The Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut
The temple is composed of 3 stories of colonnades.
The walls were covered in hieroglyphics and paintings depicting the birth of a female pharaoh and an expedition to the Red Sea.
The ceiling was painted with stars.
The Colossi of Memnon
Two massive statues of Amenhotep III once marked the entrance to his temple but floods and earthquakes over the centuries mean that these statues are all that remain today.
Karnak Temple
The sprawling temple is one of the largest religious sites in the world. Over the generations, successive rulers added walls, shrines, columns, statues, obelisks and anything else they could imagine to the temple.
In particular, I loved walking among the rows and rows of fat columns.
This wasn't our first visit to the Karnak Temple. The night before, Viraj and I went to the Karnak Sound & Light show. It's awfully cheesy with overly dramatic British voices narrating the walk through the temple, but it was entertaining and I loved seeing the temple at dusk and in the dark, the way it must have looked thousands of years ago (ok, minus the spotlights).
Luxor Temple
There are 2 podiums yet only 1 obelisk at the entrance to Luxor Temple. So where has the missing obelisk gone? It's at Place de la Concorde in Paris.
Abu Haggag Mosque stands atop of ancient ruins. A church once stood here and it was converted to a mosque sometime around 1,000 years ago. The mosque has been rebuilt multiple times in the following centuries, most recently in the 19th century.
Inside the Luxor Temple.
An avenue lined with sphinxes once connected Karnak and Luxor Temples.
Valley of the Kings
I should also mention that we did visit the Valley of the Kings where we saw 3 different tombs. It's mind blowing to wander through these underground burial chambers and see the craftsmanship that went into digging and decorating the tombs (not to mention that the cool, underground air was a welcomed relief from the blazing sun). I don't have any photos to post, however, because they officially don't allow photos inside the tombs and I wasn't interested in paying a bribe to the guys who supervise each tomb.
Between staying up for the Karnak Sound & Light show, getting up the following morning well before sunrise for the hot air balloon ride and spending the day exploring temples in the exhausting heat, we were pretty knackered by the time we boarded our overnight train back to Cairo. It was a long and restless journey, especially since the lights stayed on through the night (except for when the train broke down in the middle of the night for an hour or so), the aisle was constantly full of men without seats leaning on everyone else's seats, and no one seemed particularly interested in using their indoor voice as we tried in vain to sleep. I can't tell you how happy we were to finally return to our comfy Cairo hostel!
