Egypt in ten photographs

Egypt was five days and it felt like three weeks, in the good way.

Luxor first. Karnak is less a temple than a district of them, added to by one pharaoh after another for the better part of two thousand years, and the scale of it refuses to photograph. Luxor Temple is better at night, lit from below, the obelisk still standing where it was put.

Across the river on the west bank: painted tombs where the color is still on the walls after three thousand years, and the Colossi of Memnon out on their own in a field, worn down to almost nothing and still enormous.

Then north along the Nile. At Kom Ombo the carved reliefs run the full height of the wall and you can stand close enough to touch them, which felt wrong and was allowed.

Giza last, and the thing nobody tells you is that it's in the city. There's a photograph here of two pyramids taken over the top of an apartment building. Then camels, which is the most touristy thing available and which we did all of, and it was great.

Cairo on the way out, in the market at Khan el-Khalili, where the trip stops being monuments and turns back into a place people live.