Sightseeing in Luxor - fo' real - 3rd Feb 2002
More antiquity visiting was called for and so we reached for our Luxor guide and cross referenced it with the recommendations of the Lonely Planet. Out of the complicated calculations involving opening times, costs, distances away from a central point, we came up with a simple plan. Valley of the Kings and the tombs of Nakt and Mena.
Valley of the Kings was absolutely heaving. At the Valley of the Queens, there had been about 6 other people and this was something of a shock. It was obvious, really, that because all of the day trip buses have to travel in convoy, they all arrive at the same time and create a huge logjam. If you wait about half an hour, they have all completed the visit to VOK and headed off to the next sight, leaving tumbleweed blowing around in their wake.
On the recommendations of others, we used our three-tomb allocation judiciously and tried to get a cross section of the dynasties and styles of tombs. The painting is as one would expect. The Egyptian style is well known. In the last tomb, however, (Tuthmosis 111) the decoration is in more of a Lowry vein. The supposed reason for this is that the decoration was all done during the 70 days that were allowed for the pickling of his soft organs and whatever after he had passed away. It made a nice change.
On to the tombs of the nobles and leaving the tour buses behind we headed back down the valley. The lack of tourists to these relics has pros and cons. Pros are that there aren't heaving numbers of people and cons are that prodigious hawkers attach themselves to you and will not go away. Three little girls ran along with us waving various souvenirs at us, on quite a cheery but unwaning way. Leaving our followers at the door we went into the first tomb - Nakt, which had been wowed on about in the book, but frankly was nothing special. However the illustrations were much more realistic and less formalised than the pharaoh's tombs. The second, Meena, was better. A little scene rather amused me, of a cat frightening duck whilst a mouse was onlooking. Showing a certain amount of humour which was missing in the more prestigious tombs. The tomb had no artificial light and the guard had arranged a clever set up with tinfoil to reflect the sunlight into the tomb. This obviously meant a demand for the ubiquitous baksheesh.
It had disturbed me that in the tombs there are labels everywhere saying 'no flash photography', but the guards were quite happy to ignore the preservation of these antiquities for a certain fee. The humidity created by huge numbers of tourists and the grubby (mostly Egyptian) fingers marks on the paintings suggest that they will not be with us for long. We have heard from a chap at the hotel the fragments of the paintings are also being illegally sold after being hacked off the walls by children. Sadly it seems that the need to make money here, means that locals are willing to jeopardise the treasures that create the tourism. In further conversation the Canadian who was studying in Egypt suggested that the reason that there was no forward planning is the ethos of 'Ensalah' - God's will. Prior to coming to Egypt I felt it was terrible that their treasures are held in Paris , London and, God forbid, even Bolton Museum, but now seeing the damp blistering paintwork and walls smeared with years of touristy hands, maybe it is only right that some is protected for the future.
Outside the tomb our little gathering of children was awaiting us, and as they prattled on trying to persuade us to buy something I tried to think of what we could give them that was not money. We do not like to give money and encourage a culture of tourists being moneybags to squeeze. So while Pat kept them in conversation, I rummaged in my bag for some bits of paper. All I could find was the tickets we had used, so I busily started making tiny flapping birds for them in origami. By the time we reached the bike I had only made one and had another 2 to do, and the children waited expectantly. The tourist police were not happy and seemed agitated that they could not just bully the kids off. I was pleased that the children left with smiles on their faces with their new toys.
Its difficult to know how best to deal with the grabbing children. I remember the old fella telling us about giving sticky stars to Indian children and then others wanting pens. The only trouble with joining in with this is that everyone else gets hassled for the same things. Do the children, here, now demand origami sculptures of all the tourists? Where does it stop?
We stopped in for a bit of tucker at a favourite haunt of ours. It seems to be about the only rustic out in the sunlight kind of eatery around. Quite reminiscent of some Greek tavernas. Mohamed, for he is the proprietor, serves up filling meals of salad, bread, rice, vegetables and assorted meat for a good price. Today we decided to forgo the meat as it was truly a bit overfacing. I think coupled with the reduction of the meal by this small item, our conversation with him previously, which had been rather charming, led to the bill being cut down to an even more acceptable level.
As we said a bit earlier, we got talking with a fascinating young Canadian lad. He was Chinese Vancouvrian who spoke no Chinese (after only one generation) but was hugely in favour of immigrants maintaining their culture.. His opinions of harmonious integration of races and immigration policies were very thought provoking. He has spent a long time in Egypt studying Arabic and travelled extensively in the Middle East. He was a fund of knowledge about the Palestine situation and reckons that Syria is the up and coming country. We shall see.