On The Pedestal These Words Appear...

Took a trip to Luxor this weekend, and it was really a hell of a trip. There was lots of everything: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Luxor is quite a place, but it's been overrun by the modern world in ways both interesting and frustrating. (N.B. Luxor is actually an anglicization of the Arabic word "Al-Uqsur", the palaces. The Greeks called the place Thebes, and the Pharaohs had some name that sounded like "Niwt.")

We left Thursday night on a train to Luxor. The five girls I was with(Emily, Lindsay, Kim, Tara, and Victoria) were in the 2nd-class car but I somehow ended up in one of those traditional "compartments", with the two facing rows of seats and three middle-aged Egyptian men. They were talkative and friendly, like most Egyptians, and we had some interesting discussions about football and education. I thought it was amusing when, as the sun rose, they had to take turns praying because there wasn't enough space in the center of the compartment.

We stumbled out into the hazy, blinding Luxor sun and sorted ourselves out. I had somehow failed to get a round-trip ticket so I was forced to try and get another. They told me to return the following day. So we headed to drop our luggage off at our hotel, the "HappyLand Hostel." It's actually a very nice, charming little place in the center of town, and after a satisfying breakfast we set out to see the East Bank of Luxor.

The hustle in Luxor is intense. The town survives on tourism, and every corner sells papyrus scrolls, alabaster statues, kitschy souvenirs and overpriced water and food. It makes Cairo feel positively calm and contained despite being a fraction of the size. Sales pitches, catcalls and utterly baffling comments are the norm. Emily got so sick of being asked where she was from that she took to replying "CHINA!" despite her blonde, Nordic complexion. Got some funny looks from that one...

A microbus took us through the chaotic streets to the Karnak Temple complex, the largest and most impressive Pharaonic relics in Egypt after the Pyramids. The pictures will probably look oddly familiar to most of you, since these ruins are the iconic images of "Ancient Egypt." The part that throw you is the hordes of tourists. Even in the off-season, which we are well into, the ruins are swarmed with European, American, and Asian tour groups, and it takes some creative framing and a bit of flexibility to get pictures that don't incorporate fat women in denim cutoffs and Japanese with 4-ft. sun hats and germ masks.

The ruins themselves are really spectacular, but of course it's almost impossible to capture their majesty. Sometimes the small things are what really catch your eye, and give the whole thing that touch of nostalgic verisimilitude. The problem of course, is that the whole thing is desperately cliche. Everything is unsettlingly like walking through the soundstage of a movie you've seen many times. But sheer awe-inspiring ambition - and hubris - of the men who built these temples leaves one breathless. In hidden corners I glimpsed the original paint that once coated the pillars and walls from floor to ceiling. In their time, these structures would have been blinding, vari-colored spectacles probably visible from hundreds of kilometers away, just as the pyramids were once pure white alabaster from foundation to capstone. One can only imagine...

We then took another bus to Luxor Temple, which is situated literally in the middle of the town next to the main midan, or square. It's the same idea as Luxor, but generally smaller and less breathtaking. At this point, we were falling over from hunger and so we split up - half of us ate at a local fast-food chain and the other half had McD's...needless to say I was in the local contingent.

After retiring to the inn to rest up, we headed out once more for a Felucca ride down the Nile. Basically, it's just a lateen-rigged sailboat, and since there was no wind, we moved under a combination of rowing, towing and drifting. Our destination was Banana Island, a quaint little island village with, well, bananas. It was interesting to see village life up close and personal, but still felt a little bit like a show was being put on. Since bananas don't particularly interest me...

Anyways, our captain was an amusing man whose name escapes me. Mahmoud I believe - but in any event, he had these stacks of notes and postcards from his previous tourist clients dating all the way back to the 1980s, and a long repertoire of confusing riddles. We were pretty stumped by most of them, partly because of the lazy-vacation attitude and partly because of his thick accent. He managed to get me and Tara thoroughly entangled in that string-handcuff puzzle that I have done so many times and can never remember the solution to!

By the time we got back, I was falling over with exhaustion, and so I feel asleep before and after dinner, which was a tasty, albeit pricey tourist restaurant overlooking the Nile. I read a bit of Plutarch and then fell dead to sleep, not knowing how much more tiring the next day would be...