Day 80 - Aswan, Egypt

This morning we woke up from a restless nights sleep on the sleeper train. The train was a lot noisier and the driver seemed to slow down and speed up sporadically through the night.

We had breakfast on the train and we were warned it was bread, jam, bread, another couple of spreads and bread. The croissant & roll were good with a bit of jam.

We got into Aswan later than expected, around 11am we disembarked to train and got on a bus to head off to the Philae Temple.

You have to get a boat across to the temple as it is located on an Island. The Temple has been moved from its original spot that was 200m away from this island due to the Great Dam being built and was submerging it under water.
The Philae Temple was built by the last dynasty of ancient Egypt, the Ptolemaic. It is dedicated to Isis, the goddess of healing, birth, and magic, her husband Osiris, and their son Horus. The temple is one of the last places where ancient Egyptian religion survived after Christianity swept the shores in 550AD. The Temple has served many religions over the years, you can see a basilica inspired altar & crosses throughout the temple.
It was quite hot on the island so we cooled down with a can of coke & an ice cream that worked out to be very expensive compared to in the towns.

We travelled back by boat to the mainland. Mohamed called the Accomadation and the rooms weren’t ready so he took us to Philae Essence Palace that cold squeezes flowers to make oils & fragrances. We got a demonstration of the glass blowing of the decorative small vases & a demonstration of the fragrances on offer. Mohamed had ordered us Falafel to the Essence store to have lunch there.

We finally got to the hotel and it’s biggest attraction is the pool seeing it is so hot!

Tonight’s dinner is organised by Intrepid at the Nubian Village across on the West Bank across from Aswan on Elephantine Island. We had to take a small boat across, we ended up having to tow a Felucca to a docking point due to the loss of wind. We visited and walked through the village and had dinner at a family’s home. We had a lovely cooked meal and the male host gave us the history of Nubian and how they only have a verbal language not a written language.

After dinner we went back to the Accomadation by the boat.Read more