After a long, dark and fucking cold night, I woke up to a shivering morning still on the Luxor-bound train. However, when I looked out the dirty, grimy and fugly windows of the train, I was greeted by some of the most beautiful sceneries I have ever seen in my life.

The express train tore its way across towns, suburbs and naturally, this beautiful rural landscape of fields and and farms. Frankly speaking, the colour combinations were so perfect I never thought I’d live to see it. Along the way, we passed many plantations that pretty much show what kind of agricultural produce that Egypt yields every year. There were various produces including sugarcane, corn, and wheat. There were also orchards bearing apples, oranges and pomegranates, creating a spectrum of beautiful colours decorating that freezing morning.

Some two hours later, our train finally reached its destination. As I disembarked the car, I looked around for a signboard and saw one written in Arabic that read Al-Qusr. Before long, our guide explained that when the Arabs rediscovered this piece of lands, they saw many ruins of temples and intially thought of them and castles and palaces, hence the name Al-Qusr, meaning palaces. When the Europeans came, their lousy frigid tongue couldn’t even pronounce some simple Arabic words and in turn named it to the closest verbal tone they could manage: Luxor.

We had a quick breakfast on board our ride as we made our way to our first destination - The Temple of Karnak.

Our tour of Luxor consisted of several destinations separated by the Nile, conveniently referred to as the Western and Eastern sides of Luxor. We learned later that the Egyptians take everything around them [including themselves] very, very seriously. Most of their beliefs revolve around the Sun’s behaviour of rising from the east and setting in the west. To put simply, when the Sun rises in the east, it symbolises Birth, or the beginning of Life. And - that’s right - when it sets, it symbolises Death. As such, anything that follows this behaviour is instantly regarded as divine and incarnations of various deities. Also, since Egypt is also conveniently divided by the Nile, both sides of the land are also symbolic. If you still follow their logic, lands of the East are known as the Lands of the Living and the west, the Lands of the Dead.

Luxor is an important city as it houses many important sites that revealed a lot of information regarding the history of the Ancient Egyptians. A significant example is that of a very special pharaoh known as Hatshepsut [the first person who can say this name 5 times in a single breath gets a frapuccino on my treat. Serious]. What makes this Hatshepsut so special, you ask? To start off, one must know that a standard process in selecting pharaohs is that they must be male.

Thing is, Hatshepsut was female.

She did, however, have a stepson - the rightful ruler of Egypt at that the time. At the time of her husband’s death, this boy was far too young to be given power to rule over Egypt. As such, Hatshepsut takes charge of Egypt in his stead as steward of Egypt while the boy grows up and study in order to properly rule when he gets older. After several years, Hatshepsut became a very powerful ruler of Egypt and brought about various economic development and soon enough, she began to enjoy her career as ruler.

She soon changed her name to Hatshepsu [the masculine equivalent of her name] and called herself King Hatshepsu instead of Queen, because while King means the ultimate ruler of Egypt, being Queen only makes her the Wife of the Ruler. Since she wants to be in power so much, [like many modern women of today] she claimed the title of King, and all statues that were built of her were to be given masculine body features and also a false beard on the face of every statue - one of major the symbols of pharaonic power and rulership.

She began various construction projects including building a tomb, carving a temple out of a mountain and erecting many obelisks in honor of the gods. However, the little stepson later grew up and soon learned of her messing around with his rightful place on the throne of Egypt. It is believed by some scholars that this boy, known as Thutmoses III, went on an errand on his own and ‘took care’ of Hatshepsut. Afterwards, he began to destroy the sites that symbolised her reign by tearing down her obelisks, breaking down her temples and such.

An interesting thing about the temples in West Luxor is that they were once connected by a long walkway, an alley lined with sphinxes. Today, however, modern development has taken over most of this walkway, and only the remains of this alley are left at the sites of both temples. After Karnak, we visited the main temple of Luxor where there are some restoration efforts going on, but more or less of the same thing we found in Karnak.

We left the temple satisfied with our pictures and a renewed sense of fascination and excitement. I made a 360° sweeping look around, and I spotted something rather interesting.

It looks like most of the locals really do depend on tourism as their major source of income after all. I wonder what would happen to modern-day Egypt should the day come when tourists no longer make visits there. I honestly pray and hope that doesn’t happen.

We then made a journey across some country landscapes and more fields and farms to our cruise ship docked in Esna. A major item in the intinerary was a cruise along the Nile on board a lavish ship but that story is for another day. After the long train ride, everyone was quite tired and hungry, so after a nice filling lunch on board the ship, I slept off the rest of the evening to conserve some energy for the next part of our tour: East Luxor.

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The Egypt Travelogs Series:

1. Cairo (The Great Pyramids)
2. Road to Alexandria (Asfour Crystal Palace, Lion Park Animal Hospital)
3. Alexandria (Qaitbay Citadel, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Montaza Palace Gardens)
4. Return from Alexandria (Local fruits and produce)
5. West Luxor (Temple of Karnak)
6. East Luxor - Part One and Two (Colossi of Memnon, Ramesseum, Temple of Hatshepsut, Alabaster factory)
7. The Nile - Part One and Two (Edfu Bazaar, Life along the along the Nile)
8. Kom Ombo (The Twin Temples of Kom Ombo)
9. Road to Abu Simbel (Shooting star, desert skies)
10. Abu Simbel - (The Greater Temple of Abu Simbel)
11. Aswan - (Unfinished Obelisk, Felluca ride)

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