We took the overnight train in first class seats to Aswan from Cairo, which wasn't half bad... vaguely reminiscent of the buses in South America without the sweet service. We arrived fourteen hours later in pretty rough shape but bounced back after a little nap and a much needed shower. We got to check out both the High Dam and the Philae Temple our first afternoon. The High Dam was built with the Russians' help, creating the massive 500km Lake Nasser south of Aswan.
The Philae Temple was moved to higher ground on what became an island to prevent it from being lost in the dam building process. The evening was spent wandering around the lively weekend marketplace and being disappointed to discover that shawarma here is served on a hot dog bun instead of inside a pita. What?!
The next morning we were up in the middle of the night at 2am to catch our bus to Abu Simbel. I hate being awake at that hour of the day, but the temples of Ramses II and Nefertari there were on my bucket list... so up I got. We drove three hours through the desert in a massive convoy of a hundred buses and minibuses and were blown away by the temples. Ramses II built them to deify himself and his favourite wife (he had dozens of them and 111 sons or something) and to scare the Nubians away from invading Egypt from the south. They were actually lost in the sands for a thousand years or so before an Italian tripped on one and dug it out.
These temples also had to be moved before Lake Nasser was created by the dam... yes, the Lake is that big. But they messed up in reorienting the temples... the holy chamber is supposed to be illuminated twice a year on the solstices on the 21sts, but once they moved them, they were bummed to discover that the illumination now happens on the 22nds. Whoops. Goes to show we still have no idea how Egyptian engineering or architecture works!
The rest of our day we lazed on a felucca boat sailing down the Nile towards Luxor and overnighted on the boat on the banks of the Nile. Did I mention we sailed down the Nile? Perfect way to spend the rest of a day that started WAY too early.
Next morning we were delivered to a minibus that was taking us the rest of the way to Luxor (Aswan to Luxor is 4 days sail by felucca), with two stops at the Kom Ombo crocodile god temple and the Horus Edfu temple, the best preserved temple in Egypt. Edfu rates top four; it was excellent and I'd never heard of it before. In Luxor, we visited West Bank, the necropolis of the Valley of the Kings and Queens' tombs of the New Kingdom, and East Bank, where the ancient temples of old Egyptian Thebes still stand in the middle of the current city. No photos allowed in the Valleys, but the colours were still intact from when they were painted thousands of years ago because they're protected underground.
We also visited Hatshepsut's Temple, the only female Pharaoh and first known female ruler of ancient times. She was quite a lady... she refused to give up the throne after her husband died to her nephew the heir, and ruled for 22 years alone greatly increasing Egypt's trade and commerce with the south. Her nephew after she died tried to erase her from history, so her image is scratched out just about everywhere she inscribed herself. Bitter much...
I skipped the Luxor temple because I was getting a little overdosed on hieroglyphics and carvings of Horus and Pharaohs, but I did manage to rally to get to Karnak, a 3500 year old temple complex dedicated to the sun god Amun Ra which was mindblowing. It was comparable in size and detail to Angkor Wat... I'm so glad I made it there!
We're now back in Cairo at our favourite hostel chilling out after another long overnight train ride and thinking we may do a seaside break from all the ruins before checking out the library in Alexandria... who knows!
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