Hidden Gems in Luxor

I think there is a common misconception that Cairo is where most of your time should be spent, but actually Luxor has more interesting and beautiful historical sites than anywhere else I have seen in Egypt. It has the famed Luxor Temple, Karnak Temple, and Valley of Kings. While those are magnificent and must-sees, all of these locations are so touristic and you are just crammed in with the million other tourists. My favorite places were the less known places that most tourists don’t take the time to visit!

In awe at Karnak Temple

Imagine being by yourself in an ornately painted ancient tomb and feeling like you are just discovering it for the first time. Then you realize that it has just been opened to the public so you are in fact only one of a small number of people that have actually been inside! To get this feeling you must visit the tombs of the nobles and Deir el-Medina, to see the tombs of the workers. In the Valley of the Kings, and the Valley of the Queens, most of the tomb paintings were of the afterlife and images of different gods, basically imagined fantasy scenes. In tombs of the nobles and of the workers, they painted daily life activities. It seemed more like a journal with photos of their daily life in ancient Egypt. It is really amazing to see actually how similar we are today to the ancient Egyptians. While it seems like technology is so advanced and that we are so different than humans in the past, you can see from the paintings that not much fundamentally has changed. You can see them enjoying dinner with their family, having a party, hunting, and dancing. You can see how they had such an organized infrastructure and had jobs such as making shoes, sculptures, and wine.

Budget

Accommodation: Since I traveled for 5 weeks in Egypt and also because I am not fussy at all about where I stay, I always chose the cheapest accommodation possible. I was spending between $5-10 USD/night for a private room with shared bathroom in either a hostel/basic hotel/guesthouse. This was an upgrade for me since I usually stay in a dorm room in most other countries. When traveling with my partner we stayed in 3* hotels for $40 USD/night. We were taking a flight out of the resort town of Hurghada, so for 2 nights so we decided to “ splurge” and stay in an all-inclusive 4* resort for $120 USD/night.

Food: All over the country, I was able to find freshly cooked, filling, and decently healthy meals for $1-4 USD. My go to meal was shish tawook which is a grilled half chicken, rice, cucumber and tomato salad, tahina, and bread. Hold the bread and tahina if you want to watch the calories. In more expensive countries I usually buy groceries and cook, but for such amazing meals for so cheap, it wasn’t worth the effort.

Entrance Fees: You need to pay for entrance fees at each site and for each tomb. If you want to take photos there is usually an additional photography ticket price, anywhere between $5-35 USD, and realize you may see multiple sites a day which can add up. There is a price for locals and one for foreigners. If you are under 30 and have a student card, you can get the foreigner ticket for half price. I suggest getting the Luxor pass if you will be there at least 5 days. As for the photography ticket, if you take a photo and do not have the ticket, the guard will threaten to get the police to arrest you but they are just looking for a bribe, and if you just give the guard $1 then they will even do a photo shoot for you. I am definitely not saying to do this, but it just is an example that it is a corrupt system, welcome to Egypt.

Transportation: While traveling solo, I took the train between cities. From Cairo to Luxor roundtrip was $20-30 for a first class ticket. Each way took 11 hours, but honestly after non-stop sightseeing everyday I enjoyed some down time! Someone asked me why I didn’t just save time and take a one hour flight……well the roundtrip flight was $250. To some, $250 is well worth the time saved, but for me I had plenty of time and would rather save $230 (that pays for 46 more nights in a hostel!). To see all the sites I wanted to see, I hired drivers since most of the tours did not go to the places I wanted to see. I usually just ask at my hotel for a driver for the next day or ask the taxi drivers around town. If you like to plan and want a guide and a driver, I suggest using Happy Egypt Tours while in Luxor. Once my partner arrived, we decided to fly from Cairo to Sharm El Sheikh instead of taking the 13 hour bus ride because we didn’t want to waste time with the many checkpoints along the way.

Safety

Did you feel safe?

I need to put a disclaimer on this that everyone’s feeling of “safe” is all relative to other things you have experienced. If you have never traveled in a developing country and are traveling alone whether male or female you may not like getting harassed by street vendors or locals 24/7. Some people may feel unsafe when street vendors do this, I just find it annoying and would like to be able to walk down the street in peace. I know they will not actually grab me or harm me, they just see that I am a foreigner and they want to feed their family. If you are in a huge tour group you will most likely feel safer however, safety in numbers. Traveling alone as a female, I never felt unsafe. But I was constantly aware of my surroundings and taking the proper precautions such as with clothing and making sure my bag and valuables were secure. I have also traveled a lot in developing countries in Central America, South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, so I feel like I have built up a tolerance as to what “feeling safe feels like”. My sister told me that everyone was asking her if I felt safe and she told them, “I’m sure she does, but that doesn’t mean that others would feel the same way.”

How should you dress as a female?

I dressed modestly and tried to cover up as much as possible. I did wear tight pants, because I saw that many local women my age also wore tight pants, but just made sure the skin was covered. The only times I wore tank tops were in tourist locations where there were only other foreigners and not locals. Even at one very touristic location but that had many locals tourists, I took off my loose long sleeve shirt for some photos and just had on a tank top and a scarf. Within minutes, I had a group of 20+ gawking teenage boys watching me and trying to ask me for a selfie with them. I walked away and later went to another more conspicuous spot and again within minutes, another group formed. I finally gave up. Did I feel like I was going to get physically hurt? No, I just did not like the feeling of the unwanted attention and felt inappropriate for showing my skin to boys that are not used to seeing women dress like this. It did make me question though how helpful it is to constantly cover up women, if the men are taught that if they see something that it is acceptable to gawk at it. If I did the same thing anywhere in Western countries, boys wouldn’t even bat an eye.