Who did this to me? That was my first reaction when the telephone rang at 5:00 am on 5th February 2006, in Hotel of Maghawish in Egyptian town of Hurghada.
For a while it was hard to remember that it was actually me who asked receptionist for a wake-up call so I could catch the caravan of tourists who were heading to the historical town of Luxor in the central part of Egypt.
I had only 30 minutes for my entire preparation since our small group headed by Linda would be waiting for me at the reception to be picked up. It was her strict order that I should not miss this service, otherwise I might not be able to visit that part of the Egypt which, according to her, is the oldest part of the world, a place where life stopped thousands of years ago.
I heard this many times from her and her special assistant, a lovely man named Mohamed Omer. At the beginning I was thinking that it might be the part of the attractive words that many tour guides use just to impress their customers. But as we set off toward Luxor with the caravan of hundreds of buses, loaded with tourists and escorted by Egyptian police force, I realized with 30 minutes that it was not the real Egypt where I was living the previous 3 days.
Dry mountains surrounding the roadsides were nice change of scenery and being part of escorted caravan, [which couldn’t be crossed by any local transport], gave us a privileged feeling.
After almost an hour of traveling I opened my eyes and I couldn’t believe what I saw around me. It was the same picture of a town I knew that was located on both sides of the train tracks just outside of Lahore, in Pakistan. The same rush of people, moving irregularly on the roadside some on donkeys and some on cow carts, even the clothing and color of the people was exactly like the Punjabis in Pakistan.
Houses around the canal, the style of farming and cultivation, transportation, roadside signboards, electricity delivery systems, even women carrying jars on their heads, everywhere were the same images.
But here there were elements of the modern world which are already part of fashion, at least in internal parts of Pakistan. A civilian man carrying guns could be seen on the road. Despite this I didn’t have any fear of being attacked, since we have been escorted by soldiers, but I don’t believe anyone would have attacked us at all.
After three hour of journey we approached to our first destination ‘The Valley of the Kings’ – surrounded by driest mountains I have ever seen in my live. I started to think how stupid these kings were to chose this place to be buried, but my new guide Honey interrupted me saying it’s the most suitable place where mummies could live for ever.
This was not the only impression I had. There were many other surprises, like their tombs, the newest one was around 4,500 BC, and buried many meters down, deep in the hidden parts of the earth.
Though very deep it was full of architectural structures, statues and drawings which archeologists and historians believe were based on real events, while the kings were talking to the God Amun ra’.
Honey was an excellent and professional Egyptian guide who devoted his whole day to me and explained everything around. According to him, kings believed in second life after dying in this world, so a king sought to bury whatever he might need in his second life to be able to rule the nation where it paused after his dead.
This was the secret of these tombs. There were not only deep but as much as possible located in hidden parts of the mountains, because the ancient Egyptian kings were afraid of being robbed. Neither the depth of the tombs nor their secret mountain hideaways could save them from being discovered.
We spend almost 4 hours in this area, but all of us were hungry. It was about this time the expected announcement came from our head guide Linda that ‘we will have break for lunch’. That lunch was eaten in a place that I dreamed of visiting my entire life.
