Sunday Times 26 September, 2004 Drifting over the Valley of the Kings in a hot-air balloon is perhaps the greatest indulgence of an Egyptian trip. The wicker basket (capacity 20) reminds me of the papyrus hamper we saw in the Cairo museum — divided into nine compartments for fragile objects.
Dawn is the usual flight time, for technical reasons, but the bonus for the passenger is the fantastic crisp quality of the light. We take off from the west bank of Luxor, rise to 2,000ft over the Ramesseum, then come down via the Colossi of Memnon, Medinet Habu, Hatshepsut’s temple, to the edge of the desert.
It’s 6am but people are already at work in the fields, harvesting sugar cane — by hand — the whole family, with donkeys and camels for transport. One man waves a great stem of sugar cane at us like an ostrich-feather fan. A fox stalks up a gully after a chicken. We have a private view of geese, bullocks, buffalo, goats, donkeys, camels inside the compounds of houses. The panorama of antiquities is breathtaking. Too soon we achieve our landfall, and the army of recovery boys is clinging to the ropes, to stop us floating up again. The drumming starts up, and it feels quite normal to be dancing in an Egyptian ploughed field before breakfast. Unmissable.
Hod-Hod Soliman (00 20 95 370116), in Luxor, flies year-round. Prices start at Ă‚ÂŁ90pp (or Ă‚ÂŁ135 per couple) for a one-hour flight, with transfers and insurance
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