As Far As You Know

We had a great morning exploring three tombs in the Valley of the Kings, and then stopping at the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut before a relaxed lunch back in Luxor and then an afternoon bus trip of three hours to Aswan. By government decree, we had to go in a police-escorted convoy. All foreigners on the roads must travel between cities this way--which seems to a move the government developed in a response to the act of terrorism in November 1997 in which dozens of tourists were killed at the aforementioned Queen Hatshepsut Temple. This approach seems a bit stupid to me: since the foreigners have to register for the convoy in advance and leave at a predetermined time, a simple security lapse would give potential evildoers a list of nationalities represented in the convoy as well as a multiple targets conveniently assembled in one place at a predictable time.

As if today's 7am departure wasn't bad enough, tomorrow we get 3am wake-up calls to head to Abu Simbel in another convoy!

Just returned from Abu Simbel where we saw the impressive temples of Ramses II and his wife Nefertari. These temples, which were hewn out of a mountainside overlooking the Nile, were moved several hundred meters into an artificial mountain in the 1970s when Lake Nasser was created by the flooding due to the High Dam. They are striking nonetheless. just a few weeks from now, there is one day a year when the Ramses temple's inner sanctuary is illuminated by the sun in the morning.

From The Prince Of Egypt soundtrack: "When You Believe" by Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. Another tune rattling around my brain as I explore pyramids, temples, and tombs here along the Nile.

Our group enjoyed a late afternoon Nile cruise on a felucca, one that took us upriver to a Nubian village that had been relocated from the south as a result of the High Dam constuction. We had a terrific dinner there and took the boat back to our hotel. A high point of the trip.

Tomorrow we get to sleep until 9:00!

The Clash's "Rock The Casbah."

After a leisurely morning, we visited the Aswan High Dam, a modern engineering marvel constructed with the help of the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s. Then we took a boat to the island where the Philae Temple--constucted by Alexander the Great--is situated. (The photo above shows some bas-relief carvings on one of the interior walls of the temple.) This temple was also relocated from a nearby island due to the flooding arising from the dam project.

Soon we head to the train station for the overnight rail journey back to Cairo.