Egypt - Cruise on the River Nile

One of the must dos of our mammoth trip was to take a cruise on the River Nile.  Fortunately, our Egyptian tour package included that.  Leaving from Luxor we sailed for a couple of days at a leisurely pace towards Aswan, in the south of Egypt.  We docked a couple of times at Esna, Edfu and Kom Ombo before the final destination.

As it is quiet season for tourism in Egypt there are only 7-10 other people on the boat, so it actually feels like we have a super yacht to ourselves, and we believe there are more staff on board than guests!  We are getting special treatment, sometimes it is over the top and then other times we can’t find anyone!

We frequently made visits to the pool mainly to cool down as the temperature has reached the high 40s at some parts of the day.  The further south we travelled, the hotter it gets, and you can see from the clip, the locals like to go cruising on the Nile as well.

We have also been fed very well.  For each meal breakfast, lunch and dinner, there are about 5 courses.  If Rosie and Grant aren’t careful, they will end up being as round as I am!

Guess what we looked at whilst we were docked?  You guessed it, temples.  The thing is that they are quite varied, and all have a different story.  The Kom Ombo one is divided into two parts – one dedicated to Sobek (who had a crocodile head) and one to Horus the Elder (falcon).  Depending on what you believed in would be what entrance you would use.

Another key feature of this temple is the Crocodile Museum where there were several mummified crocodiles, all in remembrance of the God Sobek.

We made the decision to make the 3 hour trek through the desert (in an air conditioned van) to where we saw where the greatest operation to salvage the Abu Simbel temples took place.  These two temples were threatened with being permanently submerged after the rising waters of Lake Nasser in 1960.  After many years of painstaking manual work, the Abu Simbel temples were officially reopened in 1968.  Wow, those monuments are remarkable of Rameses II.

The last temple of our Egyptian tour was of another one that was saved from being submerged in water when they made the Aswan Dam.  Philae Temple is one dedicated to Isis, one of the most significant figures of ancient Egyptian religion.  Based on the Island of Philae, there are many chambers, most of them decorated during the reign of Ptolemy II, whose name is the earliest attested with this temple.  There is also quite a Graeco-Roman flavour about the architecture, and you can see some Christianity symbols featuring on the walls.

And so ends our Egyptian tour bar the 13 hour, overnight train ride back to Cairo which is where I am writing this current blog.   The tour guide asked us what we liked and disliked about Egyptian culture.  Will share our answers in the next post.