Author: tedloukes

This morning’s quest demanded walking shoes as we were about to hit the tombs of the New Kingdom elite. Maybe tomb is the wrong word, as all of these sepulchres are really a combination of a final resting place and a memorial temple, in that each one, while containing a place for burial, is actually about […]

Breakfast looking across the Nile, watching the last of the hot air balloons as they finish their early morning flights.  One can’t really complain. The West Bank Today, we start on the West Bank.  Grabbing water, hats and sunscreen we piled into the minibus that was to take us the comparatively short distance to our […]

A lazy start to day 2 for most of the team, as yesterday had been so long. We only finally arrived in Luxor around midnight, and most of us had been on the go since the morning of the day before. The Avenue of Sphinxes After a quick breakfast, it was up to me to […]

Arrival After a long and fairly sleepless flight, team GnT arrived at Cairo International. Immigration was straightforward although a recent rule change meant that we had to collect our luggage rather than leaving it to be automatically transferred to our later flight to Luxor. Falafel Sandwiches Moments later we were in our mini-bus and heading […]

Karnak Day 6 was our last in Luxor, and we were going to spend some time on the East Bank. After breakfast we made our way down to the river’s edge for a ride downstream. Our destination – the largest open-air temple in the world – Karnak. It is a great pity that security measures […]

Seti I Temple Day 5 began with a minibus journey through the local villages rather than via the main road. We were starting our day at the northern-most temple in the necropolis. The mortuary temple of Seti I, father to Ramses the Great, is a seldom-visited gem, not far from the New Qurna market. Hidden from […]

Valley of the Kings With breakfast out of the way and a fresh supply of cold water on board, we set off for the world’s most famous cemetery. Here, again, the Luxor Pass really came into its own, not only could we visit the tomb of Seti I, but also any of the other tombs […]

Day 3 started with a split in our company as our last arrival needed to get her Luxor Pass, which meant a trip across the river to the offices behind the museum. Although it was nice and cool on the water, the general temperature was still in the 40s. The Luxor Pass process was quick and painless, […]

With our number bolstered by the first of our late arrivals, we set out for the Valley of the Queens. Armed with ice-cold water we set off in our minibus taxi up though the villages, past the Colossi of Memnon. It was great to see just how much of the layout of Amenhotep III’s mortuary temple […]

From 2013 to 2015 I was busy finishing and publishing Moses and Akhenaten: Brothers in Alms. It was late in 2017 when someone for a joke suggested we run tours to Egypt. This led to the forming of GnT Tours some time in 2018. These are the slightly edited daily trip reports from the very […]