Our felucca odyssey came to an end the next morning at Kom Ombo. We bode goodbye to our skipper Mohammad and first mate Mohammah II and watched as Conni made one more last ditch effort to find the sugar jar now all our stuff was out. We stopped at this temple called the Temple of Kom Ombo and went to get some tickets.

John went first, “One student please.”

“Student card.” He produced his, an Israeli student card.

“International student card only”, angry man said, end of discussion, and turned away.

So Jordan tried her luck.

“International only!” angry man barked.

Conni’s quite considerable effort was greeted with a camel bark grunt. So we decided to have coffee instead to show him we didn’t need to go see this temple anyway.

“I am not paying £20 for that!”

“Yeah too right, it was bad enough students were £10.”

“I am glad we saved our money then!”

“Yeah, this £20 un-homogenised or pasteurised 3 day camels milk, packet coffee is way better than that 5000 year old temple.”

“It outrageous he wouldn’t give us the AUS$2 saving. I mean after all we are only poor students”, Hannah said as she fingered her video recorder and started flipping through her iPod and put her SLR camera away.

After a few drama’s involving exactly which mini bus and ‘who is supposed to be in this bus anyway?’ we set out in our convoy to Edfu and its absolutely amazing Temple of Horus. It was built in about 237BC taking 200 years to complete and was built in the style of ancient Egyptians so it was almost totally preserved.

Hannah and I wanted to trace some of the wall hieroglyphics’ but earlier Jordan had got in trouble for putting paper up against the walls. So we had a neat little system of circumnavigating the ever prowling Egyptian anti-tracing police with a secret password ‘starfish’ for our guards to say when one was approaching.

I soon got bored because it wasn’t working so I rolled up my paper and started wandering off when our guard, Phil, calls out innocuously, “*cough-starfish-cough*”.

Hannah continued etching.

“Hrm, Starfish, Hannah.” Persisted Phil.

“Where?”

“Starfish, Starfish”

“Wow, a starfish hieroglyphic? Where?”. Hannah looked around furiously.

By now the Egyptian anti-tracing policeman was watching Hannah with interest as she finished up the final touches of a beak nosed god.

“So Phil, where is this mysterious starfish for me to trace?” she said blissfully still unawares.

John became our self appointed guide and Egyptian hieroglyphic expert and told us the stories as they were written on the wall.

Apparently the Lady on the wall was saying,” I don’t care if you have a bird head. I love you anyway for who you are.”

Birdhead man had replied, “Skwark.”

There were many others but that one really ticked my fancy. Maybe you had to be there, but it was a classic, seriously. You had to see the pictures to understand because now I am writing it, it doesn’t sound quite so funny.

Tanya, Havilah and I then sat in with a tour group and listened to the guide give an explanation of the temple which was quite good because it was free, for us anyway. Although she did seem to get some facts wrong like calling Birdhead, Thoth, instead of birdhead, and bighorns, Ba. All very confusing.

Later on this mysterious man tiptoed up to us looking left and right, “baby horus?” he said as if selling drugs.

“Sure.” I said. This has got to be good with this much secrecy.

So he wisked us away to a wall covered in carvings. This sure was going to be good, maybe he would press a combination of bighorn, birdhead figures and the wall would drop down and take us into the secret treasure chamber and I would be rich beyond my glorious dreams.

He proudly pointed to the random rock carvings. “Baby Horus.”

“Woooow!” we breathed in the appropriate amount of excitement. No gold treasures, not even any drugs. Not that I would have drugs, not least because I don’t want to spend my time in Egypt soured anymore by spending 20 years in an Egyptian jail avoiding picking up the soap.

“I have 2 wives. One is pregnant with my 8^th child.” Baby Horus drug dealer continued.

“I was thinking of getting some wives as well.” I am hoping to limit it to only 4 though. Any more and there might be too much jealousy for my attention. I mean I am after all only one man. You never know though, you might just meet that special someone who wanted to be the fifth. I could say these things with impunity, without Hannah around to bruise my ribs. (See picture below for 4 potential wives)

A while later our bus driver found us. “Quickly, quickly no police escort for us now you are late.”

He was looking a bit stressed. Maybe it wasn’t safe. However to make it safer he floored that little mini bus acting like it was a Ferrari. I think personally and I am sure speaking for the whole bus group we much would have preferred chancing our luck on the angry Islamic terrorist extremists than that little catch up ordeal. He was driving around blind corners flat stick on the wrong side of the road, careening up one way roads going the wrong way, drifting around the corners on 2 wheels, dust was billowing all over the place, the chicken stalls on the side of the road got knocked over, cars were beeping even more furiously, our driver wasn’t beeping because he was going waaay too fast to risk beeping and besides we would have been well past the carnage by the time he beeped. We soon left the trail of destruction behind us and caught up to the safety of the escort.

“I am glad we caught up to the safety of the escort.” Hannah said.

“Yeah one more blind corner like that would have been the death of us. I have so much more to give to the world and my future 4, perhaps 5, wives.” I replied.

I received my daily dose of rib bruising and eye rolling.

“I suspect the escort is for our protection from crazy drivers, not gun wielding fanatics.

At 2pm we arrived at Luxor. Our flight for India was the nest day so we needed a train from Luxor which left at 9pm. We had 7 hours to kill so the Americans kindly offered to look after our bags in their hotel for us, which was incidentally called ‘Shadey Hotel’. The driver as usual fashion tried to drop everyone off at this much cheaper, better, wives uncles, brothers auntie hotel for a deal.

“We are booked at the Shadey Hotel.”

“Oh the Shadey Hotel you say, that’s bad luck, it closed down last week.” Dodgy driver explained.

“We have reservations.” The Americans said.

“But Shadey Hotel, very bad, They make reservations but are always full. I have a nice hotel for you, very cheap.” He continued.

“No thanks. We’ll chance our luck with Shadey.” Very ironic, “you never know the hotel we already payed for may just let us stay still.”

Strangely enough it was still open and hadn’t been closed down in the last few days and the other 10 occupiers of the 20 room hotel were only too glad to squeeze everyone in to the 2 previously booked rooms.

The tour operator met the Americans at the hotel.

We asked the man, “Can you book us tickets for Cairo?”

“Oh I don’t know its booked out in advance but I will see what I can do.”

Likely story but we had money to burn because we had lots left over and couldn’t be bothered sorting getting a ticket all out for ourselves.

Tour man continued, “By the way do you want to do a tour of Karnak and Luxor temple?”

It was what I had wanted to see the last time we were here but had run out of time thanks to mole face so I asked, “How much?”

“£50”

“I don’t know, very expensive so we will do it for 40.” We agreed on 40. It was a bargain for him anyway because I knew he was making lots of money from the train tickets anyway.

Soon after he came up to us in a panic, “Quick we are late hurry up, quickly now.”

We were in the middle of paying for our lunch and the lady was having a lot of trouble working out our change from the £50 for a £15 meal.

“Quickly, quickly, everyone is waiting.” Panic stations from tour man.

“Yeah we need our change.”

“If you don’t hurry up we go without you.”

“Ok, ok”

As soon as he saw our change handed back tour man said, “I am so sorry I talked to the tour guide and he said it was £50 so you owe me another £10.”

“Umm, I think I’ll just pay the £40 like we agreed upon.” I smiled to him as I walked onto the tour bus and made myself comfortable, cheeky man.

Karnak Temple was first. It was a temple built over 1500 years by lots of Pharaohs’. It is situated over a massive 1.5km by 800m area. Ramsis II built this really cool enclosure filled with massive columns called the Lotus something or rather. It was one of my favourite things in Egypt. Although the fact that we paid for it didn’t make it as exciting as the Horus temple, which we had all sneaked into earlier that day. It’s like girls you see. They only want what they can’t have or someone else has and as soon as they have it they don’t want it anymore. Strange creatures girls, cant live with ‘em, can’t live with ‘em.

Luxor Temple was next on the list so we jumped in the van for the 2.5km journey. In ancient times the two temples were linked by a path of sphinx’s about 3-4m apart. So it used to contain basically about 10,000 sculptures lining the path. Pretty amazing stuff.

Luxor temple was once covered by sand and in that time a mosque was built on top of it. Also Christians built a church there so at the one site there is a temple, a church and a mosque. Nothing much happened there but it was getting a bit sad because we were leaving our new friends in a few hours.

Back at the hostel we said our farewells and I am sure they all cried. If they didn’t they should have, I am sure Hannah and I usually make quite an impact. There was much weeping, wailing and gnashing of Hannah’s teeth all the way to Cairo anyway. I am too tough to cry.

Hannah generously took up two of the 3 seats we had. I was left with a table and one seat to try and sleep. Half way through the night I was woken with Hannah’s hair in my face tickling my nose. I moved to the remaining half of my one seat, by contorting my body backwards awkwardly. Not much sleep came to me. I looked on enviously at Korea man with 3 seats to himself opposite me. He was only little and should have only needed 2 seats. He could have given me one.