Our main reason for the trip to Aswan was to see Abu Simbel, two MASSIVE temples carved into a mountainside during the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II. In the ‘60s, the temples were cut up into pieces (30 tons at most), moved uphill and reassembled so as to prevent their flooding at the completion of the Aswan Dam. The amount of work and money ($80 million USD) was unprecedented and involved the cooperation between a team from all over the world. The temples were reassembled in their original orientation so that twice a year, every year, the sun can reach the very back of the temple of Ramesses.
Legend has it that the name Abu Simbel comes from the name of a young boy who used to run tours through the temples, similar to Slum Dog Millionaire. Although it only seems to remind me of The Fifth Element.
In order to reach the temples, we need to organise a trip from Aswan, several hours south through the desert, 20km north of Sudan. After much negotiation, our hotel offers us a cheap car for the trip and so begins the hilarity that is Egypt’s world famous customer service.
We’re up at 4am for the trip, and find out at 4:45 that our car is actually a bus and our seats are the foldout sort in the centre aisle, the bus is completely packed and everyone is cramped.
We take off still half asleep, having protested and having no car available. We stop with a group of buses on the outskirts of the city, waiting for other buses to arrive. It seems that we have to travel in a convoy, irrespective of who you organise your trip with, you all still arrive at Abu Simbel at the same time. Some soldiers outside spin some rhetoric about it being better for our safety…
Several hours later, the sun rises over the desert reveals the desert through which we’ve been driving, the desert lies in every direction. The remoteness of the temples explains why it was dormant for so long.
The Great Temple at Abu Simbel took over twenty years to build, dedicated to three gods (Amun, Ra-Horakhty, Ptah) with special guest appearances by the pharaoh himself (Pharaohs are gods too).,
At the entrance to the temple lies this gem of a sign, NO PHOTO INSIDE THE TEMPLE…
… of course that doesn’t stop me (and countless others) from taking photos.
Too bad though, an unexpected Egyptian pops up and tells me I must leave and go to the police. I ignore him and take more pictures when he’s not looking.
The tour continues with:
The Nefertari temple at Abu Simbel.
Monument to Aswan Dam, built by the Soviets and Egyptians, the plaque goes on about the friendship between Arabs and Soviets.
ЗА ДОЛГИЕ ГОДЫ СОВМЕСТНОГО ТРУДА ВЫКОВАЛАСЬ И ЗАКАЛИЛАСЬ АРАБО-СОВЕТСКАЯ ДРУЖБА,НЕ УСТРУПАЮЩАЯ ПО СВОЕЙ ПРОЧНОСТИ САМОЙ ВЫСОТНОЙ АСУАНСКОЙ ПЛОТИНЕ – Гамаль Абдел Насер (Gamal Abdel Nasser)
The fun part of the trip starts when we get to the dam. Half the people on the bus paid for the long tour, including a stop at the dam, the other half paid to go to Abu Simbel and back. The bus driver stops the bus outside and demands an entrance fee from everyone on the bus. Half the bus refuses to pay (ourselves included). The driver tells us we must get off the bus. We refuse, it’s hot out and we don’t want to spend our trip waiting for other people to have a tour. So begins the tensest standoff since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
After much swearing (in Arabic) by the bus driver, we offer the bus driver to get off and wait for him, if he pays each of us baksheesh, this does not help his rage.
Eventually we get off and let him take the guests on the dam tour. Next stop, Philae temple.
Philae Temple, temple complex and the holiest site for Isis worshippers.
The temples are in varying states of restoration, in order to get to the temple you must negotiate for a boat trip out to the island as it’s not included in the ticket price.
Negotiations start at 20 Egyptian pounds each, but we band together and get the return trip for 5 pounds. As we’re leaving, I overhear an Indian guy negotiating his way to 4 pounds. Negotiate like an Indian!
At the end of our trip, our hotel manager gives us some weak explanation as to how we misunderstood car to mean car and not bus (apparently in Egypt anything smaller than a full coach is a car), we don’t really care at this point, we’ve had a blast.
I do not miss having to deal with baksheesh. I think it's awesome that you guys tried to get it from a local though!
The whole concept of baksheesh was annoying first, but I'm in North America now and it's much more prevalent and expected here, only here it's called tipping.
Within the temple a series of chambers becomes increasingly smaller as the floors of the rooms rise noticeably. This is a basic convention of temple design, as one moves into the temple Interior of the Temple of Abu Simbeldeeper to the sanctuary which would contain the primeval mound of creation, rising out of the waters of Nun.
Thanks for that information.
Just wanted to thank you allot for this interesting article. I've already bookmarked your site, and when I get more free time I'm going to have to do some further browsing here. Well back to day dreaming of Austria - or back to the work books - I wonder which one is going to win out.
Kind Regards