Karnak Temple

It’s 5 p.m. and the giant red sun has just set on the Nile. We are having a mint tea in our rooftop restaurant and recalling all the wonderful moments we had today. At this moment, the Call to Prayer is being sung all over the city and it is loud and haunting. I cannot do the sensual overload I am experiencing right now, justice.

Twelve hours ago, we set off on our hot air balloon ride on the West Bank of the Nile and we have just returned from visiting the Karnak Temple Complex in Luxor. It is the second largest temple complex in the world after Angkor Wat in Cambodia and we were wowed.

I must backtrack a bit. Yesterday, we were hounded somewhat by a 45 year old super friendly caleche driver, Abdullah, who befriended Chris. His English was fairly good and he talked to us about his hard life in Egypt under their president who is also a military leader. Not the greatest combination…

Abdullah offered to drive us today to and from Karnak in his caleche for a reasonable price. He met us promptly at 2 pm. with his horse Rambo and his 15 year old son, Ahmed. Karnak is 3 km away and as it was hot today, this was a good option for us.

To tell you the truth, I don’t know where to start in describing Karnak. Hopefully the photos paint a good picture of what it is like. Luxor used to be called Thebes and it was an important religious centre during the Middle Kingdom period ( 2055-2004 B.C.) it was also became the capital city when Upper and Lower Egypt joined. It was home to the cult god Amun, but I am not going into any more Egyptian history as its history is huge and complicated.

So, if we had to pick one of the most impressive areas of the Karnak Complex, it would be the Great Hypostyle Hall (5500 square meters) in the Temple to Amun-Ra. It has 134 towering sandstone columns in the form of towering papyrus stalks. In the summer when the Nile used to flood, the columns would be flooded and it looked like a swamp of papyrus.

All the way from Karnak to where we are staying near the Luxor Temple, there is a Avenue of Sphinxes. This road was used once a year during a big festival when the Egyptians paraded down it carrying the statues of Amun and Mut in a symbolic re-enactment of their marriage. About 15 years ago, houses covered this avenue. When the 1050 sphinxes and statues of rams were discovered, the houses on top of the avenue were torn down and the area was cleared exposing this impressive 3 km avenue. A lot of the sphinxes though have been relocated to the Egyptian Museum to Cairo.

We spent about 2 hours at Karnak before meeting up with Abdullah again. He took us home and gave us a little tour through some of the Egyptian areas away from ‘tourist’ Luxor.

We had a grilled shrimp dinner on our roof and talked about all the wonderful things we have done in Egypt during the past week.

Tomorrow, we will go to Dendara, a place that many travellers have told us is a great place to visit and off the gringo track.Read more