20 December 2004

Seeing the Sights

Our two week sleep-in-the-desert, live-the-archeologist-life trip turned out to bear little resemblance to the original offer.

On the first half of the tour nothing went as planned, we didn't get to camp, we saw few of the promised sights and we had to put up with annoying military convoys. The hard part was trying to work out which bit was lack of organisation on the part of our tour organisers, Ancient World Tours, and how much was just general Egyptian chaos. "Inshallah" is a most used word here, and the most appropriate. There is a mixture of arrogance and deal making (on the part of officials), welcome and total lack of responsibility, combined with inefficiency and a general state of disrepair that borders on dereliction. This makes for an often unpleasant experience, always teetering on uncertainty, often frustrating where it not for the occasional astoundingly wonderful sight.

DSCF1989-2004-12-20-10-46.jpg

Abandoned Pillar at the Roman Quarry of Mons Claudianus

DSCF2143-2004-12-20-10-46.jpg

Greek Inscription at an Ancient Rest Stop in The Eastern Desert

DSCF2344-2004-12-20-10-46.jpg

Statue of Pharaoh Akhenaten at Luxor Museum

IMG_4192-2004-12-20-10-46.jpg

Sunset at Nabta Playa, near Sudan

DSCF2548-2004-12-20-10-46.jpg

Dawn over the Nile in Cairo

DSCF2579-2004-12-20-10-46.jpg

Giza Pyramid Complex

No comments:

Post a Comment