Leaving Luxor

There are many ways to leave Luxor, and there are many directions in which to leave. The overnight train to Cairo leaves at 8.10pm from Platform 2; the train up the Nile to Aswan leaves in the afternoon as tired passengers alight after the 12-15 hour journey from Alexandria through Cairo and on up the Nile valley past field after field of sugar cane.

You can leave Luxor for some few days on one of the many boats/ships/barges, I know not what to call them, up the Nile to Aswan. There you can visit Abu Symbel temple and look south into Sudan.

Thousand upon thousands of years ago, the Pharaohs of the New Kingdom, Hatshepsut, Tut-ankh-amon and the others, whose defiled toms lie in the Valley of the Kings on the West bank of the Nile, left Thebes and this life for the afterlife they believed was theirs to live anew.

If their heart did not outweigh the two feathers of Truth and Justice, they were allowed to pass. Their mortal remains were either mummified, or else contained in the Canopic Jars used to hold their internal organs – liver and lungs but not the heart – that had to be weighed by the gods. Holy barques were prepared for the journey and they left Luxor - forever – who knows?
Robert L. Fielding