My Way Is The Highway

Seattle to Cairo

Christmas Day, 2006, Day 1in Egypt

I like the dude in the flight safety videos.

He is so cool in the face of calamity. He manages to find the life vest under the seat (my furtive gropes have perpetually failed to locate this life saving device), and gets the clasps in the right hoops as the airplane is crashing into the water. He then jumps on to the raft confident that the vest will self-inflate once it comes in contact with water.  In case it does not, he is confident that he will find the tiny rubber tube on the shoulder and blow enough air effortlessly, while navigating choppy seas, to displace his own weight.

He should simply rip off his clothes to display the large yellow S on the blue tights and fly off.

The GPS tracker embedded in the back of the headrests is a fantastic invention especially with kids around. The "Are we there yet?" can be met with "Sweets, when this little airplane goes across all this blue and then over that green and brown and meets this triangle, we will be there."

Rhea gawks at the LCD goggle-eyed. I guess not being able to say AWTY takes away half her pleasure of travelling. The other half depends on how many surprises Gayatri and I have managed to secret away in her little carry-on.

Tracking the plane on the LCD over Europe is exhilarating as exotic sounding places - Dusseldorf, Cologne, Hague, Naples, Geneva, Luxemburg, Dortmund - all seem just a (parachute) drop away.

Rhea travels well. Comfortable, self assured, goes with the blow, does not resist, takes as it comes, sleeps easily. Good for her.

 

We change from United to Lufthansa at Frankfurt and the difference in the flying experience is immediately apparent. The German Lufthansa airplanes are so ergonomic designed. A little hook to hang (the wife’s) purse, A little glass holder that allows you to nurse a drink without having to put the tray down.

We landed in Cairo after 15 hours of flying. Rhea's first words as she walks out are, "Papi,  I am pretending this is India...". She stole my thought. The air was thick and warm air. A thousand odors simultaneously invaded the nostrils. Multilingual no-holds-barred loud hubbub met the ears. An explosion of smiling brown faces, it does feel like India. 

The hotel is situated on the Giza plateau. There is a a high profile garish wedding happening in it foyer, attended by local glitterati and a loud singing band. The hotel has 5 restaurants and not one of them, to our disappointment, authentic Egyptian. So we stepped out to find some food. and inadvertently notice the limestone clad Khafre on the horizon. Khufu's silhouette soon became apparent and excited Rhea.

We stumbled upon a Egyptian hole-in-the-wall where we had our first cups of bitter and muddy Turkish coffee.

We also ran into our first Egyptian smooth-talking salesman who tried to sell us perfumes made using recipes allegedly found in king Tut's tomb. Frankly we all liked the perfume though the thought of shelling out Egyptian pounds without looking around did not appeal to our senses. We promised to return later and suddenly Ashref was no longer smooth talking.

Looks like Tutankhamen, is Tutankhamen

King Tutankhamen, the 18th dynasty boy king, probably gave the world much more in death than he did in his 19 year life, 11 of those as the king of unified Egypt. His mortuary monument of death does not parallel Khufu's gigantic pyramid at Giza, or Hathshepsut's amazingly modern looking temple at Dier-el-Bahri or Ramses colossi at Abu Simbel. 

But it is the most intact of them all.

It had the sarcophagus - 7 boxed, and the jewelry and the chariots, the golden mask, the four Canopy jars, every single item mentioned by the Book of the dead, give or take a few.

Compiling King Tut's three faces as we know them

His golden mask, giving us a glimpse of the face structure. Gold as a precious metal has no effect on me, though I remember standing awe struck in front of this exhibit in the museum in Cairo.

In 2005, National geographic used 3D CT scans to create a forensic reconstruction.

And then the just released photographs of the face from the past. The asymmetrical head, the wonderful buck teeth, the high cheeks bones

 

 

 

 

 

 

29th Dec 2006, the day we were on the west bank of Nile, we casually skirted the tomb, pausing merely to take a picture. Do I regret not going in - sure - I regret not seeing so many places in Egypt that the list is itself worthy of a blog ...

 

Egypt::Day 7:: Edfu - the land of the horus

Over the night, out cruise crossed the ancient locks of Esna and landed up at the Temple of Edfu

(An oil painting by David Roberts - sketched in Edfu 1839 and completed later in his studio)

Built between 237BC and 57BC by six Ptolemies, this temple is in a fabulous shape and is smaller only than the temple of Karnak in size.

We entered through these gigantic 118 ft pylons and once again got lost in the nebulous world of ancient beliefs.

	Huge 35 feet motifs on the entrance pylon
	Beautiful hieroglyphics and carvings through out the temple walls
	Slaying of the hippopotamus, a symbol of Seth - the mortal enemy of Horus
	The huge status of Horus
	Ancient Egyptians understood the way light plays on stationary objects as well as some of the modern photographers .
	Passageway between the inner temple and outer temple
	Images of the truimp of the Horus, depicted beautifully on the temple walls

At the end of the day, we were very close to monument exhaustion. There is only so much a mind can take ... :)