G’day all, hoping this post finds you well. Today I continue on through my experiences in March last year in Egypt as part of the ‘Dhaka to Dakar’ adventure I underwent. Today I will cover one day basically in Luxor, and the next time I will cover my nearly disastrous tour of Luxor’s West Bank which covers the Valley of the Kings and the incredible Habu Temple.

Principally in Luxor I covered two temples – Luxor Temple and Karnak Temple, as well as the Luxor Museum. I had planned to visit the Mummification Museum, which just by its name sounded interesting, but it was closed at the time sadly.

I stayed at the Iberotel which was beautifully located on the banks of the Nile River, which if you are unaware runs right through Luxor (as it does Cairo). You can check out my video review of the hotel, but in summary it classifies itself as ‘4-star’ whilst being three star, but at the same time the rates were less than $50AUD so hard to complain about that.

From there it was an easy walk mostly along the Nile to the first stop for the day which was Luxor Temple. It dates back to around 1400 BC and perched next to the Nile, it’s a perfect location. Finding the entrance though was somewhat tricky. There is a square outside the temple and if you walk up some steps you find yourself at a mosque they built sort of into the side of the temple itself, which in fact is a converted part of the temple. It was originally converted into a church by the Romans in the 4^th century CE, in the 7^th century it was converted into a mosque.

The entrance for foreigners is 180 Egyptian Pounds or about $6USD compared to 40 Egyptian Pounds for Egyptians. The temple itself is pretty big and you could easily spend over an hour in it. There’s a large Obelisk outside the main entrance to the temple itself, there used to be two – I believe the other one is in France, possibly in the Louvre.

You enter and there are columns and statues galore. Standing at the temple entrance after the obelix are two large statues of Ramses II, then you enter. It takes you into a section full of statues, which presumably had a roof at one point. Then down the ‘Grand Colonnade’, a mini sort of avenue inside the temple with columns either side.

It opens up into a small square and then beyond that there is another building which still has a little roof left I think. All in all it’s nearly 200 metres from the entrance to the temple to the back. Right in the last ‘chamber’ if you like there were some girls filming a TikTok. So many angles of light, even in the middle of the day there were great photos to be taken in, around and of the temple.

Back at the entrance going the other way was the 2.7km avenue of the sphinxes. An ancient stone road that goes all the way up to the Karnak Temple. I toyed with the idea of walking alongside it – walking the actual avenue is not possible as parts are under restoration although parts are open. In the blazing sun there would be no shade pretty much in the middle of the day so probably not the best idea anyway.

But I knew if I followed it along, given there were trees here and there for a bit of shade along the roads next to it, I would eventually get to the Karnak Temple. And so I walked up the road for 20 minutes, and time was wasting away and I was getting tired and there seemed little point. I took a mini-van for very little – they trundle around Luxor, they are the public transport of Luxor. Everyone knows ‘Karnak’ so I just asked when one went past me and sure enough, it was going in the right direction.

In fact I was dropped off just outside Karnak Temple. This temple honestly is like four temples or more and is just massive, not that Luxor was small. Luxor Temple had a few visitors, Karnak had hordes and a lot of large tour groups. Entrance of around 220 Egyptian Pounds, a large entrance hall with a map of the area, then a short walk to the entrance proper.

This temple is where they shot scenes for the James Bond film ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ – also they shot at the Giza Pyramids in the same film. Karnak, like the Pyramids has a light show at night for the tourists. I wandered the temple for probably 90 minutes to two hours. It was around 30 degrees that day but all the stone reflects the light back onto you so you really feel it. Again, it’s a mass of columns/pylons, statues, stone roads, all dating back to nearly 2000 BCE. There’s a lake too and a sort of café/restaurant where you can relax in shade and pay more than you should for drinks.

Honestly, this one is so big, and the second most visited site behind the Giza Pyramids in all of Egypt, and it’s better just to show you photos and the vlog than to try and recall all the different parts of it. There’s a reason why I don’t go on a lot of tours, in a place like Karnak the information dropped would be so much I wouldn’t remember any of it.

After that I took a taxi to the Luxor Museum. This proved to be a decent enough museum with a couple of mummies you can get pretty close to and of course, ancient treasures, statues and the like. It’s not that big when you compare it to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, but it feels a lot more modern and well planned out. Interestingly they would let me use my DSLR camera in there but not my small Sony Action Cam. Go figure!

I arrived back at the Iberotel pretty tired and hot. I’d walked a fair bit during the day in the sun, but I had seen what I wanted to. The next day I had a tour booked of the West Bank. It was really all go in Egypt, six days full of travel or sight seeing. It may seem like three things in one day is not much, but I would have spent over 5 hours inside the temples and museum all up.

Thanks for popping by today. Take care wherever you are in the world, and May the Journey Never End!