Aswan and Abu Simbel |
From Luxor it's another four hours by train upriver to Aswan.
Here you see the Nile at the First Cataract, the first waterfall as you go up the Nile, several hundred kilometers from its mouth at the Mediterranean.
At Aswan you're in far Upper Egypt, really on the edge of Africa proper. You're certainly on the edge of the old country of Nubia. The markets are smellier after mid-day and the demands for baksheesh are a little less frequent. Less frequent, not gone entirely. This is still Nile Egypt. (And now you owe me some baksheesh for my educating you with that fact, or so the theory goes)
You're also at the last place where heiroglyphs were known to be used. A priest carved a hieroglyphic inscription into the Gate of Hadrian on the island of Philae at Aswan on 24 August 394 AD. After 3,000 years of use, that inscription was the last one as far as we know.
Knowledge of how to read and write hieroglyphs disappeared over the following centuries. We only recovered that knowledge in the late 1700s and early 1800s using the parallel texts of the newly discovered Rosetta Stone.
Here's where I stayed — the Nubian Oasis Hotel.
A single room with shower and toilet, plus overhead fan and air-conditioner (!), and a decent breakfast, was 15 EL (US$ 4.40). It's at +20-097-312126 and/or +20-097-312123. Walk straight out from the train station toward the Nile. About 100m from the station door, turn left on Sharia Abtal al-Tahrir, which is the first street past the entrance to the Nubian bazaar immediately on your left. About three and a half blocks along the left you'll pass a bus station (which may consist of no more than a collection of pickup trucks). Take the next left, before you reach the French Roman Catholic church. The Nubian Oasis should be just ahead on the left side.
From Aswan, if you didn't think that was pretty much the ends of the Earth already, you may be able to take a bus 280 km through the Libyan desert to Abu Simbel, about far enough south to see Sudan in the haze over the reservoir. It's hot there — over 43C (110F) when I visited, and that was in May.
The desert road is closed from time to time — security problems, or an inability (or unwillingness) to keep drifting sand off it. If the road is open, the Nubian Oasis hotel organizes trips out there. You leave about 0400 so you're there before mid-day. And thus get to ride back across the desert in mid-day, and no, the van is not air-conditioned.
In the 1960s the Soviet Union was building the Aswan High Dam for Egypt. The reservoir it created would back up hundreds of miles into Sudan and cover lots of ruins. UNESCO, with loads of U.S. funding, disassembled and relocated a number of temples, including Abu Simbel.
It used to be carved into a cliff face along the Nile down in a valley, now it's up beside the reservoir on the edge of the desert.
I don't think you can quite see Sudan, but it's not too far over the horizon.
A truck stop, the only thing on the 280 km road through the Sahara Desert between Aswan and Abu Simbel.
The Aswan High Dam was built by the Soviet Union for Egypt as some large-scale geopolitical hydroelectrical baksheesh.
Next: Mount Sinai and Dahab |
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