Fly Me To The Moon

This is not the Nile but the impact of its absence on this part of Upper Egypt just to the east of Luxor is clear. On the other side of the plane, you could see the kilometre or so of verdant fields that border the river on each side and which produce three crops per year of corn, sugar cane, wheat, bananas, cabbages, hibiscus and animal feed which is called alfalfa (see Ceridwen's link below).

However I wanted to capture the unworldly landscape above. Not for nothing did I write when I first touched down here in 1981 that 'I know what it is like to land on the moon!' and, synchronistically, the spacecraft that recently landed on the comet with a landscape not too dissimilar to this is called 'Phillae’, the same as the island in the Nile near Aswan on which stands the Temple of Isis.

We were up at 4 am, tucking into our breakfast boxes at 4:30 am, speeding through the Luxor night at 5:00 am and aloft by 6:30 am. After the clean air of Luxor, Cairo tasted awful as we joined the traffic jams back into the centre at 8:00 am.

For our personal record and possible return assistance, we stayed in the Winter Palace Hotel, Room Number 127 with a garden view and private terrace. The line of rooms from 122 to 127 are all nice!