Contact Admin. For the three of us who took the train from Luxor to Qena with the intention of visiting Dendera, the answer is quite a lot. What should have been a simple journey to the Temple of Hathor soon devolved into a mess of the most entertaining kind.
It seemed like almost everyone visited either on a private tour or as a stop on a cruise, but there was the odd report here and there that mentioned being able to do it independently which, as usual, was how I was intending to do it.
Arriving in Luxor, I asked the staff at my hostel about it, and they also mentioned the only real way to get to Dendera and Abydos — another temple complex further north — was to hire a car for the day. Not even ten minutes later and I heard someone else mention that they might be heading up to Dendera. One quick chat later, and I learned that she was waiting to hear back on a quote for the car just in case it was a reasonable price to visit both places spoiler: All we had to do now was confirm train times, which is easier said than done here as nowhere seems to agree on what information is correct.
Train timetables are a great example of this. Getting to Qena was straight-forward. We rocked up to the train station in Luxor, the train was almost on time, grabbed some seats after mistakenly wandering the carriages looking for second class rather than first, when we were actually already in second class , and then just waited for a guard to come along to sell us the tickets.
What was unexpected, however, was what came after we stepped out of Qena train station. He spotted a police van driving down the road though, and urgently flagged it down, directed us over to it, and then started speaking with the officers inside while occasionally indicating us, while frequently reminding us to wait here.
