I can only tell you what I see and hear here and what the people I know say. Luxor learnt a bitter hard lesson when the tourists at the temple of Hatshepsut were massacred by terrorists. Despite the locals doing all they could to protect ‘their tourists’, despite the fact it was they not the police that caught the gunmen, despite the fact they did everything they could; the results were dire for Luxor.
You see other places have manufacturing, large farms, service industry. It is both Luxor’s blessing and its burden that all it has is tourism. So in the lean years after the massacre people starved, lacked medicines and died. I know families where there are no children surviving who were born around that time. For every tourists there were 100 touts, even today levels have not returned to those of before Hatshepsut. The big tour companies take all the business.
So whilst a Luxor man will agree prices are too high, there are no jobs, he will do this whilst driving the tourist to the airport, taking them on a tour, sailing them on the Nile. His priority is earning a living and the only living in Luxor is servicing tourists and he knows if they are scared, they will stay away and he and his family will suffer. So that is why I have seen no gatherings, no demonstrations, no riots just people going about their daily lives and trying to earn a crust.
7 comments:
Well Jane, I and I suspect many others are watching your website with great interest.
I am booked into the Pavilion Winter (poor man's Winter Palace!) as from Monday for 10 days. Unless things patently explode into dangerous anarchy over the weekend I shall be there....
Hope at least the weather's good.....it's freezing in London !
Peter
Jane, as I write this things are looking pretty dire in Cairo.The BBC have just announced advising against all travel to Cairo, Alexandria and Luxor. Hopefully unrest will not spread to Luxor and it will be sorted out quickly. I travelled to Egypt twice this year and thoroughly enjoyed it both times. (Apart from the last day of our holiday as we were left behind in Luxor by our cruise ship along with 300 others when it left for Sharm El Sheik due to the desert road being washed away in the storms of 29th December.) One thing all the tourists both on our Nile cruise and our Red Sea Cruise agreed upon was this. If the sellers would let people look at their goods without hassling and scaring us we would actually buy them. It is such a shame. Nobody buys anything because we are so put off. Somebody needs to tell them. We would all be happier.I came back from both holidays with no souveneers apart from a papyrus bought in a government backed shop.
Our prayers are with you and the wonderful people of Egypt. May peace come.
grtotaly agree with you, thats why we pay a fair price for services offered and not try to cut a price to the bare bones and save an extra £le as they have to make a living as well,
Luxor does not have the large amount of students as other towns so we hope it stay's well out of it.
we came when the gulf war was on and we saw what a small drop in tourist does to a town like Luxor.
Thanks Jane, your's seems to be the only news coming out of Luxor, my partner and many friends are there and with the UK 'recommending' that we don't go there I was getting very concerned. Let's hope some good comes out of this and that the mostly good, kind people of Luxor don't suffer as a result.
Diane
Thanks Jane, your's seems to be the only news coming out of Luxor, my partner and many friends are there and with the UK 'recommending' that we don't go there I was getting very concerned. Let's hope some good comes out of this and that the mostly good, kind people of Luxor don't suffer as a result.
Diane
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