{"id":355,"date":"2025-09-11T01:51:40","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T15:51:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arnobrok.com\/blog\/Egypt-and-Jordan\/?p=355"},"modified":"2025-09-13T22:35:33","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T12:35:33","slug":"day-5-luxor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arnobrok.com\/blog\/Egypt-and-Jordan\/2025\/09\/11\/day-5-luxor\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 5 Luxor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

9-Sep<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This morning I had to get up early for the hot air balloon ride over Luxor. We had a group of 28 people doing this adventure. When we arrived at the spot where the balloons were launched we were even more excited as there must have been at least 40 balloons being prepared. Once our captain got the Ok to start filling the balloon, several others were already in the air. It was an amazing ride and the view over the Valley of the Kings and the temple of Hatshepsut was stunning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The captain and his support team on the ground did an excellent job, after 45 minutes we had a very soft landing in some farmers field a few kilometres from where we started.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Next visit was the Valley of the Kings, here are 16 tombs accessible to the public but not all are open at one time to preserve the colours and carvings in the tombs. Humans walking around in 37 degrees or more do not have a positive effect on those \ud83d\ude0a. Access gets rotated to a limited number and today there were 5 tombs available. I visited the Seti I, Ramses 3, 4 and 9 tombs. The Seti I tomb is really amazing, not to say the other ones are less impressive but the Seti I is spectacular (hence you have to pay extra for this, and the entry price is steep \ud83d\ude09). This 137-metre long tomb is by far the finest in the Valley of the Kings according to our guide, and after seeing the other 3 I fully agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You may ask: why did you not visit Tutankhamun\u2019s tomb? Well the answer is simple, his tomb was never finished, he died too young. There are only a few hieroglyphs and paintings on the tomb wall. And yes his mummy is there but it is not very impressive (so I have been told). However, Helen, my travel companion did visit his tomb and shared her video with me:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tDSC02012\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tSeti I Tomb\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tRamsess III Tomb\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tRamsess III Tomb\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tRamses IV\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tRamses Tomb IV\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/figure>\n\n\t<\/div> \n\t<\/span>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Next stop was the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut, it is important to mention here that this temple has been completely rebuild, only 12% was intact when discovered. The restoration efforts was led by the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology (PCMA) at the University of Warsaw since 1961, including significant reconstruction of its architectural features and statuary, and was opened to the public in March 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hatshepsut (c.1473\u20131458 BC), the queen who became pharaoh, built this magnificent temple at Deir al-Bahari, on the west back of Luxor. It lies directly across the Nile from Karnak Temple, the main sanctuary of the god Amun. Hatshepsut\u2019s temple, Djeser-djeseru \u201cthe Holy of Holies\u201d was designed by the chief steward of Amun, Senenmut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also needed a lot of work because the temple was vandalised over the centuries: Tuthmosis III removed his stepmother\u2019s name whenever he could; Akhenaten removed all references to Amun; and the early Christians turned it into a monastery, Deir Al Bahri (Monastery of the North), and defaced the pagan reliefs.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tHatshepsut Temple\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/figure>\n\n\t<\/div> \n\t<\/span>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

After getting back on board it was time for lunch and to start our actual Nile cruise, we will be sailing overnight to Edfu. To get there we will have to pass the Esna Navigational lock. This is a perfect opportunity for the local “trades people” to sell their wares while the boat is waiting for the lock. This whole event is just hilarious, they even hook on while the boat is still going to try to sell their things. There is a lot of yelling going on and if you show any interest they throw the towel, table cloth, shirt or whatever packed in plastic to you, then you agree on a price, put the money in the plastic bag and throw that back to them. It was very funny to see that all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you can imagine we find these “trades people” or oftentimes “trade kids” at every tourist spot, they try to sell anything and everything and if you’re interested, the real negotiations start. I bought a book about Egypt at the Great Pyramid, he started with an asking price of USD 35, I said no, no too expensive, after a few back and forth, plus him explaining he had many kids to feed, we settled on USD 5. I like my new book and at least he can take one kid to Maccers.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tShopping street\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/figure>\n\n\t<\/div> \n\t<\/span>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

9-Sep This morning I had to get up early for the hot air balloon ride over Luxor. We had a group of 28 people doing this adventure. When we arrived at the spot where the balloons were launched we were even more excited as there must have been at least Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egypt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arnobrok.com\/blog\/Egypt-and-Jordan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arnobrok.com\/blog\/Egypt-and-Jordan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arnobrok.com\/blog\/Egypt-and-Jordan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arnobrok.com\/blog\/Egypt-and-Jordan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arnobrok.com\/blog\/Egypt-and-Jordan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/arnobrok.com\/blog\/Egypt-and-Jordan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":500,"href":"https:\/\/arnobrok.com\/blog\/Egypt-and-Jordan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions\/500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arnobrok.com\/blog\/Egypt-and-Jordan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arnobrok.com\/blog\/Egypt-and-Jordan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arnobrok.com\/blog\/Egypt-and-Jordan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}