Upon leaving Luxor, we have continued to travel up the Nile River towards southern Egypt (the Upper Kingdom). We have had a lot of free time on the trip up the Nile and the trip has been fantastic. I have enjoyed immensely watching Egypt going by as we sit in the warm Egyptian sun, sipping the local brew. It has been like watching television with the sound off. The background is constantly changing between lush, green fields of sugar cane or palm trees, or sand-colored mountains or little villages. Also, the people that are on the cruise with me are very interesting and fun to hang out with. If there was nothing on this trip but the Nile River cruise, it would be worth it.
But of course, there is more. What more is there? Temples. Lots and lots of temples. In the last three days, we have stopped in three towns to visit temples dating back to the periods of Greek and Roman rule of Egypt.
The first temple we stopped at after leaving Luxor was the Edfu temple, which is the second largest temple in Egypt behind the Karnak Temple. It was very impressive, though to be honest, suffered from following the Karnak Temple on the itinerary.
After leaving this temple, we re-boarded the boat and went down to the Kom Ombo temple further upstream. This was the first temple that we saw at night, and we ended up paying for it. Many of the lights were out at the temple because of a rare rainstorm that occurred a few days earlier. Despite this, the tour went on until we entered the third room of the temple. At that point, the oldest member of our group fell into an unlit pit, about a foot deep, and landed on his hip and head. He was sore, so we persuaded our tour guide to go to the hospital with him to get looked after. That ended our tour, but most of us were sort of getting templed-out by this point in the day any way.
Today, we visited another temple on an island in the Nile near Aswan. I forget the name, but I’ll try to look it up and put it in here before I post this. (If I forget, remind me.) (Note: Temple of Philae. I remembered to look it up.) The temple was moved brick-by-brick from another Nile River island between 1982 and 1990 because the original island was being submerged by waters rerouted by the Aswan Dam. At this point, the original island is completely submerged, but the temple remains intact. Earlier in the day, we visited the Aswan High Dam, which I believe is the largest dam in Africa and one of the largest in the world. To be honest, I was a little disappointed because I was hoping for views and scenes as impressive as the Hoover Dam in Nevada, but those didn’t exist. We only spent around twenty minutes there, so I took some pictures and then we left.
This is our last night on the Nile. We get up at 3:30 in the morning to hop on a bus to go see yet more temples at Abu Simbel. From there, we will return to Aswan and then hop a 13-hour overnight train (see my earlier post about the train if you want to know if I’m looking forward to it) back to Cairo before heading into the Sinai Peninsula.
There, I’m finally up to date in my articles. Now if I could only find some internet connection strong enough to let me post them . . .. I’m sure these posts are a little dated when you get them, but I’m hoping they will catch up to real time soon.
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