All templed out with nowhere left to run

After larding up at lunch (veal'n' creme caramel) we headed out. Karnak temple(s). In a word: wow. Karnak temple(s) was built over 1500 years, and is a consortium/amalgamation of tons'o'gods AND pharaohs. Hence it's really one BIG site (2km square) with tons of sanctuaries, kiosks, pylons and obelisks. The hypostyle hall houses 130+ mahussive and intricately engraved columns - I cannot do it any justice - but it's like standing in a forest of them, coated in hyroglyphs and endless intricate decoration. In the words of Amelia Edwards, the 19th century writer and artist:

"It is a place that has been much written about and often painted; but of which no writing and no art can convey more than a dwarfed and pallid impression... The scale is too vast; the effect too tremendous; the sense of one's own dumbness, and littleness, and incapacity, too complete and crushing."

Let's gloss over the world's biggest inferiority complex, and penchant for the 3rd person and semi-colon. What she was trying to say was deffo that you gotta see it to believe it. 3 hours was not long enough, and the afternoon light wasn't picture-perfect, so I'm ducking out of a team excursion day-after-tomoz to go back and give it all another going-over, and snippy-snapping with camera. On the Official Kate-scale of Egypt Ratings, this gets position number 2 to Zoser's stepped pyramid.

After this mind-blowingness, we headed to Luxor temple, where the sponge of my mind was already at temple-saturation-point. I will attempt to sum up Luxor temple in one word, for the sake of brevity after my Karnak waxings. That word shall be: "meh".

Back on the boatington, and I'm not dressing for dinner as am too tired and dusty, and needing a glass of *gak* Obelisk wine. It's p-utrid, but my hands are tied here, people. Needs must. Etc.

Tomorrow morning is a 5.30am start, to jump on a balloon to fly from Luxor to the Valley of the Kings. Transport in Egypt thus far: plane, train, automobile, bus, cab-from-hell, and balloon. Have passed up malnourished-horse, skanky-donkey and bitey-looking-camel. What's left?

Very happy and chipper.

Over and oot.