Caves, Coalmines and Mummy Tombs

Whenever I go on holidays by some stroke of luck or misfortune I always end up going underground. I don’t mean tube stations or even the Euro Star on the way to France, but in enclosed, dark and stuffy places that usually aren’t very appealing. I’m not one for caves, the first caves I remember visiting were the Luray Caverns in America where the lights went out half way during the tour thanks to a technical fault up above, so naturally I’ve developed a slight fear of caves. In Dewsbury a couple of years ago I had the bizarre experience of going down a coalmine. If there are any northerners reading this can you please tell me whether coalmines are popular tourist attractions? Because going down a dark shaft deep underground where people dig for rocks is not something I would choose to do if I was given a choice, but on that particular holiday I wasn’t even consulted. Nevertheless once I’d got over the darkness and the heat it was interesting to learn about the working conditions of coal miners in the past, mostly because they were so horrific. I won’t go into details-why not visit the coalmines yourself?! But by far, the most fascinating underground experience I’ve had is going into mummy tombs, on the west bank of Luxor, Egypt.

These tombs are located in a place called the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens, in the stifling heat of the desert. Imagine walking through the valley in 40 degrees Celsius and descending into heated, narrow tombs which are not so different from your kitchen ovens. But once you get over the heat the interior of the tomb is absolutely fascinating. 3000 year old art work by the ancient Egyptians, colours still preserved and visible, patterns and pictures on the walls and celings and columns upon columns of hieroglyphics. I wish I’d been allowed to take pictures because these mummy tombs are certainly sights hard to contest. When you’re in them you actually forget that you’re in a tomb of a dead person in a gigantic graveyard. In reality, that’s what the Valley of the Kings is— a gigantic, extravagant graveyard, all history and embellishments aside. In theory, that’s got to be worse than a coalmine hasn’t it?