Egypt Part The Third 2022, From Cairo To Luxor & The Joys of Egyptian Train Travel!

If you have been keeping up with my Egyptian Odyssey you will remember that twice before I have used the trains in Egypt, once from Luxor to Aswan, and the overnight sleeper from Aswan to Cairo in 2017 so I am at least a little prepared for the journey.

(Leaving the train at Luxor a man tried to tell me he was a ticket collector and wanted my ticket, he actually wanted my ticket to get out of the station because he didn't have one....)

What you have to remember is that this is Egypt...... While the British might have been responsible for the original construction they have not been responsible for the maintenance required. Neither, it would appear, have the Egyptians.

Forget the comfort of being whisked by Richard Branson from London Euston to Manchester, or indeed the speed with which Amtrak will take you from Boston to New York, for a start the rolling stock is considerably older, and they certainly have not got around to electrification!

The rolling stock has a variety of descriptions, the one I am on is described as ''Speed AC Spanish''. Now quite what this means I am not sure but I suspect that it means it was bought second hand from Spain.....

Having been heaved aboard by the man that checks the train is actually coupled together, and slipping him a fiver for heaving my 22kg suitcase up on to the overhead rack, I take my seat on upholstery that has certainly seen better days.....

 The train is airconditioned to the extent that it is freezing cold which required me putting on a second pair of socks, and the toilet arrangements leave something to be desired. No scrub that, they leave a LOT to be desired.

But I am getting ahead of myself, the train is due to depart at 10.00am and arrive in Luxor at 6.42pm. A total of 8 hours and 42 minutes..... 10.00am is when the train arrives at the platform, it leaves at 10.10am and after a saunter arrives at Giza half an hour later. A 15km journey....

There are supposedly a couple of other stops on the way but it is (supposed) to be a non stop to Luxor.

Shortly after departure we cross the Nile and are treated to the normal Egyptian urban landscape which like most others is not particularly exciting....

There are quite a few urban infrastructure projects underway in the outskirts of Cairo and these seem to mainly be the construction of elevated roads, like the one below which is a flyover over the railway and several buildings as well.

Sadly the same investment is not being made in the railways.....

AS ever in Egypt there are the remains of older buildings demolished and left as well as the proverbial piles of rubbish. Removing all this would be a project of such vast proportions that it will probably never be attempted!

But it is not long before we reach the rural landscape which prevails along the Nile valley, naturally the windows have had only a cursory wash on the outside, but then the inside is not that clean either...

After a while even I get less interested in the landscape rolling by and resort to a book unless something catches my attention...

You can try sleeping of course but will be woken often as the carriage makes violent lurches over the uneven tracks....

And if you are at the front the driver is almost continuously sounding the horn on the train, although I must admit the horn is quite musical although why it has to be sounded almost continuously is beyond me.

Passing through the fields is a little like a journey in time.... Donkeys and carts and the occasional camel are the commonest form of transport and the agriculture is all manual labour, rarely will you see a tractor. And here's a little video for you!

                          

                                   

                                                    

Egypt Part The Third, A Day In Cairo And Buying a Rail Ticket

 Sometimes things in Egypt do not quite go according to plan, and in this instance it was the non arrival of my transit car ordered through the hotel.

At first I thought this might be because of my early arrival at the airport and the lack of other passengers meant that it took only 40 minutes to get through the airport so the car would turn up in its own time.

But the Egyptians are ever helpful and an official, yes really, an official taxi rep kindly phoned the hotel for me and finally got hold of the owner who admitted that he had forgotten to order my transfer, so my new found taxi rep offered to take me into Cairo at the same price, at which point I lied and said the hotel had quoted me US$20 when they had actually said US$25.

The traffic in Cairo has not got any better and I am surprised to see that there are many new infrastructure projects being started, but it is a shame that they haven't finished the older ones yet.

Indeed, Cairo must be quite high up on the list of most un-finished cities in the world. Or perhaps I mean one of the least finished cities in the world.

Why I expected things to be finished after a space of 3 years, or indeed, after a space of 5 years from first visit I really do not know.....

The taxi drops me on Talaat Haab roundabout and points across the road and tells me my hotel is in that building.

It isn't of course. It is actually the building next to where he dropped me off but it take me 20 minutes to find that out after I have dragged my bags across the square and back again.

I am pleased to find that I have not lost the art of crossing a Cairo street without getting run over... It is all about timing you see and adjusting your pace so that you cross one lane of traffic without getting run over by the next lane.

The hotel boasts that it has a lift, except that it does not come down to street level....

After trying several banks to change some cash, I finally find a packed ''exchange shop'' which does the transaction for me at a rate of 21.15 LE to GB£1...

And I still don't have a train ticket for my onward journey to Luxor the following day....

Egyptian National Railways has a web site that 'promises' that you can buy tickets online to save time at the station.

To date I have not heard of anybody having been able to open an account and do this, not even an Egyptian.

The only effective way of doing it is to go to the station which does present a problem because nobody seems to know where Rameses Station actually is, not even the taxi drivers.

After 40 minutes in a taxi going around in circles in the general area of the station we finally manage to home in on it although you can no longer drive up to the front door, presumably to stop the chaos that normally reigns with legal and illegal taxis blocking up the entrance. (Remember that I have been her before when I arrived on the overnight sleeper from Aswan 5 years ago).

My driver, who has done the strangest thing and has actually put the meter on, asks me to get out of the taxi about 400 metres away and charges me the princely sum of 50 LE, about £2.50 for the trip...

I have already written out my preferred train time, destination, and the 'train number' on a piece of paper to give to the ticket office clerk, (the ticket machines are not working), but that doesn't stop him querying every piece of information that I have put on the paper.

Twice.

Finally I get my ticket, first class leaving at 10 am the following morning and it costs me 145LE.

I will not go into details of the taxi ride back to my hotel, nor of my journey from the hotel to Ramsis Station the following morning except to say that an official taxi wanted 200 LE to take me because I had a bag, but a completely illegal taxi only wanted 100 LE.....

Everybody needs to visit Rameses Station, or indeed Ramsis Station.. In the past I have seen some spectacular stations but I think that Rameses is surpassed only by some stations in Russia and I have only ever seen photos of those.

I am not certain to what period the interior is supposed to belong....

Somewhere between Art Deco/Nouveau and a bad dream would probably be appropriate....

The Egyptian rail network is one of two things that the British gave to Egypt, the second being the original Aswan (Low) Dam. 

With a certain amount of self  interest the British took on the project to shorten communications between Europe, notably England, and its largest colony, India!

To a certain extent the building of the Suez Canal rather took away the need for the railway link as the French decided to get in on the act.....

Of course as you would expect, there is little point in watching the destination board on the main concourse waiting for a platform number for your train, instead I found somebody in a uniform who told me that it would be going from Platform 11 and was kind enough to guide me and actually carry my bags to the right place, and what's more he didn't even want a tip!!

That is a world first in Egypt where tipping is the norm.

So Here We Go With Egypt Part The Third In January 2022! Getting There.....

 For the last two years there has been nothing in the news apart from the Sars2-COVID19 scamdemic which has made travel well nigh impossible, has frightened people, and indeed, has governments around the world panicking and running around like headless chickens. We have had lockdowns which have apparently done little good except annoy people and we now have more people with paranoia than we do with COVID...... 

The media hasn't helped by publishing poor researched articles and using the statistics to sell newspapers rather than using them to show just what little effect it has had, and indeed it now appears that there is no such thing as ordinary flu which killed millions each year instead of which COVID kills them instead.....

During the last two years I have ''collected'' a number of flight vouchers as a result of flights being cancelled and rescheduled and now the time has come to use them because they are worth more as flights than the cash refund I can get, so the route for travelling is a little bit devious as I am currently in the UK using a ticket that I bought in January 2020 which is return from Athens to London Gatwick with good old Easyjet.

The flight vouchers I have are only usable with Aegean Air so the logical route is from London via Athens to Cairo... Of course I could fly on a cheapie with Easyjet to Hurghada or Sharm El Sheikh but that would mean buying yet another ticket, and flying from London to Cairo is out because of the price....

Leaving London on a grey drizzly Saturday gets to me to a not much warmer Athens where I stay overnight at the Holiday Inn which is considerably cheaper than the Sofitel at Athens Airport.

An early start in the pouring Greek rain after an almost sleepless night because of a thunderstorm gets to me to the departure gate for Cairo before many of the airport staff have even arrived for work!

And the flight to Cairo is almost empty...

Less than two hours sees me landing in Cairo where my request for assistance through the airport seems not have been received but Cairo airport is not huge.

And straight away there is a difference.... On the way through to Immigration there is a check point where they check vaccination certificates, currently there is no need for a pcr test if you have one of these.

Next the banks at the airport no longer change money, I really do not know why, and they only take money for the tourist visa.

But I already have my visa because you can now get a visa on line!!

On the flight they give you a PLF/Public Health Form to fill in, but nobody at Cairo airport seems the least bit interested in it so I leave the airport still holding it!

Some things do not change, and my passport gets checked twice more after immigration, and my bags are X rayed before leaving the terminal building...... But I have things to do so more tomorrow!

Karnak, The Temple of Amun, and Some Notes On The Nile Cruise

Returning from Aswan to Luxor is a leisurely affair. We have picked up passengers making the short trip back to Luxor, including some Australians from Melbourne, indeed it turns out that they live in Waverley, which is spitting distance from where my mother in law lives! This was the evening i decided to go for ''proper drinks'' rather than the unbranded stuff that you are allowed with the inclusive ''drinks package'', when I got the bill I decided I would probably not do that again. Our evening waiter left the cruise after the first five nights because he was going home on holidays, needless to say he left with a hefty tip from us on the English table.

And on the trip back we discovered that our guide has to ''sign off'' our food bill every evening, including the wine. Particularly the wine. I think he was a bit puzzled by the amount of it that we managed to consume, particularly as two of us were not one the ''drinks package''. Perhaps now he has had an insight into how sociable the British can be at the dinner table, and how chatty we get...

I have come to the conclusion that they should not try to do ''Western food'' on these ships, but having said that the breakfast and lunchtime buffets are amazing.

I tend to travel light these days and do a bit of laundry by hand until I found out how cheap the laundry service was on the ship, (I think that perhaps some of them might have laundry facilities?), wonderful service and everything came back ironed, even my socks! Well worth the money! 

There seems to be a competition going on to see which members of the crew can come up with the most amazing animals made out of towels and bed spreads.

On the way back to Luxor you get a chance to drive the ship! Apparently I was not very good at it....

Arriving back in Luxor the last two sites included in the cruise are Karnak and Luxor Temple....

I am giving Luxor Temple a miss because I want to visit the museum instead, and you can see enough temples on one lifetime.

Karnak is impressive, and of course, in ''Death On The Nile'' it is where the dislodged stone narrowly misses killing Lynette Doyle (nee Ridgeway), but seemingly it has other important features! Karnak is the largest temple complex is Egypt, and apparently the largest religious complex in the world. It has been destroyed, and rebuilt, refurbished and rebuilt, modified and rebuilt. Successive rulers have all added their own touches to it, and even when it fell into disuse for worshipping Egyptian gods, it was used by Christians... 



At Karnak you will find obelisks standing up, and obelisks lying down, columns of massive proportions, hieroglyphics in abundance,massive statues, and the first example ever of clerestory windows set high in the ''roof''...



Indeed everything you could want and far more than you can see in one visit, but them you are coming back aren't you??

My decision to go to the museum was a wise one i think, except that when I got there it was closed.



I missed the normal opening hours is the only reason, but never mind the market is close by.... Me and markets, it is worth the visit just to see how much, or how little you can get hassled!!

Our last night on board and under discussion is our onward travel the following morning. One of us was a last minute booking who flew direct from the UK to Luxor and is returning the same way. The two couples came via Cairo, as did I, but the are flying back from Luxor direct to the UK.



 And me? Ever the difficult one, I am taking the train back to Aswan. The guide asks me if I have got a ticket, to which the answer is no, I am going to book it on line tonight. It seems it is better to go to the station, which is no far away, and do it in person.

No sooner said than done he arranges for one of the crew to go to the station and get me a ticket. There are regular trains from Luxor and the go-for calls the guide and says what time do I want to go, late morning would be ideal as the trip takes 3 hours and gets me there for about the right time to check into my hotel....



 But there is a plus in sending somebody Egyptian to get the ticket, because as you have already found out (if you are an independent traveler), there is an Egyptian price and a tourist price for a lot of things including the train! So my train ticket comes out at the Egyptian price.... You just have to hope that nobody notices!!



 The following morning I am packed and ready to go, having made new friend on Facebook, and Whatsapp,
my bags are whisked away, and I am taken shoreside and put into the oldest Peugeot car I have ever seen in my life. I think they only thing that was holding it together was the paint, and that was beginning to go in places. The trip to the station takes all of five minutes, and on arrival I pay the driver, and already my bags and ticket have been whisked away by a man of indeterminate age assisted by a boy who cannot be much more than 10. Inside the station they have already checked my bag through the scanner and are waiting for me on the other side of the barrier, except I don't have my ticket but it doesn't matter because the man on the barrier knows I am with them.

Fully expecting to be left on the platform with my luggage, but no they wait until the train comes and bundle me and luggage on to the train and into a seat in completely the wrong carriage but it seems that doesn't matter either.

And we are off........