TRAVEL: Nile Cruise, Egypt (Part 4) - Abu Simbel Temple

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

 I've never been good at mornings, but at 4am on one of the mornings of our Nile Cruise, I received my wake up call and dragged myself out of bed to the coach. A promised three hour journey lay ahead of us, although it turned out this was actually more like four hours. We drove out of Aswan and through endless desert watching and waiting for the sun to rise. It's been a very long time since I've seen the sun rise (I'm not much of a morning person) and seeing it rise across the totally flat horizon of the desert was really something special, an clearly defined orange orb before the rays started to appear. 

After many many hours, we arrived at Abu Simbel, home to temples for Ramses III and his wife Nefertari. Ramses temple was impressive due to the four massive stone statues that sat outside the temple, and of course the stunning carvings that adorned the inside, showing offerings to various gods, and scenes from Ramses life including various wars and meetings with such gods. 

One of the most interesting carvings depicted Ramses in a chariot, but he had evidently been unhappy with how it had originally looked and asked for it to be corrected (I think he wanted to be depicted with bigger muscles by the looks of it!) As any good stonemason knows, carvings cannot simply be erased so this was quite a fruitless task, as they simply etched over it, leading to Ramses looking like he has four arms and his horse eight legs... Not quite what they were going for I'm sure. 

Another interesting structure was four statues inside of the temple depicting four gods. On two days of the year, October 21st and February 21st, the sunlight shines directly into the temple and lights up three of them, leaving one in darkness - the god of darkness. How clever! The other temple was of similar style but unique as it is one of only two temples dedicated to a queen, the other being to Nefertiti. 

And I haven't even gotten to the best bit. Like the temple on Philae, these massive temples were also moved to make way for the growing Lake Nasser as a result of the construction of the High Dam. It was an incredible feat of engineering that they deconstructed such intricate carvings and put them back together in a slightly different location, so cleverly done that you definitely wouldn't realise it had happened had you not been told. Very cool. 

In contrast to our almost eight hour round trip, the one and a half hours spent at the temple paled in comparison, plus we'd had to pay $85 extra for the excursion as it was not included as part of our Discover Egypt Nile Cruise. Worth it? I'm in two minds - it's a long way to travel, and tickets themselves only cost $8, so I'm not sure where the other $77 was going behind paying the driver and fuel. Nevertheless, who knows if I'll have the chance to return to Egypt again, so might as well do it while we're here! Plus, seeing some cyclists making their way across the desert in the middle of the day with nothing around for literally hundreds of miles was an experience in itself! 

Back on the boat, we had a late lunch and a little rest before walking down the street to pick up a felucca, a famous African boat controlled only by sails and no engine. We spent a pleasant hour and a half cruising very slowly up towards the Movenpick hotel and back. Aswan does seem to have one of the most picturesque parts of the Nile that we've docked in, and this is partly due to the lovely view of feluccas gently drifting back and forth. We also had entertainment on board in the form of four young boys who sailed up to us atop a surfboard and started serenading us with their own versions of Frere A Jacques and the Macarena. A lovely way to spend the afternoon. 

As we'd reached as far down the river as we were going to go, the boat collected a new group of guests who would effectively be doing the same route we had done up until this point, but in reverse - from Aswan back to Luxor. Thus, in the middle of the night, the boat began its journey back up the river for our final days on the river, coming soon to 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!