Another day.  Another loss of words.
-Luxor-

Spent the morning at the Temples of Karnak.  The columns at hypostyle hall were enough to reduce me to a giggling child.

They were so tall.  And there were 158 of them, all in one area.  I just started laughing as I looked up at their height.  There are no descriptive words, so maybe a quote written about Karnak is apt,
By Amelia Edwards:

**
It is a place that has been much written about and often painted; but of which no writing and no art can convey more than a dwarfed and pallid impression…The scale is too vast; the effect too tremendous; the sense of one’s own dumbness, and littleness, and incapacity, too complete and crushing.
**

Met a group of school children there today.  All about 10. They wanted to take a picture with me so I could go home and show everyone what the Egyptian children look like.  I was ready to engage in some sort of mass adoption.  Beautiful children!

A woman just walked by the café where I’m having lunch.  She had a massive bag balanced on her head.  Walking.  There’s another with a huge pan of something.  Balanced.

Just crunched into the Egyptian bread (like a cross between naan and pita) than came with lunch.  It’s not supposed to crunch…that’s the sand…baked in…let’s you know it’s made here and not like Wonder Egyption Bread or something!!!  It kinda brings a smile.

Last night, walking along main drag here in town, was invited into a place where the Egyptian bread is made.  Very cool!  For a small tip, the guys working there let me try the hot bread and take a look at the whole process from the giant mixer to the conveyor belt oven where these guys turned out maybe a hundred pieces per minute.
…..

Luxor 3:
Took a sunset felucca ride last night along the Nile.  It was ok, but there was hardly any wind so the boat made no headway against the current. In an hour we’d gone only about 30 meters upstream.  And after haggling with 563,242 other boat captains before getting a ride I really didn’t want it at all.  The badgering here is unprecidented anywhere I have ever been.  If you’re outside, anywhere, you can expect to have al least two people talking at you, or yelling if you don’t respond.  ”No, thank you”, quickly became my first Arabic phrase!

Then, after a nap, I took a nice walk around the central Luxor Monument.  I heard a band playing and walked up to the window and was quickly beconed in.  They were filming a music show for TV. I listened for a while and when the last song was over, met the guys in the band who let me play a rababa, which is the instrument that gives Egyptian music its unique sound and atmosphere.  I love it, but couldn’t do much useful on the rababa.  It was a great experience off the well worn tourist path.
This morning (01 DEC) off to Aswan, a three-hour train ride south.  Tomorrow night, it’s an overnight trip back to Cairo…then a LONG flight to Bangkok.