This is a continuation of my bridge holiday in Egypt. Each section can be read without reference to the previous ones. Zaib is my bridge partner, and Win, the roommate that I got landed with.

Day 2 - The Valley of the Kings

I slept badly that night - and my roommate, Win, got in very late and one of her friends came knocking on the door even later to tell her about the man she had been left with. The next day, I had to get up early for my trip to the Valley of the Kings - so I asked for an alarm call.

About 10 of us joined the tour from our hotel. We were taken by bus to the town, and then got on a platform which I though was going to take us across the Nile, but in fact there was a big boat which pulled up next to the platform and we moved onto the bigger ferry boat.  The crossing was only about 15 minutes, and then we got in another bus. We had a guide who told us our bus driver was called Michael Jackson and her name which meant Paradise in English so we called her that. She had a university degree in Egyptology and several years' research experience. We traveled away up from the river onto the hills which are part of the mountain and desert area. Paradise told us that the East Bank of the Nile, where we lived and the temples were, was called the Acropolis, the land of the living. This area on the West Bank was called the Necropolis,the land of the Dead.

In the hills we saw were the burial places which were our destination. These pharaohs dated from the Middle Kingdom and into the New Kingdom, while the oldest ones had had pyramids rather than tombs, and they had lived in Cairo. This area didn't have the appropriate stones for building pyramids so used the materials at hand - namely the limestone and sandstone hills - and excavated their elaborate tombs into them. I think there were 62 tombs of kings that had been discovered - the last one being the most famous and only one that was found intact that of Tutankhamen.

We were allowed to go into three tombs  with our tickets, but if we wanted to go into his as well, we had to pay an extra £ 1E - which most of us did. The first tomb was very long and narrow (perhaps 15 ft wide) and in fact the size depended on the length of the realm of the ruler as they started building his tomb as soon as he took over, and only finished when he was dead. This one was the prescribed 12 rooms deep, one for each phase of the journey of the soul into afterlife.

The hieroglyphics were very easy to see and understand, and in many places the colours looked as bright as they probably had when they were painted 3-4000 years ago. Some of the walls had been renovated, and these were easily shown but for the most part the structure itself was intact. None of the gifts that had been placed for the king's journey into the afterlife had remained as each new ruler brought a new bunch of grave robbers. But you could tell quite a lot about the people just from studying the hieroglyphics. We were given a basic lesson and found ourselves able to spell out simple words and find the names of the pharaoh or god mentioned over and over.

The second tomb was smaller and less impressive than the first. Then we went into the special new one - and that was almost tiny. Tutankhamen died so young there were only two rooms, and only the inner one was decorated at all, but we did see his sarcophagus and the model made of his body which was on top of the tomb. His body and all the bits found in the tomb are now in the Museum in Cairo. The last tomb was in fact the most spectacular having not only lots of rooms, but huge cavities in some of the rooms with rooms off rooms.

A lot of people had succumbed to Egyptian tummy, and I was no exception. We were relieved to see that toilets were provided on the site, but it took a desparate woman to want to use them. They were perhaps six cubicles inside the structure - but standing guard on each side of the women’s toilets was a man - and in his hands he had a plate for your money, and a small piece of toilet paper. The stench was unbelievable. I did what I had to do - but thought myself very lucky not to have vomitted as well.

Then we got back on the bus and went to the Valley of the Queens on the other side of the mountain. Here we saw the very modem looking temple of Hotchepsut (which our guide told us to remember by thinking of hot chicken soup). She was the only woman who was honoured as a king would be - the rest were only consorts - and although they had tombs, they were not nearly as fancy or important. But she was a king-equivalent and thought to have been the product of her mother and a god - and she then married her half brother - who would have inherited except that his mother was a concubine. She ruled quite well and peace fully it seems for some 14 years, but in the end the enemies scratched the pictures of her off the walls of her tomb and temple.

Then we stopped at a factory which made alabaster items such as bowls and goblets. As the bus drove up the six or so men picked up their tools to demonstrate to us how the rock was cut and how a hole was bored into it and then how it was chiseled and polished into bowls or goblets or whatever. 

Our guide gave us each a small stone Scarab  - a sort of Beetle - as a sign of good fortune. Some of the people on the bus refused them so I took three. I felt bad because there were little girls begging for us to buy their items as we got back in the bus. One little girl in particular singled me out and kept on looking at me with her big brown eyes and appealing to me to spend £E5 or whatever on her dirty homemade camel. I had given £E5 to one little boy who had been pestering me - and he only gave me a few bits of rock - so he should have been pleased but all the constant begging both upset me and annoyed me. You couldn't give to everybody - and you didn't want what they were selling. And the smallest note I had left was £E20 and I didn't want to give that away.

We felt bad when we saw two of these little boys throwing stones at a donkey which was tethered so found it difficult to avoid getting hurt. There were no adults around to supervise these children - who were more or less left to do what they liked. They were barefoot and rather dirty looking and their village looked very poor with no glass in the windows and many of the houses with no roofs. Sometimes they appeared to have animal houses on the roof. Eventually we got back on the bus and left, went back by ferry and then another bus and got back to our hotel about two. I was quite exhausted.

That night when we were playing bridge I was very tired, and really felt rather ill, and was not at all looking forward to the balloon ride scheduled for four a.m. the next morning. Saib didn’t want to go either. We had paid £130 each for the privilege and when some of our opponents sat down and said how disappointed they were that they hadn't been able to get on the trip, we sold them our tickets,  right then and there. so they couldn't change their minds. So we went to bed and had a good night's sleep - and they got up and had a very good balloon ride and we all seemed quite pleased with the exchange.
 

Day 3

Since we didn't have to go to the balloon, Zaib and I took the bus into town and went to a shop recommended by a couple who go on all these holidays and always fined the best bargains. This was a shop where nobody was allowed to haggle - fixed price. It was small but had good quality t shirts, caftans and stuff like that. 

I didn't really like the man who I thought was rather rude to his customers - but it was a relief to know what the price was for something and to make up your mind whether you wanted to pay it or not without pressure. Then we went into a shop called Arizona that appealed to me because they had western looking shirts - one with hearts and diamonds and spades on. And they also had fixed prices but written in Arabic and then crossed off A Sale, just what I can't resist. The ladies inside were very shy - and yet friendly when Zaib got into conversation with them. They thought she, being from India, must know the men who they liked from the Indian soap operas and films that they watched on TV. They said they thought Zaib was very beautiful - and really enjoyed talking with her.

Then we walked along the river bank and had a drink of coke, and fell into conversation with a young man called Jawal who owned a boat. He wanted us to read a letter he had received from an English lady who had been visiting in October and had gone back to Yorkshire and was writing to tell about Christmas and the snow, in England. I read it first but he couldn't understand what I was saying so Zaib reread it slowly, checking after every phrase to see if he needed more interpretation. He wanted us to go with him to Banana Island, or just out with him in his boat, but we had really had our fill of pleasant charming young Egyptian men so put him off.

We got a horse cart home that day too, and Zaib who was very good at bargaining gave the impression that she was going to walk and in the end we got the cheap price we were prepared to pay. I couldn't stand to bargain, and often agreed a high price just to stop the whole procedure, which rather irritated some of my friends. I have this great dislike of conflict and wanted to avoid it whenever possible rather than make every situation into a bargaining process which seemed to be the accepted way of behaving. Even though the man had agreed to Zaib's price, he kept wanting us to agree to pay more, and half-stopped en route and turned around and said, "I have eight children at home"

Zaib said, "Shame on you. That's your fault. You shouldn't have had so many."

Before we went home, Zaib and I went to the local museum which was lovely and tastefully put out. Not a lot there, but as much as you wanted. We felt quite pleased with our nice quiet balloon-less day and were happy to find out that we had come first in the competition the night before too. And we did again that night.

Win wasn’t proving to be too bad a roommate. Mostly we just avoided each other. But she did have a habit which took some getting used to. She didn’t wear any clothes when she was in the room, and she answered the door to her friends, or the hotel staff, men included like that too. At first I was embarrassed and looked away. But she found that very amusing, and wondered why I should be so prudish - and she had a lovely body for her age. No wonder she was proud of it. At first I thought that she had forgotten to pack a nightgown and offered her one of mine - or a t shirt to wear - but she said that was just how she was - enjoying the freedom of being naked whenever she could.