LOST in Luxor (Egyptian saga continues)

Is it possible to overblog a trip to Egypt? Are three posts on the same subject too many? and can you possibly take too many pictures in one trip? These are questions I've been pondering while concluding the posts on Egypt (or not). 

(so at the last post, we were trying to teleport out of Luxor)

and we found ourselves at the apparently over-photographed Valley of the Kings. 

So over-photographed in fact, 

that they dont let you take any pics, ever, never. 

they have secured the entrance with miniature meta-pyramids that no doubt send messages to the sky if they see you take your camera out.

at the tombs, so much security that they dont even let you in. 

Is the Valley of the Kings that precious really?

or is it just so over-renovated 

that it does not look like an ancient extraterrestrial monument anymore, 

but like present day Las Vegas instead? 

(I would show you more pics, 

but the guard that caught me insisted that I delete all the photos, 

after I refused to pay him to get my iphone back, 

it was quite lol, etc)

anyway so the Tombs have been manicured and botoxed to perfection, becoming unreal and unruins in the process. It is clearly the Knossos school of Fake Ruinry.

pretty little path so you dont think it's just a desert mountain

 most of the tombs look like this, though some of them had no hieroglyphics on them, and we wondered wether they had just not applied the Egyptian Ruin coating on yet. Alas, those pics will never see the light of day.

Other temples were friendlier, though disappointingly authentic in their ruination

on the way back we stopped at the temple of Hatshepsut

where we witnessed an impromptu Alien visitation

on the way back to town, yet more Security inspired meta-puramids

and were rather spooked when we had to pass a drawbridge 

and a complete security check to enter our next hotel.

all the security hysteria seemed to be worth it,

since it was situated on a beautiful private island on the Nile.

some of the landscape did seem a bit artificial, but who could complain?

the island was dotted with cute little vernacular egyptian huts,
with some strange infrastructural things on the roofs.
Did machines live in these huts?

other huts seemed to be hiding inside specially constructed trees

then we started to notice various machines hiding in the bushes



even machines hiding in the sand











machines trying to pass as trees

suddenly it all started to make sense

 we had landed right into the lost Egyptian season of LOST, 

this was Dharma Central, right down to the hexagonal bungalows

the cores of the bungalows were inhabited by machines too

some buildings were curiously upsidedown

an innocent looking swimming pool was just a place to hide more machines

even the smoke monster was immortalized in the topiary designs

 suddenly trees seemed threatening

 Hexagonal Conspiracy #3

 Hysteria checkpoint #6

 Museum of Disaster?

suddenly screams and people running and coughing

it was the Jollie Ville Smoke Monster!  we had to get out of here!

(the hotel staff assured us this was just the regular anti-mosquito cloud, that they unleashed every evening)

we located a Topiary Teleport near the entrance and decided to make a run for it

(do be continued, perhaps)

Cairo Drifting

Last Friday we arrived in Cairo

and dashed off to Tahrir square

to sample the enormous energy of the joyful crowd, 
protesting and celebrating at the same time

later on from our Nile view room, the whole city seemed as excited

next day, 
we started drifting along the Nile

negotiating a big catch

crossing bunker underpasses

the bunkerish Hilton

and the burned Hilton





finding ourselves inevitably strolling through Tahrir

but a few wrong turns and we encounter the closed-off Mubarak headquarters

we observe the closed off mosques in the Islamic museum

prohibitive signs in languages we cant read





layers of fortifications



ancient dead-ends

we arrive at the spooky Citadel fortress, but nobody's there



we pass under elaborate structures that appear to hold the city up

we get lost in the back streets of somewhere

ending up the wild cotton market

the day changes but we are still in back street markets instead of museums

under elevated highways

and tree facades

botched Parthenons

finally a cat sleeping on a mountain of Cotton

followed by Mountains of Investment

that always end up as Mountains of Rubble

pyramids of loss

Gothic Minarets

that seem to become integrated into buildings

embedded green mirror minarets

and everything looks like something to preach from

though the message is ambiguous 

we enter a mosque during prayer

but escape up to the minaret again

observing the city from up high

scanning the horizon for pyramids

even the roofs of buildings 

are a desert of ruins