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Monument Hopping in Luxor Part 1: The East Bank
Once known as Thebes, the capitol of Ancient Egypt during most of its existence, Luxor is a living outdoor museum bursting with ancient temples and tombs.
Check out Part 2 when you’re done here.
Take a slow train down the Nile from Cairo — ours was scheduled for 10 hours but took 14 — and you’ll arrive at the city of Luxor. Take a book with you. I had the copy of Moby Dick that’s travelled with me since I left for Miami on Halloween, and took a good 250-page chunk out of the old bastard between meals of abominable coffee and hard sandwiches under plastic wrap. Before you arrive, book a room at The Bob Marley Peace Hostel — they’re on hostelworld.com and similar sites — and tap suggestively on the poster of Bob Marley Himself when they ask if you need anything else. Cairo is the single most chaotic, noisy, polluted city around which I have ever walked or been driven in a tuk-tuk at top speed through the unregulated avenues and intersections. Luxor is not that, but it’s a sizeable third world tourist town with all the hustle and decay found in such places. What it has over…
