-class trains are acceptable if you're not going very far and have some time to kill.

Third-class trains are excellent if you want to see third-world transport so decrepit that it would startle Rudyard Kipling.

Below are some sailboats on the Nile at sunset.

At left is a local ferry running across the Nile from the city of Luxor to the west bank.

The west bank was the site of ancient Thebes, tombs and memorials to the dead.

Some smaller ferries take tourists across the Nile from Luxor (on the opposite bank) to the west bank of the Nile. where there are more temples and the Valley of the Kings.

You can rent a bicycle in town and transport it across the Nile on the ferry to tour the ruins.

At right is the Colossus of Memnon

As Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote in his sonnet Ozymandias in 1818:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

At left and below, I am at Deir al Bahri or the Temple of Hatshepsut.

At left, I am climbing up above the Temple of Hatshepsut and toward the Valley of the Kings.

Here I have topped the ridge and am looking down into the Valley of the Kings

These are the entrances to some of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings.

At left is the Luxor Temple.

Two baksheesh-hungry locals have spotted me coming. Within moments I will hear:

— Dem-Bel! BAKSHEESH! BAKSHEESH!!

I stayed at the Oasis Hotel.

It's located on Sharia Mohammed Farid, phone 381-699. Most rooms have fans, a few have air conditioning.

At right is the view from my room at the Oasis.

Luxor is well within the Baksheesh Belt. I was walking down the street one day when a police officer stopped me. He pointed at the ball-point pen in my shirt pocket and demanded:
— Ben, ben! Give me ben! BAKSHEESH!!

I told him no, I wasn't going to give him my pen, and I certainly wasn't going to give him any baksheesh.

He followed me a little way, saying
— BAKSHEESH! Baksheesh? Baksheesh....
But in less than a block he gave up.

Interested in using any of my pictures? I have high-resolution versions of all of these. Contact me if you are interested in using any. The answer is generally "yes" as long as I get credit and a copy of the result.

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