Egypt, And Further Thoughts and Notes For The Future......

A couple of weeks have passed since my return from Egypt and I have ''post holiday blues'', particularly as the weather is disgusting and I hoped I would have missed all the rain on Crete....

Looking back at my notes again, it was nice to see quite a few British people travelling in Egypt again. They all seemed to be ''independent'' travellers who elected to fly in through Hurghada and then after a week of 'beach' holiday were travelling inland by private vehicle or coach to the Nile Valley to see the important sites and spend a few days around the area rather than some Hurghada tourists who come inland by coach to see the Valley Of The King's and then leave again.

The general plan after Luxor and Aswan included a few days in Cairo before flying back to the UK. While these plans sound expensive Egypt really is still remarkably cheap, and Luxor has a lot of accommodation for about 5 euros a night if you are staying a while.

As an example in Luxor, West Bank you can find many properties to rent like this one Mahmoud Haseeb Nubian House at very reasonable rates 

This one in Al Bairat has some lovely traditional features like domed ceilings!

This trip was supposed to be my last and was supposed to included Alexandria where I have a 'family' connection and initially I was planning on 6 weeks until I read on Trip Advisor that it was currently impossible, because of COVID, to get a visa extension unless you were in Cairo and wanted to brave the one and only police station that was issuing them....

Of course I later found out that I didn't even need a visa extension because I was over 60.... And the Passport Office in Luxor was open so don't believe everything you read on TA, unless I wrote it

And of course the new museum in Cairo has not yet opened and I still need to visit that so another visit is already in the planning stage to do that and also visit Alexandria....

I still don't know what it is about Egypt that I love so much.....

One thing is sure this time I will do some reviews of hotels and eateries for Trip Advisor this time as looking at my past reviews I didn't do very many!!

So you can expect some updates to the blog again sometime early next year...

Inshallah..

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?''

Egypt Part The Third 2022 - Karnak and The Sphinx Way

I visited Karnak on my first trip to Egypt in 2017 but like most of the organised trips you do not get a lot of time there so it was nice to go back again for another look, and more importantly I can now get to walk the Sphinx Way from Karnak to Luxor Temple, a distance of about 3km.......

A few photos of Karnak which is not so much a temple in itself but a site containing 4 separate temples, you will recognise Karnak of course from the 1978 film Death On The Nile based on the Agatha Christie novel and starring Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot and many others!

David Suchet also made a TV adaptation which also used Karnak, and this year sees the release of yet another version by Kenneth Branagh which was filmed in Morocco for some strange reason. If it anything like Branagh's version of Murder On The Orient Express I won't be rushing to see it.....

Approaching Karnak by boat from the West Bank there is a bit of an oddity because here we see water being pumped into the Nile instead of out of it... This water is pumped out from the 'springs' inside Karnak, indeed there is a 'sacred lake' within the complex. This is a bit odd because as you can see the river banks are considerably higher than the Nile and so is Karnak itself. The high water table inside Karnak caused a problem when it was being excavated over a 100 years ago as some of the ruins were submerged.

The main entrance to Karnak is guarded by an avenue of Sphinxes, indeed these are of course a load of old Sphinxes. 

As you can see it's quite busy with tourists, mainly Russian....

And if you have run out of Sphinxes then you throw up a couple of obelisks which is exactly what Hapshetsut did when she was in charge about 4,000 years ago..

It is of course a well known fact that the Egyptians invented the clerestory window... And there are some fine examples at Karnak as shown below, the frame up in the air is a clerestory window, you will of course this architectural feature from your exhaustive visits to cathedrals in the UK....

 Stopping only for an obligatory selfie in front of a load of old hieroglyphics, I am heading for the side door as it were, in search of the exit to the Sphinx Way, which as you know is a ceremonial route to Luxor used during the festival of Opet and constructed during the time of Amenhotep III during the 18th Dynasty around 1390 to 1352 BC, that's over 3,000 years ago, the side exit is the Temple Of Khonsu, the God of the Moon. (But then you already knew that didn't you? Would you believe that a lot of Egyptians actually know all this stuff  about the New Kingdom, the Old Kingdom, and all the Dynasties?).

Along the Sphinx Way there are some huge sign boards very nicely giving a bits of history and also the progress of the excavation which was started in 2017 which is the first time I came to Luxor..

One day I will get the hang of putting photos on to a blog but for now you will have to excuse the large gaps here and there, I usually use these to waffle on a bit rather like you do when you are doing a slide show and waiting for the projector to go on to the next slide.....

And there's the Temple of Khonsu, and before me lies the the Sphinx Way...

It has taken a while to excavate it because there was a minor hiccup in that the Coptic (Christian) Church was partially obstructing the route.

There were various proposals for solving this problem, the most popular was to knock the church down. A solution that did not go down very well with the Christian congregation who probably retaliated with the suggestion that the mosque built on top of Luxor Temple should be knocked down...

On the way along there is a conveniently placed coffee shop and also some shady resting points, there are also a couple of features to note such as the Nileometer which the priests in the Temples used to calculate the taxes due from the peasant farmers, the Nile used to run alongside the Sphinx Way but is now much further to the west.

As you can see parts of the route require some maintenance and are a bit uneven but bear in mind this paving is over 3,000 years old whereas pavements in most modern cities are not that old so it seems the problem of maintenance has not improved in all that time.... 

The poor old Nileometer could do with  clean up as well, as could the Roman baths built much later.

Many of the Sphinxes are missing, presumably carried off to be used elsewhere or broken up to be used as something else....

And you might be wondering how they solved the problem of the Coptic Church,

oh yes you are, now admit it... Well you can see how in the photos below...

The one on the left was taken in 2019, the one below is now...

Yep... You got it, they cut off the back end of the church...

Egypt Part The Third - Weather, Health, and People.

Inevitably I will mention the weather.... At this time of year Egypt has warm sunny days and cool nights, indeed past experience in Cairo it can be quite cool during the day and even colder at night. Heading further south to Luxor and Aswan the day are usually around the mid 20s and because this is desert weather cold at night.

The first day I got here I had to ask for an extra blanket because this year the nights are very cold indeed. So cold it is that even the locals are complaining about how cold the weather has been, even during the day it is only a 'chilly' 18C. And there has been a fair amount of cloud around as well.

And so to health..... I have already made a trip to the pharmacy for a bit of a stock up on essentials although obviously I brought my normal medication with me, but there are some times when I need antibiotics and trying to get these out of the NHS is a problem and they are extremely mean, indeed I think they probably waste more money trying to save money if you see what I mean... Even in Greece these days you need a scrip for antibiotics which means a trip to the doctor.

So what a change to go to the pharmacy and buy three packets of antibiotics for less than £3, and this makes you wonder how much the NHS are paying for the same thing when they have to make the pharmacy fart about and only give you 8 out of a pack of 10...... Or the Greek healthcare system where they cost €5.

On a personal note, my breathing becomes a lot easier in this climate because of the much lower humidity,

often only a few percent on some days and rarely much more than 35%.

This time around I have also been aware of how many foreigners, i.e. non-Egyptians live here on a long term basis. I think I probably noticed it before except the higher number of tourists masked the actual numbers.

I noticed with some amusement that many of these are British, and often more decrepit than me! Listening to a few overheard conversations many of them come only during the winter months, (spending their heating allowance here!), which brings me to the subject of the normal tourist visa..... The normal tourist visa is valid for 30 days from the date of entry, however if you are over 65 and not working (obviously), then it seems you can stay as long as you want!

Talking to a Canadian couple they have been here for 4 months.

And then there was the inevitable boat trip. This involves looking at the river banks from the river rather than the normal look at the river from the river banks.... It is only necessary to do this once, unless you particularly enjoyed it in which case you can do it again. Indeed the touts expect you to because they will see you get off a boat and as soon as you get ashore offer you another trip, sometimes at half the price you have just paid!

This time round the captain was the very jolly Mahmoud who insisted that he be allowed to try on my size 45 Gucci Loafers when his feet are quite clearly about size 60!

I really don't know why I let myself in for this sort of thing as barter as I might it usually costs far too much and if I do get it cheap I usually have to buy lunch...... But at least I do know that I don't pay as much as some of the tourists do! And next week I really must try and do something a little more constructive with my time.....

 

Egypt Part The Third 2022 - Things Are Not Quite The Same, And Word Gets Around...

 So after a day of not doing a lot my legs are now used to being back on solid ground and I no longer feel like I am still on the train.

My hotel is next door to the one I stayed in on my last visit and Abdullah the 'house boy' has already spotted me and told Mahmoud the cook on the top floor who leaned over the balcony on the top floor next door to talk to me, my hotel is one floor shorter you see.

Today I will venture a little further afield and take the public ferry across to the East Bank... I take a late breakfast in the hotel, (2 hard boiled eggs, pitta bread, tea, cheese and jam, English pounds GB£1.50), and walking out the gate I find the nuisance from my last stay sitting outside the gate. (Egyptians are not allowed in hotels where there are foreigners staying unless, a) They work there, or b) They are staying there themselves)

How the nuisance found me I do not know but all I can say is the 'bush telegraph' works extremely well.

So what's changed?

A lot less people selling boats trips, taxi rides, and whatever else they can sell for a start, Instead of crowds of them there are now only a few and yet the number of boats moored on both sides of the Nile is just the same.

And what few people there are are a lot less pushy, but I know how to get rid of them now anyway so they didn't really bother me a lot.

A little shopping never goes amiss and prices are still the same, a few essentials like some fruit... and toms and cucs..

The fruit set me back by 35 LE, or £1.60 if you prefer, and the tomatoes and cucumber were £5, or 25p if you like...

Meanwhile the public ferry no longer goes straight across to the other side of the river but now lands a lot further north near the museum which was a bit of surprise as it is no miles to get to the market and Luxor Temple. Well not really miles but quite a long way. 

I haven't got to the bottom of why it has been changed.... Yet.

                                                                                                              

One thing I did find out walking past the Temple was how people knew I was back, this is down to a tour guide that I have used twice in 2017 and 2019 and he saw me getting off the train the previous night. So that is one puzzle solved.

One thing about them moving the ferry is that there is now a couple of cafes nearby. The 'boy' making the coffee assures me that he is 'very beautiful', I will leave you to make your own decisions about that!

Meanwhile back at the hotel some Irish people have just arrived, they flew in via Hurghada which is how a lot of people seem to be doing it, probably because of the cheaper flights. They have just spent a week in Hurghada and are trying to do the rest of Egypt in a week. It's not going to work.. I try and help and give them a few tips of what is most important, but they have got one thing right and that is that they want to do a short cruise up the Nile to Aswan but have been put off by a TV program showing Joanna Lumley all dolled up and sipping cocktails. I assure them that a Nile cruise is not like that unless the TV company are paying a fortune for one of the 'select' cruise boats.

Wandering around my neck of the woods I take make morning exercise through the banana plantations along some very dusty tracks...

Passing just one of the many stables in the area. They make quite a thing of horse riding here and most of the Egyptians can ride it seems, if they can't ride a horse they can ride a donkey. With the amount of horses and donkeys here I am surprised that they don't all grow prize roses in their gardens. 

Indeed they don't seem to use the manure for anything just stack in bigger and bigger piles on the side of the road, although I suspect that in some areas they burn it as fuel judging by the smell at time.

Wandering about in the middle of nowhere I come across the shell of a new building which according to the sign is set to become a new hotel, the sign does not say when but looking at the state of the building it will not be in the near future.

Heading back in to 'town' via the main road to the desert and The Valley of The Kings takes a while because you have to keep stopping to talk to people many of whom do not speak much English but enough to ask where you are from

 ''England'',

 ''Ah, lovely people''.

 So you see we are not as bad as we think we are!

Arriving back in the ''village'' I find out what the best dressed bride will be wearing this year, and stop off at the bakery where I admire the pitta breads and get given one still warm from the oven.

The pittas are quite 'fluffy' when they come out of the oven... The man on the counter selling them has to give them a bit of a 'pat' to squash them down a bit, a skilled job if ever I saw one....

Meanwhile back at 'The Corniche' it is time for a picnic lunch on the ''Ahmed''

A variety of 'sandwiches' in pitta bread along with bit s and pieces cost a massive 100 LE, about £4. The delivery boy didn't get a tip he got a leftover sandwich instead, and a new taste was to be had,

pickled pink turnip, unbelievably salty!! I will not be eating those again a hurry!