Luxor

Luxor is Thebes, and Thebes was the capital of the world for five hundred years: on the east bank of the Nile, where the sun rose and the living lived, Karnak is the largest religious complex ever built — a hundred hectares of pylons, obelisks and a hall of a hundred and thirty-four columns the size of sequoias — joined by a two-and-a-half-kilometre avenue of sphinxes, dug out and reopened in 2021, to Luxor Temple, which Amenhotep III began and Ramesses II finished, and which glows at night with a mosque inside it; on the west bank, where the sun set and the dead were buried, the Theban hills hold the Valley of the Kings, sixty-three tombs cut into the rock — Tutankhamun's among them, found nearly intact in 1922 —, Hatshepsut's terraces at Deir el-Bahari, the two seated Colossi of Memnon, the painted walls of Medinet Habu and the village of the workmen who made it all. Between the two banks the Nile carries feluccas, ferries and, at dawn, a sky of hot-air balloons.

The traveller sleeps on the east bank — the Winter Palace of 1886, where Agatha Christie took tea, if the budget allows — and gives the west bank a full morning starting at six: the Valley of the Kings early, with the extra tickets for Seti I and Tutankhamun, then Deir el-Bahari before the heat, Medinet Habu for colour that has lasted three thousand years, and Deir el-Medina for the small tombs of the men who dug the big ones; crosses back for lunch and the Luxor Museum in the afternoon; walks Karnak at four, when the light lies down between the columns, and Luxor Temple after dark; sails a felucca at sunset; and, one morning, rises before dawn for the balloon over the fields and the hills.

The Guide's honesty: Luxor lives on tourism and lets you know it — the calèche drivers, the felucca captains, the alabaster shops and the men who appear at every tomb to point at a wall and expect baksheesh are part of the landscape; a smile, a firm no and small notes go a long way; the heat from May to September is serious and the tombs are ovens by ten — start at six; the West Bank ticket system is byzantine, so buy at the office by the Colossi and buy the extras there; the local ferry across the Nile costs almost nothing and beats the motorboats; women travelling alone will be talked to constantly, and it is tiresome, not dangerous; and the temples at night — Luxor lit, Karnak's sound-and-light — are the second time you see them, and the better one.