BALLOON FLIGHT OVER THE WEST BANK TEMPLES AT LUXOR I took an early morning flight over many of the most famous temples in Egypt

EACH MORNING ABOVE LUXOR’S WEST BANK, 🇪🇬 A FLOTILLA OF HOT AIR BALLOONS DRIFT ACROSS THE SKIES. It’s quite a sight & I gave in to temptation and booked a flight on one.

The process of preparing each Balloon for ascent is fascinating in itself.

Each Balloon is un-packed from a track that carries it to the site. As this is done a team of men secure a key part of the fabric, the Deflation Port, which is at the top of the Balloon and is used to control the escape of heat. At the other end – several large fans are brought to push air into the Balloon itself, inflating it without flaming heat.

Finally, when the Deflation Port and fans have been sorted out, the basket with the gas burner is firmly attached, and the gas is fired up to heat up the air in the already partially inflated balloon, giving lift. All the passengers climbed on board and eventually, the heat from the Gas Burners lifts the entire contraption into the air. And so, fingers crossed, up we soared into the ether – above the temples. Check my video below.

The ascent is from the village opposite the road into Deir El Bahri, where the temples of Mentuhotep and Hatshepsut are set below the cliffs.  Hatshepsut’s has had considerable restoration work so now it absolutely overshadows the ruin of Mentuhotep’s next to it, left in my photo.

The temples, most of which are mortuary for the worship of the deceased ruler who had become a God, are broadly in a path north-south. I was delighted that the consultations I had made with Shu, the God of the Wind and his modern mouthpiece – the BBC weather app, which I had been religiously checking to plan the date, proved right and we were carried south past them all. On an earlier day I watched most Balloons drift east towards the Nile.

The temple for Ramesses II was one of many vast monuments he had built. These must have consumed a substantial proportion of Egypt’s wealth, and were built during the last century of Egypt’s many centuries-long plateau of power and wealth.

Amenhotep III, who ruled Egypt a century before Ramesses II, was also a prolific builder. These two colossal statues, below the Balloon, flanked the entrance to Amenhotep’s own mortuary temple which was almost twice the size of the Ramesseum.

The final temple we drifted over is at Madinat Habu. This is for a successor to Ramesses II, Ramesses III, who ruled around 7 decades after Ramesses II had died. This building at Madinat Habu is in much better condition than that of Ramesses II, some coloured plasterwork still survives.

Before we landed in the desert – the final piece of the Pharaonic remains that we viewed in Luxor was Malqata Lake, and its spoil heaps. This lake was a rectangular lake excavated near the now disappeared Malqata Palace of Amenhotep III. The lake was vast – about 125sq hectares and given its proximity to both Amenhotep III palace and temple it may have been a pleasure and cargo lake. Now its silted up, the outline is shown by the double row of Spoil Heaps, to the west, and settlements on part of the spoil. I cycled along its length and took a horse ride on its side, in an earlier blog.

Part of the Balloon flight can be seen on my video