Monday, November 2, 2009

My travel to Luxor

Basically I am not a person with good exploration skills. So, till now i have gone no where alone. No tourist spots, no belly dance nothing.

I met one person from India in Dubai Airport in last June. He was travelling to Cairo with him family. We were soon became good friends and his name is Kalyan.

We both planned to go to Luxor. But, for booking train tickets, as we are foreign travellers, we need to submit our original passports. So, we could not book tickets well in advance in a sleeping train, but some how we got seats in Sitting trains. In Egypt, Sleeping trains are different and sitting trains are different. Not like typical Indian trains.

To book a ticket in Sleeping train to Luxor, the fare is 120 USD per head. In a normal train it is 70 USD per head ( round trip). Tickets must be booked at least one week in advance in Ramsis station.

Here is the view of a sitting train.


The expected travel time to Luxor is 10 hours from Cairo and we have taken train at 10:15 pm hoping to reach Luxor by 8.00 am. But, we reached Luxor at 11.30 am and the travel was really horrible and boring.

We have booked our return tickets immediately after getting down at Luxor. The taxi drivers speak really good English. We have taken a taxi to go to our hotel in the  Down town. The fare was USD 6. (30 Egyptian Pounds).

When we reached our hotel, there was a confusion. The receptionist did not entered our names properly during the time booking and our names were not reflecting in the Computer. So, we have to contact again the person who have booked us the hotel and make him to speak with the hotel authorities. After all that, we were out to see the beauty of Luxor around 12.30 in the afternoon.

(More in the next episode)

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