Showing posts with label Valley of the Kings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Valley of the Kings. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Valley of the Kings

This trip outside Luxor was 210 Egyptian pounds each ~ approximately 35 euros, and it included a guide, a driver and a small bus - with good air-conditioning - essential against the 35-40 degrees felt in the desert.
In this particular case, the heat was not the only issue to take into account, but also the amount of light that forced us to keep the eyes half closed - when not wearing sun glasses.

Our guide was a young Egyptian woman, who is planning to spend the honeymoon in Romania, thanks to some old Romanian friends she has. What a coincidence.. maybe we'll meet again in august when she comes to Bucharest.

The trip itself felt a bit dry, half because of the constant need of water to compensate for the losses, and the other half because the three tombs we visited - were obviously empty.
The old drawings and the stories compensated for the most part though.

Andra just interrupted to tell me that the mountains seen through the window, look like a box of icecream from which someone took a few bites. Nice comparison... Maybe I'll ask her to continue this post since I currently lack the creativity :)

Back to the Valley of the Kings: I saw in a forum post, a reply saying something like "if you don't visit this place, you should have your passport revoked"..
I'll say that for the tombs we saw, it wasn't that impressive and mandatory.
It was definitely worth it for the history, but hardly anything to see inside, no photos allowed and amazingly hot & suffocating in the tombs - making the outside temperature feel like a breeze (it's curious how we rapidly change the perspective on things - even about the scorching desert heat).

The valley itself was interesting too - with its configuration and many tombs, but with a commercial feel as well, mainly because of the new things build around the tombs, and the touts that crossed the mountain into the valley - to avoid being catch by police.

It's probably best to visit the valley in a colder season, so that you can enjoy everything without being chased away by the high temperatures from the summer time.