Author: Neera

I am back from my trip but the euphoria of my visit to lands rich in history and unmatched experiences still there. My flow of writing got interrupted because of a lack of easy Wifi availability in Egypt. For the next few days, I am going to tell all those stories which are bubbling in me.

From Luxor, we took four nights cruise to Ashwan, a bustling city in upper Egypt. The beauty of the Nile is to be seen to be believed. Particularly in the background of the desert, the cool, calm and ever-flowing water of Nile is a better sight than any oasis one could imagine.

The room in the boat was beyond our expectations. Almost to the size of a hotel room, it had a king bed, a lounge, and a full-size window that could be opened to let the breeze in.

Once we passed the bustling banks of Luxor the smaller villages started to appear showing the real-life around the ancient river.

A little later we saw a show of our lifetime. A few boats started following the boat to sell merchandise. The skillful vendors threw ropes to hitchhike a ride with the boat while precisely throwing their merchandise to the uppermost deck where we were enjoying the sunset and a cup of tea. It was a spectacle never to be forgotten.

We haggled on the price in the noise of the boat engine and threw back the dresses (and towels and Egyptian cotton bedsheets) when the prices were not agreed. One of the dresses fell in the water which upset me a lot thinking that the poor vendor probably occurred more loss than gain.

Our guide assured me that they will recover the dress even if it had flown miles down in the river. “Don’t worry,” said our guide, “even if you throw them the money and a fish swallows it, they will find the fish and recover the money.”

We sailed for a few hours and then anchored at night in Edfu, a town famous for the Edfu temple. In the morning we visited the temple on a horse carriage.

Each temple has almost the same structure and almost the same relics – purification of the king, crowing of the king, the king making offerings to the gods, the gods presenting the king with the key of life. We also learned that each place has its own god, or rather the family of gods – the male god, the female god and the son god. The god of Edfu was Horus the falcon-headed god (the god of protector of the ruler of Egypt), who is the son of Osiris (the god of dead and underworld) and Isis (the goddess of life and magic).

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The temple was the ‘home’ and cultural center of the falcon god Horus of Behdet (the ancient name for Edfu) and remains one of the best-preserved temples. Outside the temple was a big stable for horsecarts a means for cashing in on tourism.

Once back onboard, we continued sailing to Kom Ombo, another town by the river, where we visited the Temple of Kom Ombo dedicated to Sobek the crocodile god and Horus the falcon-headed god.

The temple occupies a stunning location overlooking the Nile but most of its front pylon and pillars were chopped off to provide stone for the construction of a sugar mill nearby at the orders of Ottoman ruler Mohamad Ali Pasha in the nineteenth century. It is the same ruler who gave the Luxor Temple Obeslick to the French King Louise Philippe in exchange for a mechanical clock that didn’t even work and is still mounted on a terrace of Mohamad Ali mosque in Cairo.

Muhamad Ali was also going to use the stone from the Great Pyramid of Cairo for construction of other buildings but fortunately for Egyptians, the cost of cutting the stones from the pyramids was much more than sourcing them from the querries.

The fact is that most of the Egyptians didn’t know the value of their heritage until about two hundred years ago. It was when Napolean defeated Ottomans and occupied Egypt, Rosetta stone was discovered and the West turned its attention to Egypt that a new field of study, Egyptology, emerged and Egyptians beginning to realize that the ruins scattered around them were in fact cradle of civilization like no other.

Kom Ombo temple is unique in the sense that it was also a treatment center. It has relics that document the tools and mechanisms used at that time for childbirth, surgery and medicine making.

In the afternoon we started sailing towards Ashwan and reached there just after the sunset. Ashwan is the place where the High Dam was constructed in 1960 which stopped the flooding of the Nile. More about that in my next post. Today just enjoyed the beauty of Ashwan at night in the following video.

After spending three nights in Cairo we flew to Luxor (known as Thebes in ancient times) that is almost halfway through the length of Egypt. Luxor became the capital of Egypt after Memphis was abandoned due to a lack of water.

I think now is a good time to tell you a bit about Egypt and it’s history.

Egypt is populated on the banks of Nile, just a few kilometers on either side. Apart from the green patches on both sides of the river the rest of the country is desert. It is fair to say that Egypt exists because of the Nile.

The Niles flows from South to North and divides Egypt into two parts- Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt.

In 3109 BC, Narmer was able to conquer and unite Upper and Lower Egypt to form a kingdom and to become the first Pharaoh. For the next three thousand years, Egypt was ruled by thirty dynasties of Pharaohs.

The Pharaohs were unmatched in grandeur in the whole world. Keep in mind we are talking about 5000 to 2000 years period from today. The only other matching civilization I am aware of, from that period, was Indian civilization as depicted in Ramayana (estimated to have occurred 5000 years ago) and Mahabharata (estimated to happen about 3000 years ago). But there no trace of their existence, while temples, tombs and even the bodies of people with perfect skin, nails, and hair from that period still exist for Egyptian civilization.

The three thousand years of Pharaoh history is divided into four periods.

Old Kingdom (3100 BC – 2025 BC) when 1st to 10th dynasties ruled. This was the period when the Great Pyramids of Giza were built.

Middle Kingdom (2055 BC to 1550 BC) when 11nth to 17th dynasties ruled.

New Kingdom (1550 BC to 525 BC). It is the most significant and prosperous period when the 18th to 26th dynasties ruled. This was the period of Tutankhamen, Seti I and Seti II and all of the Ramses ( 1 to 9). Moses and Jew’s exodus happened in Ramses II’s period.

The Late Period, that lasted from 525 BC to 332 BC, when the last four dynasties ruled before the arrival of Alexander in 332 BC, which started three hundred years of Greek rule followed by another three hundred years of Roman rule.

From the airport, we went straight to the famous temple of Karnak. Karnak Temple was built by three different Pharaohs ( Seti I, Ramses I and Ramses II ) over a period of 180 years.

More than a temple, Karnak is an extraordinary complex of sanctuaries, kiosks, pylons, and obelisks dedicated to the Theban gods and Pharaohs. It was believed this temple was the place where the gods lived on earth.

Everything is on a gigantic scale. It has two entrances marked by ten pylons constructed by different Pharaohs (A pylon is a monumental gateway with sloping sides forming the entrance to temples).

Inside the second pylon is the Great Hypostyle Hall, the greatest religious monument ever built. Covering 5500 sq meters, the hall has a forest of 134 gigantic papyrus shaped stone pillars. The papyrus plant was very important to ancient Egyptians. They believed that these plants surrounded the primeval mound on which the life was first created.

The columns, roof and the wall of the Great Hypostyle Hall have relics telling the stories of the Amun-Ra the local god of Thebes and Seti I. The hall was designed by Ramses I and completed by Seti I and Ramses II.

The two largest obelisks ever erected in Egypt are also here. They were erected by the pharaoh Queen Hatshepsut to the glory of her father Amun. One of them is still standing while the other one is broken. Its upper shaft lies near the sacred lake.

Our second stop was the Luxor temple. Where the Karnak Temple has massive pillars, the Luxor temple had massive statues. Situated right at the banks of the Nile, the Luxor temple was built by the pharaohs of the New Kingdom. Later, Alexander the Great and Romans added to the temple, converting a part of it into a church.

Centuries later, a mosque (known as Abu Haggag Mosque) was built on the ruins of the temple which still stands there and still a place of worship.

This makes Luxor temple the only shrine in the world which has a temple, church and a mosque in the same precinct and the oldest practicing center of worship dating back to the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep III in the 14th century BC.

But Luxor’s biggest attraction is the Valley of the Kings. Just a few kilometers out of the city it has tombs of pharaohs, including that of Tutankhamen. The discovery of Tutankhamen tomb is the most important discovery in Egyptian history as it was the only tomb of a Pharaoh that was found intact.

We first saw the valley from the hot air balloon the next morning and then visited it later in the day.

About forty tombs have been discovered so far. While many more exist there without a trace, excavations were going on at a few new discoveries while we were there.

We visited the three best ones on the recommendation of our guide who had seen them all. Out of those, I found Ramses IV’s tomb the most remarkable. Well-preserved and with colorful relics. Most surreal was seeing his massive stone sarcophagus in the burial chamber. It was the only tomb we visited which had the sarcophagus still inside, rest have been taken out and preserved in the museums.

Ramses IX’s tomb had unfinished relics that showed ancient techniques of making relics. First, the junior artists will draw using black ink followed by senior artists correcting the mistakes by red ink, while the master artist completing the final picture and coloring (a poster below describe the process better).

Ramses III’s tomb was remarkable for a long shaft that is twisted at an angle.

Not far from the Valley of is the Kings is an impressive temple commissioned by a female Pharaoh, Queen Hatshepsut, who also commissioned many other structures including an obelisk in the Karnak temple.

Luxor is a beautiful place. I liked it even more than Cairo. It has a beautiful walk by the Nile, well-paved and well-lit, a big square outside the Luxor temple and Abu Haggag Mosque. People were exceptionally friendly and helping. The Vodafone salesperson helped for half an hour (ahead of the queue) to set things up and make sure our phone is working properly.

I am a lot behind in my posts as Wifi was not easily available in Egypt. We had to buy a SIM and loading pictures through it was next to impossible.

In my next post, I will write about cruising through the Nile and a glimpse of real Egypt.

We were not prepared for the cultural shock when we got to Cairo. It wouldn’t be so striking had we been to Egypt first. But we visited Turkey before and that raised our expectations. If Turkey was clean, well-organized and hospitable; Egypt is filthy, chaotic and over-populated.

Cairo’s twenty-five million inhabitants are said to “simultaneously crushing the city’s infrastructure under their collective weight and lifting its spirits up with their exceptional charm and humor.”

We got picked up at the airport by the representatives of our tour company even before the immigration check. One of them had a bundle of visa stickers with him. It was the first time ever I had seen anyone other than an official issuing visa.

We were packed in a bus where our Egyptian guide welcomed us. He is a well-educated man (a qualified Egyptologist) in his late thirties who has a vast knowledge about Egyptian history and temples, as we found out later.

After a night’s rest at the hotel, the next morning, our guide took us straight to the pyramids of Giza. Constructed more than four thousand years ago, the three giant structures were visible from everywhere in Cairo. The largest pyramid, called the Great Pyramid is 146 meters high and was constructed in 2570 BC for the Pharaoh Khufu’s of the 4th dynasty.

The second pyramid is of son Khafre and seems larger than that of his father’s because it is on a higher plinth. Its peak is still capped with original polishes limestone casting.

The third pyramid is of Pharaoh Menkaure and is the smallest of the trio (62m). It is said that back in the day they were covered by gold and were visible from miles.

I, however, was not impressed with them. Mainly because they didn’t look as high as they show them in photos. Also in photos, the color of the stone is white, with most of the casting gone, the earthly colored stone doesn’t stand out in front of the sand background.

Seeing the pyramids up close was a challenge, too. There were too much dirt and too many people. Yet we did manage to climb up to the entrance of the Great Pyramid and take some pictures. To my disappointment, they were not very clear due to mist (and pollution) which cleared up a bit with time but didn’t completely go away.

Next to the pyramids, in the same complex, is the Sphinx. The Sphinx is a structure that usually has the head of a man and the body of an animal. This one is the biggest Sphinx ever build in Egypt and has the head of the king Khafre (of the second pyramid) and body of a lion and it stands to guard the pyramid complex. When it was built, it was right on the banks of the Nile and had two temples on the sides to greet visitors.

After spending the morning there, taking pictures touching the tip of the pyramids and doing camel rides we drove for an hour to the ruins of 5000 thousand years old city of Memphis which was the seat of power for the most the Pharaonic period.

Now the only evidence of Memphis’ glory is a colossal red granite statue of Ramses II which was found face down at the exact location where it is now turned on its back.

The drive was an eye-opener. There were piles of rubbish everywhere. Most of the buildings were covered in dirt and were unfinished. Apparently, Egyptian people do not finish their houses ( which are usually multi-story as they keep on adding new floors for the next generation) to save taxes. The cars were mostly old and covered in dirt, waterways had rubbish floating in them.

Not far from Memphis is a 7km stretch of the desert known as Saqqara were we able to inside the pyramid of Pharaoh Teti (sixth dynasty). The entrance shaft was just one meter high and about ten meters long leading to the burial chamber, which was empty. The mummy was long gone, looted by the grave robbers. The chamber had hieroglyphics carved on the walls and the stars on the roof.

Did I get an eerie feeling while there?

There was hardly any time to feel anything, other than being amazed at the architecture and skills of humans five thousand years ago.

Photography was not allowed inside Teti’s tomb but in the next tomb, which was his priest’s tomb we were able to take several photos of relics in original colors.

The next day we visited Muhammad Ali Pasha’s mosque who gave an obelisk from the Luxor Temple to French king Louis Phillipein exchange for a mechanical clock that didn’t work. It was still there mounted on one of the terraces of the mosque. Completed in 1900, the mosque has much better architecture and carving but is in terrible condition. The stone has eroded, at many places the whole alabaster plaques were missing.

From there we drove to central Cairo which was much cleaner and had better buildings. Egyptian Museum is near Midan Tahrir, where millions of Egyptian oust their president Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

On the way, we drove past the City of Dead where people are living in old tombs. Unable to afford houses, they are using these well-constructed structures like houses. These have been evacuated now but we could still see some with satellite dishes.

Museum was something where you could spend hours. It was full of scrophages, statues, mummies, and treasures discovered from excavations all around Egypt. They have 150 thousand articles and not enough space. A new museum is near completion which will house the most of the collection.

We concentrated on a few key exhibits, one being the boy king Tutumkhamn. He became the king at the age of nine and died at the age of nineteen. The discovery of his tomb was significant because his was the only tomb of a pharaoh that was found intact. His inner cask is made of 110 kilograms of pure gold.

We also saw mummies of Yuya and Thuya whose skin, hair and nails were still intact.

The last stop of the day was Khan el-Khalili market which is the largest market I have ever seen anywhere. Being a Friday the crowds were phenomenal. We had great coffee and Egyptian pizza and bread and had an early night for a six o’clock start to Luxor the next day.

We reached Cappadocia at night and checked in the hotel which was nothing like any hotel we had stayed in before.

The rooms were like caves, low ceiling, archways, dim lights, antique furniture. Our room was like a little house with a separate living room, bedroom and massive bathroom with stain glass door.

Cappadocia landscape was formed by the eruption of two volcanoes. The rocks here have many natural caves. People have been living here for thousands of years. The caves made a perfect hiding place from invaders.

Many Christians, after the crucifixion of Christ, found refuge here from Romans. Here they were free to practice their religion. They soon made monasteries in the caves and carved out more caves to make churches.

An estimate is that there are 600 churches in Cappadocia. They are not big churches known to the western world but a small one for family or individual praying. Some of them have beautifully ocher painting on their walls and ceilings.

In Turkish Cappadocia means “the land of beautiful horses.” The Cappadocia horses were known for their beauty and strength which was surprising due to the grass the grazed on this dry and rugged land which was believed to be rich in protein and minerals.

We visited the underground city of caves which were used mainly for hiding some times for weeks. It had stables to hide the animals, storage space for food and wine and the number of rooms. There are about eighty such as underground cities in the area. Recently a new city has been excavated under a slum which is believed to be the largest city. It could accommodate twenty thousand people, which gives an idea of the population at that time.

The different rock formations have different shapes. The one below is called Fairy Chimney. They are formed when then the harder stone at the top erodes over time exposing the softer stone which collapses.

Cappadocia is a large area inhabited by a number of small villages whose main source of income is tourism. A lot of the caves are part of the National Park but some are still owned by individuals. These caves are in high demand for making hotels and restaurants. They can fetch millions of dollars for the owner.

There is no local living in the caves now. Most of the people abandoned them for the houses by 1980s. But we visited a 180 years old pottery place which was all underground cave. Even though it had proper light, phone connection, and the internet, the air was damp and suffocating that I couldn’t stay there any longer. One of the attendants who was showing us pottery was suffering from cold for being in that environment constantly.

The highest hill in the Nevşehir (the place where our hotel was) has an old castle on top of it which was a watchtower in the olden times.

This was our last day in Turkey. We flew first from Cappadocia to Istanbul and then from Istanbul to Cairo, Egypt.

We started super early today. The drive from Pamukkale to Cappadocia was about 800 kilometers driving past the Pamukkale terraces where lots of balloons were lifting off in time for sunrise.

The landscape was different from what we had seen so far. No more cotton fields or olive trees but lots of pine plantations. There were some hills but soon the disappeared too and the landscape became flat and baron.

Two hours later we stopped for coffee and toilet break. The place had a very nice quality textile, health products and souvenirs. One of the best souvenirs to take home is the ‘Evil Eye,’ the blue colored eye believed to be the eye of the sky by the old Shamanism belief. It is called ‘Nazar’ and is used to wade off the evil spirits.

Outside there were several trucks of sugarbeets, which had white skin but would turn red when boiled. Potatoes come in two colors as well – white and yellow, yellow one tastes much better than white. Turkish cook their potatoes and eggplants very well.

A stinky smell filled the bus and continued to linger on. It was from a shallow lake that fills up in winter but was half dry and muddy in autumn.

We crossed many small villages on the way. Turkish people are very hospitable to their guests but not very welcoming to the new settlers in their villages. Most of the time the villages are all related. They don’t have any fence around their houses. People can knock on each other’s houses and can walk in any time. A house is always ready for a guest.

The land around the village is owned by the villagers. It was given to them centuries ago. The owners sell the land to each other within the village. It gets passed on to the children on his death. Male and female children have an equal share.

Turkey is a Muslim country ( 99% of the population is Muslim) but is not governed by sharia law. A man can’t divorce his wife by saying “I divorce you” three times. A divorce can only be granted by the court. The ratio of arranged and love marriages was fifty-fifty in the previous generation. Now ninety percent of the marriages are love marriages.

The gay people are accepted in society since the Ottoman period ( early nineteen hundred) but gay marriages are not accepted. It is in fact very easy for gay people from neighboring Islamic countries to migrate to Turkey. All they have to do is to declare their sexuality and say the feel unsafe in their own country.

We made a small stop to see a marble query. Turkey has a lot of marble. All the hills around us are of marble and had small queries here and there.

We are crossing the orchards of cherry trees. Turkey is the second biggest producer of cherries after Japan.

Surprisingly Turkey’s biggest industry is car production. Because of the cheap labor, political stability and proximity to Europe, European companies prefer to make their cars in Turkey. Turkey is now working on making their own car, one hundred percent made in Turkey. They already make locally made jeeps, buses, and trucks but not cars.

The second largest industry is mining. Turkey exports a lot of marble and copper. Number three is chemicals or textiles. Tourism comes at number four. The average number of tourists is 40 – 45 million each year, It is much below 70 million in France, Spain, and Italy.

We reached Konya around lunchtime and had the traditional Konyan lunch of lentil soup, pide bread, meat casserole, and rice served on a hot iron plate and baklava like a dessert.

Konya was founded by Romans in the second century as Iconium (from where the word Icon comes from). It is the origin place of Mevlevi Order (Sufism) founded by the follower of Jalaluddin Muhammad Balkhi known to the Western world simply as Rumi. Rumi was a 13th-century Persian poet, Sufi mystic, and Islamic theologize. We visited the Mevlevi Museum which was the old madrasa and has the tomb of Rumi. The museum is visited by one million people each year.

The Konyan people are practicing Muslims and conservative compared to the rest of the country. We saw more women with burqa than any other place during our long journey through the country. Also, there is no bar, no nightclub, no nightlife in this city of one million people.

What it is famous for is the whirling Dervish who wears a white robe and long cap and swirls around in a meditative way to soft music with one hand up towards the sky and other towards the earth depicting their connection with the divine and sharing of knowledge with earthly beings.

Our last comfort stop before reaching Cappadocia was near the one of the largest and well preserved ‘caravanserai.’ Built in the 13th century these caravanserais provided comfort and protection to the traders passing through these trade routes.

Today was a slow start. We were not expected to leave till nine and hence we had plenty of time to have lavish breakfast. The food in Turkey is plentiful. Everywhere we have been given lots of fresh salads, a variety of dips, bread, meat, and desserts. In spite, though there was an abundance of food the men in our group would have killed for bacon.

After saying goodbye to a nice hotel, Suhan360, ( which indeed had the 360 degrees views of the coast) we started our journey towards Pamukkale. The first two and half hours were quiet, many were catching up with their sleep.

The landscape was beautiful. All through the way, there were fields of cotton and sunflower and orchards of figs, oranges, mandarins, lemons, and pomegranates. Turkey is the biggest producer of pomegranates. Most of them come from the region, Anatolia. They are big, juicy and blood-red in color but their juice is a bit on the sour side. Turkey is also a big producer of chestnuts, apricots, and figs.

We reached Pamukkale around mid-day. The hotel Pam Thermal Resort had a thermal pool right in the middle courtyard, which had mineral-rich natural spring water gushing from a canon like structure and falling from one terrace to another. The temperature of the water must be around eighty degrees.

After lunch, we headed towards the Pamukkale terraces. I wore three-quarter pants and thongs (a big mistake because it was quite a walk and my thongs were not very comfortable).

Pamukkale means “cotton castle” in Turkish, an appropriate name for the hill covered in calcium and other minerals brought by the water from underneath. Since the water trickles down from one terrace to another at a slow speed, the minerals get time to settle down and solidify. If the water was flowing at a higher speed the terraces wouldn’t have formed and minerals wouldn’t have deposited.

This is the only formation of this kind in the world. There was one more in NewZealand but it got destroyed in a volcano eruption in early nineteen hundred.

In 300 BC Roman established a town here called Hierapolis. Although there were only a few structures remained of the town, it was a flourishing town with health spas and cotton trade.

We walked on the prickly and at some places slippery surface to get to the lower terraces. From each point the view was different. With the number of people walking on sharp edges iris miracle that nobody has fallen off the cliff and got seriously hurt.

At many places, the water was directed to the drains and the terraces were intentionally kept dried to save them getting too much calcium deposits. Although in summers, because of the sheer numbers of tourists all the terraces are full.

We sat with our legs in gushing water letting the hot and mineral water wash away the tiredness and pain. There is a lovely garden all around the top of the hill worth a walk.

Coming back to the hotel we all sat in the thermal pool and rub the mud on our faces as a face pack.

Pamukkale has very nice markets with a lot of well-priced souvenirs, dried figs, apricots chestnuts and woolen, and cotton clothes.