FIGJAM'S Epic Adventure: Egypt Tour, Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut and Karnak

5/9/09

2000 (local time)

Another Early Wake Up! I'm ON HOLIDAY! GIVE ME A BREAK!

So this morning we got up early so we could go to Valley of the Kings and try to avoid the brutal heat of Egyptian Sun. When we got there, we realised we were unable to take any photos, and if they saw your camera it was a 50LE FINE (10$AUD) in reality just another way for the cheeky Egyptians to rip another tourist off. Valley of the Kings was amazing. The colour still on the tombs was still bright and colourful. Its unable to explain what it looked like, but I bought a bunch of post cards for a good price of 5 or 10LE, I cant remember, that shows you how colourful it looked. We visited all the different kings tombs and saw different types of designs and colour.

After we visited the Valley of the Kings, we went to Temple of Hatshepsut in Deir el-Bahri, didn’t really get much of an understanding of this temple but it made for some good photos.

According to Wikipedia, was the fifth pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty of Ancient Egypt. She is generally regarded by Egyptologists as one of the most successful pharaohs, reigning longer than any other woman of an indigenous Egyptian dynasty. PRETTY COOL EY!

After that, we then drove some more (mite I ad, everyone was absolutely buggered) we went too Karnak Temple Complex and saw all the different temples that worshipped all the different kings and pharaohs from all the different dynasties. What I did remember about this, was that they build the temples from the inside-out. So what is in the middle of the temple is the oldest and what is on the outside was the newest. This complex is a massive open air museum and (according to Wikipedia) is the largest ancient religious site in the world, and is the second most historical site in Egypt.

What makes this temple so amazing as well, is how long it has been in construction for. Approximately 30 Pharaohs have contributed to it, for this reason it is so big!

At the entrance of the Hypostyle Hall in Karnak Temple, there were so many columns, in fact there are 134 massive columns arranged in 16 rows, and to this day, scientist cannot figure out how they got them all in there and standing. Its like a forest of columns! The photos will show you what I mean.

We then saw the sacred lake of Amun-Re, she drank thinking it was blood, but infact it was water, and then the tour group walked around this rock in a clockwise rotation 7 times, in order to give you good luck. It wasn’t good luck for me, as I had my first blow out in my thongs! Not a good sign!

We were all happy to get on the bus and get back to our 5 star hotel to get some sleep and rest up for the massive train ride back to Cairo that night.

Wish me luck!