Wednesday 14th March

We get a phone call from the tour company we have booked the two trips from, due to trouble in the area it's now not possible to visit Kharga Oasis at all.

There are also convoy systems in place for Abydos and Dendera (IMO Abydos is not worth going to with a convoy system in place, I don't like my time there to be restricted)

So......... we settle on a day trip to Aswan for the same day instead and will visit the Nobles Tombs, Elephantine and Kalabsha.  We head back onto the East Bank and after re-arranging the schedule head up to Karnak Temple.

It's around mid-day when we get there, there are a few tourists but not many and we head to the Open Air Museum first (an extra 25LE per person) which we get entirely to ourselves for around 2 hours.

After our time in the Open Air Museum (so peaceful, just lots of cheeping birds) we venture into the main temple complex, there is no-one at ALL in the hypostyle hall

And we spot 2 people for a about a minute by the sacred lake, unfortunately by the time we stop taking photos and get to the giant scarab statue a small group has arrived and their guide is telling them how many times to run round the scarab for marriage, how many the other way for divorce (the story varies with each guide, just to be careful - as you never know - I have never run round the scarab any amount of times lol!!!)

Sacred Lake.......... tourist free

Running round this innocent looking statue may/may not cause various things to happen 

We wander around for another hour or so before leaving.

Back at the hotel we head up for dinner around 7.30pm, we had specially requested the stuffed pigeon which needs to be pre-ordered.

To start with we had the lentil soup, lovely and thick and served with bread made by the family of Mohammed and Ahmed, the two brothers who own the hotel

The pigeon came with, rice, roasted veg,  salad and one of my all time favourites, potatoes cooked in tomato.