From Lower to Upper Egypt - Cairo to Aswan

Egypt - land of really old, really big, amazing things!

Our Morocco-London-Cairo flights were always going to be a little tricky; our flight from Marrakesh was scheduled to fly into Gatwick at 1:30pm and our flight to Cairo was scheduled to leave Heathrow at 5:45. So, assuming that everything went perfectly, we had a little over four hours to clear customs, grab our bags, catch the bus from Gatwick to Heathrow (about an hour or so) and check-in at Heathrow.

Suffice to say, things did not go perfectly.

When we got to Marrakesh airport, we noticed that it seemed a little busy - apparently there was an air traffic controllers strike in Paris, and it had backed up flights out of Gatwick. We ended up leaving about 2 hours late...cutting our four hour transfer to two hours. Combine that with heavy traffic on the motorway as well as having to get from Terminal 3 to Terminal 4 (we discovered this isn't completely straight forward) and we ended up getting to Heathrow just as they were making the final call for our flight.

We missed it!

Luckily, we were able to get on the next flight to Cairo (which happened to be the next day) and Kasey and Trond came through by being able to offer the couch in their brand new flat in Highgate, saving us 200 pounds on a hotel bed at the airport.

We all went out to Gourmet Burger Kitchen and Steph and I had another accidental, but very enjoyable night in London. The silver lining was that the next day we took a quick trip down Regent Street where Steph set a new shopping record by finding a dress to wear to Al and Kelly's wedding in about 15 minutes flat (leaving time to tuck in another curry for lunch).

We left with plenty of time to get to the airport and made our flight without any issues. We landed in Cairo a little after midnight and steeled ourselves for what are quickly becoming our least favourite part of the world at large - taxi drivers.

True to form, after a lot of hassle, we managed to get a taxi driver that seemed not as shonky as the rest of them and got to our hotel in Downtown Cairo at around 1:45am. We checked in and went straight to bed.

Fairly late the next day, we arose and had brekkie, then headed out to the world famous Egyptian Museum. This was a bit of an adventure in itself.

Now, if you haven't heard, natives of Cairo have the reputation of being the worst drivers in all the Arab states. However, what makes this impressive is that I'd have to say that Arabs are some of the worst drivers we've ever seen - making those in Cairo the worst of the worst! Never before has crossing the road been an extreme sport for us, especially the "10-lane" road (in inverted commas as the Egyptians don't take any notice of lane lines), which did not have any lights or subway for crossing, and was the only way to get to the museum. Luckily, Allah was with us and we managed to get to the Museum entrance without grievous bodily harm.

The Egyptian Museum is absolutely amazing, filled with relics from the past, sphinxes, walls covered with heiroglyphics and more sarcophogi than you can poke a stick at. The worst thing about it (to Steph's absolute dismay) was not being able to take any photographs! No doubt to keep the Egyptian postcard industry intact!

Outside the Egyptian Museum - the only place you can take photos

There are so many highlights in the museum, however ones that have to be seen to be believed are the sacorphogi, funery mask and relics from Tutankhamun's tomb, which were absolutely phenomenanal, and the Royal Mummy rooms, an extra charge but worth it with case after case of preserved mummies, kept at the perfect humidity level. Considering that some of them are in excess of 3,000 years old, it's amazing that they're so well preserved.

Tutankhanum's Funery Mask - provided by Wikipedia!

With a complete lack of our own photos to show you, you'll just have to take my word for it!

That night, we had to satisfy another Thai food craving, so we took LP's recommendation and headed to the Intercontinental which has a brilliant Thai restaurant. We filled up on Pad Thai and Green Curry, all for about $30, expensive for Egypt, but good value as far as we were concerned (especially after our US$100 Thai meal in Rio!).

The next day we were all set to head out to the Pyramids at Giza, however we ended up postponing this and sat down with the resident travel agent in our hostel to organise our remaining time in Egypt. By the end of the morning, we had tours, hotels and transport all sorted. It was refreshing to do this for a change and, although it would cost a little more, it meant that for the next three weeks, all we really had to do was just turn up where we were meant to at the appointed times. Very, very easy!

In the afternoon, we head out on the town, explored a couple of the souqs and visited some mosques. Unlike Morocco, you could actually visit the mosques here! It was great to see inside some of these amazing buildings, and they were a fantastic way to get out of the oppressive 40+ degree heat of the Egyptian summer.

Heading into the Al-Azhar Mosque


The prayer room in the Al-Azhar mosque - nice and cool!

The souq at Khan al Khalili

We also paid a visit to a restored Egyptian house, in the middle of the souq. The architecture and woodwork were amazing, and it was great to get a glimpse into how the upper class used to live in Egypt.

The open courtyard...

...and main hall - like the family room!

That night, we went out to see the Sound and Light show at the pyramids. All of the key classic archeological sites in Egypt seem to have one of these shows set up - all in an effort to suck more dollars out of the tourist wallet. It was your typical, cheesy "Since the dawn of time..." type thing, however it was great to get a preview of the pyramids with all the kitsch of the lasers, booming "Sphinx" voice and coloured lights. A college of key shots during the show:

The "traditional" Egyptian piper band - in full headdress!

The next day - the main attraction! Everyone knows about these amazing wonders of the ancient world, however nothing can really match it to the experience of standing at the base of one of these mammoth structures and thinking - surely a simple classic mahogeny coffin, with brass handles and antique finish would have sufficed?

The pyramids are actually from the "Old Kingdom" of Egypt - built thousands of years BC. Very fashionable for the time, however went out of fashion later on as tomb robbers didn't have too much trouble finding where the pharaohs were buried - hence New Kingdom pharaohs were buried in the Valley of the Kings.

The ever-enigmatic Sphinx - or Sphinxy for short!

You just have to be awed by the amount of labour that must have been used in order to build these enormous monuments. Feeling the Egyptian sun beat down on our heads - it must have been absolutely gruelling work, however at least the workers didn't have to put up with the endless annoyance of touts trying to sell camel rides, donkey rides, and other assorted paraphanalia.

However, the pharaohs succeeded in what they sought out to do - make themselves immortal. The names of Khufu, Kafhre and Menkaura will live on, thanks to the world's largest and heaviest tombstones.

After a few hours baking by the Pyramids, we also paid a visit to Saqqara and the original step pyramid, the first of its kind and predating the pyramids of Giza.

The entrance to the site - mandatory tout pictured here.




The Step Pyramid at Saqqara

We returned to the hostel, picked up our bags and caught a taxi to the train station. That night, we got onto the Aswan sleeper train and enjoyed the overnight journey down to Aswan immensely. The porter served us dinner, then made up our beds for us. We had a great night's sleep, rocking to the motion of the carriage.

Our private cabin on the train...a bit of a step up from our usual travel arrangements!

Aswan is the most southern city of any notable size in Egypt. It sits on the "first cataract" of the Nile, being an area where the Nile splinters into a number of different streams and basically becomes impassable. It is also the site of the Aswan Dam, completed at the turn of the century, and the High Dam, completed in 1970.

The High Dam at Aswan

The afternoon that we arrived, we took a tour out to the Philae temple and the High Dam. Aside from the Philae temple itself, the amazing thing is that the temple was relocated to higher ground, brick by brick, from the original Philae island which was submerged after the High Dam was completed.

The Philae temple was home to the Isis cult - you can also see where many of the carvings were defaced by the Coptic Christians, trying to destroy the false idols.

The chisels of the Coptics did their work!

One of the problems with Egypt is just the sheer volume of photos that one is tempted to take. There are so many amazing sites and ruins, that you simply can't stop yourself from taking photos. Over the next couple of blogs, we'll try to keep the photos to a manageable amount, but know that for every one you see here, there's probably another 100 that didn't make the cut!

Heiroglyphics cover the walls...

...and the temples are amazing structures for their time!

After we visited the Philae temple, we went to see the excellent Nubian Museum in Aswan. The great thing about this museum is that it shows many of the temples were moved so that they wouldn't be submerged by the flooding of the valley, caused by the High Dam.

Model of an army of nubians - found in a tomb


Map of the Nile - the lake is Lake Nassar, formed by the High Dam. Note the number of monuments and temples located along the river.

We finished off the day with a walk up the hill to one of the cafes that overlook the cataracts and watched a beautiful sunset.

Aswan at night

The next day, we took a 3am bus for the five hour trip down to Abu Simbel to see the temples of Rameses II and the Temple of Hathor, dedicated to Rameses II's beloved wife, Nefertari. These temples are some of Egypt's most impressive, and the buses all travel in convoy down and then by convoy back to Aswan for security reasons - it's the site where a number of tourists were killed in the late nineties.

Again, it was amazing to see the relocation efforts. With this one, it's double impressive as they didn't just move the hillside carvings, but the entire hill as the temple inside also had to be moved. Unfortunately, no photos allowed inside (which I was told in no uncertain terms by one of the guards), however we took plenty of photos of the outside!

This entire hill used to be 100 metres down the slope, now underwater

The Temple of Hathor - also relocated piece by piece

We got back to Aswan around 12:30pm, and ducked into the hotel for a nap and to escape the heat. We went back out around 7:00pm and sheepishly headed to our first McDonalds dinner of our trip. It was one of the nicest located places in town, on the river bank and, after such a long day, it just really hit the spot.

Returning to our hotel, Steph managed to convince one of the hotel staff to hunt up some beer for us, and he came back with a six pack stashed under his jacket. We ended up having to drink it in the room, however it went down fantastically well.

Drinking Stella in our room and relaxing

Thursday was our last day in Aswan and we just had a couple of small tours in the morning, of the botanic gardens and some roman ruins on Elphantine Island, in the middle of the Nile river. There was a completely crap museum that we wasted a few Egyptian pounds on, literally rocks on a table without labels in a couple of stifling hot rooms.

The Botanic Gardens, Steph was thrilled to find a deep pink Frangipani!

We also met a group of three British travellers, Dawn, Phil (aka Tickell) and Graham, a great group of people. We discovered that they were going to be our companions for our felucca ride, as well as our tour of the renowned temples at Kom Ombu, Edfu and Luxor.

At around lunchtime, we boarded our felucca and started our peaceful float downstream to the next leg of our Egyptian adventures!