A TRAIN TO ASWAN FOR FLOATING ON NILE- (PART 3 of 5)

A TRAIN TO ASWAN FOR FLOATING ON NILE

After Cairo, the rest of our journey was to be a 3N-4D (three nights – four day) cruise on the Nile. A visit to Egypt is is said to be incomplete without undertaking the famous Nile cruise on a 300 km stretch from Aswan to Luxor. In fact for those who may not appreciate the antiquity of Egyptian history , this cruise invariably becomes the high point of the tour. The cruise is also ideally suitable for tourists as almost 90% of all historic monuments in Egypt are located on this stretch. These cruise ships sail on day and anchor in the evening at the riverside towns where these monuments are located. We were to board our cruise from Aswan. The journey from Cairo to Aswan is nearly 900 kms northwards and it takes 14 hour from Giza station on a train to get there. Alps’s Egyptian counterpart, Wings Tours, had booked our tickets on a super luxury train which had all coaches air-conditioned much like our Rajdhani Express. While some travel agencies arrange the journey from Cairo to Aswan by air, I feel a train trip is a better idea as you can have a direct feel of countryside in the early morning. The train started from Giza station at 20.00 hrs. Dinner was served on train. The train conductor appeared to be a multi-tasking personality. – doing everything from examining tickets to preparing our beds. The coach design was also very peculiar. To set the upper berth, the ticket examiner pulled put an aluminum ladder from under the lower berth, set it against the wall and climbed up to pull the upper bunk out . Each suite had its private sink and cupboard. Between two compartments, there is also a connecting door which can merge the adjoining suites if required. There was a notice pasted on the wall informing the tourists to assemble in the middle of the train for a belly dancing show. When I enquired a westerner passing in the corridor about this he laughed and mentioned that it was just an old notice pasted to the coach wall, probably older than some pyramids. The train route was almost parallel to the Nile River for most part of the 900 km journey. When you look out of your window, you can feel why Egypt had been described as the gift of Nile. Except a kilometer on either side of Nile, all you can see is the barren desert landscape and sandy hillocks. But a narrow strip on either side is lush with date palm groves and other trees like sycamore, tamarisks and carobs.( Nile was so important to ancient Egyptians that they had a separate God named Hapy for it. The pharaoh and Hapy controlled the annual inundation of Nile which brought agricultural prosperity to Egypt. That is why this male God is often seen with full breasts and an enlarged belly symbolizing fertility). A highway runs parallel to the railway tracks for most part of our journey. Unlike Indian highways, where the halogen lamps vanish immediately after the city limit, the entire stretch of this was illuminated with all lamps glowing well into the morning. Egypt is a power surplus country thanks to the Aswan dam on Nile. That is why, when in Cairo we had noticed that the halogen street lights stayed lit even in mid noon . When you have abundant power, you naturally forget to switch off.

Across the train journey, as we passed small towns, villages and settlements we never noticed a single dilapidated house. Even in tiny villages and firm settlements, all houses were made of either brick or concrete. In many towns, the exterior of many houses were not plastered with the bare bricks giving them a muddy brown outlook. Our guide told that people did it deliberately to avoid municipal tax since a house which is not externally plastered can be passed off as an unfinished habilitation thereby attracting lower taxes. “Don’t judge the book by its cover. The inside of these houses are well plastered like any modern house” the guide said. In no other place, I have seen so many multi-storied houses , lined up without any external plaster on their walls. From a distance, there seemed to be a kind of ancient agreement between the many stony relics scatted all around and the brownish brick outfits dotting its cities and villages.

After getting down at Aswan, we were greeted by Mohammad, our guide for the Nile trip and a miniature version of a Japanese Sumo wrestler. “Don’t I look a bit like Adnan Sami” , he joked. Mohammad was no ordinary Egyptian guide. He had a Master Degree in Egyptian history under his belt and was well into his Doctorate course in some University in Alexandria. In Egypt, you have to undergo a four years’ diploma in tourism to become a certified international guide. This is highly popular course in many colleges. In addition, if you happen to be an English speaking international guide, you become hot property among the perpetually competing tourism companies around Egypt. Mohammad was definitely one such guide.

Wings had booked us on their ship “Jasmin” for the Nile trip. This was a five star deluxe ship with sixty air-conditioned suits arranged in three stories, a swimming pool, a spa, a small gym, a bar, a billiard room and a book shop on board. In each of the nights, there were different entertainment shows for the guests. By the time we reached , the ship was already filled with tourists from as far as America to China. Among the Indians, all but two families were from Bengal. I knew, Bengalis account for almost 70% of all inland tourism back home, but their ubiquity on foreign lands and that too in faraway Egypt was definitely a surprise. The sight of the blue waters of world’s longest river set our hearts racing. The rooms were large and tastefully done. From the room; you can see the Blue Nile stretching languidly beyond your wide glass windows. Nile is not really a very wide river, possibly half of Hooghly’s width. But it is deep and the water is really blue. Even though there has been no rain in Aswan-Luxor stretch for the last two years, Nile does not dry up. It’s water is sparkling clean, almost like mineral water. For hundreds of kilometers, you don’t find even a floating bush or a plastic bottle on its water. Egyptians revere this river. It is their only life line. So there are strict laws forbidding disposal of any kind of solid waste or factory effluent into this river. Even swimming in its water without permission is a cognizable offence, we were told.

Cruises like ours have been operating there since decades. Their grandeur has been immortalized through novels, dramas and films. Remember Agatha Christie’s crime novel “Death on the Nile?”

After a sumptuous buffet breakfast, we were taken on a Felucca ride on our first day... Feluccas are small sail boats on Nile. As this wind propelled boat slowly moved away from the ship and the Blue Nile dazzled in the golden rays of setting sun a stork kept flapping its wings above the long white mast, keeping us company. We passed a small sandstone hillock on the bank with arrow of faint lights at the top .The Felucca boatman told us that they were the tombs of some past governors of Luxor, cut into that hillock . In Egypt, it seemed anybody who is somebody wants to construct his personal pyramids and live for eternity.

When we returned back to our ship, it was almost dark. A poster , hung near the reception desk of “Jasmin” , announced the evening extravaganza - The famous Egyptian Belly dance!

Armed with our cameras we trooped into the bar room at 9.30 P.M after dinner. The eagerly awaited dancer sashayed into the strobe lights, wrapped in a turquoise harem outfit with jingling belt encircling a rather unwieldy belly. Belly Dancing in Egypt is a part of their culture - it's a sign of celebration, happiness, getting together. An engagement party or a wedding event is never complete without belly dancing Belly dancers in Egypt today wear fully-beaded, sequined and rhinestoned bras and belts. This has been the style for the last 20 years. It is very glamorous and elegant. The bead-work is hand-strung. Over the last two decades, the length and total amount of beaded fringe has gone from long and abundant to short, if any at all. While the skirts now come in a variety of lengths and widths, the style is still quite classy. Also, dancers in Cairo who wear a classical oriental costume wear a body stocking or netting over their midriff, no matter how much leg may be exposed. It is still illegal to dance in public with an uncovered navel in Egypt. This is in stark contrast to the Turkish belly dancing style. Egypt is still a very very conservative society. The guide, finding me rather curios, gave me additional dope on the subject. He told that one of the country's former belly dancing divas, Nagwa Fouad, is now calling for the establishment of an academy for preserving this art. He told that the Egyptian belly dancers worry that no one will take heed and that their cultural heritage will be consigned to history along with the pyramids, Tutankhamen and that great seductress Cleopatra ( about whose perfect beauty , it is said that the History of the World would have been different had she got a little shorter nose!)

To be continued further ..

A DATE WITH SLEEPING PHARAOHS.- (PART-2 of 5)

A DATE WITH SLEEPING PHARAOHS..

Next day we went around other important historical attraction in the Cairo City. The most notable of them all was the Cairo Museum which houses the largest variety of historical artifacts anywhere in the world pertaining to Egypt’s past. Even a full day visit here will not do justice to your historical curiosity. The two great attractions here are the Tutankhamen Section and the Royal Mummy Gallery. The Tutankhamen section was the most crowded one that day. It had been created with the numerous artifacts retrieved from the tomb of Tutankhamen which was discovered by the British Egyptologist Howard Carter in 1922 . The tomb itself was buried in a desert near southern city of Luxor called the Valley of Kings where the later Pharoahs were entombed . The discovery of Tut’s tomb is one of the most sensational archaeological discoveries of all time. On that fateful day, Howard Carter remarked that it was, "the day of days, the most wonderful that I have ever lived through, and certainly one whose like I can never hope to see again". There is probably no more famous group of artifacts in the world then those associated with the discovery of young King Tutankhamen’s tomb. Here you can see practically everything the king would have needed in his afterlife –Gold necklaces, Pendants, Amultes, rings, bracelets and the sacred Solar Beetle. Tutankhamen’s tomb contained four gilded shrines nested one inside the other. All four of these shrines are on display in the museum. They were lined up in order of decreasing size -the innermost being made of 110 kilograms of solid gold. Here we saw the famous gilded mask that has come to be the most enduring symbol of Egypt in the minds of people outside. In recent past, many artifacts of the Tutankhamen collection have traveled around the world on request from other countries and setting largest attendance records in many museums.
Just when it appeared that we have seen the mother of all museums, our guide told us to have a look at the Royal Mummy’s gallery. It would cost an additional 100 Egyptian pounds. Many of our fellow tourists were not interested. Why pay so much money to see some more dead bodies? I took the guide’s advice and headed for it. When I entered into the hall, I realized that even a thousand pound would not have been worth what was on offer. After all, this is the final resting place for some of the greatest pharaohs of ancient Egypt and indeed of the whole world ! Here I saw the mummy of Ramsess-The great (1272BC-1213BC), the mightiest of all Egyptian Pharoah who ruled Egypt 3000 years ago with his 200 wives, 96 sons and 60 daughters. He was the tallest and longest living pharaoh and believed to have died at the age of 99 years (the average life expectancy at that time was less than 40 , so most of Ramese’s sons died in his lifetime) . It was an eerie feeling to see the body of this great monarch of a vast kingdom, lying inside a small glass container in front of the prying eyes of his ordinary subjects. This very mummy, 3500 years ago, in flesh and blood, must have commanded thousands of soldiers and launched countless military expeditions from the foot of the great sphinx. .But it was even eerier to realize that when Ramese was leading his expeditions , the pyramid and sphinx, built by his forefathers, were already 1000 years old! Such is the antiquity of Egypt; such is its historical depth.

Rameses the Great’s mummy with a height of 1.7 mtrs (, and is a little below the average height for an ancient Egyptian) features a hooked nose and strong jaw. In 1974, Egyptologists visiting his tomb noticed that the mummy's condition was rapidly deteriorating. They decided to fly Ramesses II's mummy to Paris for examination. Ramesses II was issued an Egyptian passport that listed his occupation as "King (deceased)". The mummy was received at Le Bourget airport, just outside Paris, with the full military honours befitting a king. In Paris, Ramesses' mummy was diagnosed and treated for a fungal infection. During the examination, scientific analysis revealed battle wounds and old fractures, as well as the pharaoh's arthritis and poor circulation. Ironically, CT scans taken on the mummy shows that this mighty monarch died from a toothache gone bad!
Vie of Nile from the CruiseAfter Cairo museum, we were taken around other places of tourist interests – The Sal-din-citadel, the Muhammad Ali (The .Muslim king who founded the City of Cairo in 959 AD) Mosque, Hanging Church etc.Everywhere the smell of a distant exotic past wafted in the air.
The lunch was in the Hardrock restaurant of Hyatt Regency Hotel, on the banks of Nile. The dinner was on a floating hotel right on midstream Nile. Our guide told that these floating hotels were becoming very popular in Cairo in recent times . They are quite expensive too. The buffet dinner was quite sumptuous . From its windows we could see the lights from other ships making shifting patterns on the water as the historic Nile quietly flowed beneath us.

To be continued further ..

EGYPT – THE LAND THAT DARED TO DEFY DEATH

EGYPT – THE LAND THAT DARED TO DEFY DEATH
( A Tourist’s perception)

When the Scientific Director of the Large Hadron Collidor project at Geneva described their achievement as the current civilization’s reply to the Great Pyramids, my mind was made. It had to be only Egypt - The land of gigantic pyramids, vast temple complexes and imposing citadels. But above all, a land that had dared to defy death! Scouting around the options provided by a dozen tour operators in the city, I decided on Alps Tours Agency – more influenced by the persuasive and amiable nature of its owner, Abhijit Dhar, than the cost benefits analysis of their promised itinerary.

Our journey to the past began on a Gulf air flight from Kolkata to Bahrain. With an overnight stop at Bahrain we were en route to our destination. As the Bahrain-Cairo flight steadily lost height, a shrill voice in the flight intercom announced that we were about to land on the Cairo Airport in another ten minutes. Excitement ran high and those who had the privilege of having window side seats craned their necks to get a glimpse of pyramids. From a little above the city all that was visible was a dry and arid landscape, conspicuous by a near complete absence of green cover. As the tyres of the plane bit harshly into the tarmac, realization dawned upon us that we were at long last in the land of pyramids. The time was an hour past midday.

After checking out at the airport, we were greeted by an Egyptian guide. His broad smile, European look and fair complexion belied our expectation of Egyptian skin colour. “I am from Wings Tours, Cairo and at your service till you leave Egypt. Everything in this tour- food, tickets, intercity travel and even the porterage – are already paid for by Alps Tour and Travels to us. I would therefore request you to do one and only one thing – enjoy Egypt”, he announced with the authority of an ancient pharaoh addressing his obedient court. At that time, it seemed like a typical glib oratory from a professional tour guide. But at the end, we did realize that he was not far off his claim that day.

Within no time, we were inside a luxury air conditioned coach, driving past the lanes of ancient Cairo as the guide tried his best to make us familiarize with various city landmarks on our way to hotel. We were booked at “The grand Pyramid” hotel, located in Giza... Cairo is not as ancient as the Pyramids. It was founded nearly 1000 years ago - a fairly recent event in the Egyptian time scale. The ancient city of Memphis, not Cairo, was the capital during the Pharaonic period. Cairo and Giza are twin cities separated by river Nile. The great pyramid complex is located at the Giza necropolis. Cairo metropolitan area has nearly 17 million people and is the 16th largest in the world in terms of population. Nearly a forth of the entire Egyptian population lives here. As we checked in, we noticed a large wall painting of The Great Pyramid behind the Reception desk. The pyramids straddle the Egyptian consciousness everywhere. You can see their picture from in the wall hangings of star hotels to the bath towels and even behind telephone cards. Tourism is biggest source of revenue for Egypt after the Suez Canal. No wonder, ten million tourists visited Egypt last year - double than that of entire India. After check-in we relaxed for the rest of the day and waited for the next day for our tryst with history.

The next morning, after a huge breakfast that would have done justice to a pharaoh returning from a satisfying conquest, we proceeded to the Giza Necropolis. The tour leader from Wings , Mr. Ahmed was bang on time in the hotel lobby at 10.00 am. As the coach rolled on, we could see the hazy structure of pyramids playing hide and seek in the concrete jungle of Cairo. Suddenly all the stories about the pyramid that I read in school history books came alive in my mind. The mummies of the pharaohs seemed to beckon me to listen their untold stories lying buried here since forgotten centuries. Before long we were at the great pyramid complex at Giza and were walking on the very spot where you can feel history with your bare hands.

From the earliest times, Egyptians denied the physical impermanence of life. They formulated a remarkably complex set of religious beliefs and funneled vast material resources into the quest for immortality. For the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, Death was their great obsession and immortality, the ultimate wish. They loved life on earth so much that they wanted it go on for ever . In fact Pyramids are nothing but protective tombs, gigantic stone structures constructed to house the processed dead bodies’ (called the Mummies) of their royals. It is from here that the royal souls were expected to be resurrected and start their journey to the afterlife along with the son god Re. The mummification of dead body was an incredibly complex process, almost to the point of being a fine art. Each organ of the dead king, except the heart, was removed and kept in a jar, protected by special Gods. The royal brain was sucked out by a fine wire through the nose .The heart remained in the body as it was believed to be the seat of the “soul”. With mysterious chants, the body was bathed in exotic perfume, salt water and other preservatives to last till the day of resurrection. Egyptian believed that the afterlife would be like their earthly life, but only better. So the kings would require servants even in afterlife. Small mummy like figurines, called the Ushebtis , kept in the tombs represented the servants. They, of course, would do all menial works for the pharaoh through magic in the afterlife. Life actually gets better and better after it is over, at least in ancient Egypt!

The journey to afterlife would start with the most important God –The Sun God Amun Re. Egyptians believed that the Sun merely does not set in the evening; it actually dies and gets reborn in the next morning. (Isn't it starange that the Aztecs in Mexico also thought the same well into the 16th century !) So after the sunset on the day of resurrection, the Pharaoh, retrieving the body parts kept in the scared jars by his coffin, would make the journey into eternal life with Sun God Re on a divine boat (So a boat, preferable golden, has to be kept in the tomb of the king for his use. Why a boat? Because the boat was the principal mode of commutation on the Nile for the ancient Egyptians). But still the journey of 12 hours of that night was not easy, not even with God Re by your side. There would be monsters, serpents and deserts on the way .So, no fewer than 471 minor gods and goddesses lend their helping hands to defeat these forces. On the seventh hour of that night, the sun god Re confronts his archenemy, the serpent Apophis, who swallows the waters carrying the sun boat. Isis and other goddesses hurl magical spells that cut and bind Apophis, destroying his power. In the top row, deities decapitate and punish other enemies. In the bottom row, the god Horus presides over twelve gods and twelve goddesses crowned with stars and symbolizing the twelve hours of the night. But getting help of these benevolent gods and goddesses require skills on an unprecedented scale. You have to recite hundreds of right chant or the right formulae. So in each of the twelve hours of this fateful night, the pharaoh has to read one chapter out of the twelve from a magical book called “ Amduat”. For easy remembrances, Pharoa-Thutmose-II (April 24, 1479 BC to March 11, 1425 BC) , called the Napoleon of Egypt ,even painted this whole book on the walls of his tomb which survives till today in the “Valley of Kings” at the Thebes Necropolis at Luxor . Immortality does not come easy, you see!

The great pyramids were built by the Egyptian Pharaoh under “Khufu” of the fourth dynasty around the year 2560 BC. It is the largest of the three pyramids standing at Giza. The other two were built by King Khefren and Menkaure .A hundred thousand people are believed to have worked over a period of 20 years to build it. Throughout their history, the pyramids of Giza have stimulated human imagination. They were referred to as “The granaries of Joseph” and “The mountain of Pharaoh”. When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798 his pride was expressed though his famous quote “soldats, Du haut, De ces, Pyramides, 40 Siecles Nous, comtemplant” (Solders! from the top of these pyramids forty centuries are looking at us). When it was built, the great pyramid was 145.75 meters. Over the years it lost 10 meters of its top. It ranked as the tallest structure on earth for more than 43 centuries. The slopping angle of its side is 51 degrees and 51 minutes. The horizontal cross section of the pyramid is square at any level with each size measuring 229 meter. The maximum error between side lengths is astonishingly less than 0.1%. The area covered by the great pyramids can accommodate St.Peter’s in Rome, the cathedrals of Florence and Milan and Westminster and St.Paul’s in London combined. It has been suggested that there are enough stones in the three pyramids to build a 10 feet high and 1 foot wide wall around France. The great pyramids were actually a part of a complex that include a special walkway, two temples, and other smaller pyramids for queens, concubines and other nobles, boat pits etc. The precision with which the pyramids were executed is often the source of marvel and speculation. The base of the pyramids is level within 2.1 cms and the only difference in length of its size being 4.4 cms. The blocks used in the pyramids have an average weight of 2.5 tons and the granite blocks used in the roof of the king’s chamber have an estimated weight varying from 50 to 80 tons. The top of the pyramid faced a fixed star in the heaven as if for astronomical observation. There were no wheels, no levers, no precision instruments .How did they do it 4600 years ago when in other parts of the world people struggled to make a proper stone house!

The Sphinx at GizaNear the great pyramid, sits a huge creature with the head of a human and a lion's body. It was built by King Khafre by the same workers who built the second of the three pyramids at the Giza Plateau. Over 4,500 years ago Khafre's workers shaped the stone into the lion and gave it their king's face. Khafre's name was also mentioned on the Dream Stele, which sits between the paws of the great beast. This monumental statue, the first truly colossal royal sculpture in Egypt, known as the Great Sphinx, is a national symbol of Egypt, both ancient and modern. Sphinx is 72.55 meters in length and 20.22 meters tall. The face of the sphinx is four meters high and its eyes are two meters wide. The mouth is about two meters wide, while the nose would have been more than 1.5 meters long. The ears are well over one meter high. Part of the uraeus (sacred cobra), the nose, the lower ear and the ritual beard are now missing, while the eyes have been pecked out. The beard from the sphinx is now on display in the British Museum..

Sphinx had remained buried for most of its life in the sand. It was King Thutmose IV (1425 - 1417 BC) who placed a stela between the front paws of the figure. On it, Thutmose describes an event, while he was still a prince, when he had gone hunting and fell asleep in the shade of the sphinx. During a dream, the sphinx spoke to Thutmose and told him to clear away the sand. The sphinx told him that if he did this, he would be rewarded with the kingship of Egypt. Thutmose carried out this request and the sphinx held up his end of the bargain. Of course, over time, the great statue, the only single instance of a colossal sculpture carved in the round directly out of the natural rock, once again found itself buried beneath the sand.

In the more modern era, when Napoleon arrived in Egypt in 1798, the Sphinx was buried once more with sand up to its neck. Its nose had been missing for at least 400 years at that time.
Between 1925 and 1936, French engineer Emile Baraize excavated the Sphinx on behalf of the Antiquities Service, and apparently for the first time, the great beast once again became exposed to the elements. In fact, the sand has been its savior, since being built of soft sandstone, it would have disappeared long ago had it not been buried for much of its existence.

Standing there in awe, I could feel that these monuments- the tombs, pyramids, the sphinxes, the temples - are not mere structures built by an ancient civilization but rather the standing witnesses to humanities eternal quest for immortality . Remember the Vedic hymn “tamaso ma jyotir gamaya, mrityor ma amartyam gamaya” (..Lead us from death to immortality) ? Long before this sacred chant reverberated in our Gangetic valley , the Egyptians had taken the matter to their own hands – worshipping an ever increasing phalanx of magical gods and demigods, building gigantic contraptions called pyramids just to deceive what lesser civilization had already accepted as the inevitable truth of life- death. Here, standing at the foot of the great pyramid, you can see , in flashback, that “Immortality” must have been a flourishing industry here with the best technical minds, genius architects, creative craftsmen converging from all over the world to this mega city for creating these mystical monuments – much like the “Large Hadron Colliders” of today. The very place I am standing was Newyork, 4500 BC !

In fact, most of ancient monuments in Egypt are nothing but relics from the great clash that took place between the most technologically accomplished civilization of that time and “Death”. Only time can tell who won in that battle. Or perhaps, even time can not! As somebody said “The World Fears Time, but Time fears the Pyramids”!

The evening was reserved for the “Sound and Light show”. As the laser lights beamed to the face of Sphinx outlining its distinct contours against the backdrop of the three silhouetted pyramids, a gentle breeze started blowing across the valley, caressing us softly. The atmosphere was simply surreal. As the booming voice of Omar Sheriff punctuated the stillness of approaching night, narrating the history of the Pyramid, the past became present. For a moment it appeared as if the sphinx would break his silence and the pharonic souls would rise from their tombs. The soothing breeze was already bringing down the weary eyelids of many a tourist including mine. When my wife prodded me, the lasers were lighting up the great pyramids one by one with their pencil sharp beams and I woke up , momentarily confused about my position in space and time.

.. To be continued further.

MY BLOG....

BLOG - By Love Of God
=================
Ideas, moments and events - fleeting ephemeral blips on our mindspace- cry out for a slice of eternity.

Memory, tucked away somewhere in the vast neural network of human brain, is no reliable sentinel to recount them --
as time marches forward ..slowly, relentlessly and inexorably.

At last they can be entombed for eternity here - in the blogosphere- where the Real takes shelter under the Virtual..

And some day in the distant future, when the present had melted into the past ..
They would be dug up from this digital pyramid , to relieve the moments that once went by us all.