Rachel's donkey took off to the front from the very start. Undoubtedly it could sense its rider's restlessness and desire to see her beloved king without delay.

The rest of us gave eager pursuit. After all, our destination was the Valley of the Kings, the site of at least 60 royal tombs from the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt.

Our donkey renters quided us amongst the villages on the west side of the Nile, ushering us to the right whenever a taxi or tour bus came up from behind. We weren't always only the passees, though, as the villagers' donkeys pulled heavier loads and moved slower. One such cart, laden with crops, proved irresistable to Felicity's donkey, who pulled off to the side for a quick snack. This amusing diversion later turned out to be an incredibly clever plan on the part of the donkey.

As we slowly neared our destination, the grade got steadily steeper and the roads began to wind. There being only one way up to the entrance, though, we still had to contend with the tour buses. One moment, when we were being passed on the left as another bus came ripping down around the bend, elicited yipes from some of the girls. Frankly, just another day on the roads in Egypt.

Once our goal was in sight, we all began to goad our steeds (nobly carrying our feet a full 6 inches off the ground) ahead. A little friendly competition never hurts, and sometimes having the cleverest donkey is the best strategy. Felicity proved this by arriving first.

Saleh met us there, and gave us a rundown of the five tombs we were to visit. The hyroglyphs and reliefs carved into the walls and ceilings still bore an incredible amount of their stunningly colourful 3000-year-old paint. Of course, to keep it that way, no photos were allowed.

An incredible hallway in a side chapel of the Medinat Habu temple, on the west bank of Luxor. The hall wound around an inner sanctuary in a horshoe sense, with a width of no more than 2 feet, and hyroglyphs stretching from ceiling to floor in columns packed in ways that would make sardines claustrophobic.




Some colour preserved on outdoor reliefs in Medinat Habu. In most temples, all the colours have faded or eroded down to the stone.




Standing guard at Hatshepsut's (Egypt's female pharaoh) Mortuary Temple




Among the ruins, trying to gauge the size of Rameses II's ego (that's one of his old collapsed statues, of himself of course, with his head behind me and my hand on his shoulder)

-"Hey! Hello! Where you from?"

-"Canada."

-"Oh! Canada Dry! Canada Dry!"

Saleh was born in the village of Karnak in 1943. At that point, the village still existed because the excavation of the temple was still under way, with about ten years to go.



"I live here. And my great great great grandfather lived here. The ancient egyptians were my great great great great great ancestors."

He spoke in a measured, lyrical voice which invited your attention. "Here we are at the last gate of the Temple Karnak. Your books will not tell you about the last gate. They say it is the first gate. But a temple is built from the inside outwards, so really it was the last gate." For something that was built and expanded over the span of about 2 millenia, and ended up covering more than a square kilometer, I suppose he has a point.



"Please sit down," he asked us at one point. "I just showed you the statue of the boy king, Tutankhamun. Do you want to hear his story?" We nodded agreement. "The story of Tutankhamun is on the rock on which I am sitting, because I will pull it out of my ass."

The morning passed quickly, but not in the sense that it was rushed. Saleh insisted we put away our cameras while he told us the stories, to keep us focused and let us actually soak in the details. There was still plenty of time for photos too, though, so we never felt cheated from either perspective.



The portion of the temple that had the most profound impact on me was the "forest of columns," as Saleh called it. Stacked so closely together that the only clear lines of sight are directly down the halls at whose intersection you are standing, and yet it still has an open and airy feeling as you move freely about it. It was large enough too (about the size of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris) to find a secluded corner away from all the fellow tourists and just soak for a few minutes.



"Hello, yes. Come closer please. Hello, Ladies! Mother, daughter, Mr. John..." Saleh had a sense of humour and a particular fondness for nicknames. "You may call me Ramses 99. Yes, and you will be Nefertari 99," he offered to Rachel.



From left to right...
Back row: Derrick, Mervyn, Monica, Saleh ("Ramses 99"), Rachel ("Nefertari 99"), myself, Jenny ("Mother"), John ("Mr. John"), Sarah;
Front row: Eliza, Jasmine, Kristen, Felicity ("Daughter"), Kay, Art, Lesley.

A few pics from Giza from yesterday:




One of those typical shots of the Giza plateau. If you've ever seen a postcard or a book or a show or a drawing or a t-shirt or a keychain from Egypt, you've probably seen this angle before. I wish I was the first person to take this photo, in which case I could be making money off royalties. Instead, I'm approximately the 529,492,260th person.




Someone just left a big pile of blocks here. I imagine they were planning on using them to build something, but must have never got around to it...




Chris attempting (ok fine, pretending) to climb said pile of blocks




Hanging with my bud, Sphinxy

Two questions that have plagued mankind since the dawn of time... ok, fine... two questions that have plagued Chris since yesterday:

1. What should 4500 year old dust smell like?
2. What would a mummy taste like?

1. I've had the opportunity to climb through two pyramids, one yesterday and another today. You always hear about how they're not for the claustrophobic. Granted. What I've never heard about before is the smell...

First of all, there is no unique pyramid smell. The Red Pyramid yesterday had such a potent dust in the air, it almost had a biting quality to it, like ammonia. Climbing down, down, down, it slowly gets stronger and stronger. Finally, the burial chamber is bearable for at most a couple minutes. I guess in this early form of architecture, they did not really worry too much about ventilation (the interred pharoahs being more than happy with the 'none' variety... well at least I've never heard about them having filed any complaints).

Today's pyramid, the pyramid of Khefre (the second Pyramid of Giza), was somewhat easier on the nostrils, although was more exercise for the back. Being bigger (and thus allowing for a burial chamber deeper in), meant you had to climb down and down, but then also back up for a while before reaching the end. The stillness and staleness of the air was still quite palpable... I'm guessing the different smell, though, is because they used a different type of rock when they started building the Great Pyramids at Giza.

2. Today, after Giza, we also visited the Egyptian Musuem in Cairo. There we had the opportunity to see the famous Royal Mummies. The most impressive and most exposed (many were shrouded in linen to reveal only the head and feet) of them was that of Rameses II. As I've been learning, and as I hope I'll have a chance to share in future posts, this guy made sure everything attached to his name was ridiculously impressive, so it's only fitting that his mummy should be no different.

Anyway, as far as the mummy itself, how to describe it... let me just say I'll never look at smoked and cured meats quite the same way again.

Well, I think I'm finally over the jet-lag and the culture shock.

I had a really nice Egyptian moment the other night while I waited for my bus back to Cairo. I sat and waited at a little cafe by the bus terminal. I was definitely the only tourist there, and it was nice to see Egyptians just being Egyptians... greeting one another very affectionately, chattering away over mint tea and sheesha pipes, and eating fuul (a delicious bean paste served in a pita bun, with some spicy pickled vegetable on the side... for about 20 cents CDN).

There's a real danger when travelling to only encounter the locals in a touristic context (i.e. they are taking you somewhere or trying to sell you something... one very friendly gentleman on my first night in Cairo started off very conversationally, welcoming me to Cairo, inquiring about Canada... etc... turned out to be an extremely polite and yet coercive papyrus sales technique). On the other hand, the waiter at the cafe was genuinely just looking for a chat (and maybe an opportunity to practice his english).

"You are only second person I meet from Canada. The first one was a very beautiful woman. The second is a very... polite man."

Step by step guide to building pyramids:

Step 1: Start with steps



The Step Pyramid of Djoser (aka Zoser... how dare these Egyptians have names that predate the invention of the Latin alphabet by thousands of years, thus making it mildly inconvenient for me to write about them?) is basically the oldest major stone structure in the world (over 4700 years old!). It's about as tall as a 15-storey building.

Step 2: Figure out which building materials to use



After completing the main structure, the ancient Egyptians began experimenting with covering the jagged blocks with form-fitted ones. In this case, they didn't make it very far up yet.

Step 3: Don't just put stones over top a pile of sand



Some of the pyramids they experimented with used mudbricks for the interior, instead of stone blocks throughout. This turned out not to stand the test of time...

Step 4: Get your angles straight



The Bent Pyramid... this first attempt at a "true" pyramid had to be readjusted partway, presumably because of stability issues due to too steep an angle.


Step 5: Start thinking big



The Red Pyramid is hailed as the first time they perfected the art of pyramid building. At about 25 storeys tall, this thing is getting big. When I walked up to it at first, though, I wasn't as impressed as I thought I'd be. I suppose it's because I've seen many other taller things in my day, and it's not trivial to put yourself in the mindset of someone from 4600 years ago and imagine how small it must have made them feel.

However, my viewpoint changed when I tried to snap a picture of it. I stood back and... well, that won't fit in the viewfinder... ok, take a few more steps back and... nope, not even close... about 100 meters back and... geez, I guess not...

The picture above gives you a bit of an idea, with the busload of tourists climbing up to the entrance for the sole purpose of providing a scale for my shot ;)

Step 6: Start thinking even bigger

Tomorrow we're off as a group to the Great Pyramids at Giza. Stay tuned...