After breakfast we went to the west bank of Luxor.  Some details of Luxor at http://www.luxorguide.com/

We had to go deep into the desert to discover the Valley of the Kings. I had a chance to step onto the dessert sand here….it was an amazing feeling. I was actually at the Sahara dessert…..the largest dessert in the world.

This is the place where generations of Pharaohs and noble were buried in great splendor, housed in crypts cut into the cliffs. The treasures of the burial chambers of great kings and queens have long been looted by ancient Egyptians and visitors over many centuries.

Yet there is a magic in the tombs of the great kings even after 5000 years the paintings retain their original colors and tell the story of the civilization gone by. There is a gigantic temple of queen Hatshepsut, the woman Pharaoh to have ruled Egypt.

They are still excavating the valley of kings and finding a lot of tombs of the kings. One such tomb had the mummy of king Tutenkhaman. To see this mummy we had to pay 100 pounds entrance. Inside was ….a dark…small looking….mummy…the whole body was wrapped completely with white cloth. Only the face and legs were visible…. We are still wondering if all that was worth the 100 pounds….hmm..whatever…we saw a mummy…that’s all counted…..that’s what you are supposed  to see in Egypt…isn’t it??

 On our return we took a photo stop at the Colossi of Memmon. These two giant statues are all that remain of the mortuary temple of Amenophiss III.Next we went to the east bank of Luxor where we visited the famous temple of Karnak. The majestic avenue of Ram-headed Sphyx’s, the colossal statue of Pinudjem and the sight of its sacred lake will leave you awestruck.

After lunch we went back to the hotel and we took some rest. Then we went to the sound and light show again at Karnak temple. After the show, we went back to the cruise for dinner. It was the last dinner and it was very horrible. We went back to the hotel and slept.

Since we had been late after the Esna lock….we had skipped some sight seeing on that day. Everything was jam packed for the last day….and so we were dead tired.

 Next day morning we checked out of the hotel and came to the airport. From Luxor, we came to Doha, Doha to Chennai and Chennai to Bangalore. At last, Wednesday afternoon, we reached home safely.

 Except the last day dinner, all the other days food was very good. Especially the Indian food served in the cruise was very good. We thank SOTC for this.

I want to thank S who told me about the SOTC travel. We enjoyed out trip because of her and SOTC.

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After finishing our breakfast we visited temple of Edfu. Of all the ancient temples of Egypt the one in Edfu is not only the best preserved but the second largest after the Karnak temple in Luxor.

The temple had been submerged under the desert except for the very top of the pylon entrance. A small amount of stone had been removed from the exposed part but when excavated it was found to be in near perfect condition.

The temple is dedicated to Horus and was built in the Ptolemaic period. This temple is unusual in that it is on the west back of the river which was normally dedicated to the after life.

We returned to the cruise and had lunch. We enjoyed the scenery from the deck as we sailed to Luxor via the Esna lock.

 Before we returned to our cruise ,my husband asked me to go and that he would get some water bottles. So I boarded the cruise with the others. Our cruise was parked in the 4rth place. There were 3 other cruise boats parked on the 1st 3 places.

All people had gone into their rooms. I also went to our room and kept all the things and took rest for 5 minutes. I came out and saw that many of them were at the dining room and having lunch. My husband had not yet returned. I started getting a little tensed. I checked the dining hall and found that our table was empty….we were 6 vegetarians who always sat at one table…D, D, A,V, my husband and me. No one was to be seen. I was happy about that. Again I went to the dining hall after a while and saw that D and D were having lunch. I dint know if I was to have lunch or wait for my husband. I was not sure why he was not back yet. I wanted to check with our tour manager but he too was not there.

I went to the reception of the cruise to check. He said everybody had boarded and that he was not sure if anyone was left out. I asked another guy at the reception. I told him my husband had not yet boarded. He said ok. I again explained to him that my husband had not come on board and that we had already started sailing. How would he come on to the boat?

He laughed and said that “we will sail for 5 minutes and then we will get your husband on board. We would not move off without him”. I was not satisfied. I had so many thoughts racing in my mind. I went to the deck to see if I can find him and call out to him.

Suddenly I heard a voice shouting “hai hai….” I saw that my husband and A were standing on another boat. Before he entered the boat…it had started sailing. So he was standing there. He said “ don’t worry. I will come”. After 5 minutes both of them entered the cruise and we had lunch.

There is a photo which my husband has clicked from the other boat. He says he tried to get my tensed expression. One can hardly see me standing on top of the boat at the deck.

 After lunch we were waiting for the Esna lock. The tour manager told us not to miss the Esna lock. It was something special. He told us that we should watch it, but we cannot say when it would happen to our cruise. It takes 45 minutes for a cruise to cross the bridge. He said we expect the lock to happen around 3 o’ clock.

After we reach Luxor we planned to go to the Karnak temple. Some people went to sleep after lunch. Some people started watching movies on the TV. We wanted to see the Esna lock. So we waited.

 What is the Esna lock anyway??

A lock is used when the water levels are different at different points. The boats need to lowered or raised by pushing water from one side to the other and holding it there till the boat passes from the lower water point.

Some pics can be seen at http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=esna+lock&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=gbJSS6rRII6YsgO6gOmIBw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CBsQsAQwAw

And http://www.galenfrysinger.com/egypt_esna_locks.htm

 The Esna lock.

On the top of the river there was a bridge. Under the bridge they have a big gate to lock the water. The cruise will be on one side. It has to cross the bridge and only then we can go to Luxor. The side on which the cruise is, the water level is high. But on the other side, the water level is low. So the cruise cannot sail into the shallow side. To enable the sailing, first they lock the gate. Then they pump water from the side of the cruise to the other side, upto 6 meters depth. Once the water level goes down on the side of the cruise, the cruise will go down, and once enough water is pumped to the other side, they open the gate. At once the cruise should cross the bridge. After sometime, the water will automatically come back to the first side. The same process is done for every cruise boat. The process takes half an hour to 45 minutes.

We waited for a very long time for it to happen to our cruise. It happened only at about 5:30 to 6:00pm. It took another 4 hours for us to reach Luxor. This was a delay. So our tour manager said that we were going to stay back in the cruise itself.

After dinner we had some Egyptian party and belly dance. There were some small shops on the cruise. So some people went shopping, we went to sleep.

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Next day we had to go to Abu Simbel. We were told by our tour manager that we would have to leave very early in the morning. The area was prone to terrorist attacks and so all the tourist buses would go along with a convoy (A convoy is a group of vehicles (of any type, but usually motor vehicles or ships) traveling together for mutual support and protection. Often, a convoy is organized with armed defensive support, though it may also be used in a non-military sense, for example when driving through remote areas)…..with armed army people…..An army bus will lead…all tourist buses will follow and another army bus will follow at the back.

Since army would accompany…the time would be 2,3…that is 2 Am wake up call and 3Am departure.

Breakfast would be packed. Since it was the convoy….there would be no stops whatsoever…no restroom stops or anything. We were asked to be prepared for such a  trip.

There was a lot of discussion about the convoy.

Next morning we all boarded the bus at 3 Am. Usually I am a little scared about terrorist attacks…but this time somehow I was not worried. I was quite cool about it. But one of my friends (whom I met at the Chennai airport) was very scared. She took some time to calm down.

The bus started to move after half hour. It was very early in the morning…so within 10 to 15 minutes most of us were sleeping deep. When we woke up …we saw the sun raising in the east. It was beautiful….cold…complete desert….sand everywhere…I wanted to walk on the desert sand without shoes. But I dint get a chance for that….they had already announced that there won’t be any stops.

What was surprising was….there was no coach either in front or behind our bus….they told us so much about army and protection and that they would closely follow us etc etc….we could see nothing but sand.

 After about 3 to 3 and half hours travel we reached Abu Simbel. There we visited 2 magnificient temples; the temple of Ramsses and the temple of Nefertari.

The temples were threatened by submersion into Lake Nasar due to the construction of a high dam.

There were 24 such temples that were threatened of submersion…they saved 2 temples by raising it and reconstructing it. The removal and reconstruction of the temples were a historic event in itself. Read more about Abu Simbel at http://www.touregypt.net/abusimbel.htm

 During the salvage operation which continued until 1968, the 2 temples were dismantled and raised over 60 meters up the sandstone cliff where they had been built more than 3000 years ago. The façade of the temple is 108 feet high and 125 wide feet with colossal seated statues about 65 feet wearing the double crown cartouches of Ramsess II. The alignment of the temple is such that twice a year the rays of the sun reach into the innermost sanctuary to illuminate the statues of Ptah, Amun – Re, Ramesses II and Re- horakhty.

After this we went to the hotel for lunch. We were not able to move into the hotel….the smell of fish was too much. We decided to go out of the hotel. D and D were also having a problem with the smell. They asked us if we could go somewhere else for lunch. We said ok. We asked the tour manager for a pizza place and he pointed at one direction.

We thought it must be around the corner and started walking. We walked, walked and walked…it was too hot. At one point we decided that we would go 10 more steps…if we dint find the hotel we would go back. At last we reached Pizza hut. We had pizzas and got back to our bus.

 From there we went to the Kom Ombo temple overlooking the Nile. This unique temple is in fact the fusion of 2 temples set side by side with each side having its own gateway and chapels.

The left side of the temple is dedicated to Haroeris, the falcon headed God. The right part of the temple is dedicated to Sobek, the crocodile headed God and the God of fertility.

 There were paintings on the walls of these temples. There were numbers carved. On one of the walls were the instruments that they used in hospitals …like scissors, forceps etc. Another wall had a picture of a man with a stethoscope. There were many other rooms. Those were the waiting rooms for patients. Another room had a painting of the fertility God.

Some pics of the Gods of Egypt can be seen at http://www.thenileandegypt.com/deities.html

 Next we sailed towards Edfu.

The cruise was very nice. It was not very big….very compact. The bathroom had a Jacuzzi. In Cairo I had a lot of back pain and shoulder pain which I think was because of the bed.. the bath in the Jacuzzi made all the pain go away:)

The room was very cute. We had our room on the 2nd floor of the cruise. So we were enjoying the scenery through the window as we were sailing.

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The whole group was not made to travel together in the same flight. My husband and I were in one flight and the others were in another. Our flight was scheduled to reach about 10 minutes earlier. So they had asked us to wait at the airport for them to join us. But it so happened that our flight did not take off on time. We were delayed by almost 30 minutes. Everyone else had to wait for us.

 From the Azwan airport they took us in a bus to visit the high dam of Azwan, the pride of Azwan, an ideal place for a panoramic view of Azwan. Azwan was not like Cairo. It was very nice. The buildings were all very clean and neat. They had maintained it very well. There was also a lot of greenery. We were happy to see this city. This is where Egypt ends and Nubia begins.

 After seeing the high dam we headed to the unfinished obelisk.

What is an obelisk?

An obelisk is a tall, narrow, four-sided, tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape at the top. Ancient obelisks were often monolithic whereas most modern obelisks are made of several stones and can have interior spaces.

The unfinished obelisk is the largest known ancient obelisk, located in the northern region of the stone quarries of ancient Egypt in Aswan (Assuan), Egypt. It is unknown which pharaoh created this structure . It is nearly one third larger than any ancient Egyptian obelisk ever erected. If finished it would have measured around 42 m (120 feet) and would have weighed nearly 1,200 tons. Archeologists speculate that it was intended to complement the so-called Lateran Obelisk which was originally at Karnak and is now outside the Lateran Palace in Rome. (Thutmose III obelisk in Lateran, Rome: 105 ft)

The obelisk’s creators began to carve it directly out of bedrock, but cracks appeared in the granite and the project was abandoned. Originally it was thought that the stone had an undetected flaw but it is also possible that the quarrying process allowed the cracking to develop by releasing the stress. The bottom side of the obelisk is still attached to the bedrock. The unfinished obelisk offers unusual insights into ancient Egyptian stone-working techniques, with marks from workers’ tools still clearly visible as well as ocher-colored lines marking where they were working.

Next we proceeded to the perfumery and saw a demonstration of how scented oils were used to make perfumes.

 From there we boarded our legendary Nile cruise for a great 3 day journey on the scenic Nile river. In the evening we were free. They took us for shopping.

 People seemed to shop everything and anything they saw. Many things did not look worth or even interesting…but most of them were shopping at every shop. We just bought some souvenirs (fridge magnets with Egyptian kings pics). We dint find anything else interesting enough to buy.

 Some details of Azwan at http://www.aswanguide.com/

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Next day, our time 6,7,8 they took us to the second largest city of Egypt popularly known as the pearl of Mediterranean, this was the Alexandria city.

Some information about the city can be found at http://www.egyptologyonline.com/alexandria.htm

 We visited:

The Pompeii’s Pillar – Next to this was a place which they used as a library in olden days.

The Catacomb – the largest Roman cemetery consisting of 3 levels cut in rock.

What is a catacomb?
Catacombs are ancient, human-made underground passageways or subterranean cemeteries composed thereof. Many are under cities and have served during historic times as a refuge for safety during wars or as a meeting place for cults. The first burial galleries to be referred to as catacombs lie beneath San Sebastiano fuori le mura, in Rome. The derivation of the word itself is disputed and it remains unclear if it ultimately derives from the cemetery itself or from the locality in which it is found. There is no doubt however that the San Sebastiano catacombs are the first to be referred to as such.

The word now refers to any network of caves, castles, grottos, or subterranean galleries that were used in medieval times as refuges during wars, as worship places, or for burial of the dead.

The Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa (meaning ‘Mound of shards’ or ‘Potsherds’) is a historical archaeological site located in Alexandria, Egypt and is considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages.

The necropolis consists of a series of Alexandrian tombs, statues and archaeological objects of the Pharaonic funeral cult with Hellenistic and early Imperial Roman influences. Due to the time period, many of the features of the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa merge Roman, Greek and Egyptian cultural points; some statues are Egyptian in style, yet bear Roman clothes and hair style whilst other features share a similar style. A circular staircase, which was often used to transport deceased bodies down the middle of it, leads down into the tombs that were tunneled into the bedrock during the age of the Antonine emperors (2nd century AD). The facility was then used as a burial chamber from the 2nd century to the 4th century, before being rediscovered in 1900 when a donkey accidentally fell into the access shaft. To date, three sarcophagi have been found, along with other human and animal remains which were added later. It is believed that the catacombs were only intended for a single family, but it is unclear why the site was expanded in order to house numerous other individuals. The Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa is, according to some lists, also one of the seven medieval wonders of the world. One of the more gruesome features of the catacombs is the so called Hall of Caracalla. According to tradition, this is a mass burial chamber for the humans and animals massacred by order of the Emperor Caracalla.

Next was the visit to Mediterranean sea. Here we saw the light house. I touched the sea with my legs . The sea was too deep …so they dint let us go in…..it was very dangerous. Still, I wanted to touch the water…I could not touch it with my hands…so I did it with my legs:)…

After lunch we went to the second largest library in the world. The library had 7 floors with the largest reading room in the world…. They gave all of us membership cards… I guess the membership registration should be done online. I need to look into it yet. After this was our journey back to Cairo.

Next day the plan was to go to Azwan…before I start narrating about the trip to Azwan, I wanted to say something about Cairo.

We felt that Cairo was the dirtiest city….it was very dirty. Also, 90% of the houses were unfinished. The houses were constructed with bricks…but then they were not finished after that….no painting. The rest of the houses and shops were also finished only on the front side. The buildings have not been maintained. The buildings were ugly looking. Our tour manager told us that in Cairo, the finished buildings were taxed more and so people preferred not to give finishing touch to their buildings.

Another thing we noticed was that 90% of the houses looked identical…among which 75% of the houses were vacant. Our tour manager gave us some reason which was not very convincing….it would be interesting to know why this is so….

Some details about Cairo can be found at http://www.cairotourist.com/

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Our wake up call was at 5:30….S called us in the morning from US. I decided not to go back to sleep…but to start getting ready. But suddenly I developed a severe one sided headache. I also threw up 2-3 times. I felt very tired. I was not able to do anything. I told my husband that I may not be able to go out and so he should go and see the pyramids. He refused to do so. He said “you wanted to see pyramids in the first place….so I won’t go without you.”

We took bath and got ready for breakfast. I was not able to eat anything. I took little cornflakes and a small bun. Then I thought if I had some coffee, it might help. The waiter came and he poured coffee decoction for me. But they don’t keep hot milk. We dint have a choice. So I added some sugar and cold milk and had the coffee. Coffee tasted good….but was not hot. We had enough time to go out. So we returned to the room.

The headache was too much. My husband told me to take a tablet. I did so. After sometime we went to bus. Once the bus started to move I felt better.

After a while we reached the pyramids. Our tour manager warned us saying  “If you have back pain, spondilitis, BP, knee pain etc please think it over…because you have to pay some money for entrance and if you are unable to climb then it’s a waste”. We had knee pain already. Still we decided that we won’t go without seeing pyramids.  There are a lot of pyramids in Egypt. But not all are for public entry. So they took us to the great pyramid of khufu, one of the pyramids in seven wonders of the world where public was allowed to go. We went in. They had built some steps in wooden planks. In some places we had to bend a lot. We could stand straight only after some distance. But the bending was not for too long…it was only for a short stretch.

There was a lot of crowd for both going and coming back. The walking stretch is not very broad. They were regulating the crowd. They were not allowing everyone together inside. Anyhow, we managed to reach the top of the pyramid.  They have one big room on top where they have the coffin. Now the coffin is empty. There is no mummy inside.

Now, they keep all the mummies in museum and only one mummy, the very famous king Tutankhaman’s mummy is kept in Luxor. After seeing the empty coffin we got down very slowly and came to our bus.

 Again we started our journey. On the way we saw the other 5 pyramids and one small pyramid. Then we visited a sphinx carved from natural bedrock at the bottom of the cause way to Khafry’s pyramid.
Next we went to papyrus institute. They showed us the live demo of how they make paper for the great Egyptian paintings from papyrus plant. The plant stalk has pyramid shaped bottom. They keep the plant stalk on a board and press the stem. It becomes very soft. Then they soak it for a week. They make paper from this. This paper won’t lose colour for its lifetime…..It is just a yellowish colour. In this yellow coloured paper they do paintings. It was very nice and interesting. We took 2 snaps there.

We were then told not to take photos inside the institution. We apologized and came out after seeing all the paintings.

 Next was the museum; there we saw many statues, things used, treasure golden boxes, golden face of Tutankhaman and Egyptian jewellery. We did’nt see the mummy because oflack of time.
At night we went to the Nile river cruising restaurant where we had our dinner. It was a cruise boat on which they had arranged dinner for us. While serving dinner we had some entertainment. The cruise was very beautiful. The decoration was too good. I wanted to take photo. I thought I would click some photos after dinner.

There was singing program. After that there was a dance. One man did a dance for 10 to 15 minutes. He kept turning round and round continuously throughout the dance. It was very nice. He was holding a ring like thing…7 of them. He kept changing the position of all the seven while he was rotating. Then he did some tricks with his umbrella like dress which had lights on it. He kept rotating when he was doing all this. The dance was extremely amazing. I have never seen anything like that before.

 After this was the belly dance program.

Then we wanted to take some photos on the cruise. But I think the next batch of people had to come in. So we were almost pushed us out of the cruise. We could not take many photos. We only took a few on the dinner table.

After this we went back to the hotel and slept.

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Once we reached the Cairo airport…everyone got through except me. The held back my passport and asked me to wait. My husband tried asking what the problem was but no one heeded. I got very tensed. Everyone who came after me were also let through. The man kept asking me to wait. When I tried to ask the person in charge…he answered to me in Egyptian language.

Finally after a long wait, I asked him once again if I could go. I told him that I understand only English. He told me that I could go to the next counter to collect my passport. Meanwhile there was another person standing and calling out names with their passports in his hands. He called out my name. I immediately went to him and go it.

We asked our tour manager what the problem was. He said he dint know. They do that sometimes for some people and the reason is never known. However…I got my passport and we were finally at Egypt to start with our trip. 

We met our tour manager at Cairo. He took us to the hotel. We reached hotel nearly by 6:00 in the evening. Once we reached the hotel he told us that we would get one hour to freshen up and then we had to assemble so that we could go for dinner.

 They allotted all of us rooms on the ground floor. We room was very nice. Every room had the backyard which had a beautiful garden.

 We took bath and got ready for dinner.

All of us assembled at 7 O clock in the reception. They separated us into different groups. It so happened that all my friends (whom I met at Chennai and Doha airports) were put into other groups. My husband and I were put into a group in which we dint know anybody. We had to say ok because he did not give us a choice:)

 Our tour manager’s name was Adee…..he was very nice to us throughout the trip.

We travelled by bus for an hour and reached a hotel. We were very tired because of the journey time.

The dinner was good. They had served nice Indian food. They had both veg and non veg. We dint know which table to sit at……we were not very comfortable with the non veg. We found one table with only 2 girls sitting. We decided to join them. I asked them if they were vegetarian. They said yes. So we brought our food and joined them. They were D and D…. sisters from Bombay. By the time we finished dinner time we became friends. We also made a deal with them. We decided that whenever we go for lunch or dinner, whoever comes first should reserve place for the others. They were very happy as both of us were pure vegetarian and so they said ok.

 After dinner we returned to the hotel at 10 ‘O’ clock in the night. Our tour manager told us “tomorrow we are going to go around Cairo. So your time is 6 7 8”…. That means 6 O clock wake up call, 7 O clock breakfast, 8 O clock out. All of us agreed with him and went to sleep.

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We had to leave on 21st dec 2009. From Chennai to Egypt was taken care of by SOTC. From Bangalore to Chennai we had to make our own arrangements. We decided to go by train. We got the ticket in Shatabdhi which would leave at 3:30 in the afternoon from Bangalore to Chennai.

We went to do our last minute shopping on 20th December in the evening. We went to the nearest shoppers stop where I thought I will get all the stuff that I wanted to buy. But after we got there I realized that I cannot finish all my shopping over there. We came out of the shop at about 8 o clock in the night.

I decided to do the rest of the shopping in Jayanagar 9th block the next day morning. So we came back home had dinner and slept.

The next day, 21st Dec, Monday. We had our breakfast. I planned to finish my cooking and then go to 9th Block. We thought it would not take more than an hour to finish the shopping and so we could come back and finish our last minute packing, lunch, kitchen cleaning and everything else…

We started to the shop at 11:30. Till 12:30 we did not find all that we wanted to buy. We started getting tensed as we did not have too much time left. We went to 4th block from there hoping to finish our shopping. I was looking for a particular shop which I did not find. But by God’s grace, very unexpectedly, I found all that I wanted in a small shop. At once I called my husband (who was waiting on the road because he dint get a parking area) and told him to pick me up from there. We reached home at 1:30.

He parked the car in the garage. When he was doing so, I came inside the house and finished my last minute packing in 10 minutes. We had our lunch and I finished cleaning the kitchen; all exactly at 2 o clock. My husband went to get an auto for us. We entered auto at 2:10.

The traffic was too thick and we were not able to go fast. At one point the auto driver changed his route to another which he said will have no traffic jam. But our luck was not too good, we got stuck in much worse traffic and we were not able to move. We were getting tensed because the train was expected on the 6th or 7th platform only. We had a lot of luggage and we had to go there by stairs. So we planned to get a cooli once we entered the station because I could not walk fast with the luggage.

While we were discussing this, we had crossed some distance. Suddenly a car which was coming behind slightly touched the auto. Nothing happened…..it was a very light touch. But our auto driver got angry with that. Because of the traffic he was’nt able to do anything. After 2 minutes the car came to our left side. He saw that the car was driven by lady. The traffic was very heavy and was moving inch by inch. After moving some distance we stopped at the signal. At once the auto driver called out to the lady who was driving the car “what is this. Come out and see the auto”. The lady didn’t open the glass. She was saying “nothing happened…go ahead”. He got angry. Suddenly he banged the car glass and started shouting “Vadi, come out, come out and see …let us talk”. The traffic was very heavy. She was not able to come out. She said “ I can’t come out. Nothing has happened to the auto. Please go quietly”. He got angrier. At once the signal changed to green. She moved away quickly. He started chasing her. It was nearly 3 O clock already. He kept chasing her. We were nearing the railway station and he did not seem to be stopping. Our tension was at the peak.

We waited for 5 minutes. Then I politely told him “please drop us at the station because we are late already”. He started saying “have you seen her. She doesn’t want to care about my auto. So I don’t want to leave her”. Then my husband told him to stop right there (We were almost at the station). Finally he stopped the auto at the railway station. We got down and we engaged a porter to go to the 6th platform. We reached at 3:15. We then got to know that the train was late. We finally got some time to breathe.

After we reached Chennai railway station we got one auto to go to the airport. It was drizzling. The auto had a tarpaulin sheet….but we still got wet on the sides. After some time the rain seemed to have stopped. So we pulled up the sheet….a sumo went past splashing water on us completely…we reached the airport dripping with water. When the auto driver took out the suitcase he broke the wheel in the trolley of the suitcase. We could not do anything. We had to change our dress. So we just walked to the rest room directly and changed our dress at the airport.

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My husband and I had been to Switzerland in Europe last year. The trip to Swiss  was very good and so we planned that we should make one trip to a foreign country per year. So from April 2009 onwards we started planning our next foreign trip.

My husband and I discussed a lot and we decided that our next trip would be to Egypt Egypt. Why Egypt?…………

I have had 2 wishes from a very long time…1. To see pyramids…2. To travel in a ship

From a long time I have been fascinated by pyramids. I have studied about them in my early school days and have always wanted to see them.  

I had also expressed my desire to go by ship. My husband always told me that it was not that easy. He said that without knowing anybody on the harbor side it would not be possible. So, I lost hope.

Now….why am I talking about pyramids and ships….and Egypt.

We figured out that Egypt had Nile river cruises and of course pyramids too!!!.

 (Anyway, the cruise was a huge boat, but yes…it was just like ship).

It so happened that whenever we planned to make arrangements for the trip to Egypt, something would happen that would stop the planning. Either we won’t get time off from office, or they were not conducting the trip or we would have to attend some function at home…. This kept happening repeatedly. At one point I was fed up with the Egypt trip. I started to feel that Egypt was not lucky for me and maybe we should plan to go to some other country. But my husband said refused to make a different plan. He said he would get the luck to me .

This went on till end of November. We decided to give the Egypt trip one more chance. If it did not work out this time we decided to forget it as the climate condition in Egypt would not be very favourable in the next months.

We wanted to get the trip arranged through ‘Thomas cook’ who had arranged our Europe trip which was very good….. with all the well prepared Indian food. We had already tried booking the trip with them before…..once we had even blocked tickets after which we had cancelled. These kind of things happened many times within the period of April 2009 to November 200.

Again my husband went to ‘Thomas cook’ office. He talked to the person and he blocked the ticket for a customized tour because he was told that they were not conducting group trips for Egypt. He was almost convinced about the trip and he told the person that he would come over and pay him the cheque the next day. Next day he told me to come along to the office as they might as for signatures for some formalities. We went there talked to the person in charge.

As we discussed I found some points which would not work out for us because of many reasons. We told him that we would think it over and take a decision in a day’s time. We discussed with each other and decided that the customized trip would not suit us.

Suddenly a thought came to my mind. I had recently talked to my sister and she told me about the SOTC travels and so I asked my husband to give it a try. He was not very satisfied with that travel company. Still, he said he would check it out. If that did not work out, then we decided that we would drop the plan to go to Egypt itself.

The next day we went straight to SOTC office to talk to the person in charge. He said “yes, we have the group trip. Immediately this weekend. If it is ok for you”. My husband said “ok. But I want everything, the paper, visa done smoothly”. He said “that will be done. However, I will confirm the trip tomorrow”.

So from there my husband went to the ‘Thomas cook’ office and told that person that SOTC seemed to be more convenient and so we would go with SOTC. We also thanked the guy for the trouble he had taken for the past six months in trying to arrange a trip for us and we offered to pay him any processing fees. But the person was a gentleman. He said “no sir, you can make your next trip abroad through me. You don’t have to pay anything now”. My husband promised to do so and we came back.

The very next day my husband got a call from SOTC and the person said “sir, you are very lucky. We have only 2 seats for the trip you want and within the next  3 to 4 days I will make all the other arrangements like visa processing and other essentials”. On one side we were very happy that the trip was arranged. But on the other side I was not very happy about having only 5 days time for preparation. Even if we planned a year before, we always have last minute purchases. Now I had only 5 days. Anyways…it was my dream trip….so I decided to do my best in 5 days.

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