We reached Luxor, Egypt – our destination after the Nile cruise. It was evening and the orange setting sun covered the city with a very warm and welcoming vibe. It was a lot cleaner than Cairo and far less crowded. 

Luxor, known in ancient Egypt as Waset and later Thebes, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It was the capital of Upper Egypt at a time when Egypt was split into two kingdoms. Today, it is called the largest open-air museum in the world as it is home to temples, tombs, monuments and giant statues.

We headed to the Luxor temple. The promenade near the temple, called the Luxor corniche, was beautifully landscaped and would make for a nice evening walk.

We entered the temple and spotted an obelisk. Our guide, Karma, told us that there were originally two obelisks here – one of them was gifted to the French and could be seen at Place de la Concorde. Regular readers of this blog would have encountered these obelisks in many of our other trips – like the one in the Vatican, Istanbul and Paris (blog coming soon). 

The temple had statues of Ramses II, Tutankhamun and his wife. The temple was dedicated to the sun god, Amun. The statues of Ramses depicted different stages of his life – one was made for every 10 years that he ruled. 

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