I think I've figured out why they do it this way.

You see, I started writing this dispatch yesterday afternoon, fresh from a particularly unpleasant day of travel. I was about three pages into it, writing furiously (furiously, in several senses of the word) and looked back to see that all I had done was whine. Three pages of moaning and groaning. It definitely made me feel better but it didn't make for much of a story.

Travel writing is supposed to be filled with quaint inconveniences, humorous mishaps that don't really get in the way of the author having a good time but just add some spice to the events that transpire. If the author writes his narrative in the throes of misery, then the story is no more enjoyable than listening to someone complain about their bad day at work (the exception, I guess, being hard-core adventure writing like Into Thin Air where misery is sort of the leitmotif that ties everything together).

This, then, is why travel writers write their books after the fact. It is so much easier to make light of diarrhea when you don't actually have it; so much easier to chuckle about an uncomfortable bed when your own is just oustide the den and up the stairs. But this is a website and the idea is that it's relatively current so I'll just have to do the best I can. I will write from the comfort of a semi-comfortable bus seat (as I do today) and temper my words with a cup of lukewarm instant coffee, single-grain liquors not being readily available in the land of Islam.

Sarah and I arrived a few days ago in Luxor on the overnight train from Cairo. Although we were traveling south we were heading up the Nile and thus into what is known as "Upper Egypt." Some time ago (four millenia, give or take) Luxor was known as Thebes and was the capital of the Egyptian empire. Modern-day Luxor is spread along the East bank of the river. It is home to about 40,000 people and although it is not a "sleepy" town by any stretch of the word it is definitely mellower than Cairo. Down by the river you can even look over the across the flat green fields on the other shore to the sun setting behind the desert mountains.

The pyramids of Giza may get all the press, but Luxor is the real crown jewel of Egypt. Packed in and around this ancient capital are the incredible Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens (west bank), the hugely huge Temple of Karnak (east bank), and hundreds of other tombs and temples too numerous to name here.

To the sun-worshipping Egyptians, east was the ordinal from which life sprang and west the direction of death (clue to the clueless: think sunrise and sunset). This dichotomoy, with a convenient river to mark the boundary between east and west, has resulted in a slew of ruins up and down the length of the Nile: pyramids, tombs and graves on the west bank, and temples and palaces on the east.

Sarah and I decided to start with the Valley of the Kings. About 2500 BC, the pharaohs began to realize that their forefather's habit of pyramid-building was ill-conceived. Rather than protecting the tombs, pyramids simply served as big neon "Loot Here" signs to the ancient grave-robbers. So the next generation of kings -- in fact, the 1000 years worth of kings -- took the opposite approach: they sought to hide their tombs in an obscure valley.

The valley is just a short taxi ride from the Nile. As we rode up there, once again I was surprised by the stark contrast between lush river valley and the barren nothingness of the hills. We hopped out of the car, walked through the dusty entrance gate, and looked up to see dozens of tomb entrances dotting the steep slopes. They valley was much smaller than I had imagined. From where we stood near the entrance it was only a 10 or 15 minute walk to the other end. And our guidebook said that in this small space over 60 tombs had been built. Most of the smaller tombs higher on the hills are closed to vistors, and even some of the major tombs below are closed for ongoing excavation and study, but Sarah and I found one that was open, showed the guy our ticket, and stepped inside.

It took a while for our eyes to adjust to the relative darkness, and when they did adjust we hardly believed what we saw. Every inch of the walls and ceiling was covered in murals and heiroglyphics. The most amazing thing (and even though we knew this about this before we were still amazed): it was all done up in vibrant color. History is supposed to be in black and white, or maybe earth-tones, but not color. When you look at dinosaur bones, or Roman statues, or medieval armor, or even World War II photographs, it's always colorless and muted. But these walls were covered in color! Deep blues, fiery reds. Orange. Pink. Bright in places, more faded elsewhere, but everywhere, color color color.

We toured three tombs and they all followed a similar design. You walk along a long straight corridor that descends gradually. The corridor is large -- maybe 10 feet wide by 8 feet tall -- and cut about 80 meters into the mountain. At a few places along the corridor it widens into a large room or antechamber. In true Indiana Jones fashion, one tomb even crossed a deep shaft that dropped down into black nothingness. At the end of the corridor sits the burial chamber, the largest room of all, with its bright walls and its huge stone sarcophagus right smack-dab in the middle.

We had seen plenty of sarcophagi already, especially in the Egyptian museum. There they were lined up like bathtubs at a Home Depot and were dull and uninspiring. But here, set up on a pedastal and framed by murals of strange gods and kingly poses, they were grand and stately.

The next morning, back on the east bank of the Nile, we toured another site that was equally impressive. The Temple of Karnak whollops you by its immensity, its hugeness. The original temple was built circa 2000 BC and was added on to, reconstructed, enlarmed, and restored for the next 1500 years. It was the most important place of worship in Egypt.

After walking along a causeway lined with sphinx, you reach the massive First Pylon, the outer wall. At 50 meters the pylon's height is impressive enough, but carved into the surface of the stone are giant images of the pharoahs and gods. I was about ready to drop to my knees and worship them right then and there.

We entered through the main gate into a large courtyard. Ahead lay another massive pylon (we would cross 5 before reaching the other side of the complex!) and to each side an array of columns, statues, small chapels, and siderooms. We continued walking, lost and amazed in the size of it all. All the walls were covered in carvings and heiroglyphs, and in protected corners you could still see traces of the paint that used to cover everything. One area, a sacred room called the Great Hypostyle Hall, had 134 gigantic papyrus-shaped pillars, each about 10 feet in diameter.

Over the next few days we explored some of the other big sites in the area. The Temple of Hatshepsut is a nice eye-catcher carved right into the mountainside. The Tombs of the Nobles are a series of 400 tombs of scribes and governers and lesser nobles. They are spread out in and around and under some local villages, so touring them means dodging goats and village boys, but it's a rewarding hike. The tombs are smaller in scale than those in the Valley of the Kings, but they are equally colorful and somewhat more personal, a few having paintings of the entombed with the wife and kids.

If Luxor is crown jewel of Egypt, then the finest jewel in the crown is the Tomb of Nefertari, located in the Valley of the Queens. This amazing tomb houses the brightest heiroglyphics and murals, all in pristine condition. Though discovered in 1904, it has only been open to the public for the last five years. A strict limit is in place -- just 150 visitors are allowed per day -- so one usually needs to get to the ticket window by 6 AM to be assured entry. In a stroke of luck that I still haven't figured out, we were able to buy tickets when we arrived at 10. The guy initially said they were sold out (just has he'd told the two groups in front of me). "No more tickets?" I asked, carelessly waving my 100-pound notes in the air. "Where you from?" was his reply, and when I told him he said "America number one!" and sold me two tickets at face value.

Nefertari's tomb really was spectacular. Well worth the ticket price. After having spent several days staring at colored walls I didn't think anything could impress us, but her tomb outshone all the rest. Incredibly vivid colors, still shining bright more than 3000 years after being laid to stone.

From Luxor Sarah and I decided to press further south to Aswan, the last city in Egypt, the end of the empire. Aswan is a three hour's drive up-river from Luxor and is most famous this century as home to the High Dam, Nasser's monumental public works project that launched the Suez Canal crisis of '56, plugged up the Nile and created the world's largest man-made lake. Aswan is the center of the Nubian culture and is a slightly smaller, slightly sleepier version of Luxor, set on the banks of the Nile on the edge of the desert.

Getting to Aswan presented a bit of a problem. Actually, getting anywhere in Egypt south of Cairo presents some complications. As you probably remember, 1997 was not a good year for Egyptian public relations. Late that year a tour bus was fire-bombed outside the Egyptian museum in Cairo, and a few weeks later 58 tourists were massacred by machine guns at the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor. In the wake of these accidents, the Egyptian police clamped down. Armed tourist police were placed on seemingly every street corner in the country, road blocks were instituted, metal detectors and X-ray machines were installed at the entrance to every tourist attraction and almost every hotel. Most inconvenient for the independent traveler like myself, independent travel was severely curtailed. Most trains were placed off-limits to foreigners and road travel on buses and inter-city taxis was prohibited.

We only had a few choices for getting to Aswan. We could take the one approved train (no siteseeing along the way), we could take a cruise ship up the river (no culture), we could take a felucca (no toilet), or we could hire a private car and driver and join the military convoy. We chose the latter.

Our small convoy left at 7 AM sharp. An hour south of town we split into two groups, one heading directly to Aswan and the other, ours, stopping at a few sites along the way. I had expected to have the sites to ourselves, but as we drove across the bridge in Edfu to the Temple of Horus, I looked out on the river to the ominous bulk of 8 cruise ships. Turns out the temple we'd taken such great pains to get to was packed with 1000's of Italian tourists, fresh off the boat.

The main reason we had come to Aswan was as a launching point to Abu Simbel, Ramses II might temples even way-er down south near the Sudanese border. Getting there required another military convoy, so as soon as we got into town we signed up for a minivan and went to bed early, trying to fall asleep despite the traffic noise outside. The convoy left at 4 AM.

I was awake, I guess, but I didn't really notice I was awake until about 6 o'clock, when the rising sun lit up the desert rock. Our road was smooth and well-maintained, but all around was rock and sand and nothing. Flat, save for a few small buttes jutting defiantly out of the landscape. Every hour or so we would pass a single, solitary building housing an ambulance. Who they were there to rescue or where they would take them, I have no idea.

Our convoy -- it was a big one this time with a dozen minivans like ours and an equal number of large coach buses -- reached Abu Simbel at 7:30. We were told to the return convoy would be leaving at 9:30 sharp, so we were a bit pressed for time. Along with the other 600 people in the convoy, we stampeded our way to the entrance where we found -- praise be those wonderful Egyptian tourist officials -- one ticket window with one very confused look arab selling tickets at a sickeningly slow pace. There were to barricades to help bring order to the mob.

Getting up at 3:30 in the morning will put me on edge under the best of circumstances and faced with this situation I almost snapped. We had paid a bunch of money, packed ourselves into a van with 11 other people, drived 3 1/2 hours across the desert, and now we had two hours (all of which we would spend in line, elbowing fellow travelers) before turning around and driving back. This convoy arrives every single day at exactly the same time. Why can't they hire a few extra ticket guys for an hour? Come on! This isn't rocket science.

With a nice upper-cut of my elbow to a little Dutch girl I eventually made it to the front of the line. Despite the annoyances, the temple was actually worth it. In anticipation of the High Dam, the temple was moved from its old Nile-side location, and today the four huge statues at the entrance gaze out over Lake Nassar. Had I been a Sudanese invading force 3000 years ago and seen those colossal things looking down at me, I would certainly have given up any hope of victory and paddled home. At 9:30, Sarah and I declared our own "furthest south" and turned like Shackleton to head north back to Aswan.

This morning we were up early again to catch the 5:00 AM tourist train to Luxor. Once in Luxor, we got lucky and were able to get on a public bus (cheap, no convoy) for the ride to Hurghada. We are leaving the Nile now, heading east across the desert to the Red Sea.

We have come to Egypt and seen the sites, from the Roman ruins on the Mediterranean to the pyramids at Cairo to the ancient monuments of Luxor and Aswan. We were sufficiently wowed by the oldness of everything and the hugeness of it all.

But therein -- in the hugeness and the grandness -- lies a problem, something that had been bothering my subconscious since we arrived. The sites are almost too big, too over the top. Everything is solid gold and super-sized. This is the original Las Vegas, a place where show and size and everything. Both the pharoahs and the gambling kingpins want to do everything bigger and grander than anyone else.