Splendor In The Dust Egypt Is One Of The World’s Great Travel Experiences, Just Don’t Confuse It With A Relaxing Vacation

There’s no avoiding the comparison with the “If it’s Tuesday, it must be Belgium” syndrome.

By 7:25 a.m., we’d squeezed in and out of King Tut’s cramped tomb and seen his gold-encased mummy.

By 8 a.m., we’d checked off the tombs of Ramses IX and Ramses IV.

Thirty minutes later, we’d driven from the Valley of the Kings to the Valley of the Queens to wonder at the incomparable tomb of Queen Nefertari.

At 9:25, we descended Tomb 52 of Queen Titi; by 9:45 we’d puzzled our way in and out of two burial vaults of sons of Ramses III.

The temperature labored past 90 degrees; we drained our water bottles and swerved around a sandstone cliff to where Egypt’s only female pharaoh burrowed her lavish tomb.

An hour later, we spun away from the Hatshepsut memorial to shop for alabaster and photograph the Colossi of Memnon.

Seven wilting hours after disembarking from our Nile cruiser, we shuffled back and plunged like desert scavengers into the copious luncheon buffet.

Make no mistake, Egypt is one of the world’s great travel experiences. Just don’t confuse it with a vacation.

The ancient sites offer everything an inquisitive traveler could hope for, but seeing them requires stamina. The soporific heat relents only in the dead of winter; pre-dawn risings offer a few hours respite from the sun’s ferocity.

By and large, the guides are well-qualified but ponderous; they plunge into the intricacies of hieroglyphics, gods and goddesses, imparting minute details rather than the big picture. My deluxe tour with the worldwide tour company of Abercrombie & Kent (A&K) offered one guide per 24 tourists, unless a private guide was hired.

Unlike Europe, where when you’ve had enough of a cathedral you can duck into a cafe around the corner, Egyptian temples are fairly isolated. You’re there for the duration, jostling with a dozen other groups for a spot in the miserly shade.

I’d hoped for a leisurely, 120-mile downstream cruise, north to south, from Aswan to Luxor. But that illusion faded on the second day. We boarded the 6:30 a.m. flight from Cairo south to Abu Simbel; the dreaded wake-up call detonated at 4 a.m.

“Internal flights are often canceled or delayed,” the A&K representative explained. “Catching the first flight of the day maximizes chances of getting passengers to Abu Simbel and on their cruise.”

Later in the week when our ship, the Sun Boat II, arrived at Luxor, the front desk issued a 5 a.m. reveille. Sixty minutes later, 45 passengers had dressed, eaten, slathered on suntan lotion, loaded cameras, stowed extra water bottles, and boarded a water taxi for the hop across the Nile to the Valley of the Kings. Crossing the unruffled Nile in the golden dawn, dozens of other boats shuttled sleepy passengers from the 20-odd cruisers docked at Luxor to Thebes on the western shore.

The Nile is Egypt’s beginning and end - without its life-giving waters, Egypt would be just sand and rock. The ancients engineered their temples to hug its fertile banks. Today’s boats tie up within a short walk from Edfu, the temple of the falcon-god Horus; from Kom Ombo, the crocodile temple; and from Esna’s Khnum Temple.

They’re ideally located for sightseeing. But their mystical beauty is tempered by the unchecked free enterprise that erupts outside their gates. Invariably, a crowded souk defines the dock-to-temple route, where open-air stands display T-shirts, baseball caps, shawls and cotton galabayya robes.

The salesmanship is hardly subtle. “If I looked at something but didn’t buy, they’d shriek at me,” remarked a fellow traveler.

In Edfu, I priced a bangled headdress. The teenage vendor followed me for two blocks, flinging it at me as I declined his ever-lower price.

Hundreds of vendors lined the block leading to Esna’s magnificent temple, but they didn’t accost us. Our guide Alaa Abdoon explained: “Passengers complained so much about their aggressive tactics that, earlier this year, cruise ships deleted Esna from their itineraries for a month.”

Who can blame the Egyptians for milking the cash camel? The incongruity, though, is unavoidable. On the one hand, Egypt offers magnificent sculpture and architecture from the dawn of civilization. And right across the street is unabated, 20th-century hustle. Turbaned and robed opportunists even lurk in the temples, accepting baksheesh for pointing out a ceiling mural, a viewpoint or hidden staircase.

Culturally, Egyptians interact with lots of touching. This can be unsettling, especially to female travelers. Our female guide, Manal Fathi, explained: “We Egyptians do touch a lot. And the men can be aggressive, since many of them know about Westerners only from the TV show ‘Falcon Crest.’ My advice is to tolerate only what an Egyptian woman would: a handshake.”

Like all packages, the A&K itinerary included a half-day at the pyramids and sphinx at Giza. And like every visitor, I wanted a cliched photo of the pyramids with an obligatory camel.

Dozens of men work the camel concession. The younger ones wear jeans and baseball caps; the older ones stride in traditional robes and turbans. When one of the latter approached me, I offered $2 to take a picture of him and his tasseled camel. In a country where the average per capita income is around $60 a month, this seemed fair. He said, “Whatever you say, my friend. For you, this is a gift.”

I thought we had a deal but when I paid, he scoffed. “Lady, don’t spoil my day. No one has paid me less than $10.”

Every traveler has a tale. “When Asheed came up to me with his scruffy camel, I expected to ride around the pyramids, an amateur Lawrence of Arabia,” recalled a community college English instructor. “But this was no movie. Asheed led me 30 feet to a viewpoint, took my photo and said, ‘That’s $10, my friend.’ “

But the ageless charm of Egypt is such that, despite the heat, the ambitious early morning departures and the annoying vendors, I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.

The afternoon that we did cruise the Nile, heading north from Kom Ombo, we saw fisherman tossing nets from feluccas, the odd camel bending to drink and water buffalo working the shockingly green fields.

But best of all were the temples. Every time I saw one, I was reminded of the story of Napoleon’s troops marching through Egypt in the late 1700s. When they first saw the temples of Karnak, they halted and burst into spontaneous applause. An army lieutenant wrote: “Without an order being given, the men formed their ranks and presented arms, to the accompaniment of the drums and the bands.”

The magic is still there, and every bend of the Nile brings a marvelous sight. Old temples, haphazard mud villages and lanteen-sailed boats. Like archeologist Howard Carter said when he first peered into the tomb of Tutankhamun, “Past and present seemed to meet, time to stand and wait.”

MEMO: See related story under the headline: Queen’s valley showcases royal tombs

This sidebar appeared with the story: IF YOU GO More than 250 tour boats ply the Nile; all except a handful limit their cruising to the Aswan-Luxor route. Abercrombie & Kent owns three ships, including the recently launched Sun Boat IV. An 11-day itinerary that includes a 5-day cruise begins at $2,385 in high season. Other top-rated cruise boats are the Sonesta Sun Goddess, The Radamis (Movenpick Hotels) and the Philae, (Oberoi), launched in 1996. Hilton International, Sheraton, and Swan/Hellenic also operate boats. High season runs October- April, during which time many ships, such as A&K’s, are fully booked. A&K’s American office reports an 80 percent increase in Egyptian bookings in the past two years (800) 323-7308. Information: Egyptian Tourist Authority, 630 Fifth Ave., Suite 1706, New York, NY 10111; 212-332-2570.