Egypt Day Six : Abu Simbel, Aswan, Luxor

Egypt Day Six : Abu Simbel, Aswan, Luxor

We are awoken at 3 by our front desk to get ready for the 4AM police escorted convoy to Abu Simbel. If I wasn't so eager to see this ancient marvel, I'd probably sleep on, but we sleepy eyed get ready for our 3 hour bus ride. A bus arrives at our hotel to transport us as well as our Egyptologist- the same lady as the day before unfortunately. About 40 buses of all shapes and size gather along a road where police are walking around taking down liscense plate numbers. Around 430am, we head out into the vast dessert, one bus after another speeding towards Abu Simbel.

I found Egypt to be safe. Even when we were out late into the night, there was always activity going on around, and the streets were not desserted. The hassling you get in Egypt as a woman seems to be as far as it goes- we felt safe at all times. Security in Cairo was fairly invisible to the eye. We visited Egypt two days after the first bombing in Dahab, and were expecting more heightened security. Security was more visible in the southern part of the country, in Aswan and Luxor. Since 1997, when tourists were massacred in Luxor, security has been very tight in the Aswan/Luxor area. Though I didn't quite understand the reason that the vehicles had to be escorted to Abu Simbel, I always appreciate security measures. As a traveler, you cannot hire a car and head to Abu Simbel on your own. You are required to buy a ticket on one of the many buses, and all the buses leave together escorted by police. It's a three hour bus ride through the vast dessert at an ungodly hour. The two lane road through the dessert seems to serve no purpose other than as a road to Abu Simbel, and as our buses were the only vehicles on the road, they proceeded to race with each other at speeds only fit for the Autobahn.

We were delivered to Abu Simbel in one piece thankfully! Abu Simbel is some 40 kilometers north from the Sudanese border, and 280 km south from Aswan. Once there, we were happy to be visiting at 730am when it was still relatively cool and the sun was not out yet in full force. Abu Simbel comprises of two temples (Temple of Ramses II and Temple of Hathor) on the banks of Lake Nasser. Like the temple of Philae, the building of the dam submerged the temples of Abu Simbel under water where they remained until rescued in 1964, and at a cost of US$ 40 million. Over the course of 4 years they were cut into more than 2000 huge blocks, weighing from 10 to 40 tonnes each and moved to a specially built mountain. The original Temple of Ramses was carved out of a sandstone mountain and is a intimidating construction mainly consisting of four collossal statues of Rames II on the exterior. It stood on the banks of the Nile as a monument to the strength of Egypt under his rule, and also an awesome quartet of sentinels watching over any boats sailing into the Pharaohs land from the South. The 4 statues of the pharaoh are flanked by smaller (but still larger than lifesize) statues of his wife, children and mother standing around his feet. The interior of the temple is a marvel of a high ceilinged main hall and smaller annexes. It is just spell binding to look at the scenes decorating the walls commemorating battles fought by the pharaoh and his offerings to the gods.

Ramses II built not only a temple for himself, but also one for his favorite wife (this man had many wives and is believed to have fathered over 100 children) Nefertari. The temple of Hathor is a monument in her honor, dedicated to the godess of fertility, and love. The exterior comprises six statues- four of Ramses himself, and two of the Queen Nefertari. Interestingly, in these statues she is the same height as her husband (whereas in most statues, consorts are depicted as only coming up to the knee of the pharaoh). Although not as grand as his own temple, the temple of Hathor is still grand (look at how small I am standing at her feet). After taking in all the murals and the grandeur of the two temples, we sat by the banks of Lake Nasser and just took in all the sites. Once again we were impressed beyond words by the imagination, engineering and level of thinking of the ancient Egyptians. Our sun allergic Egyptologist all the while was luxuriating at the small cafe that flanks the entrance of Abu Simbel.

We headed back to our vans for our dreaded three hour drive back to Aswan, where in daylight the race between the buses was even more frightening! I was half tempted to leave the buses and head further south to explore more of this fascinating continent but the rifle bearing police guarding the exits brought me back to reality!! A short nap on the bus and we were back in Aswan city at 1pm. We extended our check out time, and were hungry and sleepy, but sleep won out and we napped till 3. At 3, our ever trusty Travel reps escorted us the 5 minute drive to the train station and led us to our train compartment for our 4 hour train ride to Luxor. The compartment was airconditioned, with comfortable large seats and I managed to fall asleep for an hour or so.

We arrived in Luxor and were met by yet another travel rep. After dropping off our bags at the hotel, we were driven to the Temple of Karnak for the light and sound show. There are light and sound shows at almost all of the major sites in Egypt, and having heard that the Karnak one was the best, we were eager to see it. More than a temple, Karnak is a wonderful complex of sanctuaries, obelisks, statues, and pylons all dedicated to the Theban gods. Everything at Karnak is on a large scale, and was added to over a period of 1500 years by the various pharaohs. Called the "most perfect of places" it was the most important place of worship in all of Egypt during the height of Theban power. I'm really failing at this point to do any justice in words to these spectacular sites, so the quote the great adventuress Amelia Edwards: "It is a place that has been much written about and often painted; but of which no writing and no art can convey more than a dwarfed and pallid impression... The scale is too vast; the effect too tremendous; the sense of one's own dumbness, and littleness, and incapacity, too complete and crushing." The sound and light show was a little too Hollywood for us, with booming and overly dramatic narrations, but it was still worth it to be able to walk through the complex in the night time with the various monuments lit up gorgeously and to sit back at the end at height and wander about life in Thebes back then. Tomorrow we'd be travelling to the Valley of the Kings, and we were both very excited about that.