Some time on the country.........

Started off late today as was keen to make the most of the last day here in the hotel, and so after breakfast I sat in the garden under a white gazebo and caught up with the blog and played around with photos.

At 12 or so I decided I wanted a little look around the countryside outside Luxor and so hopped in a taxi found for me by my mate Cat and we headed south out of town.

Hmm…can't say I was exactly overwhelmed with what I saw!  The scenery is nice…not by any means spectacular but there are a low range of mountains to one side of the road, and the fields of Alfalfa, vegetables, sugar cane and bananas stretching down to the Nile on the other.

What also strikes you both as you leave town through the shabby suburbs and as you enter the countryside is the state of the housing. It is maybe no wonder that blocks of flats collapse with amazing regularity.

We stopped at a development outside town that is being built for foreigners. Well, I don't know. Who on earth would want to buy a holiday flat 10 miles outside Luxor with nothing but the worst types of slums on every side, no shops of any quality for miles around and located in the middle of the Egyptian countryside in a sort of gated corral of  of 3 or 4 storey blocks of flats?  A funny choice of holiday destination. Apparently it has a swimming pool…..! 

But there are apparently many foreigners who have a house in or near Luxor and who come here for the winter, indeed someone told me there are up to 2000 English people alone who live in and around Luxor all year round.

We headed south towards Esna, a temple I was vaguely interested in seeing in as much as it is located in the middle of town rather than out in the countryside. 

I am afraid what struck me was the filth the people live in. It was indescribable. I stopped on numerous occasions to photograph something I had seen and spoke to the people who approached the car.


 They were to a man and child the most polite, smiling people you could wish to meet, but  dressed in dirty old clothes and if you look into their houses, and these are the ones of the edge of the main road, what it must be like further behind I dread to think, they have  mud floors, a few sticks of furniture and little in the way of sanitation. I mean this is poverty with a capital P!

Having seen all this I am flip flopping here….shouldn't the governor of Luxor be doing something, anything about this, rather than being obsessed with building more 5 star hotels and Avenues of Sphynxes in his town. It seems to me a policy built on sand….literally. I don't know!


Business in the country in conducted on the back of a donkey. They are everywhere, burdened down with every assortment of heavy stuff. Vast mountains of sugar cane, piles of Alfalfa, building materials…just about everything you can imagine. Then on top of that almost always comes their owner/ Talk about beasts of burden.

At one point we stopped off at a sugar cane market. This is where people bring donkeys laden with sugar cane and sell them to one assume middle men, who in turn sell them to a factory which is located belching black smoke, on the outskirts of town. 

A small scene developed as I approached (luckily I was with my driver for the day…a good man and a good driver) as one of the cane sellers thought I was an Israeli! I don't quite know what brought that idea on, but he was pretty cross with me... until I told him I was from London! I feel I might as well have been a martian for all he knew! Oh, and by the way, a donkey load of Sugar cane goes for about 30 E£'s!

I thought the cruise boats were moored either in Luxor or Aswan, but no, they are also littered all the way down the banks of the Nile. Hundreds of them, all stading empty and immobile. This is a huge huge business in crisis. I am pleased to hear the Foreign Office have lifted their travel advisory for Luxor, but I wonder how long it will be before all these boats are moving again.

We soon left the Nile behind and the road continued along the banks of a canal. I will not go on, but seeing the state of the canal, the dead animals, the effluent, the rubbish that is thrown into the canal, and then seeing the myriad of villages on its banks, with people wading about in the canals is again amazing. Women were doing their washing (huh!) in the canal…the clothes must have come out dirtier than when they went in.

We arrived in Esna crossing the bridge to the West Bank and headed into town. Same story, but worse. The filth and squalor was indescribable. The roads were virtually non existent and we were obliged to abandon the car and complete out approach to the temple on foot as the road just petered out in a building site.

The temple itself is in the middle of a market and is approached down a flight of steps. It's location is different to say the least, and I am sure if Mohammed had been with me he would have made the place sound terrific, but for me - and as usual it was just me, indeed the gatekeeper told me they had not had a single European visitor there for 2 weeks or more, it held little fascination.

I spent about 10 minutes looking around, and then had an amusing haggling session with the only store keeper who had his store actually open - good for him - as I bought a rather nice Cotton shawl for Caroline. I am sure I could have beaten him a lot lower, but I didn't have the heart. He started at 600 and we agreed on 120. Honours even I think!

We then took a Caleche ride into the centre of town. Well, I wont go on….suffice it to say I did not enjoy it. I am sure people who come to Luxor for the first time, and some even who are here for the umpteenth time, find this sort of thing thrilling, exotic and 'happening'  Not me I am afraid. I find it distressing and no fun at all. Over the years I have probably seen too much of it, both here and in other countries. I asked that we head back to the car PDQ.

I had a another nice interlude as, being hungry, I queued up at the local bakers. Egyptian bread when straight out of the oven really is delicious, and I bought 3 roundels of it,  piping hot and fresh as could be. I ate 2 of them and gave the other one to my driver. I also bought all the people queuing up for their bread at the tiny window their allocation…they seemed pretty pleased at that!

We headed back to Luxor along the West bank road. Unfortunately the road goes nowhere near the Nile and so did not see the great river until we had re-entered Luxor again. I was rather disappointed.

I sat in the garden under a white gazebo until the gardeners came and started spraying anti mosquito smoke around the place. I think what they use ut tear gas as it was pretty hard on the eyes, and so I retreated indoors and back up to my room.

Do you know, I am ready to go home tomorrow. I have lived a fantasy life here for a week.  It has been like having my own private filmset to play on…indeed numerous film sets. The Valleys, the hotel, the river, the town itself, Karnak. There has simply been no one around. 

I do wonder whether I will ever return to Luxor. I have been lucky enough to have seen it at a time few people have. I have had the entire place to myself. To walk around Karnak with no one...but no one around was just something else. I remember a couple of years ago I got to Karnak and turned straight back round again as the queues to get in were so long. 

I have stayed in a hotel with just the most charming, kind attentive staff you can imagine. The manager told me today that some members of his staff have said they will miss me, as apparently I have been a model guest! Wow…well, be friendly to people and it works, If something goes wrong, don't shout and scream.  


Maybe it is an attitude which is disappearing from the competitive world we live in. This evening whilst sitting in the lobby on internet a young group of French people came in, all dressed like Indiana Jones and being very loud in their vociferous demands of the staff.  It was like an atomic bomb had gone off. The poor, gentle staff on the front desk hardly knew what had hit them!

I have not spoken to more than 2 foreigners all week I don't think. Its not that I am antisocial, there just have not been any ! But the Egyptians I have spoken to and spent time with, apart from one execution, have been just the most delightful and laid back companions.  I feat once the tourists come again, this will change back as the stress of competing with each other takes hold.


Who knows? 

And lastly to those who have read all this guff…thanks very much. I have enjoyed the comments you have made, both the ones through the front door on the blog itself, and the ones round the back door via emails.  

I hope you will join me again on the next trip wherever it may be to. 


With a little good luck I may be off to Delhi for work in March, and want then to make a side trip up into the mountains around Simla. I have always had something of a fascination for the times of the Raj, brought on buy a mixture of  Paul Scotts novels about that period, an interest in Indian history around the time of independence and I suppose a good dose of simple nostalgia for a time when things were a little gentler in the world than they are now! 

Maybe that is a good set of reasons why I have enjoyed staying in this hotel so much. It really has been like living in a hotel set in the 1030's in Simla or Ooty in India.

Toodle pip !