Valley of the Kings

Recreated

There was an optional hot air balloon ride this morning that left at 4:30am, since it was foggy, at 4:30 am and you had to pay extra we opted to skip that and to sleep in until 5am to catch the 6am bus to pick up the hot air ballooners and head to The Valley of the Kings.

The Valley of the Kings is where many of the pharaohs of Egypt were buried. The pharaohs were being buried inside of the pyramids, but this was a distinct marker for grave robbers to know exactly where the pharaohs were located so they started to be buried in secret unmarked underground chambers and the Valley of the Kings is a large collection of these underground tombs. Cameras were not allowed inside, so there are unfortunately not any pictures of this posted.

You buy your ticket depending on the number of tombs that you want to enter and each tomb makes you get a punch in your ticket. As part of the tour on limited time we were given tickets to enter three tombs. The first tomb that we went into had brightly colored and nicely decorated art and hieroglyphics on the walls and the ceiling. Inside was an actual slab tomb with its own engravings and the whole place was pretty well preserved and very interesting. The second tomb was up a giant rickety metal stair case and around a wall of rock. Then we had to descend a flight of stairs into the mountain that was only wide enough for one way traffic. Then there was a platform with some very terrible looking hieroglyphics that looked like they were drawn on with a marker pen. Below this platform were another set of stairs that could also only accommodate one way traffic. Down on this level was the tomb and more marker pen hieroglyphics. It took so long at this second tomb waiting in line to get in and then waiting our turn to descend and ascend the stairs we had to rush to a third tomb and we simply looked for a tomb with the shortest line. The third tomb was one the King Ramses tombs and was almost as nice as the first tomb that we entered. Sam told us that three tombs was enough because once you enter one tomb you have seen them all. Janelle and I both adamantly disagreed with him and thought that all three tombs we entered were dramatically different and would have liked to spend more time in each tomb and seeing some of the other tombs that were accessible.

We had to leave the tombs so that we could next go to the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut which was really disappointing. Most of the temple has been destroyed through the years and the majority of it was restored in modern times to reflect how the temple used to look. I really wish we had spent more time at the Valley of the Kings and skipped this Temple.

Next we went to the Valley of the Queens which is similar to the Valley of the Kings except that it is for the queens instead of the pharaohs. I thought that it would be like the Valley of the Kings inside but maybe decorated nicer but with less gold. Instead it was a series of holes that the tombs were lowered into and then filled up again, like a bunch of wells. There were a couple of tombs similar to the Valley of the Kings but these were where sons of queens who died before becoming pharaohs were buried.

After that it was still early in the day and we went back to the hotel to check out of the room. The group was planning to go to another temple, but we were all templed out so we lounged by the pool while the rest of the group went to Karnack Temple. Once they were back from the temple we boarded the bus for an 18 hour bus ride to Dahab. On the bus we first watched the movie 2012, quite possibly the worst large budget movie that I have ever seen. Then we watched The Hangover which is quite hilarious and I predicted correctly that we would end up watching before I even knew it was a choice. For dinner we stopped and had three classic Egyptian choices McDonalds, Pizza Hut and KFC. Then it was time to sleep the night away on the bus, good thing we were all so exhausted already.

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