ASWAN PART I ...... nice small town....

Our next stop is ASWAN, the most southern city in Egypt , very close to Sudan. We took a night train from Cairo to Aswan and it took 14 hours to reach Aswan .It's only a small town and its no 1 source of income is tourism....

Tourists from all over the world visit Aswan or rather transit in Aswan to be able to explore Abu Simbel area , almost 280km from Aswan. Aswan is located on the bank of the NIle River and many nile cruises can be seen along the bank.



At first we planned to get to Luxor and then took the nile cruise / the felluca to Aswan , but then the tour guide advised us to get to Aswan first by train and then be on the cruise or the felluca ( a sail boat without engine, just the sail )...the river flows downstream from Aswan. We decided to take the felluca instead of the cruise since it looked more 'egyptian ' sailing ....( Aswan Part II )


We stayed at Nuba Nil Hotel, 2 minutes walk from the train station and in the evening we took a horse carriage around the town, it's very cheap 40LE=JD5=RM25 per hour.... In Jordan this ride is very expensive JD20=RM100 for half an hour...so, how could I resist riding it......



The next morning at 3.30 am we were all ready to get to Abu Simbel, 280km from Aswan.... there were more than 20 buses convoy to get to this temple. We have to move in a convoy since this place is located very close to the Egypt/Sudan(40km away from Sudan ) border and there was a case ( a few years ago ) a few tourists were shot dead by the guerrillas while they were on their way to Abu Simbel... However, it's funny when at first the driver told us it's a convoy and we must wait for all buses to gather at the meeting point and at 4am we were let go by the authority... it's then no more convoy, every driver tried to overtake each other just to be ahead of each other and reach Abu Simbel first.....we reached Abu Simbel at 6.45am and we had 2 hours to be there.


The view was so breathtaking, it's a combination of hills on both lands and the Lake Nasser flowing in the middle....one can get to Sudan by boat crossing the lake.....but the lake is large.

Lake Nasser

So, with 80LE= 10JD=RM50 paid for the entrance fees... there we were, facing the largest statues of 2 couples of kings and Queens of Ramsis II at the Sun Temple......











When the conservation efforts to preserve the temple from the soon-to be built High Aswan Dam and its rising waters were begun in the 1960s, the temples were dismantled and relocated in 1968 on the desert plateau, 200 feet above and 600 feet west of their original location.


The massive facade of the main temple is dominated by the four seated colossal statues of Ramsis. These familiar representations are of Ramsis II himself. Each statue, 67 feet high, is seated on a throne .



We got back to Aswan and in the afternoon, we were brought to the famous Aswan High Dam and the Philae.

Aswan High Dam.......Dam construction in southern Egypt, that exploits the water of the Nile.The construction was started in 1960, and fully finished 10 years later. The Aswan High Dam became an expression of political tensions in those days — financed by the help of the Soviet Union, a few years after the war inflicted upon Egypt by Israel, France and Britain. Of the total cost of US$1 billion, about 1/3 seems to have been a gift from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union provided 400 technicians for the work. The lake that grew gradually from the construction, is called Lake nasser, in honour of the president Gamal Abdul Nasser, who died the year the dam was finished.The embankment is 111 metres high, with a width of near 1,000 metres. Lake Nasser is 480 km long and up to 16 km wide. The power station has a yearly output capacity of 2,1 gigawatts, but the full capacity cannot be realized because Lake Nasser's water level is lower than optimum.

Aswan High Dam

The Philae Temple..Philae Temple was dismantled and reassembled (on Agilika Island about 550 meters from its original home on Philae Island) in the wake of the High Dam. The temple, dedicated to goddess Isis. Although antiquities on the island date between the 26th Dynasty and the Roman Period, most of the work is from that of the Roman. This was a time of immense popularity of the Goddess Isis, and this was her island, where pilgrims would come from all over the Mediterranean. Construction on the island took place over an 800 year span, and it was one of the last strongholds of Ancient Egyptian Religion which continued to flourish here into the 6th Century. When the Temples where finally closed by Justinian in A.D 550, it ended 4,000 years of worship of the pagan gods.

Aswan offers a great deal of tourist attractions and the it's more fascinating as we took our Nile excursions on a felluca from Aswan to Kom Ombo ......next entry...Felluca Nile Excursion.....