Travel Article Sample
Publication: Balloon Life
Publisher: Balloon Life
Frequency: Bi-monthly
Format: One-off article
Flying Over Tutankhamun
Do you remember your first balloon flight? Kirsty Young tells how her maiden flight laid the history of an ancient culture at her feet…
“There is no way you are getting me up hundreds of feet up in the air in a large picnic hamper at 5.30am in the morning!” I had firmly told my travelling companion as we sipped our drinks that night. “I get vertigo on a ski lift; what hope did I have in a hot air balloon?” My companion, however, knew what I was missing. “You’ll love it,” she said, “Don’t be such a wet blanket. When will we be back in Luxor again?”
So, that’s how I found myself chugging across the Nile before dawn one morning, in a little boat packed with twenty intrepid adventurers of assorted ages and sizes. It was an inauspicious start, as we had to scrabble up the West Bank’s muddy sides to a ramshackle minibus that smelt decidedly of goat. Then, a white knuckle-drive past the immense Colossi of Memnon, a squeal of tyres at the junction, and right towards the Valley of the Kings. Suddenly, we veered off and bumped onto the rocky desert by the roadside. There, glowing red in the darkness, was our balloon, reassuringly large, and plenty of eager Egyptian hands ready to haul us into the basket. No-one ever tells you that the basket has four compartments; I felt like a podgy bottle wedged into a wine crate.
After the safety talk, and the obligatory bracing practice, I was just mentally preparing for a gusty, buffering lift-off when I noticed we were already feet off the ground, the crew cheering us up, up and away. The lights of the village below us diminished as we rose into the sky, as what seemed like incredible speed, yet I felt no sensation of movement. Hang on, wasn’t I supposed to feel rushing wind, basket swaying, have to clutch on for dear life? Nothing, just a gentle hiss, the bray of donkeys from below, and the roar of the burner. I suddenly realised my hat, brought for the desert chill, would have quite the opposite use; my head was decidedly warmer than my feet.
After a cautionary shuffle of said feet to reassure myself that this picnic hamper really could hold us all, despite its creaking, I looked up and out for the first time. I nearly had to sit down (but I couldn’t, of course). Laid out before me was a vast landscape, the Nile a ribbon of silver tied at its middle, flanked by verdant green our side, and the concrete of Luxor the other. It was breathtaking.
A quick burn later, and our pilot had swung the basket round to face the Valley of the Kings. In fact, we were heading away from King Tutankhamun’s resting place and the amazing tombs we had explored the previous day, flying south west, almost parallel with the Nile. Of course, you know that any valley must be set in hills, but nothing prepares you for these dramatic yellow mini mountains rising out of the horizon, nor the range of tombs that pockmark their cliffs and languish at their feet.
There, in the distance was the Temple of Hatshepsut, its famous terraces set against a cliff that looked enormous from the ground, now revealed as simply one sheer rock face of many. Then, past the workers’ village of Deir El Medina, where the skilled craftsmen needed to create these marvels lived. I actually laughed out loud at the sheer thrill of flying over the Colossi we had passed only minutes before in the goat-van; how often do you get to see the top of a statue’s head, especially one 60 feet high?
We crossed vast temple complexes, towering walls when visited on foot, now laid out below as perfect plans, just like in my guidebook. I could see just how vast the Ramesseum was, appreciate the rows of mudbrick stores that gave the site the look of a ridged tile, and appreciate the first pylon not as a vast wall, but the gateway to an extraordinary complex. Then the Temple of Ramses II, another huge site but this time seemingly the size of kid’s building blocks; you felt you could have reached out and rearranged them.
With an impish Egyptian grin that we had already learned meant, “OK, tourists, here’s something you didn’t expect”, our pilot dropped the balloon down, and down, until the basket skimmed the tops of the corn plants in the fields. As trees approached, we popped over them with the ease of a giant on a space hopper. We flew over houses without roofs; the canny Egyptians build their new houses with all the walls and steel required to build a new floor for their son’s family when he marries. Until then, it’s open to the rain, except, of course, there isn’t any. All that greenery exists because of Nile water, and irrigation.
As we drifted further westwards, it became clear just where that irrigation ceased. Lush fields became separated from the encroaching desert by a single tarmac road. Keen to capture a rare church nestling in an oasis, I raised my camera, but the pilot suddenly barked; “Cameras down!” We were approaching a military camp, a lone enclosure at the side of the desert, little more than huts, lorries and a not-quite-straight football pitch, but it was still illegal to take pictures of it. Beyond its wire it was the open desert, miles of stony ground, and our sister balloon ahead of us, hanging like a ripe cherry in the sky ahead.
Time has seemingly stood still during our flight, and I suddenly realised we were gently descending towards the desert. Below us, a moving dust ball turned out to be the ground crew, following the balloon’s progress in their truck, across dirt tracks that wound amongst the undulating desert.
Then I remembered; we had to land. Safely. Certainly there weren’t any obstacles in the way, but my mind flashed back to that brace position for landing. Back in England, my travelling companion had ended her flight somewhat ungracefully in a farmer’s field in Hampshire, and our pilot seemed to sense this unease. The impish expression, however, should have told me that he had a trick up his sleeve. “You are ready to brace?” he grinned, “You want a British landing or nice Egyptian landing, eh?” We opted for the latter. Then I looked down; big mistake. Only fifty feet below us was – a storm drain. Well, it looked like a large storm drain, big enough to drive down, but with steep sides, and next to it, mounds of rocks. As we got closed, I realised these rocks was just the surplus desert dug out to create the storm drain thing, but everywhere was littered with rubbish. The crew had parked the lorry smack in the middle of this lot, so they obviously expected us to touch down in dump central. I have to admit, for a moment, I shut my eyes.
An almost imperceptible tug, and a cheery shout told me the crew had grabbed the ropes hanging from the basket and were guiding us down to terra firma. They literally pulled the basket down onto the desert with less of a bump that I make shutting my car door. It was incredibly gentle, and once again, willing hands lifted us out from the basket. We stood, slightly stunned, on a clear patch of earth in between two heaps of earth and a well-dead goat.
“We will probably all have to help get the balloon down,” my companion had warned, but not here in labour-cheap Egypt. If their style of throwing themselves at various parts of the canopy whilst yelling loudly at each other looked chaotic, it was certainly effective. Within minutes the balloon was bundled into its bag, and then the basket was lifted, bodily, onto the back of the truck. We gave them a round of applause. Big mistake, because out came the drum.
Every time a drum appears in Egypt, you know it means singing – and dancing. The singing is fabulous, the rhythms as ancient as the sites we had seen, as basic and natural to the crew as they were exotic and wonderful to us. I can clap along with the best of them. The problem is, the obligatory dancing, and soon I found myself in the middle of a ring of hysterically laughing crew, as I tried to keep up with their fancy footwork, with limited success. My fellow adventurers were crying with laughter by this point, and lent their support by taking as many embarrassing photos as possible.
By the time we had taken a coach back to our boat (a more sedate trip this time, no goat aroma and the less romantic but quicker road route back across the new bridge), we were just in time for the start of breakfast. By the end of the meal, all the boat seemed to know about my desert dancing, and I never lived it down the entire trip.
I can’t wait to get up in a balloon again, and the next plan is to fly over a game reserve in Kenya, (once the bank balance has recovered from Egypt). However, any sign of a drum at the end of that flight and I’ll take my chances with the lions…
*Editor’s Notes:
For most of us who queued for hours to see the famous death mask in the 1970’s, this Pharaoh is Tutankamen, but nowadays he is known by the more accurate name of Tutankhamun.
© Copyright Kirsty Young. All rights reserved.
Published in Balloon Life, October/November 2005 edition
return to Sample Articles page
Publisher: Balloon Life
Frequency: Bi-monthly
Format: One-off article
Flying Over Tutankhamun
Do you remember your first balloon flight? Kirsty Young tells how her maiden flight laid the history of an ancient culture at her feet…
“There is no way you are getting me up hundreds of feet up in the air in a large picnic hamper at 5.30am in the morning!” I had firmly told my travelling companion as we sipped our drinks that night. “I get vertigo on a ski lift; what hope did I have in a hot air balloon?” My companion, however, knew what I was missing. “You’ll love it,” she said, “Don’t be such a wet blanket. When will we be back in Luxor again?”
So, that’s how I found myself chugging across the Nile before dawn one morning, in a little boat packed with twenty intrepid adventurers of assorted ages and sizes. It was an inauspicious start, as we had to scrabble up the West Bank’s muddy sides to a ramshackle minibus that smelt decidedly of goat. Then, a white knuckle-drive past the immense Colossi of Memnon, a squeal of tyres at the junction, and right towards the Valley of the Kings. Suddenly, we veered off and bumped onto the rocky desert by the roadside. There, glowing red in the darkness, was our balloon, reassuringly large, and plenty of eager Egyptian hands ready to haul us into the basket. No-one ever tells you that the basket has four compartments; I felt like a podgy bottle wedged into a wine crate.
After the safety talk, and the obligatory bracing practice, I was just mentally preparing for a gusty, buffering lift-off when I noticed we were already feet off the ground, the crew cheering us up, up and away. The lights of the village below us diminished as we rose into the sky, as what seemed like incredible speed, yet I felt no sensation of movement. Hang on, wasn’t I supposed to feel rushing wind, basket swaying, have to clutch on for dear life? Nothing, just a gentle hiss, the bray of donkeys from below, and the roar of the burner. I suddenly realised my hat, brought for the desert chill, would have quite the opposite use; my head was decidedly warmer than my feet.
After a cautionary shuffle of said feet to reassure myself that this picnic hamper really could hold us all, despite its creaking, I looked up and out for the first time. I nearly had to sit down (but I couldn’t, of course). Laid out before me was a vast landscape, the Nile a ribbon of silver tied at its middle, flanked by verdant green our side, and the concrete of Luxor the other. It was breathtaking.
A quick burn later, and our pilot had swung the basket round to face the Valley of the Kings. In fact, we were heading away from King Tutankhamun’s resting place and the amazing tombs we had explored the previous day, flying south west, almost parallel with the Nile. Of course, you know that any valley must be set in hills, but nothing prepares you for these dramatic yellow mini mountains rising out of the horizon, nor the range of tombs that pockmark their cliffs and languish at their feet.
There, in the distance was the Temple of Hatshepsut, its famous terraces set against a cliff that looked enormous from the ground, now revealed as simply one sheer rock face of many. Then, past the workers’ village of Deir El Medina, where the skilled craftsmen needed to create these marvels lived. I actually laughed out loud at the sheer thrill of flying over the Colossi we had passed only minutes before in the goat-van; how often do you get to see the top of a statue’s head, especially one 60 feet high?
We crossed vast temple complexes, towering walls when visited on foot, now laid out below as perfect plans, just like in my guidebook. I could see just how vast the Ramesseum was, appreciate the rows of mudbrick stores that gave the site the look of a ridged tile, and appreciate the first pylon not as a vast wall, but the gateway to an extraordinary complex. Then the Temple of Ramses II, another huge site but this time seemingly the size of kid’s building blocks; you felt you could have reached out and rearranged them.
With an impish Egyptian grin that we had already learned meant, “OK, tourists, here’s something you didn’t expect”, our pilot dropped the balloon down, and down, until the basket skimmed the tops of the corn plants in the fields. As trees approached, we popped over them with the ease of a giant on a space hopper. We flew over houses without roofs; the canny Egyptians build their new houses with all the walls and steel required to build a new floor for their son’s family when he marries. Until then, it’s open to the rain, except, of course, there isn’t any. All that greenery exists because of Nile water, and irrigation.
As we drifted further westwards, it became clear just where that irrigation ceased. Lush fields became separated from the encroaching desert by a single tarmac road. Keen to capture a rare church nestling in an oasis, I raised my camera, but the pilot suddenly barked; “Cameras down!” We were approaching a military camp, a lone enclosure at the side of the desert, little more than huts, lorries and a not-quite-straight football pitch, but it was still illegal to take pictures of it. Beyond its wire it was the open desert, miles of stony ground, and our sister balloon ahead of us, hanging like a ripe cherry in the sky ahead.
Time has seemingly stood still during our flight, and I suddenly realised we were gently descending towards the desert. Below us, a moving dust ball turned out to be the ground crew, following the balloon’s progress in their truck, across dirt tracks that wound amongst the undulating desert.
Then I remembered; we had to land. Safely. Certainly there weren’t any obstacles in the way, but my mind flashed back to that brace position for landing. Back in England, my travelling companion had ended her flight somewhat ungracefully in a farmer’s field in Hampshire, and our pilot seemed to sense this unease. The impish expression, however, should have told me that he had a trick up his sleeve. “You are ready to brace?” he grinned, “You want a British landing or nice Egyptian landing, eh?” We opted for the latter. Then I looked down; big mistake. Only fifty feet below us was – a storm drain. Well, it looked like a large storm drain, big enough to drive down, but with steep sides, and next to it, mounds of rocks. As we got closed, I realised these rocks was just the surplus desert dug out to create the storm drain thing, but everywhere was littered with rubbish. The crew had parked the lorry smack in the middle of this lot, so they obviously expected us to touch down in dump central. I have to admit, for a moment, I shut my eyes.
An almost imperceptible tug, and a cheery shout told me the crew had grabbed the ropes hanging from the basket and were guiding us down to terra firma. They literally pulled the basket down onto the desert with less of a bump that I make shutting my car door. It was incredibly gentle, and once again, willing hands lifted us out from the basket. We stood, slightly stunned, on a clear patch of earth in between two heaps of earth and a well-dead goat.
“We will probably all have to help get the balloon down,” my companion had warned, but not here in labour-cheap Egypt. If their style of throwing themselves at various parts of the canopy whilst yelling loudly at each other looked chaotic, it was certainly effective. Within minutes the balloon was bundled into its bag, and then the basket was lifted, bodily, onto the back of the truck. We gave them a round of applause. Big mistake, because out came the drum.
Every time a drum appears in Egypt, you know it means singing – and dancing. The singing is fabulous, the rhythms as ancient as the sites we had seen, as basic and natural to the crew as they were exotic and wonderful to us. I can clap along with the best of them. The problem is, the obligatory dancing, and soon I found myself in the middle of a ring of hysterically laughing crew, as I tried to keep up with their fancy footwork, with limited success. My fellow adventurers were crying with laughter by this point, and lent their support by taking as many embarrassing photos as possible.
By the time we had taken a coach back to our boat (a more sedate trip this time, no goat aroma and the less romantic but quicker road route back across the new bridge), we were just in time for the start of breakfast. By the end of the meal, all the boat seemed to know about my desert dancing, and I never lived it down the entire trip.
I can’t wait to get up in a balloon again, and the next plan is to fly over a game reserve in Kenya, (once the bank balance has recovered from Egypt). However, any sign of a drum at the end of that flight and I’ll take my chances with the lions…
*Editor’s Notes:
For most of us who queued for hours to see the famous death mask in the 1970’s, this Pharaoh is Tutankamen, but nowadays he is known by the more accurate name of Tutankhamun.
© Copyright Kirsty Young. All rights reserved.
Published in Balloon Life, October/November 2005 edition
return to Sample Articles page
