Many Days

We flew into Luxor on Saturday. After three days in Cairo; the warm wind and swaying of palms is a lovely change. Sunday was one of those travel days that the experience is so personal it is impossible to relay, at least for me.

Memphis (ancient capital of Egypt) is not much more then a ruin the size of a football field. There are a few scattered pieces of sculpture but nothing to show this was once the great city of the Pharaohs. The bus ride out was what I wanted; mud brick homes, women selling carrots on the side of the highway, donkeys, camels and the humans that use them as their only source of transportation were far more colorful and interesting then the limestone fragment of Ramses II.

Our next stop was to Saqqara the home of the oldest pyramid in Egypt. It is step shape; more like the pyramids of Mexico then the great ones of Giza. Driving through lush vegetation of papyrus, date palms and the reeds along the smaller canals of the Nile lulled me into believing that I was in a tropical Africa. The sudden, and I mean one side of the road green and verdant and the other a vast open dessert is no exaggeration, took me a back. The line between life and sure death CAN be drawn in the sand.

Dzojer's step pyramid is situated in the Sahara; which means desert in ancient Arabic, hence it is redundant to say Sahara desert. something I've always done. The sand dunes undulate and the camel riders sit on the crest of a hill looking like something out of 1001 Arabian Nights. If you take there photo, which is why they are there, you must pay the baksheesh/tip/bribe..... It is 75 degrees at 8 in the morning and no shade to be found.

By 1 in the afternoon we are on the plateau that over looks the last remaining monument of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. It is a zoo of tour buses, postcard hawkers, stands to pay for a ride in the desert on a donkey or camel. Below, quiet, brown on brown stand the Pyramids. The sky is huge; bugger then life, bigger then Wyoming, Colorado and Montana sky combined. AWESOME!!!!!!!

So in one day I have to absorb all of this and it is not possible.

Our boat is an oasis. The call to prayer is heard from afar. The speakers hung on the minarets of mosques in the back waters of little towns drone and echo off the Nile. Dry, parched, no green except for the reeds on the bank of the river I sail with the feeling that these views are as ancient as any monument. This is a different world, mind set, sense of how life works. Most people are openly warm towards us; we are the infidels and you see that and also that their warmth towards us is genuine. The men, not all, but many have a permanent bruise on there forehead from the years of kneeling and touching the ground above their brow five times a day ever sense they can remember. I believe it may hold them to this place. It is so in the art of these ancient people; there is this steadfast static unmoving quality.

I love the sailing. Spending time on the open deck and taking in the full moon and knowing people have traveled this water for over 5,000 years. It suits me, the hot dry climate, the eggplant, rice and dates. I'm also keenly aware that I enjoy it because I can leave it. I am free to view with out taking part. My mom and I have been blocked by a group of men from entering an elevator that we pushed the button for. The chef refused to make eye contact and had to use every ounce of energy to serve this foreign, unveiled woman. He glowed and openly smiled and spoke to the man next in line behind me. I have never felt so invisible. What a feeling of humility and loss and yet there is something moving about this place.

This is our last night in Aswan. We flew early this morning over the high dam to view the temple of Abu Simbel. Again, how do I describe the monumental feet of the original design, construction and art AND the ability for us to move a mountain 240 meters up hill as not to loose it when the waters flooded the valley and gave Egypt a chance to enter the modern world.

Back to Cairo tomorrow for another two nights and then on to Paris.

Home is just around the corner. I can smell John's BBQ in the back yard and here Frida and Figaro's excitement when I pull in to the drive.