EGYPT PART THREE

Tuesday morning we visited the Edfu Temple and in the afternoon we went to the temple at Komombo. At this stage we were pretty well "Templed out" and the significance of the various Pharaohs and dynastys was becoming quite confusing, so we were pleased to get back on the boat and find ourselves sailing off to Aswam which is the furthest southernly navigable part of the Nile.

That evening we had the Galabya party which required us to dress up in Egyptian style (see photo above). The "party" was a series of games (pass the bottle etc!) but everyone joined in with good spirits and it was a most enjoyable evening.

Aswam is where the High dam was constructed to form the massive Lake Nasser. It was built with Russian aid as the UK was on the nose with Egypt at the time. The lake covers some 600 square kms and provides hydro electric power to Southern Egypt. The city of Aswam is quite modern (due to the dam works) although we did pass through the old city with it's traditional mud brick buldings when we visited the High Dam.

Our first stop was a visit to the Aswam Quarry where we saw the unfinished obelisk. This obelisk had been cut from the quarry floor and had been almost complete on the top surface and both sides when a large crack appeared which caused the project to be abandoned. The method of completing the obelisk would have been to dig holes along the base of the granite block and insert wooden pegs. This was then soaked with water allowing the pegs to expand and eventually breaking the block away from the quarry floor!! The one just had to lift the 30 metres up, cart it off to the Nile (about a mile away) place it on some barges and float it off to Luxor - simple!

Next we took a small boat to visit the Philae Temple. This smaller temple had originally been in the valley which was flooded by the High Dam. It had been deconstructed and moved to higher land where is was reassembled.

On the way back to the Premier we stopped at the Papyrus Centre where we had a brief demonstration of paper manufacture and were then invited to purchase Papyrus paintings which surrounded the walls.Ho Hum -thank you.

After lunch we paid a visit to a Nubian Village by boat. One was invited to make the trip on a camel - but we passed. Nubians are a much darker coloured race of Egyptians coming from the far south of the country. Their life style is totally different and relies on community based cooperation. Whilst appearing quite poor, they had their TV,Fridge,Washing machines etc but otherwise led very simple lives. Carol took a photo of baby crocodiles which were kept in a bath for the children to play with! They are returned to the Nile when they get bigger (the crocs not the kids) Sadly, the children were all beggars despite a community aversion to the practice and it remains to be seen whether they will be able to hold on to the life style.

There was a Nubian show after dinner that night - but we both felt pretty fagged out and took a rain check as we had to be up and off at 4am the next morning for a visit to Abu Simbel.

Wake up call at 3.30am - a cup of tea - picked up a breakfast box and onto the coach.We didn't get too far before we came to a halt and joined a queue of coaches. It was explained to us that we had to travel in convoy across the 275 kms of desert for security reasons. There would have been some 60 coaches lined up waiting for the start gun. I haven't mentioned before that there was a continual presence of sub macine gun toting security guards everywhere we visited, and each coach was allocated one for this trip. It was dark of course, and whilst some passengers slept,I was fascinated with the slow approach of dawn and the desert landscape. There was a constant jockeying of positions between the coaches, and it was a bit awesome being overtaken on the quite narrow road while travelling at 70 mph!

We arrived at Abu Sembel at7.30 and were told we had two hours to view this magnificent temple before we had to get back on the coach for the return trip! With every coach arriving about the same time, the crowd was annoying and it is something that we found difficult to accept, not only from the point of view of our own ability to properly appreciate the site, but there must be a significant hazard to the preservation of the temples and their surrounds. The temple had originally been in the path of the Lake Nasser flooding, and it was Unesco who organised the moving of this temple and 21 others which were threatened with submerging. It took 10 years to dismantle the buildings, and more remarkably to cut the massive statues from their rock face and to transport and reassemble it all at Abu Simbel.Second top photo shows the size of the statues.

The trip back in daylight was an impressive desert race with overtaking and being overtaken some sort of game. We saw the desert mirage which was dramatic. In the distance it seemed that there was a sea of water with palm trees reflected in the water - but just a mirage.

After lunch we were taken on a Felucca ride across to an island where there was a botanical garden. The Felucca is the traditional Egyptian sailing boat and I was very impressed with the handling characteristics. Everything was pretty worn out, frayed ropes,patched sail - but she went!