Luxor and Bahariyya in brief(ish)

Luxor is the heart of Upper Egypt--the illustrious home of Karnak Temple and the Valley of the Kings and the colored walls of Medinet Habu and the day-to-day existence at the village of Deir el-Medina. It's also in teh hartland of sugarcane burning and mass tourism and improperly dressed German and Russian/Eastern European visitors on their endless lines of cruiseships (most of which are ugly, kitchy, and inhibit the natural breezes of the Nile from coming onshore.
In Luxor, we decided to go the route of "small tourism" on the lesser-inhabited West Bank, surrounded by green fields and local Egyptians, as well as closer to the major funerary monuments. Getting there with all our luggage proved a mite tricky as the bridge is an astonishing 9km north of Luxor--this is either to preserve the vista view at Luxor (did I mention the cruise ships line the banks and ruin the vista already? Oh yeah, I did) or a government official owns the land up until 9km north and so the government just stole the land from the "stupid Saides", or Upper Egyptian peasants. My bet is on the latter--it's the least rational and most typical reason I can think of.
So our hotel is cute and located right next to a mosque with particularly poor quality loud speakers. For those of you who have never heard a call to prayer, it is enough to make you desperately wish for the technology of even 50 years ago when a person, as opposed to a scratchy, high pitched, wailing recorded message calls all good Muslim men to come pray. The women can come too, but they have to sit behind a curtain in the back or outside (but this is a story for a later post, wherein Lindsey is bitter and meditates on the meaning of Buddhist equality while forced to sit behind said curtain).
Cute, but Mom and Dad's AC doesn't work in their room! That's okay in January, but we are talking 45C/113F and humid from all the agriculture. It's not hot, it's damn hot. So we all sleep in Lindsey's room and wake up early to visit Karnak Temple. Mom and Dad are a little bitter about Karnak still--I got excited, they got hot, I started bouncing and talking and forcing them to walk over ruined mud brick and open mounds with one column and no other tourists. And then they laid down the law and we left.
And we get back, try to get cool (their AC still isn't working), go to tea at the Winter Palace Hotel, walk around and avoid carriage drivers, shopkeepers, annoying children trying to sell me an unneeded bottle of water for 10LE (it should be like, 1LE), and the unnumerable SKETCHY men that roam the streets trying to buy me from my father and generally be assholes (forgive the language, but I mean this with conviction). And then we go to a pub, visit Luxor Temple at night, which is a beautiful sight as the reliefs are more defined, the colors more true, and the trash is invisible. Stunning!
Except we go back to the hotel, where the fuse box white literally catches on fire, and we are out of electricity. This of course means no AC. They promise it will be fixed "by midnight" and we check into the Winter Palace Hotel, where we will make use of the lovely pool and nice on-premise restaurants.
Daddy gets Egypt-sick and Mom and Lindsey go to Medinet Habu (the mortuary temple of Ramses III) and Deir el-Medina, where I bribe my way onto the roof, take a zillion photos, get insanely excited (I wrote a major paper on the temple for class this past semester), and am mildly mean to a guy trying to sell me plaster cat statues. (P.S. Cats weren't even worshipped in Luxor, they were worshipped in Bubastis, which is several hundred km north in the Delta).
After the traumatizing ferry ride back involving a 9-year-old that needs to be smacked, I hide in the hotel the rest of the day. Seriously, it was sick what he was able to get away with.
The Valley of the Kings was lovely as always, Dad accused me of inciting the Bhutan Death March III over the Theban Hills from the Valley of the Kings to the Temple of Deir el-Bahri in the middle of summer, we swam in the nice pool, and we did a road trip down to the Greco-Roman temples at Kom-Ombo and Edfu in an insane convoy that consisted of bad driving, scary speeds on bad roads, and gorgeous temples overlooking the Nile. At this point, before intense industry, the Nile is beautiful and clear and sparkley and not filled with unthinkable toxins, though some sewage running into it is still rather... raw.

We take a flight back to Cairo to catch a van to Bahariyya Oasis, the closest and most-settled of the Western Oases. It is near the black and white deserts and is the jumping-off point for many desert safaris. Instead of desert camping, we opt for the more-refined eco-resort called the el-Bawity Resort, where after a 5+ hour drive that has redefined desolate emptiness, we encounter a palm grove, a spring-fed pool, and a lovely collection of little house-casita-villa-bungalo-ish buildings. They are all of traditional materials with no steel or conrete in sight--big domes keep hot air at the ceiling, while thick stone walls keep heat out in the summer. One room is especially beautiful, with a view overlooking the oasis, huge windows, and a suchy bed, but with no AC, it's no good and we opt for a cute suite instead.
We are served way too much food and huge amounts of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, which Mom and Dad won't eat and I have to eat in order to not be rude (I will later pay for this in a very painful manner). I attempt to climb Pyramid Mountain in flipflops and almost drop my camera. The poor shoe choice was, for once, not my fault. We go into the main town and end up eating dinner with the family (or rather served by the family) of one of the resort workers. It is a huge family of lovely women; no one speaks English; my Arabic is near non-existant; it is only slightly awkward; I am almost strangled by Yasmin, his 5-year-old daughter who wants to put I nikab on me; I almost hyperventilate once I am in the nikab (yes, there are photos) due to heat and me frieking out at being covered in a black shroud-like garment; the food is amazing!
It was a lot of fun and my first meal with an Egyptian family--definitely a trip highlight!
The next day is a desert day with huge white dunes, scatterings of black igneous rock atop white sand, crazy Utah-like arches and columns and statues of bright white chalk-stone. The driver had a crush on me--Daddy thought it was funny--I thought it was mish-quayess (no good).
We left the next day, dealt with the loal police who insisted we needed a police escort (I think one of them just wanted a free ride back to Cairo), got into a fight with the van driver, who initially refused to drop us off in Zamalek at our hotel and instead ended up south of Dokki (quite a ways away) and I had to yell at people in French in order to end up in Zamalek. Good times, always.
And then I got sick, so we just kind of chilled and I laid in bed and we looked for an apartment for me and then the Mom and dad departed.
And I sat in Cairo with nowhere to live... party!?
But more about those adventures in the next post.