Egypt Part The Third 2022 - A Trip To The Market.

I have given u trying to catch up on the blogs that were missed for now, so on with the current stuff and then the rest will follow out of chronological order and you will never know!

When i said i wanted to go to the market everybody thought I just wanted to get the ferry cross the River to the souk to buy a bit of fruit and veg and maybe some spices...

No I want to go to a proper market where they sell camels and horses and animals..

Really??      Yes really.

I don't know why anybody should think it strange that I can milk a cow, or that I want to know how much a camel costs.

Or why I should even be interested in farm animals, but surely I am not the only person who has lived on a farm for a few years, or indeed there must be many that own farms in other countries who might be interested.

After a bit of discussion it seems that the best/nearest livestock market to go to is at Armant about 20kms south of Luxor. For a really big camel market you need to go down to Aswan which is a bit too far... In fact the market is not in Armant at all but to the west almost in the hills and right on the edge of the agricultural belt.

Armant is about centre in the map with the little blue marker..

Map courtesy of Google of course...

So I am up bright an early to leave at 6 am, I should have known that not a lot was going to happen going to happen at that time of day except breakfast...

A couple of wrong turns later and we finally got there, and the easiest way to show you is with a bit of video
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And it was just what I expected... In a lot of ways it was just like an English livestock market with lots of farmers sitting around drinking tea, (instead of beer), and more than likely discussing the weather and the price of oats and note the almost total lack of 'western' clothing, out here not a lot has changed for a thousand years, except of course they now have a lot more water for crops....

Exceptionally though there was not an auctioneer, everything is sold by battering for it....

And how strange the breeds are compared to the ones we see in Europe... Some might say the cattle are underfed but you see them chomping their way through food and realise they are not underfed it is just the way they are.

Donkeys there are aplenty, at a price...

Camels are worth a lot more than donkeys and indeed horses so a man's wealth can genuinely be calculated by the number of camels he has!

Junior here wanted to demonstrate that he can milk a cow..... But as it was a heifer I don't think he would get a lot out of it.

And in aisle 3, we have these... And I don't think these are donkeys... I think they are either mules or hinnies.

In the absence of any form of pens except a low row of rocks to keep the animals off the carpets nearly everything is 'hobbled' which looks a bit cruel but they don't use rope and it does solve the problem of the animals wandering off!

Goats and sheep are in aisle 1...

Titch on the right has just been sold along with one of his siblings for a total of 3200 EGP about £80 each, which I thought was quite expensive... The 'boy' tells me this is a sheep but it isn't, it's a goat...

And some very cute goats here as well, quite ornamental in fact. Oh dear admiring goats means I have lived on Crete for too long....

Get a camera out in Egypt and you are never short of a subject, this one on the right should go far, he seemed to think his picture was worth 10EGP, but all he got for his trouble was a clip around the ear from his father for pestering the tourist.

       

And some people, below, do not look too thrilled by the idea of market day...

And finally the ''tea tent''.. An important place for meeting friends and chewing the fat over a cup of tea and a shisha...

Egypt Part The Third 2022 - Did You Miss Me, Moving House, Bureaucracy... And Why There Have Been No Updates!

 I make no apologies, let's just say that 'things' were against me and the modern technology failed!

So my previous accommodation was supposed to have WiFi, well to be honest it did have WiFi but no internet which by the boss's own admission was because he hadn't paid the bill, but I don't really think he meant to tell me that....

I was due to leave Egypt on 4th February which was allowing for a couple of days delay because of COVID/civil unrest/earthquakes, and possibly because my 30 day visa was due to expire on 8th February....

Now having mentioned this to a couple of people they told me that as I was over 60 I didn't need a visa.... Although it pained me to admit that I was indeed over 60, although I only look 35, I decided to investigate further and went to the visa office to inquire if this was true....

Needless to say the man behind the desk, who I only waited 5 minutes to see, a plus there for the Egyptian Civil Service, looked a bit vague and then gave me a piece of paper, written in Arabic, which told me what to do.... Really useful huh??

And with the rider that I should get the paperwork done tomorrow, Friday, and come in on Saturday before 11am.

As I had no intention of staying in the same apartment if I could extend my stay, I went to see somebody else about a nice little apartment they were doing up when I was last here. Showing him the piece of paper I had been given he assured me this, (whatever this means!), is quite normal and come back tomorrow and we can sort it out.

I duly arrived at his house at 8 am on a Friday armed with passport and various other bits of paper and not enough money... As it turned out.. We then proceeded to go to a government office of some sort, which only takes cash.... I will not go into detail of how much this cost because it wasn't a lot, but was then ushered in to an office with my prospective landlord, and an English speaking tour guide as witness, to meet an older civil servant who knew what was needed but had trouble getting the computer keyboard into Latin characters... The end result was this piece of paper

Just in case you think I have got it upside down because it is 'right justified' remember that Arabic script reads from right to left, indeed if you look carefully you can see my name written ''correctly'', Christian name first reading right to left... But then came the surprise bit... Fingerprints!! I acutally signed my name because I can, but I still had to fingerprint it... Egyptians, (and presumably other Arabic nations) have to fingerprint documents because you cannot sign your name in Arabic script because.... Wait for it... It will just look like Arabic script... Officials and people that think they are really important do 'invent' signatures, you can see an example here from the man in the office bottom left.. but otherwise it's a thumbprint for everyone.

And the end result? well it rather precludes doing anything on the internet that requires signing doesn't it??

Of course if you ever see an Egyptian with a blue thumb, you know what he has been doing!

Now i was going to rush off to the passport office early on Saturday because this piece of paper is 'time limited' but somebody said leave it til Sunday... A government office is open on Sunday?/ Really?

Yes really, well the Law Courts next door are open so why not the Passport Office..

Now bear in mind that my original enquiry was to whether I actually needed a visa because I was over 60, and I assumed that what I had now would give me that visa... Wrong... Yes I can get another visa but it will cost me £85.... 

But wait, there is a British woman next to me asking the same thing and she has already been there once and they have told her, 'No you don't need a visa because you are over 60''

''Can I have that on a piece of paper please.'' She asks.

''No'' The man says.

''Why not''.... And so on. It turns out it's in ''the rules'' that you don't need a visa over the age of 60, and apparently everybody that needs to know about it, like the men at the airport, knows about it....

So that's that sorted out... Hopefully I will not get arrested when I try to leave. I did ask the man dealing with me why I was being charged £85 when I didn't need a new visa, and basically I would only need it if I was buying a house, wanted to open a bank account, or wanted a phone contract... That is something very official, but as it happens I got a short term mobile phone contract before my visa 'expired'....

Which brings me nicely to the point where I have moved to somewhere with no internet at all... And move I have done into the village away from the Nile where it is no quieter than the riverbank and there is a stables with the gentle smell of horse wafting around, (but that applies to everywhere around here), and there is a bakery the other side of my front wall so I wake to the smell of fresh bread in the morning, and they make pastries...

Some photos of the new pad which is very cosy, and a lot more comfortable than the other place... And as I was having to use mobile data for blogging is a lot cheaper now I have bought an Egyptian SIM!!

You can't really complain when you are only paying £10 a night can you....

And did I mention pastries?? There is a bakery across the road from my new accommodation...

These are, of course, part of my five a day...

So that has brought you, if not the rest of the blog up to date, and I am now leaving on 22nd February......

And blogging will continue shortly....

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....