The Valley of The Kings: The Royal Burial Site That Was the Gateway to the Afterlife | Egypt Travel Blog: Day 6 (Part 47) 05D19

The Valley of The Kings in Luxor, Egypt | Exploring the World’s Most Famous Tombs

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

The three tombs suggested by our tour guide and most of our tour mates decided to visit together were:

KV11 – Ramses III

KV2 – Ramses IV

KV8 – Merenptah

I will briefly describe these 3 tombs here.

KV11 – Ramses III

The tomb of Ramses III is the largest tombs. To get inside, you have to go through many long passageways. They are not too steep but involve a lot of walking.

Everywhere, including the ceiling, you would see detailed artwork. There is also a burial chamber. This tomb has a lot to see and would take some time if you go through each section.

KV2 – Ramses IV

The tomb of Ramses IV is not a huge tomb, but a pretty one. The downward entrance consists of three slowly descending corridors. The construction here was simpler compared to other tombs and was cut short at 89 m, upon the early death of the pharaoh.

Still, there is a lot to see here and it is totally awe-inspiring. The preservation was spectacular and makes it hard to believe these artworks were made thousands of years ago.

KV8 – Merenptah

This tomb involves a downhill walk through steep, declining passageways of stairs. Some of the walls were barren and had no artwork. There was a large burial chamber, but the mummy was not there. The mummy of Marenptah is in an Egyptian museum in Cairo.

I found KV8 – Merenptah not too colorful and kind of black and white. Everyone has a hard time exiting this tomb due to the sharp ascending stairs back to the ground level.

Each tomb is unique and different, but they all have some things in common. All of them painstakingly designed and meticulously crafted with carvings, reliefs, and paintings. The colorful and hard-to-believe artworks fill the walls, corridors, side rooms, antechambers, final burial chambers, sarcophaguses, ceilings, and basically everywhere.

I couldn’t fathom how they built things like these so many years ago when there was no electricity or motors. No prefab colors, no technological advancement; it was almost like they had nothing.

Our next stop would be Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari.

The Valley of The Kings: The Royal Burial Site Was the Gateway to the Afterlife | Egypt Travel Blog: Day 6 (Part 46) 05D19

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

The Valley of The Kings in Luxor, Egypt | Exploring the World’s Most Famous Tombs

Once we arrived at the Valley of the Kings, we had to go through checking and X-ray scanners. Every day, at most of the sites we visited, we had to pass scanners.

It was quite a walk from the main entrance to the Valley of the Kings, so we opted for a short, 5-minute trolley ride. For those adventurous types that wanted to walk, the option was there, but it would be an enormous pain to walk that far in the desert sun and sweltering heat.

We were warned before by our guide not to give any money if our trolley drivers asked for it. By then, we were used to this norm, so we dealt with it without giving any money to anyone.

After getting close to the Valley of the Kings, there were shelters where we all gathered to start our journey into the underground tombs. We heard a police officer was going to each group and asking if someone lost money. What happened was while passing through the scanners, someone set aside a stack of cash and forgot to take it, so the police were looking for the owner to return the money.

There were many tombs in the Valley of the Kings. I heard there were 63 and more were getting discovered. Our tour included visits to 3 of the 8 tombs. If we wanted to visit more tombs, we had to pay more.

Our whole team decided to visit the 3 tombs below and our guide would accompany us to each of them. If someone wanted to see anything else besides these 3, they were free to go on their own. I decided to stay with my team and see only these 3 suggested by our guide.

KV11 – Ramses III

KV2 – Ramses IV

KV8 – Merenptah

The Valley of The Kings: The Royal Burial Site Was the Gateway to the Afterlife | Egypt Travel Blog: Day 6 (Part 45) 05D19

The Valley of The Kings in Luxor, Egypt | Exploring the World’s Most Famous Tombs

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

The Valley of the Kings refers to the sloping cliffs in the mountains on the Nile’s west bank near Luxor. The valley became a royal burial ground for pharaohs during the era known as the New Kingdom (1539-1075 B.C.). You will find the tombs of Tutankhamun, Ramses II, Seti I, and many queens, high priests, and elites of the 18th, 19th, and 20th dynasties.

63 tombs have been discovered and there are possibly more lying hidden beneath the mountains. The size of these tombs can be from a single chamber to massive complexes spanning several thousand square meters. Inside, the tombs are very colorful and awe inspiring. You will find hieroglyphic carvings and vividly painted decorations illustrating ceremonies, burials, and much more.

Environmental pollution from mass tourism such as friction, carbon dioxide, sweat (2.8 kg from each tourist) is a threat to these tombs and artworks inside. Egypt is working to put a process in place so these ancient antiquities can survive many more thousand years. Some of the measures are having a limited number of tombs open on a rotation and each ticket allows access to only 3 tombs (with an option to pay extra for more), installing dehumidifiers, glass screens, and so on.

It took us about 30 minutes on mountainous road to reach the Valley of the Kings. The road was gradually sloping upward with very dry, hot and humid weather. Even riding in a luxury van, I felt like we were going to an isolated place in the mountains far from the city and people. That made me wonder how it was possible to find this type of place and build this magnitude of structures like these enormous tombs when there was no electricity, no motors, and no nothing.

Colossi of Memnon | A Long Day of Excursions | Egypt Travel Blog: Day 6 (Part 44) 05D19

Early Breakfast at Lotus Luxor Hotel | Visiting Twin Memnon Pillars - Two Faceless Colossi of Memnon Representing Pharaoh Amenhotep III

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

We were scheduled to leave the hotel at 6:30, so I had to wake up very early. The hotel provided breakfast in a box, which was available before 6:00. It was a basic dry breakfast, but I appreciated that they provided something so early.

Some of our tour mates went for a hot air balloon ride that provided aerial views of Luxor, its iconic landmarks, and the sunrise. I skipped that because it was way too early. Just before leaving the hotel, I saw the sky in the distance when daylight broke. It was a beautiful view over the swimming pool with mountains and the Nile River in the background.

We were heading to the Valley of the Kings as our first excursion of the day. However, we had a stopover at the Colossi of Memnon, a site where two huge faceless statues representing Pharaoh Amenhotep III rise majestically about 18m from the plain.

Each colossus is cut from a single block stone and weighs about 1000 tons. This place is a popular tourist spot with lots of open gift shops and small or big restaurants. Our tour mates who went for the balloon ride would meet us here.

I picked up a mango juice from a restaurant for 30 LE, about $2.40 CAD. I would say this was my best mango juice ever. They squeezed real mango with pulp in front of you, adding nothing. The result was a heavenly sweet mango juice – the taste was hard to forget.

I also met a cute and friendly street dog greeting all the tourists, wagging his tail. A lot of tourists liked his sweet behaviour and fed him cookies bought from the roadside snack shops.

All our tour mates gathered and soon we were heading to the Valley of the Kings.

Murphy’s Irish Pub Restaurant in Luxor| Unwinding After A Long Day of Excursions | Egypt Travel Blog: Day 5 (Part 43) 04D19

Dinner in Luxor | Murphy’s Irish Pub – A Little Oasis in Luxor

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

After reaching our hotel, our guide gave us an hour and a half to relax before meeting at the lobby. I utilized this time to take a shower and have tea.

Then we all met at the lobby and waited for everyone else to come. Some of our tour mates decided not to go, so there were close to 10 of us going to the Irish pub.

After walking a few blocks, we reached Murphy’s Irish Pub. An ordinary pub, nothing fancy, but in Aswan downtown finding an Irish pub felt like finding a little oasis. Their pub had 2 floors. We all settled on upstairs.

Although I saw a Guinness tap on both bars located upstairs and downstairs, they were just show and not connected to anything. The pub mainly serves local beers and alcohol. I didn’t get any beer, but tried a Coke. Beers were a lot cheaper compared to a pub in Canada. One of our tour mates who was from London kept drinking lots of beer, it was too cheap not to drink a lot.

I saw a pool table and there was even a DJ. We all felt comfortable and were chatting about our experiences in Egypt so far, and other stuff in general.

I ordered a mixed kebab with rice for 150 L.E. or about 12 CAD. The food was not great, but good enough. Food prices felt cheap, but I figured it was most likely that local Egyptians would pay less than us.

The pub was not crowded. I saw only one customer besides us. After finishing our dinner, we stayed for a while before returning to our hotel. On my way back, I noticed a big, antique-looking bookstore called Aboudy next to the pub. If I was alone, I would go in and spend some time browsing the bookstore. It looked like they had a good collection of books, postcards, and other interesting stuff.

The next day, we would leave our hotel at 6:30 to spend a busy day exploring.