A sound and light show - Karnak temple

We left the Luxor temple and went straight to the Karnak temple by van. 

The previous post in this series is here..

Walid told us exactly where to go, where to sit and how to come out of the show as fast as we can to get ahead of the returning crowd so we could be at our boat before dinner time closed.

This is my first sound and light show. Apparently a lot of historic venues do this thing. 

it was an interesting experience. We go as a group and walk through the temple at night with things being projected on the walls. 

Somehow the lighting was not optimal and the sound was all garbled for a third of the walking show.

There was also a dog that kept sittiing at my foot and walked with me the entire time. San was freaking out about the dog. It was dark and an animal at your feet is not exactly comforting if you are scared. 

Still we enjoyed the show given we could see the stars in the night sky. You can see orion in this picture right above the temple!

from a distance I thought this was a row of sphinxes.. turned out to be Ram's! 

a few more pictures.. 

that part where we sit on a gallery watching things light up randomly over the lake was not that great. It was more like something from Disney and more American than ancient Egyptian. Shakespearean voices don't set the right tone for this show. 

A video highlight of the walk through show..

We raced out to Walid's surprise. We were the first ones out to the parking lot. Have never seen a guide be so proud of his group! We went back to the boat. Was trying to shop for magnets in the shops when Walid said "don't bother. We come back here first thing in the morning. You are here at a special time. There are only two days in the year when the sun shines through the line at the Karnak temple to make it look like it is rising from the sea! Tomorrow is one of those days! you can shop then"

we were dropped off at the dock and we had to walk a block towards our boat. The walkway along the dock in Luxor is well lit in night and looked even more beautiful. 

We were back in the boat and the group was already having dinner. We joined in. The dining room team was very nice and wished us well. It was going to be our last night in the boat. 

The next morning we were to be in the reception area with our bags packed by 5AM. We told them there was no need for wake up calls. We had been up before 4:30 almost every day! Our original van was going to be back. We were going to cover a lot of places in the van and head out of Luxor.

We were given guidelines on what to tip and how. Having had local currency helped. It was interesting how they expected a larger tip when in dollars than in local currency. 

It was time to hit the bed early one more time! 

What is not to like?

Finally managed to watch Dilwale this afternoon. It was as high on my watch list as the Star Wars movie. There was really only one reason I wanted to watch this movie. It was a  Shah Ruck Khan movie.

One needs to have a certain mindset to watch an SRK movie.. don't expect much of a plot for starters. Expect very predictable twists and turns. Great visuals and a background score that goes with the visuals, SRK hamming his way through the movie with the few scenes where he is actually doing more comic timing than anything else. 

The hopeless romantic in me always comes home humming the background tune from the movie and this one is no different. 

SRK movies for me have become the equivalent of Nat King Cole songs for baby boomers or so I am guessing. Somewhere some neurons fire in your brain and make connections between the past and present and you get all emotional for reasons that you cannot quite put a finger on. 

Don't understand why people were working hard to set my expectations really low for this movie. Yes, SRK and Kajol do look a little ridiculous in some scenes trying to pass for folks a good 20 years less than their age, and in this day of special effects they could have spent some more effort to make those scenes look natural but it was just another SRK movie. 

The locations in Iceland for the song "Gerua", where Kajol is running on a black beach in a yellow nine yards saree (it has to be at least nine yards), were just breathtaking! See for yourself..

Need to add every place on the backdrop to our travel list. The gold threaded designer sari that Kajol was wearing will be the next big hit for Dilwali.

As for me, I am happy as Yoda, still humming.. 

Sport vs. Entertainment

Many many years ago during a world cup cricket game, I was in a heated argument with my dad that the game was fixed. There was no explanation for what we saw on the screen including the "thiruttu muzhi" of Azharuddin which was there for everyone to see. He did not even do a good job of faking regret at losing a very easy catch. My father, a die hard fan of cricket and countrymen did not agree. In fact we did not speak for a few hours after that argument. 

Years later, I was proved right when the whole match fixing scandal came to light and that very game was included in the list of games that was fixed. While it felt like vindication, I had stopped watching cricket. Occasionally I would come back and catch something that was genuine or go to Youtube and watch recorded videos of some truly great bowling or batting performances where you knew the chances of it being rigged were low or none. This was mostly limited to watching a select few videos which I can pretty much list here :

Sehwag and Tendulkar hitting double hundreds in ODI's

Sehwag's 195 against Australia

Sachin and Sehwag in the 2003 Durban World cup match against Pakistan

Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram bowling reverse swing and deadly yorkers on infinite loop

Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh getting batsman out clean bowled 

Shane Warne and Muthaih Muralidharan at their great moments

The occasional Benson and Hedges games in Australia and the ICC games also in Australia which bring back old memories from my middle and high school.

But, to be honest .. mostly Waqar Younis and the yorkers. 

Money or not, no one could have played those balls even if they were offered a jillion dollars.

That said, I stopped watching football for a different reason. Everytime I watched, my favorite teams lost. It was a superstition of sorts that would make any statistician jump up. Even San decided it was best for me to not watch any game that involved our favorite team(s). It was also because I thought the football games were rigged as well. Where there is money involved there is corruption and if Cricket can have that level of deceit, I concluded "what chance did football have?". Was told many times by my friends that "No, football is above all that."

Today I got to watch the second half of the Niners game with Seattle. I could not help think that it was rigged! It was just a feeeling, after watching the player's and coach's body language as well as some of the calls made by the referees with today's abiilty to do high tech action replays. 

Today my folks in India tell me "we now know it is all fixed. We just watch it for pure entertainment! There is no sports in it anymore!" 

So if there is a match fixing scandal that breaks loose 5-10 years from now and this match gets mentioned.. this time I am putting it on the record! 

Just saying..