It's been a while!

It's been a while since I last posted anything on my blog, so I thought an explanation of why, is in order for those who do not know me personally.

Sadly, I had to leave Luxor, Egypt (temporarily) at the end of last year.  The downturn in tourism hit hard and I was struggling to earn a living.  I took a decision to come back to the UK for a while, try and find work and save some money to replenish the savings that I had been living on for some time.

I am still in the UK, and probably will be for the next few months, but I wanted to share some of my thoughts and feelings about being back, what I am missing about Egypt and what I am loving about the UK.

Obviously, it goes without saying, the weather!!  Did I really swap sunshine every day for rain every day?  That is what it feels like..... rain, rain and more rain.  I had to buy boots, a warm coat and lots of sweaters! But it was a good feeling to be able to go out shopping and know that I could find exactly what I wanted in the shops.   Even summer clothes are made of cotton, not nylon and lycra, and diamante and bling are options on clothes, not standard!  Bras actually fit and can be bought by size! Knickers are cotton as standard!

Food next.  I never realised what a healthy diet I had in Luxor until I came back here. Everything I cooked in Luxor was fresh and made from scratch.  In the UK, I quickly got used to "fast food" although I have not yet succumbed to the microwave, which I never did like! The choices here are phenomenal, especially breads and cheeses!  Loving it! I do have to admit to a bit of a pork fest on my return, although that has now diminished to normal levels.

Public transport is actually a delight after living in Egypt........ yeah, can you believe it? Although I do miss being able to just get on and off a bus where I want to, not where the bus stop happens to be.

I have internet which works all the time, electricity that does not go off constantly and there is always water in the taps! 

On the downside, life here is pretty much ruled by the clock, it can be hectic and there never seems to be time to just sit and be.  Tea or juice by the River Nile is sorely missed.  There is nowhere I want to go to just sit and have a coffee and enjoy the view, at least nothing that does not involve a car drive and a few traffic jams.  TV is good though, but only because I have the full Sky package available and can watch all those amazing documentaries that I missed.  Without that, I seriously doubt I would be watching TV anymore than I did in Luxor. I much preferred people watching by the Nile.

It is green here, wonderfully green........ but no temples to wander around.  Although I am starting to attend lectures, and dayschools on Egyptology as well as bringing myself up to scratch on the spiritual stuff and there are a few courses planned.

I did have a fantastic Christmas with my family and my daughter got married in April, so I was able to be involved and do the whole "mother of the bride" thing! 

So, what do I miss? The weather, the laid back lifestyle, my friends and of course, the other half.  I miss my work very much and the people I worked with. I miss the Nile itself and I miss the temples and tombs.
I do not miss the hassle, the lack of basic necessities such as electricity and water.  I do not miss fuul!

 Short and sweet, I know, but a brief update on where I am right now.  More to follow as I begin my search for more knowledge and take advantage of everything the UK has to offer! 

Cartouches at El Kab

Just a quick post with some photos for you!  These are some rock art cartouches that we saw near to El Kab, between Esna and Edfu.

I thought I would share them..... do you know which pharoahs they are?

Spirit of the Nile

Edfu Temple and the Sound and Light Show

I spent a lovely time the other night at the wonderful temple of Edfu, dedicated to the god Horus. They have recently started their own Sound and Light show and I have to say that, for me, it is the best one I have seen so far. The lighting effects were fabulous, the stories they told were spot on and I loved it. Horus, Hathor and Seth were all spoken about, Ptolemy who built the temple and of course, Alexander the Great who founded the Ptolemaic dynasty.

Just a couple of hours drive from Luxor, through the real Egypt and we were there. A quick stop for tea on the way at a roadside coffee shop and we were all set up for this amazing show.

The God Seth

Spectacular lighting

 

At first I thought it was a bit slow to get going and was a tad concerned that I would be bored, but it improved dramatically and all of our small group were mesmerised by it. I could have stayed much longer.

Wonderful colours, magical

My only requirement that was not met was that we did not actually walk through the temple, as you do at Karnak temple, but it was still an excellent show.


 

Colourful finale

Please forgive the bad photos, I only had my phone with me.

Catching up!

And yet another week has flown by and I have no idea where the time went.

Its been a quiet week, well almost.......  I am home alone for a short while and its been lovely most of the time. A friend has been here, she left yesterday to return to Belgium, and we spent a lovely morning wandering around Deir El Medina the other day.  That trip followed our recent viewing of the BBC documentary by Joanne Fletcher about the tomb of Kha and Merit and their lives.  Well..........  I just had to go see for myself!  Didn't find the tomb although I did figure out roughly where it was. Maybe another day when there are less visitors there will find me ferreting around in peace!  We did have a great time though, and even better, we finished it off with a huge jug of fresh lemon juice at Restaurant Mohamed just up by the ticket office.

Last week also saw a visit to a friend who was hosting a lunch in aid of a local charity.The Al Bairat Family Clinic, Luxor, Egypt provides a much needed service to local families with disable children.  To be honest, I have not been, it would upset me too much, but I am very impressed with the work they do with the children. I, along with many others, are happy to support this wonderful facility in whatever way we can.  The Shepherds pie and Robin's famous chicken curry were superb!

Tomorrow sees me off working again........ Edfu temple and El Kab. It promises to be a fun day I think! I will try and remember to get some photos for you all!

Brief updates from me!

I have been very lax in updating my blog and I apologise for that.

It will be impossible to fill in all the blanks since my last post, but I will very briefly bring you all up to date.

Christmas was very quiet, and an extremely peaceful time. I actually found myself pickling some wonderful beetroot on Christmas morning. Not exactly a normal Christmas Day activity, but I enjoyed it!

Since Christmas, business has been pretty good considering the state of tourism in Luxor and I have spent some wonderful days with some wonderful people! We have had felucca sailing on Spirit, temples and tombs and one or two "off the beaten track" days, interspersed with lots of fun and laughter.

New neighbours have arrived in the flat upstairs. Fortunately they are friends and life in our little oasis promises to be pretty good indeed.

My Greek and Roman Mythology course ended, and elhamdulilah, I passed with a Distinction!  I then started an Introduction to Philosophy course, but never finished.  Work got in the way and I found myself getting further and further behind. So I let it go, and will sign up again in the future. Now I am onto my third course....... Ancient Greeks and loving it so far.

My laptop died a very sad death, but I am now the very proud owner of a new one! Much faster than my old faithful and with lots and lots of memory!

And the highlight of the last few months was a long overdue visit by my sister and her man! It was fabulous to see her, and finally meet the man who makes her happy. And we managed a whole week without fighting! How good is that!!

And finally, I have a couple of photos for you.....  

The first one is sunrise 2 days ago from the top deck of the ferry.

And the second is the following day, just yesterday, sunrise again from the top deck of the ferry.

A very different day!

And finally, one more picture at Karnak temple.....

See you all soon!!

Engagements, Red Sea and Buses

I just spent a couple of days in Hurghada with my daughter and her man. I was delighted to learn that the day before I imposed myself upon them, he had proposed to her!  Wonderful news! It's times like this that I miss being in the UK. I could have been planning a wedding with her, buying dresses etc etc and generally having a great mum/daughter time together.
But I am here, in the country that has become my second home, and I will be going home as soon as I can and will definitely be there in plenty of time to buy my "mother of the bride" outfit!

Hurghada surprised me, the hotel was lovely with a great beach right outside my balcony. I had an amazing view of the Red Sea, almost being able to dangle my fingers in the water from the balcony. We didn't do much, except spend time together, but hey...... it was all about that, not sunbathing or shopping.

I did have an interesting journey there. I decided to get the bus, but made the unfortunate mistake of booking the Upper Egypt service rather than the Superjet.

The bus left Luxor at 7am on the dot! Brilliant I thought, on time!  Hmmmm a bit presumptive of me.  By 7.45am, I could see the skyline of Qena in the distance, bang on time, and this was after we had picked up sundry bus company workers going to the depot in Qena. Then we hit Qena! A large detour around the city found us in the bus depot fuelling station, where we were filled up with fuel, with all the passengers sitting on the bus. Once we had done that, we headed back into Qena to yet another depot where we were thoroughly hosed down..... again with all of us still sitting on the bus. Once clean, we were joined by a man with an extremely large bus tyre who managed to get the said tyre on the bus and off we went..... to yet another depot to deposit the man and his tyre there.
Finally, some 2 hours after arriving in Qena, we left and headed for the Eastern Desert road to Hurghada. A brief 15 minute stop for toilets at 85kilo cafe, and we were off again. My nearest neighbour passengers were 4 German people who were heading for Safaga.  Why did I get a bad feeling about this?
We reached the end of the desert road, with Safaga directly in front of us, but we turned right and headed towards El Quseir, drove for about 20 minutes before taking a small road which doubled back towards Safaga. Ok I thought, the bus station must be this end of town. Minutes later we were in yet another bus depot being refuelled and hosed down. The nice German people asked if that was where they needed to get off the bus........they got an emphatic "no! Stay!"   So they did.
We returned to the main coast road, fully expecting to turn into Safaga itself but the bus bowled its way past Safaga towards Hurghada. I was a tad concerned, so spoke to the Germans, who had no idea of where they were, and they spoke again to the driver. He had forgotten them! And then he wanted to just leave them in the middle of nowhere so they could take a taxi back to Safaga.  Eventually, we turned around and took them to the outskirts of Hurghada and left them to get a taxi from there.

I eventually arrived in Hurghada at 2pm, some 7 hours after leaving Luxor!  Needless to say, I returned on the Superjet bus, 4 hours door to door almost!

Just one of those stories that we just shrug off here in Egypt,  We would go insane if we didn't learn to just "go with the flow"

Feluccas on the Nile

This week has been another busy week, but a fun one!
During the past week, I and my regular Egyptology guide have become more than a familiar sight at various temples and tombs, but I missed out on sailing as I got double booked and had to do Karnak Temple instead of sailing the Nile!  What a choice to make....... both are experiences I love, but needs must and one set of guests happily sailed on Felucca Spirit without me, and the other guests spent a happy afternoon in Karnak and Luxor temples.
Of course, I was pretty happy too!

So because I had to miss out on sailing, I had a nosey around my pictures and found a small video I made some time ago and I would like to share it with you now.