Aimless wanderings in the Egyptian heartland. Part Nine- In the terrorland or Was it?
The coming 36 hours were going to be long and tiring…
Though my initial plan wasn’t like that… I planned to travel to Luxor… take a bus to Aswan… and then take some rest there… before leaving for Abu Simble… I even called Hotel Keylany in Aswan… for a room.
The bus to Luxor arrived at 7 pm… by that time… darkness had engulfed El-Tor… I was sitting alone on a bench of El-Tor bus stand… with a Sandwich store owner… I told him my plan … and he was amazed … from El Tor to Abu Simble in 36 hours… I must be crazy… travelers are crazy.
The bus to Luxor… travels first to Suez and then drives along the Red Sea coast… up to Safaga and then turns right to travel towards Qena… the northern end of Upper Nile Valley. It passes through the resort town of Hurgadha… one of the few places that I couldn’t visit during my stay in Egypt… Hurgadha used to be a much liked resort for Egyptians … till Russians arrived… with their money and numbers, they changed the way the resort used to be… not a new story… I have heard the same things about Goa, Ayanapa, and to some extent about Antalya.
Qena is a special town… in Pharaonic period a canal was dug from Qena to Quseir… the canal was used by Pharaonic ships to travel to Red Sea and back… Queen Hatepshut went to Punt through the same route… but with time this canal got destroyed… I am told a few decades ago, there was a move to reconstruct it… but techno-economic studies rejected the idea as preposterous.
I was sitting beside an old man… an Egyptian… who was from Hurgadha… ran a resort over there… his son had started a resort in Nuweiba… and he was coming after meeting him. He told me something I knew and had completely forgotten… the convoys between Luxor and Aswan.
In mid 1990s, Egypt faced a massive outbreak of Islamic terrorism… mainly propagated by a group called Gamaa al-Islamiya… it carried out a number of attacks on tourists in Cairo, Luxor… and other places… these attacks created a huge challenge for the Egyptian tourism industry. The Egyptian Government took some hard steps.. it strengthen its intelligence network, gave them sweeping powers, recruited thousands and thousands of police personnel (they later on became ubiquitous, manning the railway crossings, standing without any purpose by the river side in Cairo and what not)… In Minya and adjoining regions, they prohibited farmers from growing sugarcane… as its fields were used by terrorists as a hideout… this decision killed the sugar industry in Egypt… it also introduced the system of convoys.
It introduced a system of convoys, by which… all the vehicles in the main tourist circuits move in a convoy… Luxor to Aswan and Aswan to Abu Simble are two examples… these convoys are prevalent elsewhere too. Long after the threat of terrorism has dissipated and gone….
The elderly gentleman told me that I would reach Luxor by 7 am… and that the next convoy to Aswan wouldn’t be before 2 pm… so I would have to fend for myself for 7 hours…
Now I had visited Luxor 3 times… seen most of the places over there… and I was in no mood to spend 7 hours, yet again, in Luxor… I struck an idea… that of alighting at Qena… and trying to see the temple of Dendera and then come back to Luxor to push for Aswan. The Dendera temple has been out of bounds for most tourists…. Plainly because the Authorities don’t allow people to visit it… for fear of more terrorist attacks… but I argued, what if I just land over there… the police wouldn’t just shoo me away… they will allow me to see the place… and then probably tell me to retrace my steps and go to safer zones.
At 5 am in the morning, I alighted in Qena… little did I know that my entire programme would change… I saw a new face of Egypt… where people were most helpful, least greedy, simple and ever smiling… sadly, this is not what tourist are able to see… and probably that is what keeps these people pure… one of my teacher in AUC was lamenting… how people in Aswan have changed over the years… mainly due to influx of tourists…
I had to change two microbuses to reach Dendera… people helped, they were elated to see a foreigner… they told me much of the foreign tourists that come to see Dendera… come via Luxor in buses, escorted by police vans… they don’t get to feel the real Dendera… or Qena.
The microbus… left me at a place… from where Dendera Temple was a two kilometer walk… instead of taking another microbus… I decided to walk the entire distance… flanked by green fields… village simpletons, riding on donkeys… cheery children… and a rustic smell… it was a home-coming… as if, I have reached my village in India… I was blessed.
When I reached the security gate of Dendera… the guards were surprised… I was taken to a room… of the Superintendent, who grilled me… as to how I came over here… what are my plans… he checked my passport… and then relayed a message that an unescorted Indian had come to see the Temple… I was amused… the entire place looked so safe…and yet so much of paraphernalia to ensure safety…
While alighting from the Microbus on the main road… some one told me that I should definitely go to Balyana… where the Abydos Temple lies… he said it was more beautiful than Dendera… and that he was from Balyana… he said that he had a small general store in Balyana… and if I come over there… then he should ask for Yousuf…. I thanked him… and made up my mind… I wouldn’t be going back to Luxor… I will proceed to Balyana… and my entire plan got changed.
The Superintendent asked me… where do you go from here… I said Abydos… he relayed the message on a walkie talkie… and let me enter the periphery of Dendera…
First view and I said WOW….
Though my initial plan wasn’t like that… I planned to travel to Luxor… take a bus to Aswan… and then take some rest there… before leaving for Abu Simble… I even called Hotel Keylany in Aswan… for a room.
The bus to Luxor arrived at 7 pm… by that time… darkness had engulfed El-Tor… I was sitting alone on a bench of El-Tor bus stand… with a Sandwich store owner… I told him my plan … and he was amazed … from El Tor to Abu Simble in 36 hours… I must be crazy… travelers are crazy.
The bus to Luxor… travels first to Suez and then drives along the Red Sea coast… up to Safaga and then turns right to travel towards Qena… the northern end of Upper Nile Valley. It passes through the resort town of Hurgadha… one of the few places that I couldn’t visit during my stay in Egypt… Hurgadha used to be a much liked resort for Egyptians … till Russians arrived… with their money and numbers, they changed the way the resort used to be… not a new story… I have heard the same things about Goa, Ayanapa, and to some extent about Antalya.
Qena is a special town… in Pharaonic period a canal was dug from Qena to Quseir… the canal was used by Pharaonic ships to travel to Red Sea and back… Queen Hatepshut went to Punt through the same route… but with time this canal got destroyed… I am told a few decades ago, there was a move to reconstruct it… but techno-economic studies rejected the idea as preposterous.
I was sitting beside an old man… an Egyptian… who was from Hurgadha… ran a resort over there… his son had started a resort in Nuweiba… and he was coming after meeting him. He told me something I knew and had completely forgotten… the convoys between Luxor and Aswan.
In mid 1990s, Egypt faced a massive outbreak of Islamic terrorism… mainly propagated by a group called Gamaa al-Islamiya… it carried out a number of attacks on tourists in Cairo, Luxor… and other places… these attacks created a huge challenge for the Egyptian tourism industry. The Egyptian Government took some hard steps.. it strengthen its intelligence network, gave them sweeping powers, recruited thousands and thousands of police personnel (they later on became ubiquitous, manning the railway crossings, standing without any purpose by the river side in Cairo and what not)… In Minya and adjoining regions, they prohibited farmers from growing sugarcane… as its fields were used by terrorists as a hideout… this decision killed the sugar industry in Egypt… it also introduced the system of convoys.
It introduced a system of convoys, by which… all the vehicles in the main tourist circuits move in a convoy… Luxor to Aswan and Aswan to Abu Simble are two examples… these convoys are prevalent elsewhere too. Long after the threat of terrorism has dissipated and gone….
The elderly gentleman told me that I would reach Luxor by 7 am… and that the next convoy to Aswan wouldn’t be before 2 pm… so I would have to fend for myself for 7 hours…
Now I had visited Luxor 3 times… seen most of the places over there… and I was in no mood to spend 7 hours, yet again, in Luxor… I struck an idea… that of alighting at Qena… and trying to see the temple of Dendera and then come back to Luxor to push for Aswan. The Dendera temple has been out of bounds for most tourists…. Plainly because the Authorities don’t allow people to visit it… for fear of more terrorist attacks… but I argued, what if I just land over there… the police wouldn’t just shoo me away… they will allow me to see the place… and then probably tell me to retrace my steps and go to safer zones.
At 5 am in the morning, I alighted in Qena… little did I know that my entire programme would change… I saw a new face of Egypt… where people were most helpful, least greedy, simple and ever smiling… sadly, this is not what tourist are able to see… and probably that is what keeps these people pure… one of my teacher in AUC was lamenting… how people in Aswan have changed over the years… mainly due to influx of tourists…
I had to change two microbuses to reach Dendera… people helped, they were elated to see a foreigner… they told me much of the foreign tourists that come to see Dendera… come via Luxor in buses, escorted by police vans… they don’t get to feel the real Dendera… or Qena.
The microbus… left me at a place… from where Dendera Temple was a two kilometer walk… instead of taking another microbus… I decided to walk the entire distance… flanked by green fields… village simpletons, riding on donkeys… cheery children… and a rustic smell… it was a home-coming… as if, I have reached my village in India… I was blessed.
When I reached the security gate of Dendera… the guards were surprised… I was taken to a room… of the Superintendent, who grilled me… as to how I came over here… what are my plans… he checked my passport… and then relayed a message that an unescorted Indian had come to see the Temple… I was amused… the entire place looked so safe…and yet so much of paraphernalia to ensure safety…
While alighting from the Microbus on the main road… some one told me that I should definitely go to Balyana… where the Abydos Temple lies… he said it was more beautiful than Dendera… and that he was from Balyana… he said that he had a small general store in Balyana… and if I come over there… then he should ask for Yousuf…. I thanked him… and made up my mind… I wouldn’t be going back to Luxor… I will proceed to Balyana… and my entire plan got changed.
The Superintendent asked me… where do you go from here… I said Abydos… he relayed the message on a walkie talkie… and let me enter the periphery of Dendera…
First view and I said WOW….
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