(Last Updated on Apr 6, 2024)

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. 

The sun rays filtered in through the pillars giving the entire place an ethereal feel.

A lot of paint on the original carvings was still preserved. Here again, we saw that many faces and bodies had been disfigured and destroyed by the Coptic Christians. There was also a portion of wall that was completely plastered over and filled with paintings done by them – it looked oddly out of place inside this Egyptian temple. Inside the inner sanctuary, there was a separate smaller room for the king, Alexander (yes, the Great!) to offer his prayers. Despite being Greek, he ruled Egypt as a pharaoh, respecting their gods and traditions. We explored the chambers trying to decode the hieroglyphs and stories that the ancient Egyptians had left behind for us to discover. 

As the sun set, we went to the Luxor bazaar for some souvenir shopping. Armed with a bunch of pyramids and tiny collectibles for our showcase back home, we headed back to our cruise for dinner.

There was a belly dance performance happening after dinner – we spent a few minutes watching it and then retired to our room.

We love reading your comments – leave them below if you enjoy reading our blog. Also consider subscribing, it’s free!

Day 5

We pulled back the curtains in our room to reveal the mountains on the West Bank of Luxor. There was something floating in the air – hot air balloons! It looked dream-like and amazing. Sadly, it was a hazy morning and the view would not have been great from up there – we were glad we didn’t wake up at 3am and go for it.

We had to check out of our room before leaving for the day’s sightseeing. We had breakfast, left our bags on board and proceeded.

Karma and our driver were waiting and soon, we set off to visit the Valley of the Kings and Queens on the West Bank. We passed through many fields of sugarcane and a few small villages. The Bajaj 3-wheeler auto had completely taken over Egypt – it was everywhere! 

Randomly, in the middle of a clearing, we spotted two giant statues – the Colossi of Memnon! Work was still under way to dig out the remains and assemble the old temple that the Colossi were part of.

Our guide Karma told us that all the kings made temples and their tombs on the west bank – the logic followed was that the sun rises in the east – so people lived in the east bank and it set on the west – so they put their tombs where the sun died. Another reason was the arid and raised landscape – it was far away from the reach of the flooding Nile and with hardly any moisture – would preserve the tombs for eternity. 

The roads started winding around the hill and we reached the Valley of the Kings. Over 60 tombs were discovered in this region – the last of which was the famous Tutankhamun from 1922. Our entry ticket gave us access to three tombs – Ramses IV, Ramses IX and Merenptah. We paid extra to gain access to Tut’s tomb. 

There was a small train from the main gate to the tombs. The landscape was as arid as it could be and we could only imagine how hot it would get during the summer. We first entered the tomb of Ramses IV. We were amazed with what we saw – it was colorful! This is how all the temples and structures would have looked had the paint not weather away over thousands of years! The entire length from the entrance to the sarcophagus was filled with colorful engravings about the king’s life, offerings to Gods, Anubis doing the mummification – all under the watchful gaze of sky goddess Nut. 

The tomb of Merenptah was much longer, with a couple of chambers in between. The longer the reign of the pharaoh, the deeper his tomb – in fact, they would start constructing the tomb during the king’s reign and keep at it till his death. Also, a longer reign meant more treasures and items inside the tomb. The lighting inside the tombs illuminated the colours beautifully and this gave a whole new life to the Egyptian history we had seen so far. It was like we were watching a black and white movie so far and suddenly we saw a color version of it! After all, the world was not really black and white then!

Up next was the famous King Tut – the corridor was really short – given that he wasn’t even in his twenties when he died. And it was a sudden death – so he was hastily buried inside another king’s burial chamber. I guess that’s why it was undiscovered for so long. Raiders did not realise that there was a second tomb and Howard Carter later discovered it. As you enter the tomb, there is a board which details all the items that were discovered there. These are now housed in the Egyptian museum in Cairo (which we will see in the next blog).

We entered the first chamber and felt someone on our left. We turned to see a mummy looking at us! It was Tut, preserved perfectly with all of his features. Over 3300 years from his rule, ancient Egyptians had successfully preserved everything! On the right, we saw a huge sarcophagus and a smaller room which contained all of Tut’s belongings. Everything discovered here, except for the mummy, was kept in the Cairo museum. We exited and went to our car. It had been a crazy trip to the past walking into those tombs. 

We then went to the other side of the mountain to the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut. The Queen ruled as a King in the stead of Thutmose III, who was too young at the time. One of her biggest achievements was that she brought in trade in a large way to Egypt. It was almost noon and the sun was beating down on us – it was much hotter than the banks of Nile which was only a few kilometres away. The temple had engravings of Queen Hatshepsut’s trade journeys on boats. Most of her statues were destroyed by Thutmose III who believed that she got power hungry and usurped the throne from him. 

The Queen wanted to be buried in the Valley of Kings alongside her father and other great pharaohs. She was denied this because she was a woman. The smart woman that she was, she got a tomb dug deep from her temple which secretly extended all the way to the Valley of the Kings on the other side. Clever way to make her point and have the last laugh! 

We then headed back to Luxor town and had lunch at a restaurant near the Luxor temple – a simple meal of rice and chicken. After lunch, we went to the masterpiece of Luxor – the Karnak temple. The temple complex is gigantic! There are contributions made by pharaohs over decades with each one adding his own element. The innermost temple was the most ancient and subsequent kings made hypostyle halls (with pillars covering them) and pylons going outwards from the centre.

We again saw obelisks and were told that one of them had been moved to the Vatican and another to Istanbul. We explored the entire complex – super tiring in the afternoon heat – we would recommend an evening visit. 

In one corner, we spotted a huge scarab statue – it was said that circling it a certain number of times would bring good luck. We circled it hoping that our trip would continue to be as good as it had been so far. I’m not sure we got the number of circles right given how our next day went (check out the next blog).

We were done for the day and headed back to the cruise. As we had already checked out of our room, we could only spend time in the lobby and up on the deck. Many others who were part of the cruise were also whiling away time on the deck waiting for the same train. 

The temperature dropped sharply after the sun went down. Around 9pm, our driver Mustafa came to pick us up and dropped us at the Luxor station. Mustafa knew barely a few words of English – yet we had an interesting conversation about Bollywood, Hrithik Roshan and traffic in Cairo vs Luxor. His warm smile and friendliness despite not sharing a common language left a lasting impression on us. These are the moments which make us realize that we are all the same! 

The train station reminded us of those back home in India. We had to wait over an hour for our train as we had arrived early. The train was an AC Sleeper VIB train mainly used by tourists. We got a private coupe which was like a tiny room with even a wash basin inside. As soon as the train left, we were served dinner – turmeric rice with meat curry, French fries, chickpeas and a mandarin orange. We had a coach attendant serving us who also helped us set up our beds. We felt like we were on the Orient Express! And with that, we moved on to see the most ancient site on our trip – the Great Pyramids!

Check out the other Egypt blogs here:

• The Egypt Itinerary – Plan your perfect trip to the land of the pharaohs!
• The Southern Tip of Egypt – Abu Simbel – our “Woah” moment of the trip
• Going on a Nile Cruise like a Pharaoh – Experiencing the longest river in the world
• The Pyramids of Giza and Cutting a Cake in Cairo – Celebrating Nam’s birthday at the Pyramids

If you have any questions on how to plan your trip, leave a comment below and we’ll be happy to help. Do subscribe to the blog if you like the content. You can also share it with fellow travel enthusiasts.