Egypt Pt. 1 - the great pyramids, hot air ballooning and karnak temple

sorry blogging world, i'm not going to be able to catch up on much in the foreseeable future. as some of you may know i've been travelling since may 23rd and my first stop was a tour of egpyt. thanks for sticking with me (if you have/are) i'm sorry i'm probably not going to be overly responsive or be able to keep up with other people's blogs, but i'm going to try and update where i can just so i don't have 5 months worth of photos to sort through when i get home. i've had to split my egypt photos into two posts but i should be able to get part two up ASAP. rather than write an essay about all the things i've been doing i decided to write my memories of the country and include the music i was listening to at the time, mostly just for my reference but feel free to play the songs as a background to these photos and my words for a more complete picture of my experience, if that's of interest to you.

visiting the great pyramids and the great sphinx of giza and finding that we were just about the only tourists there. being the only person going inside the second pyramid and standing in the chamber alone, closing my eyes and feeling the complete stillness of the air and the weight of millions of tonnes of stone pressing in on me. driving overnight from cairo to luxor, arriving at 4:00AM and heading out at 4:45AM to go hot air ballooning. crossing the nile in the darkness and watching the sunrise over the river from the balloon at 1200 feet above luxor and hatshepsut temple. becoming instant friends with the incredible people on my tour and spending just about every waking moment together. standing face to face with tutankhamen's burial mask at the egyptian museum. being given a bottle of Queen of Egypt perfume oil as a gift, the scent of which is made up of 22 different types of flowers. seeing the original colours of three thousand year old paintings inside ancient pharoah's tombs in the valley of the kings. walking through the huge karnak temple complex. seeing a man's tyre fall off his car and watching him chase after it, put it back on and drive away. obsessing over the rolling stones’ exile on main street. cities full of brightly painted half-finished houses because residents pay less tax if their property is still under construction. stray cats everywhere. carts selling whole watermelons in the sun. cars and trucks beeping constantly, no road rules, no speed limits, no traffic lanes. everybody sweating and living in the desert heat.

it was the most important decision of my life so far. what i was doing was telling everybody to go jump in the big fat ocean of their own folly. i was also telling myself to go jump in the big fat ocean of my own folly. what a bath!
kerouac

the egyptian museum where most of the artefacts from tutankhamen's tomb are, including his burial mask. no photos allowed inside.

karnak temple