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The next day, umm Wednesday now, we were up before sunrise again for this! I've never been in a hot air balloon and neither has Kristina, and so I organised this as an early Christmas present for her - she knew nothing about it beforehand :) The look on her face says it all hehe - more on video here.				After a quick safety brief which no one listened to, we headed up!

The take off point was over on the West Bank just in front of the illuminated mountains we saw the night before (more on them below).				It wasn't overly warm at this time of morning but the balloon's burners took care of that - the heat coming off those things was scorching!

Aside from the occasional roar of the burners it was really peaceful up there.		The boundary where desert meets green.

Looking east towards the Nile and Luxor.

The highest we reached was 3,000 feet - not a bad view from that altitude!

Shortly after takeoff, up it came again, and again you could immediately feel the heat coming off it.				Kristina looks gorgeous, and I look like I got up at 4:30am. Again.

Beautiful!		Egyptian mud bricks! Many Egyptian homes are constructed out of these as they're very cheap and economical. They're are produced by combining small pieces of straw with soil from the Nile, shaping this mixture into bricks by filling it in wooden moulds, then it's dried out in the sun.		After almost an hour in the air we touched down with a thump in a field, and the boys spent the following ten minutes wrestling with the balloon to pack it away.

View of the West Bank from Luxor by day...		...and looking back at Luxor.
After another quick nap we got the ferry back to the West Bank, jumped in a Ghostbusters-style taxi, and headed into the mountains (along with every other tourist). This is the Valley of Kings, one of several such valleys in the immediate area containing ancient tombs of the Pharaohs and powerful nobles of the New Kingdom, dating from the 16th to 11th century BC. The tomb of Tutankhamun is located here in the Valley of Kings as well. This place was intended as the ultimate insurance policy on life eternal. The secretive tombs were planned to preserve their mummies for eternity. Most have failed that test, and are now open to the paying public. Currently, the Valley of Kings is known to contain 63 tombs and chambers.

Upon arriving here, our taxi driver informed us that photography was strictly forbidden (which I did know), and that cameras weren't even allowed inside the complex (which I did not know). However, this seemed odd to me. No photography, fine, but no cameras at all, surely not - surely there would be some place made available where you could safely leave cameras for later collection. Upon raising that to the cabbie he pointed to a sign that stated "No cameras allowed. Leave all cameras on the bus". Still, I wasn't buying it - not everybody comes here as part of a tour group on a bus, and I saw plenty of taxis during the drive here. Instead, the cabbie said I could leave my £350 camera with him, and he would hold it for me and wait for us to come back out (admittedly a lot of them do wait around for an extra fee). He then produced a camera case from the glove box claiming he was already holding someone else's camera for them so as to suggest he was totally legit. Alarm bells were ringing for me by this stage. A) That camera case could be filled with rocks for all we knew, 2) If he really was holding a camera for someone, why was he driving us around rather than waiting here for the camera's owner as per the deal he had just offered us, and D) what he was saying just made no logical sense to me. I told him to wait while I went and spoke to one of the tour guides leading people from another bus that had just pulled in. Sure enough, the guide confirmed that absolutely you can leave your camera inside with security and they'll give you a ticket which you use to collect it later, so it looked as though our cabbie was just a prick trying to scam me out of my camera. I wonder how many tourists fall for that? I'd say an unfortunate number do.

While photography is strictly forbidden here, that rarely stops me - I didn't check my camera into security and instead smuggled it through in my bag. I then just had to slip the guard a few pounds to get these shots ;) The royal tombs are decorated with scenes from Egyptian mythology and give clues to the beliefs and funerary rituals of the period. All of the tombs seem to have been opened and robbed in antiquity, but they still give an idea of the opulence and power of the rulers of this time. Fucking impressive and absolutely mind-blowing!
Your entry ticket entitles you to enter three of whatever tombs happen to be open on the day. We saw those of Ramses III (tomb KV11), Siptah (tomb KV47, photos above), and Tawsert/Sethnakht (tomb KV14). The shot above-right is looking inside the sarcophagus of either Tawsert or Sethnakht in tomb KV14 - full of dust and litter apparently discarded by tourists, disgraceful! The tomb of Tutankhamun costs extra to enter and is apparently really not worth it, so we didn't bother.
View of the Valley of Kings from up in the mountains.

There are a number of paths up the mountain side which lead into other valleys in the area. They're steep, rocky, dangerous, and hot work to climb in 30-something degree Egyptian sun, but anyone is welcome to try.

While I spotted the taxi camera scam earlier, I failed to spot one here. At the start of the path leading up from the Valley of Kings is a large sign saying that climbing the mountain is forbidden, and beneath it was a (sleeping) security guard. Our guidebook made no mention of this and claimed anybody keen enough to climb up was welcome to, although it was printed three years ago so for all I knew it was simply out of date. We could see folk up the mountain though, and as the security guard was sleeping we decided to try our luck and play the dumb-tourist card if we get caught. As we started making our way up, an Egyptian fella coming down approached us and claimed we weren't allow to go up unless accompanied by a local guide (such as himself) for which he wanted E£200 (€25). After the usual round of haggling and us threatening to leave altogether, he agreed on a mere E£20. The bastards will try any amount they think they can get away with, and again I'd say an unfortunate number of tourists are none the wiser and hand over whatever amount they ask for. For the E£20 (much more money to them than it is to us) he would accompany us up the mountain, let us take a few photos, and show us a few other things while we were up there.

This guy seemed very friendly and genuine, and was indeed really good at telling us about everything, answering our questions, and taking us to spots up the mountain from where you can see other things of interest. He spent about 45 minutes with us in total, and I had it in my mind to give him a bit more than the E£20 we'd agreed on. However, I was short on small change that day (big no no) and the smallest denomination I had was E£100. I said I'm happy to give him E£30 or E£40 or something provided he has change on him to give me back. He claimed he did, snatched the E£100, and we quickly discovered he had fuck all on him in the way of change. He had a tenner, some small Egyptian coins, and a couple American dollars. He refused to return our hundred, instead giving us what little he had before running away like a bat out of hell when I went to take his photo hahaha! I'd noticed earlier he was extremely paranoid about me potentially getting him in a photo and had asked to see the photos I was taking to be certain he wasn't in any. Although I'm not exactly sure what he was so concerned about, I knew it would definitely piss him off if I was to blatantly snap him, and after blatantly ripping us off it was the least I could do hehe. We're only talking like €5 or something completely insignificant like that, but it's the principal of the matter.

Shortly thereafter we were passed by a couple of Asian tourists who evidently had no trouble getting up the mountain without a so-called 'local guide'. It was at that point we realised anybody could climb the mountain - local guides weren't a requirement at all and these two got left alone probably because they were seen as speaking little or no English and therefore harder to communicate with and scam. I'm still not sure what the sign behind the security guard was all about though - the one that said climbing the mountain was forbidden, but regardless it clearly isn't. Egyptians - after the taxi camera incident and now this I was really starting to despise the lot of them which is unfortunate because for the most part they're are extremely friendly and welcoming. Not everyone is out to stiff you but having to constantly discern who is offering you a fair and legitimate deal with no dodgy intentions from those just out to screw you over is draining.

There he his, almost like he's running for his life because I'm taking his photo! What a weirdo.		Looking back towards Luxor and the Nile from atop the mountain.		Looking down over Deir el-Bahari - a complex of mortuary temples and more tombs on the other side of the mountain from the Valley of Kings.

The interior of a Ghostbusters cab hehe - barely roadworthy and probably wouldn't be allowed on the road in anywhere except Africa hehe.		We got back to Luxor late afternoon and started walking north through town for a few kilometres.

Out in the suburbs the local kids had a great fascination with us. There mustn't be too many tourists who wander out this way.				Anyway, this was our eventual destination after what was actually a bloody fun walk - Karnak Temple. This place is a vast conglomeration of ruined temples, chapels, pylons, and other buildings. While we were told not to bother with Luxor Temple, we were told this one was worth it. However, by this stage in the day, after the pre-sunrise ballooning, the heat and climb in the Valley of Kings, and the walk here, we were tired and just really couldn't be arsed with it hehe. Unfortunate but that's what happens when you've only given yourselves a week to squeeze in as much as possible.

My favourite intersection by night.		I mentioned to a local how much I enjoyed the chaos, to which he replied I hadn't seen anything yet until I've seen Cairo hehe - can't wait!		The hat I keep wearing gives me the best hat-hair out!

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