Luxor squats on the east bank of the Nile like a Bedouin Benidorm, full of hotels and tours and hard selling touts.
The west bank, by contrast, is almost entirely undeveloped apart from the dusty township of Quan into which the new bridge - that crosses the river 5km north of Luxor – now feeds. It is quiet and for the first 3km from the river, very green.
We hired a ramshackle pair of bicycles the night before and, eschewing the bridge, rode the ferry across the mighty river. The current is strong and everything crabs at alarming angles to make landfall on the other side. An old man, well past any sensible retirement age, snatched the bikes from us as we disembarked, and hauled them up the steep quayside steps with practised ease of a wiry frame.
Only when it came to the issue of baksheesh did his strength evaporate. He indicated his dissatisfaction with what was offered, by a series of groans and an increasing crescendo of coughs.
The brief spin around the darkened alley outside the hire place, disguised the truly appalling shape our bikes were in. In the cold – sorry, make that the blisteringly hot light of day – the failings soon made their presence felt. The back wheels were undeniably oval and slung the rear end out into the traffic with each turn of the wheel. The seat was crudely repaired with a piece of carpet and the brakes – well, the brakes were fine. It was just the absence of brake pads that caused the problem. At the first junction, I skittered through the traffic, my feet dragging desperately on the tarmac to slow me down on the slope.
In the 50 degree heat, we stopped at every patch of shade to pour water down our throats; our miles per gallon were something akin to a Sherman tank but eventually we reached our destination
The Funerary temple of Ramses II sits incongruously amongst a small collection of houses. Ramses must be very happy spending his afterlife next to a kebab shop.
The temple is the usual collection of pylons and pillars, hieroglyphs and statues and is all very magnificent. The problem was that we had seen it all before and frankly, on a more epic scale. It was only over lunch at – you guessed it – The Ramses II Kebab House next door,that the Habu Temple, as it is properly called, came to life.
Over lunch, the restaurant owner described how he had grown up next to the temple which had been a wreck until his childhood in the 1950’s. American Archaeologists had excavated the site and rebuilt it and he and the male members of his family had helped. Perhaps inappropriately, they had supplemented their meagre wages with whatever they could pocket from the dig. Most had been sold on the black market, which he assured me, remains surprisingly healthy.
His Aloe Vera plant rested on a clearly ancient column in the corner. He showed me a collection that was not really on display, but neither was it hidden from prying eyes. There was a fossilised spike from a prehistoric sword-fish; a smooth, spherical stone that he swore was a dinosaur egg; a collection of stone hand tools and some small statues and coins. The fact that he didn’t offer to sell any of them tended to suggest that he at least thought they were genuine, even if they weren’t.
By the toilets was a giant caged bird of prey that screeched from time to time. Several years ago he has rescued it as an abandoned chick but after its recovery, it had refused to leave when he released it. Now he and his new friend went hunting in the desert together at sunset.
After lunch we said farewell to our new friend and cycled back in the afternoon sun. It was no cooler than the morning version.
Collapsing onto chairs on the balcony, we were just in time to see one of the amazing fiery sunsets that Luxor is famous for. A pair of Feluccas, with their distinctive Arabic sail plan, completed the scene as we cooled off. Being closer to the equator, the sun here falls like a stone.
Blink and you miss it.
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