Egypt Part The Third 2022 - Out And About and Transport - Part 1

 One doesn't like to be nosey, but then when you are out for a walk how can you help noticing things....?? I was going to try and put on a map of where I go often for a walk but unfortunately by the time I have zoomed in on it it is too big to fit an a blog!

Suffice to say it is very dusty most of the way around, 

And before I forget... This should have been in the blog about Luxor City... This is the El Karnak International Hospital.

I don't know why the International because it is for everybody. As you can see it is new!

                           

The two photos above probably say it all, the one on the left is typical in the fields, I have yet to see a tractor.... The load on the donkey and cart is the tops from the sugar cane which they use for animal feed, the one on the right is in the city and they still use donkeys even there, but behind it is one of the minibuses they use in the cities and in the country.

Meanwhile in amongst the fields they are building yet another mosque, as if they haven't got enough already...

This road is a road not just a dusty track, you really would not want to be disabled around here and a wheelchair user... The canal on the left is an irrigation canal but at the moment they have a problem further up the road as the culvert that carries the water from the main channel has become blocked with rubbish and general black Nile mud!

By the way all these dusty tracks have LED street lighting which they have been using for years in Egypt... Who said they were backward?

Like Greeks they do like building stuff in the middle of nowhere... This is destined to be a hotel in a few years time, yes another hotel...

The palm tree on the right amused me rather, never waste a good palm tree is the motto I suppose.

Years of ploughing has resulted in the soil compacting down, and in dry weather blowing away as dust and left this tree high and dry!

Below right n the banana fields they cover the developing fruit with blue plastic bags to protect them from the cold.

Walking around these back streets you get to speak to a lot of people, many of them invite you into their homes and show no embarrassment that the floor is compacted earth, but somehow spotlessly clean. Years of damping the floor and walking on it compacts the dirt down, indeed they even sweep it.

And of course you get the children and sometimes the adults who ask you for money, and for many this seems strange or unusual, but many Egyptians will refer to it as ''a present'', at this point it is worth remembering the Five Pillars of Islam, one of which is 'Charity'.....

Give an Egyptian an apple and you will often see him cut it in half and share it with somebody else.....

The video is just a part of my daily walk, I took it because of the level of the Nile at the moment which is the highest I have ever seen it. Where the donkey is is usually dry land but at present it is flooded. I asked around and apparently the level depends on the rainfall in the mountains where the Nile rises and when Lake Nasser reaches maximum capacity then the flood gates ae opened, but the level also depends on agricultural demands for the rice fields downstream in the Nile delta around Alexandria. Bet you didn't know they grow rice in Egypt!

Meanwhile the weather is still misbehaving and it is very cold at night.... So along the riverbank there are burning braziers to keep tourists and local alike, warm.

And somewhere I have lost the plot on the transport side of things!!

Egypt Part The Third 2022 - Archaeology Warning!!!! Medinet Habu Temple

 The Luxor area is literally littered with archaeological sites which is hardly surprising when you consider it is the location of Thebes, the glorious capital of Upper Egypt during the time of the New Kingdom. The city of Amun, later deified as Amun-Ra...

Most visitors to the area are on a time limit unfortunately so they only get to see The Valley Of The Kings and The Colossi of Memnon which you cannot miss because they are on the side of the road!!

To visit all of these sites in depth would take years and I met a Spanish Egyptologist who has been studying the sites for years and she says she still hasn't finished!

So at the risk of boring you dear reader I visited one of the other temples in the area, Habu Temple, the mortuary temple of Rameses III.

Rameses III was known for his battles against the ''Sea Peoples'' unfortunately the day of my visit that part of the complex was off limits for some reason so I cannot bore you with the huge carved wall depicting the defeat of said Peoples....

Much excavation work has been carried out on the site, since 1926 mostly by the University of Chicago Oriental Department who are still busy at work on the site to this day, the middle of the site once contained a Byzantine Christian church which was demolished to allow excavation of the ancient site below. Needless to say nobody thought to do any drawing or photographs of it beforehand. We can blame the French for that I believe... From here on I will leave you with the pictures although there are a couple of comments further down!

The Temple is built on a slight slope which makes it a bit more interesting than some.

As you can see it is not too crowded...

Lots of statues of Rameses III pretending to be Osiris....

Like a lot of them he thought he was a God...

Note the colours which have remained for 1000s of years which is more than you can say for some of the modern paints.

A lot of the carving is excellent and unusually deep.

If you think the picture below looks familiar look at the picture of the railway station in a previous blog..

At some stage the builders have been in (left), and put in a new piece of wall which has obscured the carvings on the original wall......

Some of the excellent carvings are on the outside of the buildings, hopefully you can see the detail on the picture below..

Egypt Part The Third 2022 - In and Around Luxor

 My ramblings, physically not verbally, around Luxor lead me into all sorts of alleyways as I take a gentle stroll around what is quite a busy city.

It is inevitable that these walks take a while because the Egyptians being friendly souls like to stop you for a chat and if I accepted every invite to take tea I would be awash with stuff. And then again even in quite quiet backstreets there is somebody trying to sell you something, even the occasional bit of hash!

I usually avoid the horse and carriage drivers as I am not sure that the animals are treated too well either during their working life or when they are 'breaking' them in, so by not using them I am sort of trying to discourage their use, but in this case I had beaten the driver down from 50 LE to 20LE so I felt duty bound to take it. As it was one of the boys was given the job of driving so he got a 5LE tip.

Apparently you can only insert a YouTube video in the centre of the page....

Luxor is quite an important place being a regional headquarters with all the usual government offices full of civil servants doing not a lot and queues of people waiting... But looking around there is a sort of university, I am guessing that it will be a branch of an American  or European University where all the expertise and materials are provided from abroad, rather like Greece.

But there is a Faculty of Art, and also a ''Tourist College'' although tourism is a bit of a dead end industry these days. (One of the boys in the hotel where I am staying is doing a catering course).

You can tell it's an art college because of the strange statues outside......

The area called ''Downtown'' on the map is something of a surprise as it contains a network of small back streets with a variety of small shops. For some reason the shops are all independently run, with a population the size of Egypt, around 100 million I am surprised that there are not more larger national ''chain'' stores.

The Downtown area does however boast the Law Courts which are open on Sunday, as is the Passport Office just down the road. The Water Authority also has an office here and a large water treatment plant which is an unusual addition to a cityscape! 

I found the Fire Station as well and it has quite an impressive array of appliances.

Taking a meander to the south there are some central shopping streets full of life and day to day bustle.... 

And also the railway station which for a regional building is almost as impressive as the Ramsis Station in Cairo!

I couldn't resist another video at this point... the most essential accessory on a car is the hooter which is probably the first thing to wear out as well.

The hooter is sounded almost constantly as a warning that the vehicle is actually there and is moving. At least that is how it seems to me....

A bit like Greece it is not unusual to find three or four shops, all selling the same products, next to each other... I love these dry good and spices shops because the smell as you walk past is amazing!

Note the plastic Christmas tree still in place outside the station.... Left.

Somebody told me that they usually take down the Christmas decs when the put up decorations for Ramadan and that is not until April...

I think they were joking

Miss Burger?? Makes a change from Mr Burger I suppose...

And the video below... If you listen you can hear the cigarette boy asking me where I am from, the usual question..

Certainly just wandering the streets can be quite entertaining.... And when you get weary there are cafes stuck in the strangest places....

Egypt Part The Third 2022 - About Food and Bob Marley

 Have I mentioned food already? Of course I have but since then I have had a lot more to eat, indeed I am almost certain that I have put on a bit of weight, either that or my clothes have shrunk in the wash...

Egyptians, like Greeks, do like to eat..... 

Lunch is often a take away from the nearest shop where they have not quite succeeded with the technology yet, the plastic bag you can see contains soup. Yep. it's soup in a bag, they only seem to have the smaller liquid containers like the one that you can see, which contains tahini.

The full spread, the foil package contains half a BBQ chicken... And yes that is beans on the left, they cam in aplastic bag too, the foil container contain the soup that came in a bag. The Greeks claim that a lot of their food is traditional Greek, but that soup contains 'kritharaki' the small pasta about the size of rice grains, the Egyptians claim it is their invention!

I mentioned before the 'pickled' pink turnip they use as salad, where here it is in bulk.... This lot had just been delivered to a market stall...

An Egytpian sandwich which is a split pitta turned in on itself and the filling shoved in....

Another area where the Greeks claim to have invented everything is sweets...

These you can buy in a pack at the corner shop, or in bulk at the baker's, and they are exactly the same as you would expect to get in Greece... So what they claim is Greek actually turns out to be common throughout the eastern Mediterranean region.

Popular in the morning is falafel, this hellish looking pan contains falafel being freshly cooked... I am very fond of falafel and there is a place just down the road from my hotel that makes them on the side of the road...

Egyptians like their breakfast and if you are in a big hotel they very often have a huge buffet with all sorts of stuff on it, but below is a more normal breakfast which includes a traditional dish of beans!

By now you are wondering where Bob Marley comes into the story.....

Although the Egyptian diet supposedly uses a lot of pulses, most of the people eat a lot of meat, they are especially fond of liver but there is a vegetarian restaurant nearby which also has an art gallery attached..

So on the right... Cauliflower curry, brown lentil salad, which was absolutely delish, and obviously there was rice, plus on the lower left a dish of tahini with dill...

And it was all very nice... There appears to be a slight absence of fish in Egypt but if you search you can find places that specialise in fish, indeed in the main street on the West Bank in Luxor there is a very unassuming shop which only does fish, and only at lunchtime.. The best you will get in one of the 'tourist' places is a grilled piece of fish with chips. I suspect the fish is frozen but it ate well enough...       

Don't ask me what sort of fish it was, but it could have been perch as it was a very 'meaty' solid type of fish, a bit like sea perch.

Having had this one evening I got told off by 'the boy' for going to the wrong place and he told me he would take me for lunch at a proper fish place. This means he is taking me but I am paying....

I must admit I was impressed although somewhat wary as it is a bit off-putting when the people at the table next to you are sporting pistols and you realise that there is a Kalashnikov lying on the bench seat behind them.... The explanation was that the President of the local farmer's union was being elected in the building next door.... I never realised that being the President of a farmer's union required such security....

Back to the food and Bob Marley.... 

While we are waiting we have tie to appreciate the Christmas decoration which are still up although looking a bit jaded, and also study the classic poster of Bob Marley, you know the one, it is the one made up of lots of small photographs of Bob Marley....

They have a 'thing' about Bob Marley, and I really don't know why...

I did ask the boy as on another wall they have the portrait that was popular after his death in 1980. And yes it really is that long ago that he died. Indeed he has now been dead longer than he was alive...

Finally the food starts to arrive because they are serving the farmers first... And you know you are in trouble when this lot arrives before you have even seen the fish..... 

I told him not to order too much, instead we have enough rice to feed a family of 4, plus the salad, a dish of hot vegetable in tomato sauce, they do love peas here.....

And finally the fish..... I took the photo with my sunnies next to the plate so you can see how big the fish is.

And if you know me you know that I have an aversion to fish bones which goes back to being very young and getting a fish bone stuck in my throat, which is why I love fish fingers!!

Luckily this fish has huge bones in it, about the size of a good sized darning needle so there is no problem getting the flesh off it...

This is a freshwater fish from Lake Nasser and is called a Nile Tilapia although it is found further to the north east from Egypt as well, Ahmed actually called it a 'boulti' which threw me out a bit... Cooking wise they put it on the grill first and the put a sort of batter on it and fry it to finish it off. It sounds like they have overcooked it but the flesh flaked off very nicely.

Like fish anywhere these days it wasn't cheap cheap, the whole meal set me back 350 LE or about £17 for the two of us, and there really was too much food. We could have done without the rice...

I will leave you with a pudding... Fried bananas with honey which I made the mistake thinking that it would be a couple of bananas instead it was a plateful so I shared it with a British woman sitting behind me...

And lastly as so often happens abroad I leave you with the pudding menu which offers us something made of sand apparently.

                              

And I can't believe I actually managed to post two photos next to each other!

Egypt Part The Third 2022 - What's Changed, Random Observations, and A Haircut!

 I think I already noted that the public ferry route had changed going from West to East, well the ferry now lands a lot further to the north than it did before and now lands near the Luxor Museum and the hospital, I asked around as to why and the answer came back that the Corniche on the East Bank has been redesigned and upgraded to coincide with a 'state' visit by the President of Egypt....

And very nice it looks too.... All shiny new street lights, marble and stuff, but I have my own theory as to why they moved the ferry landing and that is because they didn't want the President seeing all the dusty peasants in their dusty djellabas wearing sandals with dirty feet in them.... I sort of suggested this idea to somebody and they looked at me and said 'You are probably right'.... (They did a similar thing in Aswan during my visit in 2017 when they cleared all the boats and horses away from the southern end of the corniche so the president didn't see them between the station and the Old Cataract Hotel, indeed at the time they were rebuilding the station as well!!).

I am not sure how long the new planting will last as Egyptians do not seem to be very good at ornamental gardening, but time will tell, at the moment everything is getting watered..

They have installed some nice little pergolas to provide a bit of shade as well, but for every plus there is a minus and with all the new superbright LED street lights you can no longer see the Temple floodlight at night.

As a well known symbol of Luxor you would have thought they would have made a point of keeping the street lighting low key around that area...

This work has been done since I was here in 2019, one does wonder where the money comes from sometimes....

Oil revenue is not that good these days and with no tourists because of COVID...

A bit of video with the lights on....

Something else that has changed is that there seem to be far fewer boat people trying to get you on to their motor boat or feluccas, and a lot fewer pesky taxi and horse and carriage drivers. Not only that but they seem to be less pushy than they were. Or maybe I have just got used to them!

An even bigger change is in the money! There are about 20 LE or EGP to the £1 sterling or GBP, so 1LE is not a lot of money, (the public ferry fare is 1LE or 5LE if you are a tourist), but there always used to be amounts after the decimal point so if you look at the receipt below, you will see the total is 56.50. But they have withdrawn all the small coins, shopkeepers never used to give you any change anyway but now everything is being rounded up or down. This is a big plus for lavatory attendants because the small coins, (if you ever managed to get any), were always used as ''toilet money'' or baksheesh. Now the lavatory attendant gets a whole 1 LE so she is coining it in!! (This is a bit like when Greece joined the Euro, you used to give 50 drachma as a tip but then along came the Euro and we are giving a Euro as a tip which is nearly 400 Drachma!).

And of course never give an Egyptian a large note to go to the shop and buy you something because you won't see any change.....

I mentioned djellabas further up, so something else I have noticed this time around is that in Cairo you rarely see a djellaba, everyone wears Western clothing, (or mostly),but as you head south you find more and more people, men and women, wearing more traditional dress. A djellaba is actually quite a useful garment if you are a man because if you want a pee all you do is squat and go and the djellaba covers everything up. And in answer to the question ''Is anything worn under a djellaba?'', (avoiding the Scottish joke), the answer is ''Yes'', usually long johns or currently thermal underwear!

And after seeing the selfie I took at Karnak without my hat on, I decided it was time for a hair cut and beard trim, not only that but the Egyptians kept calling me Ali Baba, one of them said I had a moustache like Ferouk, and he's dead.

So with the aid of a translator I took myself off to the East Bank to find a barber, 

Don't I look a picture and a bit cheeky too!

And another random observation.... I noticed on previous visits that there were quite a few foreigners here, that is non-Egyptians, who apparently lived here, with the much fewer number of tourists here it has now become apparent that there really are a lot of northern Europeans living here, notable English and Dutch, both of which races seem to get everywhere, but there are also French and Scandinavians as well, with quite a few Germans thrown in for good measure.

Some of these have been here for years literally, and more have arrived more recently such as the 75 year old Irish woman I met recently.

And for the girls I notice that a lot of them have much younger Egyptian boyfriends/husbands. See there is hope for us yet! 

Still to come is another look at food and a wander around Luxor, and a bit about Egyptian bureaucracy.

But I will leave you with a bit of Egyptian humour..

Taxi driver ''You want taxi, very good price, you know how much?''

Me ''No Thanks you. I am walking''

Taxi driver ''Like an Egyptian?''