Near East Adventure

Jordan & Egypt (Land and River Trip with 7 nights on the Nefertiti)

Thursday October 14, 2021; Evening departure from aboard BA for a London, Amman Jordan itinerary got off about an hour late leading to a missed BA connection in London.  As the next flight was 48 hours later BA switched me to Royal Jordan 24 hours later on a very nicely appointed B 787.  The good part of this was on the bus connection to the London transit hotel and through dinner I met another interesting world traveler and struck up an acquaintance into the future.  This, in the 2021 year of the Covid virus, culminated a week of stress over numerous vaccination, testing trials requiring document submission and obtaining QR codes various countries and entities.  As initially planned this trip was to include a couple days in Israel, but this scrubbed due to the pandemic.  Not much fun getting started, but great trip to follow.    There were to be 6 or 7 travelers to Jordan, but at the last minute I learned that all had canceled but one, myself.  “Our” guide, somewhat dependent on tips from 6 for his week’s work might not be pleased.  Maybe instead of the usual well-appointed van, he would just say “since it’s just you and I, get on the back of my motorcycle.”  This giving much uncertainty over whether I too should cancel.   But in the end Hashim and OAT came through for a fine visit in Jordan.

Jordan

Monday October 18; Today we are driving to Petra with some stops along the way.  Over the past two days exploring Amman and surrounds.  A castle at Ajloun reportedly visited by Saladin and some crusaders, The Roman ruins at Jerash Citadel and Roman Theater in Amman.  The landscape is populated with olive trees everywhere.  However, Jordan has few or no “lumber” trees so essentially all buildings are of limestone masonry and are generally very clean and sturdy in appearance.  I am impressed by the neat and clean appearance of the neighborhoods around Amman.  My guide reports the Jordan’s largest GDP component, ~14%, is from tourism. Second is from remittances to Jordan from well-educated Jordanians working abroad. Third in GDP is agriculture, and fourth is the spending of transient tourists passing through on pilgrimage to Mecca.  Indeed second and fourth are surprising to this writer as major components of GDP.  The country is 4% Christian, as is Hisham, and 96% Muslim.  80% are smokers as are many of Hisham’s guide friends.  On the drive to Petra we detoured to Mt Nebo, where Moses is reputed to have looked from the mountain top upon the Promised Land that he never reached.  Also through Masaba to see the mosaics in the Greek Orthodox Basilica of Saint George.  Driving south to Petra were many large freshly tilled and unplanted agricultural fields.  Apparently Jordan gets a lot of rain over a short time of the early growing season and not much the remainder of the season.   Among the rural settlement are Gypsy camps and in the hills and valleys not dedicated to agriculture are Bedouin camps with tents of goat and camel skin.   The Bedouins are nomadic rural herders and the Gypsies beg and steal.

Tuesday October 19; A long day was spent exploring Petra during which I walked more than 10 miles and climbed the 1,000 feet to the Monastery.  Horses, donkeys, and golf carts are offered for much of this but I declined.  Petra, was built and operated by Nabatean people in the Shara Mountains.  It was a sheltered trade rest and replenishment stop along major crisscrossing north-south and east-west trade routes between about the 1st century BC until the 4th century AD when loss of favor by changing trade routes, heavily damaged by an earthquake it fell to obscurity to all but local Bedouins.   It was rediscovered to the western world in the early 19th century. Some of the writings had left me with the impression of a city carved within the mountain, but in fact it more façade with pretty much a single room behind in the mountain.  Nevertheless very interesting to see.

Wednesday and Thursday were spent at the Movenpick Hotel on the Dead Sea  Many tourists come to this luxury hotel to smear up with mud on the sea shore, then bathe in the floaty, slippery, salty water of the Dead Sea - not much attraction to me!  We did visit the Jordan River coming within yards of Israel on the other side and observing the place of Jesus reputed Baptism by John the Baptist.  Thursday morning getting a Covid PCR test for later Egypt travel. These days of the trip were a looser for me.  Friday morning we drove to Amman Airport for the afternoon flight to Cairo. Jordan Album[1]

Egypt

Lower Egypt

Saturday October 23; Our 1st day in Cairo.  We have 18 travelers in Egypt and the time before and after the Nile river cruise is spent at the Semiramis Intercontinental on the edge of the Nile just south of the Qasr El Nil Bridge.  My room on the 16th floor affords great views of the river, bridge, and the Cairo Tower on the opposite side of the river.  Tahrir Square, center of Arab Spring[2], is a block east from the river along the bridge street, El Tahrir.

   Today we visited the Egyptian Museum, just a block north of the hotel, with lots of mummies and associated burial paraphernalia.  A new museum, the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) is west of the city by the Giza and not yet open, while the more treasured mummies have already been moved there in a celebratory parade in April of this year.  Very unusual for OAT, in our hotel we have a private happy hour with copious hors d’oeuvres each evening, as well as business and snack services in the 18th floor business center all day.  Also nearly every night the hotel hosted a big wedding with lots of loud music, one evening I counted ~250 place settings, that annoyed some of our travelers – on my floor with balcony slider closed and my poor hearing it was not a problem.  Over the following two days we toured the site of the ancient city Memphis, Saqqara, Tombs of Kagemni, and of Imhotep, considered Father of Engineering & Medicine by Egyptians.  Also Mosques of Sultan Hassan and Al-Rifa’i.  The latter the burial place of many of Egypt’s modern Royalty including the last monarch King Farouk.  We also had a speaker tell about women’s rights in Egypt, but rather uninspiring.  Egypt’s largest source of income is revenues from the Suez Canal.  The speaker indicated that government leadership, mostly military, is emphasizing spending on infrastructure and high rise housing that it sells to citizens, over welfare spending on the people.  Government has evolved from monarchy to mostly military through King Farouk, Nasser[3], Sadat, and Mubarak to current Al Sisi with a couple other short-termers between.

Food was quite good in both Jordan and Egypt, though rather plain, nothing exotic or very spicy.  Lots of fresh vegetables, paba beans – and okra are common.  The guide says breakfast is Egyptian’s main meal as they don’t know when is dinner due to traffic jams – particularly Cairo no doubt.

Some rules that were hard to understand.  Cameras were often prohibited without purchasing a permit and sometimes prohibited altogether, but nearly always cell phone cameras OK!  Maybe just impractical to regulate the cell phone, so let them go.  On bus transits round the city, Cairo, we always had some law enforcement individual in the bus and an escort car in front.  More than once waiting for this escort would delay our trip start.  Someone said this escort policy was in compliance with US and Japanese Embassy request, not Egyptian initiative.

Most of the Cairo we saw however has sorely lacking facilities.  Street sweeping is a man with a dust pan and broom. That works in little villages in Germany where every resident does their own, but not in the city.  Between the hotel and the Nile a 100 ft. river bank that should lend to a beautiful park is totally littered with trash and fenced off from the public, maybe because of this mess.  In many areas are 10 to 20 story masonry apartment building, many of which are actually falling down and others occupied but totally trashed with portable ACs hanging on the side, laundry draped from many windows, 100’s of satellite dishes cluttering, etc.  Sometimes when a view of rooftops were visible, many are littered with old tires, trash and construction materials.  Our guide says many of the large residential structures are unpermitted and government is trying to eradicate them and build new.  I made an effort to find any neat city park around the hotel but did not.  Near the end of our stay in Egypt we visited The National Museum of Egyptian Civilization which seemed to be set in a well maintained upscale section of Cairo.  This and the Heliopolis section northeast toward the airport were a welcome contrast to city center around our hotel, Giza and such areas. Such a contrast to the neat limestone architecture around Amman.  Our hotel itself was quite nice and in a location to get a good exposure to Cairo. Cairo Album

Upper Egypt

Tuesday Oct. 26;  Today we fly to Luxor in “Upper Egypt” and join our Nile cruise ship Nefertiti.  Interestingly the flight is a private charter on an Embraer jet of Petroleum Airlines.   After the flight we first visit the Karnak Temple in Luxor.  This is the sight of tallest obelisk in Egypt (320 tons, 97 ft.) erected by Queen Hatshepsut, as well as a plethora of other huge columns of a style that we will see in many upper Egypt temples.  Later we board the, Nefertiti, which accommodates about 60 but we are 18 and have the whole ship, – a gift of the Covid?  Next day we cruise ~40 miles down river toward Cairo to Qena arriving early morning.  Then explore Temple of Dendera .  Interesting that in addition to the ancient treasures of Dendera, the graffiti of early 19th century visitors can be found on the upper level.  Next morning after return to Luxor we explored a farm village on the west bank, crossing the river in one direction on the omnipresent Nile Felucca sail craft.  Visiting the Luxor Temple at dusk was an exotic light show among the columns.  The ancient 2 mile Sphinx Highway, on display when we entered Karnak, and terminating at Luxor, has been restored and is scheduled for a grand opening to be attended by President Al Sisi on upcoming Nov.4.

Many places on the temples throughout Upper Egypt are instances of large carved images of humans that are defaced by “hammer and chisel” pockmarks – the remnants of later generations of a new religion destroying the symbols of the predecessor.   It occurs to one that the Muslim Taliban are doing this in 2002 to the Buddhist Temples in Afghanistan and in 2020 in the US south we are doing it to the Robert E. Lee and Jefferson statues.

Cruising the Nile in the sunny October bucolic weather with banks lined with coconut groves, doum fruit palms, banana plantations, various agriculture, livestock and occasional children swimming was quite a pleasant and peaceful experience on several legs of out Upper Egypt journey between Qena and Aswan.  Every quarter mile is an irrigation pump drawing water to the local fields that in the past before the Aswan High Dam were annually flooded.  Service and the food on the Nefertiti were outstanding on the entire stay.

Over the next six days we explored most of the major archeological sites of Upper Egypt, including Valley of the Kings, Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, passing the locks at Esna, Edfu’s Temple of Horus, Komo Ombo, The Philae Temple at Aswan, and lastly Abu Simbel.  In the locks our cruise ship was accompanied by small row boats with venders throwing their goods up to our deck for examination and purchase – how the money gets returned to the boats below, not landing in the water, was not demonstrated.   For perspective, traversing up river from Luxor, Esna Locks get past a weir, built for irrigation water control in 1909, 15 – 20 miles upstream is Edfu, 30 miles further is Aswan and Aswan Low Dam, build in early 1900’s, and ~2 miles farther upstream Aswan High Dam,  The latter built in the 1960’s under Nasser, and hence Nasser Lake above the dam.

Perhaps the highlight of Upper Egypt is the Temples of Abu Simbel, a 180 mile bus ride south through the desert from Aswan along Lake Nasser.  To remove from flooding of the lake these temples were moved in the 1960’s, perhaps ~200 ft. vertically and ~600 ft. horizontally.  The huge temples and statues were cut into slices, moved and reassembled, and a new mountain built over the new location with the aid of archeologists and engineers, and money, from twenty or so countries.  The tunnel passage into the Great Temple of Ramesses II (1279 – 1213BC) is aligned with an east azimuth of about 68°, or 22° from east.  Our guide told us of the Abu Simbel Sun Festival on Feb. and/or Oct. 22 when the sunrise shines down this passage illuminating the god statues at the depth, perhaps implying that this was intentional. This is another example, in the writer’s opinion, of ascribing great knowledge and accuracy to the ancients that are more like happenstance.  Anywhere they built the tunnel less than 23.4° north of the equator would provide two days each year for the sunrise to accommodate Sun Festival.  Indeed, shortly after returning home to California after this trip we had much publicity about the day in November when the sunset aligns with the line of pilings that support the Manhattan Beach Pier and dozens of folks gather to photograph the sunset through tunnel formed by the pilings.  Many instances in the world, like alignment of pyramids in South America, seeming coincidences, are ascribed to knowledge or accuracy of the ancients barely achieved in the twentieth century.  Many likely invented by the tourist bureau.  Another example is the magic attributed to Coriolis force on the equator (see footnotes 3 & 4 in the link).

On the long desert drive we saw areas where attempts to make the desert bloom with agriculture by pumping water in from Lake Nasser have started but not obviously very productive from the highway view.  Also great expanses of flat sandy desert, with occasional Nubian villages of people relocated from the rising waters of Lake Nasser, but why no sand dunes – is there little wind or no obstructions to make the sand pile up? Upper Egypt Album 

Tuesday Nov. 2; Fly to Cairo. The group spent 4 night in Cairo before the Nile cruise and 3 nights after.  Most activities are cited above.  The Pyramids, Coptic (Christian) section were on out itinerary in the latter 2 days.  I hiked to the Cairo Tower in free time.  The Great Pyramid is indeed impressive but we had seen so many archeological wonders before …….  But of course the Sphinx is one of a kind.

Just for fun: While learning to fly over 2015 to 2017, I learned to use the flight software FltPlanGo.   Along with many other capabilities, this software lets you plan a flight and track it with Geo Positioning Satellite (GPS) Navigation as it occurs (in real time!).  Some folks play Sudoku or other video games while flying.  I sometimes use FltPlanGo on my phone and/or tablet to track the flight.  The ability to do this is spotty depending where one’s seat is on a commercial flight with respect to wings etc. which influences GPS reception in ‘airplane’ mode.  Further, the airspace charts aren’t high fidelity outside of US.  Nevertheless, I am entertained sometimes by tracking the flight in real time.  The result are tracks from CAI-LXR and ASW-CAI flights on Petroleum Air.  A careful look will find that both flight screenshots were taken near landing with altitude and speed low.

Friday Nov. 5; Fly to home, after the correct Covid test result. Here is a couple interesting pictures over Switzerland and Greenland, quite a contrast from Egypt.


[1] A note about photos.  I am trying to make them available optionally to the reader without overwhelming he or myself.   It’s still a learning process for me.  I am creating albums associated with a subject or location and putting a link in at the end of related sections of text.   Hence the reader can choose how many photos to view in accord with his own interest and giga bit availability. In addition there are links to individual subject related photos interspersed.

[2] An interesting book about Arab Spring I read a couple years ahead of this trip, The Buried, an Archeology of the Egyptian Revolution, Peter Hessler 2019, describes and somewhat takes place around these landmarks as well as other Egyptian archelogy.

 

[3] A great recent movie, writer’s opinion, The Angel, with Nasser’s son-in-law as main character deals with his influence on Sadat, the Yom Kipper War, and Sadat’s approach to Israel.