On The Nile ......as goods !

The Awesome machinery of Tour Agents: 

Tourists bring in the butter and most of the bread for Egypt, a country more than amply blessed with treasures of the jawdropping kind. So it is no wonder that the tourism industry is well oiled and in perfectly functioning order. The Tour Agents are so efficient that it is more than amazing - its almost frightening ! From the time they pick you up to the time they dispatch you home, they function with robotic precision . 

Right after the Hullos, they briskly rattle away answers to all questions you would ask, could ask, ought to ask , forgot to ask and never thought of asking. They even tell you when to have breakfast so that you can be in the hotel lounge when they arrive for the day's tour. 

The Nile Cruise offered us the unforgettable experience of really understanding and appreciating the Six-Sigma operational system of the Mumbai Dabbawallas. In the land of the everlasting Pharaohs, we were the Dabbas. 

'Main Agent' greeted us at the Aswan airport and checked us into a pretty ,colonial type cottage by the Nile for the night and early next morning, bundled us and our luggage into a not-too-flashy, not-too-drab, comfortable boat , which would be our base camp for the next 5 days. He handed us over to Agent-1 at the boat's lobby and left.  That was the last we saw of Main Agent . 

Agent 1 colour-coded us with little round stickers and loaded us into a luxury coach that took us to Site A.  "45 Minutes . Departure by the Green Bus on the left of the Guard's cabin. " rang out the announcement and both ,Coach and Agent, disappeared. 

This same was being repeated near numerous other arriving coaches . By the time we had just about nodded, Agent 2 , holding aloft a little flag ( a scarf tied to a ruler) had miraculously materialised at the entrance, shepherding all those who wore stickers of the same colour as his flag into one battalion, who would henceforth march behind that flag like the mice of Hamlyn . 

Sightseeing done, legends heard, jaws dropped, pictures shot, we suddenly discovered at the exit that Agent 2 had vanished too ! So had most other mice who were with us. Everyone had a bus to catch. We scurried to our “Green Bus on the left of the Guard's cabin”, where Agent 3 checked us off on  a clip board by merely looking at our sticker code. The Green bus contained a totally different set of people, all headed to Site B. " One Hour ! Departure by Grey Coach near the Coffee Bar. " Another flag ( a child's pink umbrella with kerchief tied to its end) loomed up and with some other new faces, we started marching behind the story spinning Egyptian. 

And so on, it went. At the end of Site C, we were collected by someone with a familiar face - ah ! Agent 1 ! He brought us to the wharf, where cruise boats by the dozen had anchored. They were all aligned, side by side, like a Navy Parade with narrow drawbridges connecting them. "Fifth portal ! Good day !" He told us and went poof ! We entered the first cruise, walked through its lobby, took the drawbridge on the other end to cross into the second cruise, walked through another lobby towards the farther bridge....and so on to our own boat, the fifth. 

 We never had to worry if we would miss a bus or the Guide or an item on the itinerary or get lost in the maze of souvenir stalls. We would always be found, collected and deposited in all the right channels by the super efficient cogs of the amazing network. They say, in Mumbai, not one Dabba is misplaced. Same here. Hats off to their efficiency . 

The Sights : 

 The River bank temples built along the Nile at various periods of time are in different states of preservation. Some have had to get drowned when the Aswan High Dam was built. Those worth saving were saved , of course. 

The Philae Temple Complex on an island which got inundated was saved by building dykes around it and pumping the water out. Within this protective fortress, the temple complex was dismantled totally into crates of numbered blocks. Transported to another island, Agilika, on a higher plane , they were re-assembled like giant Lego bricks. The complex, started by the Ptolemies, contains temples dedicated to Hathor (the most ancient , 380 BC) Osiris and Horus. Greeks have added their share of buildings and carved reliefs. Later, Coptic Christians who occupied the temples left their mark by defacing symbolic imagery and establishing a chapel for Virgin Mary. This in turn was shut down by the Islamic conquerors. In one of the colonnaded inner halls of the Great Temple, we could see traces of colour (some greenish blue and russet )on the lotus and papyrus motif decorations. How wonderful it would have been in that age ! 

Temple of Kom Ombo , standing on a promontory by the bend in the Nile, is massive. It is a Double Temple, with two matching sets of structures built together like Siamese twins. One side is dedicated to the Crocodile headed Sobek The Elder and his family and the other side is dedicated to the Falcon headed Horus the Elder. There is a complicated mythology involving the two and I am still confused if Sobek is good guy or bad guy. This temple is famous for the 300 mummified crocodiles offered to Hathor, of which we saw just one in a glass box. One wall has carvings of some curious looking things which the guide said were surgical instruments. 

The cruise offered reasonably good food and , on the final day, some entertainment with whirling dervishes and belly dancers. As we had notified beforehand of our vegetarianism, the chefs took trouble to dish up things like plain pilaf , cinnamon flavoured roasted potatoes, green salads, far-eastern sambal and ofcourse the delicious falafel with Tahini laced sauce. 

 We have all read about the River Nile since school days and we have mental images of all such exotic places. I had always imagined the Nile to be a vast flood of sparkling water thundering down sandy, pyramid-dotted wastelands and occassional verdant oases. Of course the real Nile was something quite different. For one thing, it was much narrower than i had imagined. And quite placid , because most of the water is imprisoned by the Aswan dam . Another curious thing i had never expected was the traffic jam of cruise boats on the river ! It was quite a funny sight, looking very much like any clogged road in our metros ! And when the traffic had to slowdown at the bottleneck of the The Esna Lock, we could hear much grumbling and bickering similar to road rage. The Cruise weighed anchor at various spots along the Nile, so that we could take day trips into the land to see the wonders strewn about. 

The trip to The Valley Of The Kings, with its cleverly concealed tombs, took up half a day. The actual name of the place is : The Theban Necropolis or Wadi Biab el Muluk ( modern) or Ta sekhet ma'at (ancient) The coach stopped quite a distance away and from the entry point of the valley, visitors are taken to the necropolis in the special shuttles run by The Department of Antiquities.The place was chocking with visitors and there were serpentine queues everywhere. The Ticket given is usually valid for entry into any three of the about 60 tombs but since the time allotted in our itinerary was too short, we could enter only two and do justice to only one . Alas, it wasn't the tomb of Rameses, said to be the best and consequently sporting the longest queue. 

We saw the resting place of Seti-1 , tried to take in as much as possible of the murals and the sarcophagus in the pressing crowd . Coming out, we picked up a small rounded stone from its entrance, as a souvenir. The other Tomb we rushed through , though less crowded, was also less ornamented ,but unfortunately, did not make a note of the name. 

The floor of the valley was carpeted with pebbles of all sizes and many tourists were stacking three or four into dolmens with their initials scratched on them , to say " X was here". 

 On the way to the Valley, a lonely house atop a summit was pointed out as the house of Howard Carter who discovered King Tut's tomb. We exchanged stories of King Tut's Curse which , at that place, did give us the creeps!

The temples of Amun Re at Luxor and Karnak are magnificent and left me completely awed. The size of the coloumns is unimaginable. The capitals of the pillars show excellent decorative motifs. The guide patiently taught us how to read numerals and idioms in hieroglyphics. I was thrilled when he complimented me for deciphering a certain number he pointed out on a wall !

 In Luxor, the unforgetables are the colossal statues of Ramesses. we also saw the 25 meter tall pink granite Obelisk, one of the two erected by Ramesess II. We had seen its pair standing in The Place du Concorde in Paris.  

The Temple of the female Pharoah Hatshepsut  is remarkable for its size, neat structure and resemblance to modern architecture.  The legend of this lady boss is very inspiring. 

 The tours included the mandatory vists to handicraft centres. I really enjoyed the show put by the alabaster artisans . I call it a 'show' because it was almost like a dance drama with a main sutradar narrating the nuances of the craft in a sing song and the chorus of young helpers adding "chants" like : "chip-chip-cut ! " , "turn-it-right-turn-it-left-and-heigh-ho !" " po-lish we po-lish !" with suitable choreographed actions. The narration was peppered with jokes and witty one liners. And that final operatic flourish ! Enjoyable show ! ( and, no , we bought no alabaster.) At all souvenir selling street bazars, one friendly call greeted us, unfailingly : "Ameetabacchan ! Ameetabachan !" So sad, we knew no names from the Egyptian film industry to greet them back. I wondered if the urchins would recognise the only name i knew - the oldie Omar Sherrif. I guess not ! 

The Colossi of Memnon : It was just a quick stop for a photo . 

(Family Tour of November 2004 . Old Blogpost migrated here from another account )