Aswan and Abu Simbel - Temples, saved from Lake Nasser

July 13, 2009

Through our hostel, we had booked a tour of upper (southern) Egypt for a very affordable price. Our first stop was in Aswan, after an overnight train ride. So we got to the train station about 10 minutes before our train and ran in, thinking we might be late and didn’t want to miss it. A train had just rolled up, and we thought it was ours. Turns out, it was not, and the teenagers we asked about it were laughing at us a bit. Whoops! We didn’t realize that this was Egypt, and everything is on Egyptian time here. Our next mistake was waiting in the wrong zone. When the train came in, we were at the first car. Our car was alllll the way at the back of the train, some 15-20 cars later. We had to rush to get back to our car before the train left.

14 lovely hours later, we awoke in Aswan, the most southern ancient Egyptian city, which normally demarcated the border between ancient Egypt and ancient Nubia. We were taken to our hotel, a nice three star, and dropped off for lunch and a few hours rest. When we awoke, we piled into a van with another couple and toured the Old Aswan Dam, built by the British in the 1800’s and the Aswan High Dam, built by the Soviets in the 1960’s. It was this damn that flooded the Nile all the way back into Sudan, swallowing up tens of Temples and thousands of years of history. It has also caused environmental and health problems, but did increase the arable land of Egypt by 30%, as well as their power supply. This is the reason so many Egyptian temples had to be cut up and moved to higher ground to save them, which was funded by many donor countries, including the United States.

Our next stop was at the Philae Temple, which is one of the most famous. It is on an island in the Nile, and had been at the bottom of the lake, after the flooding. It was rescued by building a coffer dam around the temple, and raised up onto an unflooded island. So it was a pretty incredible sight to see, both from an engineering point of view and because it was a huge ancient Egyptian temple. It also had additions added onto it during the Greek and Roman periods , and an early church was built next to it, which had also been moved from the lake floor.

After all this, we went to dinner with the other couple in the van, who were named Narcis and Sylvia. They were from Spain, and we became quick friends. After speaking with them, it turned out that they would be on our tour with us for the rest of the week, which was awesome because they were nice and fun!

The next day, we had to get up at 2:45 am. We were going to Abu Simbel, which is a very famous site because of two temples built there by Ramses II. They are very famous, and we are sure you will recognize them from our pictures. They were also moved to save them from being flooded and disappearing beneath lake Nasser. The reason for the early time is that, because of border disputes with Sudan, we had to travel in a military convoy. The temples are only 15 miles or so from the border, so security is tight.

The temples were wonderful though, and well worth the trip. A lot of the reliefs and designs on the temple walls still had maintained their color, which was spectacular. Even driving through the desert was interesting. Early in the morning, it looked kind of like a moon landscape, while on the way back, in the heat of the day, we really got a taste of what the Sahara was like. We returned to our hotel at about 2 PM, at some lunch, and gathered our things for a ride on the Nile with our friends from Spain.

Enjoy the pictures!!!

Ma’ Salamma