Viking Nile cruise – Valley of the Kings

Another fun packed day on the Viking Antares as we spend the day touring the Valley of the Kings and then make our way upstream on the River Nile to Esna. This is one of a series of articles describing and reviewing the Viking Pharaohs and Pyramids River cruise in Egypt, the first one of which can be found here.

For the first time in what seems like forever, we don’t have to get up at 3am! This morning was far more leisurely as the coach to the Valley of the Kings didn’t depart until 8am! With the new bridge over the Nile, the journey is now much shorter, and we were at the entrance to the tombs in less than 30 minutes. After showing our tickets and passing through the normal security arrangements, you are taken on large golf carts to the tombs themselves. To say this is a dry and unforgiving area is an understatement. You can see why the Ancient Egyptians had such an out of the way place for their burial tombs although with teams of builders living their lives creating these tombs, it must have been hard to keep it a secret.

We were here in early November and the weather was pleasantly hot, but as you can see, there is not a great deal of shade around. As usual, Viking provide a lot of bottled water! We were provided with tickets that let you in a certain number of tombs, plus the much more expensive Seti I tomb. Our guides did a great job suggesting which tombs to choose and in which order, after which you are on your own. Of course. the tomb of Tutankhamun is a favorite and still includes his mummy in a glass cage. The attendant will shine his torch on the mummy (for a tip) which certainly helps with the lighting.

The decorations in the tomb are perhaps not as extensive as some of the others and Tutankhamen died after only 9 years on the throne. He had commissioned his tomb using an existing one as the starting point, but the workers still did not have much time to create something massive. But, as we all know, the tomb was found undamaged in 1922 and was full of all the items that would have been buried with a Pharaoh in those days.

The tomb of Seti I is by far the most extensive that we visited (and it is an extra charge that Viking paid to keep the visitors down). The decorations in here are far more complex with both carved figures on every wall as well as paint on all wall surfaces.

Incidentally, the light levels in all the tombs is pretty low. All of these images were taken at an ISO of 12800 for the photographers among you. And, even now, work continues to explore and restore these tombs:

After a couple of hours at the site of the tombs, we left in the coaches to visit the home of Howard Carter, the archeologist who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen after years of exploration. It is small, but pretty interesting, with lots of his original work on the walls and in his office:

Then we were off to visit our next massive temple – the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut which stands majestically against the dramatic cliffs, on the other side of which is the Valley of the Kings.

This perhaps looks a little more impressive than it is (although to be honest it is hard to believe that all of this was built so long ago). There is much less of a building into the rock face and so the rooms at each level are not actually very deep. However, the scale of some of the statuary is very impressive.

The heart of the temple is the “holy of holy” room that only the top priests would have entered. You have to line up a bit for it, and if you want to miss the line, this is what it looks like (you get to see through the spaces left by others in front of you!). Nothing like as impressive as what you have just seen in the tombs!

But wait, there is more… as the old TV adverts used to say. We then went to look at the Colossi of Memnon which are all that are left of yet another massive temple. They are a bit battered now, but still very impressive.

We were then driven back to ship for 1:30pm and lunch as the crew prepared to leave Luxor and start the afternoon sail to Esna on our way to Aswan. This is usually my time to wander the top deck, looking at life on the banks of the Nile. We were docked alongside a Viking sister ship – the Sobek, one of the much more modern designs of ship that Viking uses on the Nile:

Viking always pays extra to be docked alone alongside the waterfront. Not so for other cruise lines on the Nile:

As we sailed south, I think some of my fellow passengers were perhaps taking a much-needed relaxation time in their cabins:

There is always something to see along the river as it seems that everyone’s life revolves around the water. This father and son had rowed a long way downstream while fishing in the river and were eyeing our boat looking for an opportunity to hitch a lift back home:

And then with a skillful toss of their rope, they managed to snag a hold on the lower deck and settled in for an assisted ride up the river to their home village:

Everywhere there is activity – this small boy rowing a boat packed with grass for the family’s animals as the sun started to set:

And another small rowing boat with a child at the oars as the father relaxes against the pile of vegetation they have gathered:

And, finally, as the sun headed below the horizon, a chance to capture two interesting silhouettes against the bright orange sky as we readied ourselves to arrive in Esna for the next day’s adventure!