Luxor Travel Guide

Introduction

Arriving in the modern town of Luxor by plane, you skim down over fertile fields that green all year round. If you're lucky, you'll see a farmer or two, their traditional gallebeyas pulled up around their knees as they tend to a water-buffalo-drawn plow. It's a scene that hasn't changed much since the first European tourists started arriving here a century ago. They found the local population living amongst the millennia-old ruins of Theban temples that they referred to in Arabic as Al Uqsor -- "The Palaces" -- which in time became Luxor.

Today, because it contains many of the biggest and most famous of the ancient monuments, Luxor is the center of gravity of the cultural tourism industry in Egypt. Most of the big sites are now open to the public and have, on the whole, been developed in a way that keeps damage to delicate ancient paintings and stonework to a minimum. The main downside of all this tourism is that the local economy has become completely dependent on foreigners,...