With its magnificent temples and pharaonic tombs, Luxor, once known as Thebes, is where ancient Egypt rests in all its glory, discovers Fabiola Jacob.

Temple Round at Twilight

The Egyptians believed that the soul journeyed with the sun into afterlife, and so they built their temples and palaces on the east and elaborate tombs on the west bank of the River Nile. The sprawling Karnak Temple Complex is 250 acres of soaring columns, obelisks and statues. Built over a period of 2,000 years, pharaohs like Ramesses II, Queen Hatshepsut, Ahmose I and Amenhotep III have left their mark here. Everything here is super-sized, especially the Great Hypostyle Hall, with magnificent pillars shaped like papyrus stalks. Just a short drive down south, is the Luxor temple, built around 1400 BC, and dedicated to Amun Ra. The pharaohs were crowned here. Flanked by colossal statues of Ramesses II with a rather diminutive Queen Nefertari, the Luxor temple had two 75-foot-high obelisks (one of which is now at the Place de la Concorde in Paris) and impressive courts and colonnades. The avenue of the sphinxes (a 2.7-kilometre pathway to the Karnak temple) looks magical during twilight, as Luxor temple and the open-air museum are beautifully lit up at night, and kept open till 9 pm.

Valley of the Kings

Luxor’s biggest attraction — the Valley of the Kings — is more spectacular than the pyramids of Giza. The pharaohs built massive crypts in the barren hills west of Luxor during the New Kingdom (1539-1075 B.C.), as a royal resting place for pharaohs such as Tutankhamun, Seti I, and Ramesses II, as well as queens, high priests, and other elite of the 18th, 19th and 20th dynasties. Out of the 60 excavated royal tombs here, only three are opened for tourists each day. Yellow tuf-tufs (electrical train) wind their way through the low hills, ferrying visitors to the tombs. The tomb of Tutankhamun — the boy-king who died in 1327 BC at the age of 17 and was laid to rest in a golden sarcophagus, along with his chariots, throne, statues, toys and a fleet of miniature ships to aid his journey to the netherworld — is the main attraction. It was discovered 3,000 years later in 1922 by the British Egyptologist Howard Carter. The mummy of Tutankhamun rests in a climate-controlled environment here, while the golden mask, jewellery and the sarcophagus are at the National Museum in Cairo.

Queen Hatshepsut’s Temple

One of the most beautiful of the royal mortuary temples, the temple of Queen Hatshepsut — with three colonnaded terraces and two majestic ramps, set against the dramatic cliffs of Deir el-Bahari — is a sight to behold even from a distance. As stepmother and regent for the adolescent Thutmose III, Queen Hatshepsut managed to retain the throne by posing like a male pharaoh with royal headdress, kilt and false beard — as seen in the wall paintings here. Her successor and step-son Thutmose III’s attempts to wipe out her legacy are also evident.

On the way out from the Valley of the Kings, just a short distance from here, is the house of Howard Carter, the British Archaeologist and Egyptologist who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun. It’s a museum now, with all the furnishing used by Carter and Lord Carnarvon his benefactor, left intact. This city sure takes you back in time. It makes you feel like you just stepped out of a time machine into another era. It also still is the hotbed of archaeological discoveries, regularly springing surprises from an unsuspecting world.

Red and white, yellow and brown, grey and blue — houses on Merchant’s Bridge or Kramerbrucke are colourful. But they have no numbers. Or addresses. Even the street is nameless. What they do have are symbols; bright, prominent and distinct red stars, golden helmets and golden canes stare back at you from these vibrant chock-a-block homes.

Tap on any of them and you may get to hear a hollow whisper that takes you back 500 years. Known as half timber houses, the peculiarity of their construction is that within the timber frame, hay and clay are placed in order to keep the house warm during the bitter cold German winters. Of the original 62, 32 remain and enjoy special protection. Gothic, renaissance and baroque — they are all here on the 120-metre-long Merchant’s Bridge in Erfurt, capital of the state of Thuringia in Germany.

“Try our chocolate truffles. You won’t regret it,” says the server standing on the stone cobbled bridge outside Goldhelm Schokolade, a homemade chocolate manufacturer. He deliberately extends a grey stone slab on which brown chocolate-dusted cubes of sample truffles beckon. Goldhelm Schokolade happens to be a local success story gone viral with their truffles, pralines, hot chocolate and ice cream being sold out in a few hours.

Named after the merchants who were the crème de la crème of the bridge in its heyday, today artistic displays rule and conquer Merchant’s Bridge. Potters, glass blowers, a felt maker, woodwork sculptors and porcelain manufacturers vie ethically for coveted space on Kramerbrucke.

The picture-perfect bridge houses model cafés, shops and studios that co-exist with residents and their poodles. But if you really want some drama, step into Haus der Stiftungen, which is less of a house and more of a permanent exhibition on Kramerbrucke.

A couple of centuries ago, near the ford across the River Gera, two prominent trading places needed to be connected. Thus was born Merchant’s Bridge that played its role in Erfurt’s prosperity. Said to be the longest European bridge with inhabited houses on its entire span, the original structure was made of wood, easy to source and build with, but equally easy to burn. Which is exactly what happened. Fire upon fire razed the bridge to cinders. And each time, the resilient townspeople rebuilt it and life returned to normal.

But prudence prevailed in 1325, after another blaze. Fire-resistant materials (in comparison to wood), like sand and stone, were used. Six vaulted arches were constructed with two churches built at each end of the bridge — St Benedict’s Church at the western end and St Agidien’s Church at the east.

But the stubborn fires were not done with Erfurt and challenged its sand and stone construction yet again in 1472. This time, Erfurt’s residents expanded the bridge, and caught in the heat of the moment, built 62 half-timbered houses as well.

Erfurt painted Europe blue with its superior quality of the woad plant, used for dyeing. Today, the odd woad in a pot reminds residents and visitors of a time gone by.

The Amazon’s dark forbidding heart is a place for chills, thrills and wonderful calm

The dark waters of the Rio Negro swirled with the strong breeze as I peered excitedly out of the open motor boat along the fringes of the Amazon forests. We had left the harbour at Manaus more than an hour ago, with the rain drumming over the stretched tarpaulin overhead. Soon, we would be near the famed confluence of the rivers. The River Negro was so called because of the darkness of the waters. But if you were to scoop some into your palms, the water would sparkle in its natural transparency. After some distance, the water merges with the River Solimoes, and here we were cruising along the waves of the intersection (Encontro das Aguas, as the Brazilians say). It is quite strange that when the yellowish-whitish Solimoes runs into the dark waters of the Negro, there is no intermingling. Together, they pour into the Amazon, and the river mouth is so wide that I couldn’t see the horizon any more. The Amazon is no doubt widest at this point.

After pulling over to a couple of houseboats which strategically mark off territories and offer short breaks with refreshments and facilities, we move in silence into the Amazon forests. At first, the forests appear as blotches in the distance merging with the darkness of the cloudy skies and the moving waters below, and then they begin to close in overhead. The last remaining rainforests of the Brazilian Amazon are exotic and exciting. My heart kept beating with the thrill of boyhood dreams being realised; marvelling at the sheer majestic heights of the trees and the lushness of the fronds and creepers. I even forgot my camera dangling from my neck; the experience was exhilarating. There were strange bird calls and the intense smell of wet earth hung over everything.

Dream come true

In my childhood, I used to imagine that if one were to keep digging a tunnel into the earth, one could end up on the other side of the globe, and so from my part of the world I could perhaps surface in the heart of the Amazon in Brazil! Later, when I came across Latin American literature, the phrase magical realism proffered such possibilities in the world of imagination. Of course, I had travelled across deserts and rivers and traversed mountains and seas on the magic carpet of creativity long enough. Nevertheless, my journey to Brazil and to the fringes of the Amazon was a dream come true. When I was invited to deliver a plenary lecture at the International Conference on the Demise of Nature organised at the Federal University of Amazonas in Manaus, I was excited at the prospect of entering the almost pristine Amazonian rainforests. And finally here I was in a boat over the legendary river, alive and in the thick of my dream.

Recalling the 1997 adventure film Anaconda by Peruvian director Luis Llosa shot around this area, I was disappointed that I did not encounter the snake! A brief albeit tiring trek allowed me to take a peek into the jungle’s secrets. It is a mixture of awe and calm that descends in the sublimity of silence deep within. After all, only when you have to leave a place do you realise the brevity of your being there. One lifetime is certainly not enough to explore the magnificence of the Amazon. As a Russian friend had long ago advised me, I silently toss a coin overboard, praying for my return to this same spot sometime soon enough. “Amazonia!” some of the young people with us sing and dance with the moving waters, as we break the spell of the magical circle of the jungle.

The indigenous tribal village that we move into soon becomes a space for cultural interaction. The Tupe Indians had organised a ritual dance to entertain us. The high-pitched flutes and their swaying rhythms were bewitching. In the intense quiet of the jungle I watched a small boat dance in the wind and waters. Not many people from my part of the world are fortunate enough to see this, I thought. All the way back as the boat rocked in the wind, the rhythms of the dance echoed in my insides: Amazonas!