I seriously wish I had left Cairo sooner and come to Aswan. It is cleaner, not nearly as busy, you aren’t accosted as much, and it is much warmer. I have actually gotten some of my tan back and was able to wear shorts and sandals for the first time in two months.
I’ve been very busy since I arrived. After a 14-hour overnight train ride from Cairo, where I barely slept, within a few hours, I was on a bus going to see the Aswan High Dam and the Philae Temple. The dam wasn’t as impressive as I thought it would be. It is a big dam and its significance being on the Nile makes it really important, but it wasn’t much to look at. Soviet construction seldom is.
Philae Temple was very impressive, however. It was moved piece by piece in 1977-80 by UNESCO after having been flooded by the original Aswan Low Dam in 1902. Unlike the pyramids, Philae had all the trapping of what you expect from Egypt. Hieroglyphs and carvings of Pharaohs. The temple didn’t just show signs of ancient Egyptians. All of the images of humans had by carved over by Coptic Christians in the 4th century. You can still see crosses in the stone and an altar inside the temple. When Napoleon invaded, he had academics go to Philae and carve a large inscription into the wall in French. There are also tons of 19th Century British graffiti carved in everything.
Yesterday I wasn’t planning on doing anything because I was still tired from the train ride and had to wake up extremely early the next day to go to Abu Simbel. I ended up with an offer for a free felucca trip on the Nile, so I grabbed my camera and went. There was no wind, so we took forever to cross the river. I took the opportunity to take the zip-off legs off my pants and get some sun. I got the explore the very crowded botanical garden for about 30 min before we switched boats and went to Elephantine Island. Unfortunately, it took so long to cross the river, by the time we got there it was closed. Oh well, you get what you pay for.
This morning I woke up at 2:45 am to go to Abu Simbel. It is 275km from Aswan and you have to leave with every other bus in the city in a big caravan. This is done to reduce the risk of kidnappings in the largely desolate stretch between Aswan and Abu Simbel. Arriving there in the morning was like being at the Disneyland when the gates opened. There were hundreds of people there. Like Philae, Abu Simbel was moved from its previous location because it would have been flooded by the waters of Lake Nassar.
Between everything, I saw I probably took close to 400 photos. It is going to take a while to get through everything.
Tomorrow I’m taking a cruise aboard a ship from Aswan to Luxor, with stops at several temples along the way. From everything everyone has told me, the temples at Luxor are really the best in Egypt. I will need to set aside some time after Luxor to go through my photos. I’ll have a lot and I don’t want to get too far behind. Because of the quality of the internet connection in Aswan, I did manage to upload all my photos from the Gulf, so I got that going for me.