Aswan,
Egypt
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Took a second class overnight seater train to Aswan from Cairo...only about 12 hours! Settled into our hotel mid morning and spent the afternoon and evening touring the Nile on a motor boat around Elephantine Island. We had dinner with a local Nubian family and goofed around with their kids while enjoying the home cooked meal. Made our way back in the dark for a much needed good nights rest. Aswan is considered Upper Egypt although it is located south of Cairo...go figure. The Nubian's are located in this part of Egypt as well as Northern Sudan and they speak the Nubian language as well as Arabic. Nubia is the homeland of Africa's earliest black culture with a history that can be traced back to 3100 BC! The land of Nubia is a desert divided by the Nile and in the 1960s the Aswan high dam was constructed here creating Lake Nasser (coincidentally the name of the Egyptian ruler at the time...or not) The lake permanently flooded ancient temples and tombs as well as hundreds of modern Nubian villages. While the dam was under construction there was an international effort to relocate the artifacts and temples that would be flooded by the newly formed Lake. The many temple relocations were said to have been an engineering marvel that equaled the original temple construction by the ancient Egyptians as many of the temples were originally carved from solid rock!
We saw one of the relocated temples called Abu Simbel the next day after an early morning departure via convoy to the site. Since the terrorist activity in this area that occurred in the mid 1990s, all tourist have to travel in security escorted convoys. In reality this is not the safest or most convenient way to solve the problem of tourist safety but we had no choice but to comply. Luckily I slept during most of the harrowing high speed tailgating ride and the amazing temples more than made up for the inconveniences of the journey. On the way back we visited the High Dam and the massive Lake Nasser and also to the Phillae Temple on an island via motor boat taxi. Relaxed with some tourmate poolside at the Isis Hotel and then collapsed from exhaustion while the rest of the group went to dinner and had sheesha.......
