Luxor bomb: Should tourists still visit Egypt? - Telegraph

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Luxor bomb: Should tourists still visit Egypt?

As a suicide bomber targets the famous Temple of Karnak in Luxor, we ask whether it is still safe to travel to Egypt

On arriving into Luxor, I recall seeing the top of Karnak’s magnificent columns rising above the modern buildings lining the riverbank Photo: AP

By Chris Moss

12:18PM BST 10 Jun 2015

I made my first trip to Egypt a month ago, joining a group of British and French travellers taking the classic Nile cruise down to Luxor – a section that has been almost completely closed for two decades because of security fears.

The serene beauty of the Nile, the crazy energy of Cairo, the glory and hubris of Akhenaten’s new capital – all the strangeness, ancient and modern, of the country worked its magic on me and made me promise to myself to return again some day soon.

With tourist numbers still very low, I often found myself entirely alone even at major sites, and while I hoped – and continue to hope - Egypt will begin to attract more visitors soon, I know the absence of queues and clamour made my experience all the more memorable.

A senior manager of the local firm operating the vessel on which I was voyaging told me that “the British held us up” during recent difficult times, following the Tahrir Square uprising. He praised us, and the French and Germans, for having faith when tourists from other countries – notably Japan and the US – had stayed away.

During my ten-day trip, I was by turns reassured and surprised by the level of security. Around the Egyptian Museum – on Tahrir Square –there were metal cordons and lots of policemen and squad cars, and two armoured vehicles loaded with troops. These were, presumably, on the lookout for protesters as well as anti-government militants.

New parking areas, manned barriers, and armed guards smoothed our entry to Giza and other urban sites.

Out in the countryside, the security was even tighter. Our ship was escorted for almost the entire journey by armed guards – including one or two on deck as well as police launches in our wake that carried three or four armed officers. When I asked Bassem, the tour guide, about the heavy presence, he said, “They don’t want anything to happen, because we’re only just reopening the Nile after a long and difficult period.” He added that some provincial cities were hotbeds of Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya activity in the Nineties, “but now things are calm.”

Whenever we docked, the ship was guarded night and day by armed policemen. When we arrived at Asyut, more half a dozen boats circled the ship, including a speedboat rigged out with a mounted machine gun. On trips to remote temples and pyramids, our coaches were always escorted, often by several police and military vehicles – at times, I did wonder if the sirens and motorcades weren’t more likely to draw attention than deter threats. Warmly greeted by locals wherever we went and cheered by drivers when passing through locks and swingbridges, we never had any sense of being unwelcome intruders.

For all this, it is of course impossible to cover all possibilities and, at the same time, allow tourists to move around with relative freedom. On visits to the Middle East, during this time of heightened tensions across so many countries, there is bound to be some degree of risk.

In the wake of the 1997 bomb at Luxor, which killed 58 tourists – including six from the UK - a well-travelled friend commented, “After a bomb is always the best time to visit Egypt. Atrocities mean less tourists, tighter security, and lower chance of a follow-up.”

It’s a cynical remark, but perhaps it reflects something about the British attitude to travel and danger. Today’s suicide bomb at the Karnak site near Luxor will no doubt put off some people – but they would probably not have gone anyway.

On arriving into Luxor, I recall seeing the top of Karnak’s magnificent columns rising above the modern buildings lining the riverbank, and glowing in the later afternoon sun.

It wasn’t on our itinerary but I’d go back to Egypt tomorrow to see the site. Not because I’m brave or foolhardy, but because it’s the rational thing to do. We voyaged 420 kilometres down the Nile. We must have travelled at least the same distance overland. We visited around twenty sites. That’s a lot of territory to cover, for terrorists as well as for the police, and the probability of being attacked remains statistically very low indeed.