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Published: December 5th 2008
The great temple of Abu Simbel
As usual we were the last ones and were kicked out by the guardsI need money, lots of it, billions and pretty quick. I intend to build a second Abu Simbel but more of that later.
The trek down to
Aswan was done in style in a sleeper train. After arriving in Aswan we wanted to go straight down to Abu Simbel and went to the train station as we knew there would be a 11 am bus. There was a bus, we inquired if this is the 11am bus and we loaded our luggage into it and sat down to drink a tea. And we waited, and waited and.... Finally I had enough and asked the ticket guy when we are leaving to which he replied 5pm as there are not enough passengers or the 11 am bus. No one bothered to tell us. Lesson learned.
We checked into a hotel in Aswan and had a walk through the immense Souk. Walking along a Souk in Egypt is highly recommended if you want to practice saying no and how to dodge salesmen. In the right state of mind its fun though.
The next day we finally were of to
Abu Simbel. We checked into our -1 star hotel and went to the
a 4 star hotel to lounge around their pool to waste some time for the sound and light show. Not being really convinced of such shows I paid the entrance fee and had my first glimpse of the temples of Abu Simbel. If you never heard of Abu Simbel before (living behind a rock??) then lets give you a quick tour. The temples should at this time be about 65 meters under the water of lake Nasser which formed after the Aswan High Dam was constructed in the 1960s. Luckily for a lot of temples the Egyptian government asked UNESCO for help to rescue the temples (they had enough money to build the largest dam but not to save their cultural heritage. Talk about priorities). Anyway lots of countries chipped in and some of the more famous and beautiful monuments were saved from the waters. The temples of Abu Simbel were built into solid rock and it took 4 years to carve them out of the rock. cut them into small pieces, move them, build an artificial hill and reassemble it all together again. Think of the worlds largest 3d puzzle. They did a good job. The temples look as
amazing as they did before (I guess). The larger one "Temple of Ramses, beloved by Amun", is fronted by four 25 meter tall statues of Pharaoh Ramses II and with some smaller statues of his favourite queen and some of his kids. His favourite queen as he had 60 wife's and produced over 100 kids. Must have been a busy man.but he had 70 years to do all this.
The temple is even more amazing from the inside. The first hall has 8 pillars each fronted by a standing King Ramses II and the walls tell of his battles. He is often shown killing enemies or enemies fleeing from him. The other rooms also depict various battle scenes, scenes where he gives offerings to the gods and the inner sanctuary has four figures, three of gods and one of him. There must be close to 50 pictures and statues of him in this temple which is dedicated to him. Talk about self love....
Anyway I was talking about the sound and light show. It was better than I thought. The story is a bit cheesy but they use the temple and the rock facades as a giant screen
and project images onto it and sometimes even a short movie. Quite impressive to sit in front of these temples at night to see them lit up. The stars played their role too and we saw a shooting star coming down smack back between the two temples. After the show I took the opportunity to take a few snaps of the temples until the guards kicked us out.
The next day we came back for more. We got up at 5.20 am (yes I can get up that early) to see the sunrise at the temple. Dusk was already there when we left the hotel but it took another 30 minutes for the sun to peek though which was enough to get to the site and view the sun rise over Lake Nasser. Better yet is to turn around and have a second glance at the temples. Certainly the most impressive temples I have ever seen. As mentioned the inside of the great temple is fantastic. Everything is carved and originally painted. Some of the paint is still visible especially on the ceiling where the black vultures still circle like they did 3200 years ago. Not sure how it
View of Lake Nasser
The worlds largest artificial lake can be that modern paint starts to peel after 10 years.
Once the sunrise was done the 30 odd Japanese tourists which were with us at the site disappeared and we had everything for ourselves for the next 1 1/2 hours. Never really liked the idea of running through temples with hundreds of others and having to watch the time. That was the reason why we did the unusual and stayed the night in Abu Simbel. Most tourists come with one of the two convoys, stay for two hours and then leave again. That's 6 hours driving for 2 hours viewing. Crazy!
We must have spent at least 5 hours in and around the temples. Sometimes just reading and relaxing but I managed to look at the same temple four times ... inside and out. Loved every minute.
We planned to go back the same way we came which is the local bus. This is as said quite unusual as most tourists use a organised tour and have to travel in the convoy. The convoy system was introduced in the late 90s when some terrorists started killing tourists. Now every tourist bus must have one police man in
it and all buses have to travel together. That can make up a convoy of over 100 buses and minibuses. The other option is the local bus which is usually only for locals but up to 4 tourists are permitted. We tried to board the 1pm bus back to Aswan but the local police guy didn't let us on. After a lot of forward and backward a policeman which could speak English turned up and told us that it is to dangerous to take the bus and we must go on a bus in the convoy. He never told us why it was dangerous and three tourists were just arriving from Aswan on the bus we wanted to take back. Luckily the police looked after us and put us on a tourist bus in the convoy back to Aswan for free. As I said every bus has a policeman on board and so did ours. Not just a policeman but the boss. Strangely enough he wasn't too bothered when our driver did 140 instead of the allowed limit of 90. More dangerous on the local bus hey...
Apart from going to Abu Simbel there is not much more to
Queen Nefertari
His favourite wife out of the 60.... do in Aswan. Ok ok thats unfair there is quite a bit to do and we visited yet another museum the Nubian Museum. The Nubian's are local inhabitants of upper Egypt. If you're confused as why upper Egypt is in the south and what we would consider lower Egypt then you're not alone. Upper Egypt is called that because it is the where the upper Nile is. Anyway the museum is rather good and shows the history and Culkture of the Nubians. Most of which (history and culture not the Nubian's) was flooded when Lake Nasser was created.
We could also had have a look at a Pharaonic quarry but we chose instead to have some beers and cocktails in the local Moevenpick hotel.
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