EGYPT – Nile Cruise, Day 5

After a late’ish night at Philae, the last thing I wanted to do was get up at 3am for breakfast and an early start to Abu Simbel, but it was too late to back out now.



We’d been told that the journey would take about 2½ hours but that before that, we had to go to the meeting point for the convoy as we’d all travel together with an armed guard on each coach ‘for our security’. Er, OK then… It was really quite disconcerting to see them checking the buses with sniffer dogs and anti-explosives wands, and even more worrying when a bloke with a machine gun got on, but it was 4am so I soon forgot them and went to sleep.



The night before, we’d been a bit worried about the threat of attack in the convoy so we’d formulated two plans; a) declare ourselves to be the son of God or b) announce that we had Stockholm syndrome and start speaking like we’d had one too many ‘I bloody love you I do’. I wasn’t sure either would work so I was relieved when Yahya woke us to see the sunrise over the desert, and it wasn’t long before we arrived at Abu Simbel.



This is truly one of the most amazing places I have ever seen and an absolute ‘must see’ for anyone going to Egypt. Apparently, if you wanted to be king in ancient Egypt, all you had to do was declare yourself to be the son of God (even if you were a woman), and they would say ‘Oh alright then’ and hand over the kingdom.



Ramses II went one step further and declared himself to be not only the son of a God, but a God as well which is why the colossal statues of himself are on the outside. This is a priviledge normally reserved for Gods, so he just declared himself to be one!



It’s just impossible to describe the sheer size of the main temple and even when you are there, it seems almost like a film set. Photos aren’t allowed inside – drats – but like most places in Egypt, a few Egyptian pounds (10?) goes a long way to getting the rules relaxed when there aren’t too many people around. Unfortunately for us, it was pretty busy so I had to content myself with outside photos.

One of the amazing things about Abu Simbel is that the ancient Egyptian architects positioned the temple in such a way that twice a year the rays of the sun would shine through the temple to the sanctuary and illuminate three of the four Gods on the back wall (excluding the statue of the God Ptah, the god of darkness and the underworld who always remains in the dark). These dates were allegedly the king's birthday and coronation day. The temple had to be moved to avoid being flooded by the Aswan Dam and apparently the light now shines through one day later than it did originally. They were a clever lot these Egyptians!



The second temple is dedicated to two of his wives and some of his sons, but he had so many – it is alleged that he had over 200 - it's not surprising that I can’t remember their names!!

It was on the way out that I was touched up and ripped off in the same transaction; 2 for the price of 1 (the price of course being 10 Egyptian pounds). We set off again in our convoy passing some amazing sights such as the lone fire truck, and a street market that seemed to be taking place in the middle of nowhere.





We were still all super sleepy after our 3am start, so we settled in for a snooze on the way home only to be disturbed by Yahya so that we could look at the Mirage. It did look for all the world like a lake in the middle of the desert but try as we might, it wouldn’t come out on the photos.



On the journey back, we stopped at a perfume factory where we watched the bloke making the hand-blown glass perfume bottles before we were invited inside to try and obviously buy. The tiny bottles were absolutely gorgeous and each one a little work of art.



They let us try lots of different perfumes which form the basis of many famous names and makes which they had cunning disguised so they can’t be caught out; Chanel 5 became 5 secrets, Nina Ricci became Nefertiti and so on. I would have been quite tempted to buy if they’d started at 10 Egyptian Pounds, but sadly the essential oils and perfumes started at a whopping 150 EGP which sounds a lot but is actually only about 20 squid.



Saturday night was ‘Egyptian Night’ on the boat so we all duly dressed up in our Galabeyas which is the name for the traditional Egyptian dresses. The bloke on the boat selling these has a right little goldmine as nearly everyone got into the spirit of the thing although the beautiful cotton dresses did cost more than 10 Egyptian pounds!



They even offered a make up service for the men and women, which I sensibly declined.