Travels with Selkit - 7

OCTOBER 7th, 2024:

The grandest Luxor site remains to be seen - Karnak temple. In a perfect world, I would have got there at first light today. But, after 9 days of continuous travel, the very bones are tired. So, I take it easy and have my first breakfast in 5 days. Shifting thru the gears gently, I check out from the resort by 9.30, luggage and all.

I need to get across to the city. Right at the beginning of the 2 km walk to the ferry, a guy on a motorbike halts and says: "leeft? fairy?" before I can answer, he says: "i take... free!". I get on although the Aamir adventure is fresh in memory. My new benefactor sets a reassuringly gentle pace, halts to say Salam to at least three chaps on the way and puts me down at the ferry. He speeds off immediately, cheerfully waving away my attempts to tip him with a "No...Maassalaama!"

From the ferry jetty on the city side, the Karnak temple is some distance to the north - at the end of the nearly 3 km sphinxes avenue from the Luxor temple. I walk, luggage and all - not too heavy, I tell myself, only just under 10 kilos. But, the sun is already beating down.

Karnak is an immensity - I would say a lot larger than any south Indian temple complex. Just the 'hypostyle hall' of over a hundred pillars - the tourist highlight of the place - equals the huge Notre Dame cathedral in floor area. The Homeric description of Thebes as the 'city of a hundred gateways' refers to Karnak - its pylons/gopurams are huge and many in number although much less than a hundred. The Luxor temple, so impressive in every other way, is a veritable pygmy before Karnak. Karnak was built, extended, rebuilt and built over by several generations of pharaohs: Hatshepsut, Thutmose, Tutankhamen, Ramses and many more. Most of the construction happened in the latter half of the second millennium BC but there are earlier remnants.

From nearly 10.30 to almost 2 - the glariest part of the day - I wander thru Karnak. Here is what I see:

The first pylon - the entrance to the complex:

A heraldic pair of vultures on a pillar:

Yet another Ramses colossus with a daughter of his - herself about twice life-size - at his feet:

The pharaoh as the destroyer of enemies is a sculpture theme dating back at least to Narmer. The standard pose - the victorious king holding the vanquished opponent(s) by the hair and about to smite him(them). Karnak has quite a few war scenes, mainly on the vast pylon surfaces.

Glimpses of the hypostyle hall. Imagine how these pillars would have looked in the morning desert sunshine if only the colors had survived - and yes, the blue god makes another appearance!

The two famous obelisks of Karnak. The taller one is by Hatshepsut; I can recall reading about it long ago in Mali's retelling - how the ironwilled queen forced master builder Senmut to undertake the task of erecting two huge obelisks "one in my father's name, one to the glory of Ra" (much later in life, I also heard Hat and Senmut had a falling out leading to the latter's name and signature getting erased from many of his works!).

Obelisks ought to be bracketed with the pyramids as supreme Egyptian achievements - aesthetic as well as structural. Collecting these elegant needles were a European craze in the last century or so and wiki says the great majority among the tallest ones have been taken across. The very largest obelisk ever rests in a quarry, unfinished. Queen Hat's standing oblelisk comes next.

Must be the lady herself, in the 'stretcher-bearer' pose:

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Note added later: I have come to know the above statue is probably not of queen Hat but of goddess Amunet (a new name I was unaware of while in Egypt). An observation: seems in Egypt, really large colossi always represented human beings and not gods. I have heard of big statues of Horus as a falcon at Abu Simbel, a place I didn't visit; that's all I can think of.
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Many of the colossal statues here are heavily damaged - some are defaced and a few look like some satanic force has torn them apart - I can't think of even one really intact specimen:

Gopurams reflected in a holy tank is a common enough site in Tamil temples. Here we have something very similar - the remnants of a huge pylon reflected in a holy tank (to my limited knowledge, this is the only holy tank in an ancient Egyptian temple), whose very existence in this desert puzzles me (admittedly, the Nile is only a kilometer off).

The temple of Khonsu - though quite a big affair - feels like a mere appendage to the main Karnak temple:

Another 'temple of Ramses' lies in ruins nearby. The remnants include some reliefs of botanical and zoological specimens:

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I get out of Karnak and ask around for "temple of Mut" - to which I already have a ticket - and receive somewhat misleading directions. Long story short, I end up walking all around the site (an excess of nearly two km) and finally having to solicit the help of a youngster who despite not having a word of English, willingly leads me through some overgrown no man's land to another entry point. Not one tourist is around but the caretaker opens up the place (for a personal fee) and lets me have a dekko. The temple is utterly ruined. It is most famous for its array of Sekhmet statues; a few are mercifully intact. And see how the hooded cobras team up to form a tiara for thr lioness-goddess!

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By 4 pm, I reach Oasis restaurant. Koshari is waiting. The dish feels like a cross between upma and pasta and is quite bland; but I am starving so conquering a massive plateful is no big deal.

I now ponder what to do with the rest of evening. I positively do not want to see the Mummification Museum. Among the temples, the Luxor temple stays open till 10 and gets lit up in the evenings. So, I decide to revisit it. Since I know the folks at Oasis well by now, I can leave the luggage there.

Here is how Luxor temple looks at twilight and after.

Back at Oasis, I have another go at King Farouk soup and garlic bread.

One final glimpse of the Nile:

No Uber in Luxor; to get to the airport, I end up paying the cabbie an amount approx twice what I would have paid in Cairo for a similar distance. I reach at 10 pm.

3 more hours of waiting before the flight to Cairo - the onward flight back home from Cairo via Abu Dhabi is only at 2 pm tomorrow. A gaggle of Italian tourists make a nuisance of themselves with noisy chatter; maybe it is just as well - if the place were silent, I might sleep off and miss the flight.

OCTOBER 8th, 2024:
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I land in Cairo at 2 am. Reeling from Luxor effect and utterly spent, I catch a wink of sleep at the airport on a rather awkward bench. Post an early breakfast, I briefly consider filling some of the half day remaining in Cairo with a taxi ride around Heliopolis but decide against it - just loitering in the airport sipping some drink or other feels like bliss.

Somewhere, I see this three-tier object, the like of which I can't remember seeing anywhere - the last bit of sightseeing in Egypt:

Mercifully, the customs and stuff get done quick and we fly off to Abu Dhabi on time. It is night when we land. For the second time in a fortnight, I have 3 hours to kill at Abu Dhabi and once again I get fleeced. A Currency Exchange booth gives me the equivalent of 1000 Indian rupees less than what I should have got for my remaining Egyptian pounds and justifies it with some "online...offline" nonsense. I am too tired to argue.

On touching down in Kochi at 3 am local time, I text Gyani with news of my return home. "Now starts the hard work on the memoirs." comes the matter-of-fact reply.
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Now that the 'memoirs' are done, I need to thank a couple of folks - Rekesh for putting the Egyptian idea into my head a year ago and for mentioning Abydos, a place I hadn't heard about before I landed in Cairo and 'Captain', without whose logistic support and guidance, I simply wouldn't have set out for Egypt, let alone gotten back home in one piece. To my Readers (so few I can name you all), congrats on getting this far! And to Egypt, dunno if I have enough years in the bank for a revisit, but I will try!