TRAVEL: Nile Cruise, Egypt (Part 2) - Edfu & Komombo

Before you start, make sure to read my last Egypt blog here! 

Maybe due to the movement of the boat, the heat or something else, but I woke up after my first night on the boat not feeling too great. Nonetheless, it would take a lot to defer me from an excursion, so I dragged myself out of bed to head off to Edfu Temple via horse and carriage, with carriage drivers bustling at the side of our boat to be the ones to take us, and therefore get our money. The road was filled with carriages, with horses in various states of looked-afterness, but alas it was the only way to get to the temple.

Edfu was very impressive with its large and imposing structure dedicated to the god Horus. I loved seeing all of the different hieroglyphs which our guide argued had even been used to predict future events, if you read into them closely enough. It seemed most of the Nile cruises take much the same route, as I recognised people from other ships that I'd seen the day before. 

After we'd wandered around the temple for a while, we had to 'run the gauntlet' back in the form of walking through a series of shops to get back to the carriages. The sellers are extremely persistent, and I didn't appreciate my way being blocked repeatedly by people trying to sell me things, although I seemed to have gotten off easy as a man in front of us was forcibly shoved into some clothing one of the sellers was desperate for him to buy. We caught the same horse and carriage ride, although mine was marred by the driver consistently asking me for money even though wage and tip had already been handled by our tour agency. This sort of persistence seems to be the norm, but unfortunately took away from the beauty of the places we were visiting, and I knew it would only get worse when we got to Cairo.

Much of the reset of the day was free for us to do as we wished, so we walked the world sail by and read books to pass the time. I'm no good at this relaxing thing, so tested out the small pool on the top deck, although didn't last long given that the majority of the pool was about an inch deep with a small swimmable section. Lunch was followed by afternoon tea (read: tea and biscuits) before we docked in Komombo for our next excursion. All of the ships are docked against each other, so we had to walk through two ships (which seemed rather nicer than ours!) to get to the shore.

As the sun set, we walked to Komombo Temple, which again was covered in beautiful hieroglyphs, many outlining recipes for medicine as the back of the temple had served as physicians offices. Our guide Essam regaled us with tales about how to tell if a woman was fertile (tests of which I'm glad they no longer undertake today!), natural viagras, breastmilk as the cure to the common cold, and more information on Ancient Egyptian gods, many of whom are depicted on the walls of temples such as this.

Included in our ticket was a visit to the museum of the crocodile god Sobek, although crocodiles are only present in a small section of the Nile now to keep them away from humans. Inside the museum were around thirty mummified crocodiles - something I never thought, nor wished to, see. Still, the history of why they had been mummified and their connection with the god was interesting. 

Dinner was Egyptian themed, which meant yummy falafel and baba ganoush, one of the nicer meals I'd had on board so far. Unfortunately, along with the Egyptian themed dinner was the suggestion to guests to dress up in Egyptian attire, which didn't sit very comfortably with me. Seeing all of these tourists in stereotypical dress seemed more like cultural appropriation than a good time, but to each their own I suppose. This was followed by a galabalaya party upstairs which I chose to skip in case there was any 'Egyptian' dancing by cruise guests... but there was still plenty more of our Nile cruise to come, stay tuned to read about it soon on the blog! 

I hope you enjoyed today's travel blog! I'll be back with more very soon so make sure to stay tuned on my Twitter @CiarasCountry, and drop me a message in the comments below with any comments or questions you may have about my adventures - thanks for reading!