Western Desert Trip - Kharga and the Necropoleis

 

Me on the Golden Sand

Another early morning rise and into the car to get to Dush Temple. We passed the yellow sands, famous in this region, and stopped off for a photo opportunity. In the countryside, we also saw cows, which were apparently from Switzerland (among other countries) and gifted to Egyptians in the inner regions in President Nasser’s time to encourage people to stay in the area and to make a living by farming (if I remember correctly). Anyway, we arrived at Dush Temple, which was built in the first century AD. 

Inside Dush Temple

It was a religious, military, and civilian complex dedicated to Isis and Serapis. The ground was littered with broken, ancient pottery (incredible).

The Ground at Dush Temple (Pottery Remains)

After that, it was on to the necropolis al Bagawat. 

Approach to Necropolis at Bagawat

This was a Christian cemetery in use from the 1^st to the 7^th century AD. It comprises 263 funerary chapels laid out in streets and a church. It was interesting to see Christian relics after all the Pharaonic remains.

Interior of the Chapel of Peace at Bagawat

The final site of the day was Hibis Temple, meaning the place of ploughing. It was dedicated to Amun, Mut, and Khonsu. It began to be built in around 664 BC, although most of its present form is from around 500 BC, with further additions in the third century BC. It’s an important temple for understanding Ancient Egyptian religion.

Hibis Temple

The next day, our first stop was Tuna el Gabel – another necropolis, this one dating from 300 BC. This one is notable for its baboon and ibis burial grounds. These were regarded as holy animals representing Thoth. Millions of these animals were buried at this site.

Baboon Mummy

Baboon Engravings

It is also home of the mummy of Isadora (the Egyptian Romeo and Juliet story) – the daughter of Emperor Pius fell in love with a young soldier, but her father would not allow them to marry. They eloped, but Isadora died while crossing the Nile. Her father built an elaborate tomb and a cult rose up in her name.

Isadora

The rest of the day involved two large climbs (in hot sunshine!). The first visit was to Amarna, which was briefly Egypt’s capital in 1300 BC. It is Egypt’s best preserved pharaonic city; the city of Akhenaten and Nefertiti and dedicated to the sun god (Aten). We were able to visit a selection of the tombs, which were differently engraved from those in Pharaonic times due to the belief in this era that the dead did not pass on to an afterlife but remained to warship the sun each day as it rises.

Tombs in the Hillside (Further Up!)

Depiction of Everyday Life

The second long climb was at Beni Hassan. On the upper terrace there are 39 tombs cut into the cliff face overlooking the Nile. 

View Over the Nile from the Tombs

Inside, pictures depict everyday life at that time (around 2000 BC). As usual, it's mind-boggling to think how these places were built so long ago and when implements were very basic (supposedly) compared to modern-day.

Depiction of Everyday Life

After that, it was on to our hotel in El Minya, with beautiful views over the Nile. 

View from Hotel Bedroom in El Minya

The following day, we had a long journey back to Hurghada, but all worth it for a wonderful trip.

El Gouna - Antibody Test

 

El Gouna Town Centre

The night before I heard about Maria’s death, I’d decided to get a covid antibody test. I’m wary of the vaccine (I’m not anti-vaccine, just pro-choice, so don’t get all annoyed with me!) and would be happier if I had natural immunity (but I don’t deliberately want to get coronavirus, of course). Ever since I heard about Maria’s illness, I’ve been wondering whether I had coronavirus but was lucky to be asymptomatic. It’s been going through my mind a lot. This could have the benefit of providing me with antibodies and (in my view) me not needing a vaccine. Problem solved.

The question of whether or not to get the vaccine is becoming acute, because I have to get to the UK to collect my new bank cards. If they require me to have a vaccine, I need to get it now, so I can get the second shot in before my Egyptian visa runs out and I have to leave the country (current vaccine available is AstraZeneca, but will be Sinovac soonish). So I was keen to find out if I could claim existing immunity instead. I asked at the local clinic if they could do the antibody test, but they said I’d have to go to El Gouna (about an hour away).

I used Uber for the first time. It was a little confusing as the driver wanted to charge me for coming to El Andalous to fetch me (by adding an extra fifty percent to the agreed price!). I said I’d meet him halfway on the cost (I thought myself very generous). He still tried to push for the full amount but settled when I handed over what I said was a “fair price” and didn’t back down from that. Other than that, he was extremely pleasant. No hassle. Very good English and teaches as his proper job. Everyone needs a bit of extra money these days.

Funnily, he moaned to me about how his previous customer had got very angry with him when he charged the extra and how silly it was for the customer to ruin his holiday by stressing over a few pounds. He praised me for being such a nice customer (which made me feel like I’d been conned!). I explained that it’s not normal to have to pay someone to come and pick you up. However, the driver was adamant that if people didn’t want to pay, that’s fine, they can have another driver. He was the only driver available. It was the last day of Eid.

Security coming into El Gouna was very strict. There was a queue of vehicles and all cars were checked. My driver got a bit worked up that I didn’t have an appointment. He claimed he told security that I needed an x-ray and that security had said no-one was working in the hospital on Sunday. However, we got in.

Much to my astonishment, I was able to walk into El Gouna hospital and get the test done without appointment (that’s what I’d been told, but reality is often different). The procedure was quite Egyptian, with going to reception, then getting a form from the Lab, then to the cashier desk, then return with the receipt of payment, and then wait in a room. I’d hoped it would be just a finger prick of blood, but it was a syringe. The doctor kept on telling me to relax when he was taking my blood (from my hand), but I hate this kind of thing and found it hard.

I also hadn’t realized that I’d get the result on the same day, so he told me to return in two hours’ time. I arranged for the taxi driver to return at that time; he took me into the town centre, where I wandered about. I bumped into Essam, who has a flat in El Andalous, just as I was looking at a restaurant menu. He recommended it to me, so I went in. Small world.

I didn’t have much money with me as I hadn’t reckoned on having a meal (and I don’t like to carry too much money), so I ordered the super duper breakfast. However, they didn’t have the chef for the breakfast. By way of apology, they gave me a free melon juice and a free salad. They treated me like a princess! It made me wonder if they thought I was some kind of restaurant critic. I felt bad because I only ordered a kebab sandwich and a diet pepsi. They then also gave me ten percent off! I gave them a good tip and said I’d definitely return! Maybe Essam told them I wrote a newsletter.

The antibody test result was ready for me when I arrived back at the hospital. It came back negative. So I can’t claim immunity, but the good thing is that I never did have covid. The whole thing still remains bizarre.

On the way back, the driver had his 14-year old son with him, so we got talking about his family. His daughter manages a hotel in Alexandria. I mentioned that I’d never been and would love to go there one day. The next minute, he was on the phone to his daughter telling me I must speak to her! That’s so Egyptian. They love phoning people up and telling them who they’re with and handing the phone over. Personally, I find it a bit of a nightmare! Anyway, he made me save her number on my phone so that I can get a good deal when I want to stay there.

It was a bit of an exhausting day (venturing out of Sahl Hasheesh is always a trauma!). And I’m still left with questions about what to do next regarding travel. Ho hum.

Anyway, next week, I’ll get back to talking about the Desert Trip.

Trip - Flash Forward

 

Maria - Happy on Our Trip

I was going to carry on writing about my trip this week, but I can’t face it. I heard today that one of the friends I travelled with has died from coronavirus. It was always great to have Maria on a trip because she loved to laugh and strongly believed that you had to make the most of life. She’d just had her first vaccine shot (Chinese vaccine) the day before we left. Out of the three of us, she was the only one who’d been vaccinated. She felt no side effects, but about four days into our trip, she complained of a tightness in her chest and took things easy (opting out of certain sites if they involved a climb). We all thought it was a reaction to the vaccine.

Several days after we returned, I heard that she’d got coronavirus and was in hospital. She came out of hospital, having oxygen delivered at home, then went back in again because she couldn’t breathe. She had to have oxygen the whole time; sixty percent of her lung capacity was gone. Next, a heart attack. Then she recovered. Then, finally, she died. It’s tragic. And not a nice way to die. It’s hard to grasp.

We assume she must have got coronavirus before she got the vaccine. It’s extraordinary, because she was very careful since she had underlying conditions (eg, diabetes, among others) and was thus high risk.

The other lady I went with also became ill once she returned (clearly something from Maria), but when she went for a PCR test, it returned a negative result. That was also baffling to me. Her symptoms were similar to coronavirus. She recovered.

I didn’t have any symptoms. None. Before I’d heard Maria had coronavirus, I was swimming in the sea quite happily. After I heard, I did my best to avoid infecting anyone (in case I had it and was asymptomatic). I couldn’t see the point in getting a PCR when it was relatively easy just to stay in for a while. Our tour guide also had no symptoms afterwards.

But it makes my mind boggle. We spent four hours a day in the car together for seven days. Most of the time, the window was open and there was a good draught. But not always. A lot of the time, when we had air conditioning instead, we wore masks. But not always (I grew relaxed after a while thinking that if any of us three had it, I was in any case doomed). I sat in the back on my own. Perhaps that helped. I would say I was 1.5m away from Maria; at least I think I could stretch out between where I was and where she was in the car, and I’m 164cm. I had my own room at the hotels. Perhaps all of this helped. But I took an apple from her that she had peeled. We handed things to each other. We ate together. And even if I was a distance away from her in the car, four hours is still a long time. And not even as a one off. It was pretty much every day. Our tour guide was in the same position as me, but diagonally in front of Maria rather than diagonally behind. Maybe that says something. Maybe it was just enough distance (although I sat next to Maria on the day we drove back, which was a long journey…).

It makes me think the superspreader theory has some legs (ie, that most of the cases are due to a few people who, for some reason, spread the virus; whereas the majority aren’t actually that likely to transmit it). My first reaction was to feel invincible. I’d been with her all that time, and not caught it! That feeling has gone and has been replaced by uncertainty – the knowledge of my complete lack of understanding about how coronavirus works (and, let’s face it, even the experts still don’t really know). My mind boggles.

Anyway, I shouldn’t make this about me (it's hard not to ruminate!). If she got coronavirus before the trip, then maybe we can be grateful that she managed to see some more of Egypt in her final, healthy days. Better than having spent them not doing much at home. And she would want to live life to the full. She was quite fatalistic about life. If you die, you die. But I shudder at the thought of having to rely on oxygen to breathe and I understand she was in pain. She was in the intensive care section of the hospital.

But through it all, she still kept laughing and joking. That was her way. That was the way she blessed herself and those who knew her. I’m not sure what’s happening now. I guess she’ll be buried here. These things never seem real. Rest in peace, Maria.

El Andalous - Writing Competitions

Blossoming!

I’m taking a break this week from talking about my trip as those blogs take longer to write. I can never remember all the details, so it takes me a while to decide which photos were from where and then to double-check it on the internet. It’ll be back to my adventures in the desert next week!

Anyway, as soon as I got back – well, almost – I wanted to enter a couple of writing competitions (RevPit and WriteMentor). The first competition has a prize of a full development edit by a professional fiction editor (thus covers things like character development, pacing, voice, plot) and the second competition was a prize of a four-month mentorship by an established author. Someone reported that their child was a bit astonished that you’d enter a competition where the prize was to do work!

Submitting to RevPit was stressful. I think I had to submit my first five pages and a query letter, plus a statement as to which three editors I wanted to apply to (you can only apply to two, but the third is a backup). Entries were accepted in a two-day period, but each editor was capped to a maximum of 100 applicants. I filled in my entry form twenty minutes after entries opened, and already around five of the editors had reached their cap (including my third choice). If your own choice is not available, you have to rewrite a blurb for another editor that you’d like to choose. But I was worried that my new choice would become capped as I wrote my new blurb.

Anyway, all was well, as I got my entry in before my first two choices were capped, but phew, it was a nail-biting few minutes. I ended up getting completely sucked in by RevPit. The twitter site (yes, I’ve graduated to twitter, albeit kicking and screaming) was busy with teasers (mostly just information about how many entries were in which genre, etc) and 10Queries. The 10Queries was a series of tweets from the editors’ submissions giving anonymized feedback on an entrant’s query and five pages, but could be generalizable to a lot of people. Each editor did at least ten of these, but many did quite a bit more than that. Anyone whose entry was used is told at the end that the 10Queries belonged to their entry.

It was interesting to see the feedback. I really lucked out in that one of the editors who I’d applied to promised to give feedback to anyone who’d submitted to her and who requested feedback (so I requested, of course). The generalised feedback was interesting to read; around 90 percent of the middle grade entries seemed to be getting the “wrong voice” comment (too old, too young, too formal, too old fashioned). This is why I’ve been stressing about my middle grade voice (middle grade is for readers 8-12 years old). For first five pages, much of the feedback was about being sure to introduce the setting; including goals, motivation, and conflict (all three); show don’t tell; don’t start with the inciting incident – show the normal life first (but in action). On queries, feedback mostly seemed to be about including both the plot and the character arc; don’t give the whole plot; plus the common failings (inappropriate word count, include a small bio, start with the blurb, etc).

The feedback I got was (to my complete horror!) that my point of view in my second chapter wasn’t clear (what?! I was sure I’d nailed that!). When I looked, I could suddenly see exactly what she meant. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before. The other gem was that I needed to give more characterization in my initial pages. This was another revelation. I didn’t think I could do it better than I had, although I did think my first pages lacked a certain je-ne-sais-quoi. I stared and stared at my opening page for about an hour and then realized that I could add in some opinions rather than just the mystery element that I had focused upon and bingo! I think I found my voice. Brilliant. So I won, even though I didn’t win.

There were many self-care tweets as people get very stressed as they wait for results to be announced and see all the feedback wondering if it applies to them. So there were suggestions to switch off, get back to writing, meditate, etc.

WriteMentor had very little going on via twitter and didn't have any caps (phew!). For this, I had to submit my first chapter (which is very short), a query, and a synopsis. I think their philosophy was that the tweets increase stress (which they do, but I can handle it!), so not much was tweeted until the results were announced. Here too, I didn’t win, but I was very lucky to get some feedback (mention time traveling theme early on, clarify a few things in the synopsis).

All in all, I am hugely pleased at having entered these competitions and my novel is better as a result. I couldn’t want more than that. I’m now testing a few queries to agents to see if I’ve finally hit the sweet spot… 

Western Desert Trip - Bahariya and Dakhla

 

Decorated Tomb (Muzawaka) at Dakhla

The next day, we had to drive back to Bahariya, past the white and black deserts again. Our first stop was Black Mountain, on top of which there was the English House - ruins of a lookout point that the British had during WW2. A good bit of exercise to start the day!

The English House

For lunch, we stopped off in a person’s house. Apparently, he was the only person in the village who had electricity. However, you could see solar panels here and there in the village, so things are slowly changing. The place may have been simple, but they’d got the interior looking beautiful.

After lunch, we visited the museum of the valley of the golden mummies. Around 250 mummies have been excavated in this area, but they estimate there are probably around ten thousand in total. If I recall correctly, there will be an exhibition hall dedicated to them in the new museum in Cairo, but Bahariya itself has a museum of eight or nine of them for public viewing.

A Golden Mummy

After that, it was on to the temple of Alexander the Great, the tombs of the Nobles, the Muftella temple, another hot spring, and then the salt lake.

Ruins of Temple of Alexander the Great

Detail from Tombs of the Nobles

Muftella Temple

That evening, when we checked into the hotel, the police visited to make sure we were okay. From this point on, we had to sign a form each day to say that we did not require a police escort.

The next day we visited Dakhla and Farafra. We started off visiting the smallest oasis, then a long car journey but on our way we could see that solar electricity is starting to become a reality in Egypt, which was good.

Dakhla Oasis

Solar Electricity!

Dakhla is known for being very beautiful and the scenery as we drove was wonderful. Our next stop was Dar Al Hagar temple, where the ground we walked on was still full of broken, ancient Egyptian pottery. It’s mindblowing how much there is in Egypt that there isn’t enough money for to excavate. Ancient treasures are everywhere! The temple was built in around 54-68 AD for festivals and decorations were later added by Domitian and Romans, right up to 300 AD.

Beautiful Dakhla Scenery

Dar Al Hagar Temple

Inside Dar Al Hagar Temple

The next site was the astonishing Muzawaka tombs from the Roman times in around 100-200 AD. Muzawaka means “decorated” and there are two tombs open for visiting, but, once again, there are many more in the area yet to be explored. The ceilings of the tombs almost collapsed, so they have been restored.

Muzawaka Tomb

After that, we visited the very different antique city of Al Quassr. It dates back to the 12^th Century and extends to the Ottoman period. It was a large complex with the old school, prison, court, and mosque, as well as the former dwellings. It was a day of traveling through history.

Mosque in Al Quasr

Typical Road in Al Quasr

After that, it was time to check into the hotel and sign again that we did not require a police escort.