So when we decided we’ve got to go to Mynia, the process involved finding a guide willing to take us there and obtaining police permission for our visit. With a bit of luck all of these formalities have been overcome. And after our return back to Cairo from the Upper Egypt kingdom, we hopped on the train again – this time for a shorter (4 hours?!) journey to Mynia.
I liked it. I liked the city that turned out to be not what I’ve expected it to appear – not a rural character of forgotten land…Quite opposite, Mynia looked pretty much of well developed average size city, quite modern and with fantastic renovated promenade next to the blue Nile. As being arranged, a local teacher, who was going to be our guide for this day, met us on a train station, took all our papers to police registration office and soon we’ve been driving streets of Mynia heading towards El Amanra that lies on the opposite bank of the Nile, about 40 km from the city. Mynia as a city gave me a very good impression. Clean, not crowded streets, colonial style old houses, made it looked like an out of date resort that used to be a popular location and then fall into social oblivion as the times passed…but it is also a modern city with a large University.
When we arrived on the train station, there were a lot of students coming into city – the impression was that Mynia is a city of youth. Middle Egypt is also an area with the most percentage of Christian population in all Egypt (about 15%) I didn’t knew that fact until I’ve returned from the trip, but I did notice A LOT of Coptic churches in the area, much more then I’ve already used to see while travelling throughout Egypt. It was in Mynia, where in the 1990's there was some tension between them and the Muslims.
Today things are safe, but Mynia's police do not allow its foreign visitors to move around town unescorted. We’ve been lucky enough that our guide- George, already sorted out all the safety issues and we had relatively “light” police presence with us. What that actually means: apart from being stopped at every single police post on our way (and there were dozens of them!) and apart from every police officer on those posts had to write down where are we from and where are we going to, there were “only” one-two military guys with kalashnikov with us on any site we’ve visited. That’s of course, not counting the local guards that always followed us around step-to-step wherever we would turn our eyes. In El-Amanra we saw only one tourist bus crossing Nile on the ferry, but never saw the tourists themselves, as we drove straight to the royal tomb of Akhenaton, while everybody presumably went for other tombs, that were closer to the ticket office. All the other sites we had just for ourselves only, naturally, in a merry company of two or three armed policemen and a guide.
We only realised it when in Mynia, that we should’ve leave not one, but two days for this area. The amount of interesting places to see there was not adequate to the time allocated. Next time will definitely stay in Mynia’s hotel overnight.
In El Amanra we only saw the Royal Tomb of Akhenaton. It was far away into the hills and after we picked up an escort, it took us about 15 min of driving through the very weird landscape of strange coloured hills (almost bright orange). Empty road, silent guide and policeman made the travel even more eerie experience. But the tomb itself was a pathetic sight. Very much dilapidated from the ground waters, completely chiselled out in revenge after his death. Currently there is restoration work going on there, so we managed to see this in progress. Didn’t impress me much, more looked like a bunch of college students has been given an assignment to decorate the tomb in Egyptian style. The tomb was different from those in the Valley of the Kings, as it has a “side suites” presumably for his family…but the rest is pretty much the same, apart from the fact that it is in a very bad condition.
Most of the time allocated for El Amarna, we’ve spent getting there and back. That involved long drive through few pretty villages and crossing Nile on the local ferry. It was the type of ferry from those old movies in 60ies we waited about 30 - 40 min for it to load other passengers, which included two cows, a motorcycle and a couple of pedestrians. Then it took us about 10 mins to actually sail across, then - another 30 mins to the tomb with the stop by the ticket office to pick up the police. All together it was a long way and took significant part of our time in Mynia. So we voted on not going to the other places of the Akhetaten city, as there was something else in our planner we wanted to see.