Cruising down the Nile

On Monday we were to join our cruise boat for the trip from Aswan to Luxor. We really didn't know what to expect. We had booked the 2 night 3 day trip through our hotel in Aswan and it had only cost £100 for the 2 of us. We had been shown a brochure of a boat that looked very nice but we weren't convinced that was the kind of boat we might end up on. The lonely Planet has many warnings of backpackers being sold very disappointing cruises by cheap hotels in Aswan. So as we drew up to our boat, the Sentido hotels and resorts M/S El Mahrousa, we were very pleasantly surprised. It was a great boat! Very smart with a bar, restaurant, lounge and really nice top deck with a pool and lots of loungers.

Our cabin was really smart with ac, tv, two cute little port holes and a decent size bathroom. We got three meals a day served buffet style and announced by a man banging a gong! We also got afternoon tea at 4pm. All very pleasant and much better than we had expected.

Our first night's entertainment was a pub quiz. We managed to win which was very exciting and we got the highest score ever on the boat! Unfortunately there was no prize, but the host did say the prize was to buy everybody else in the quiz a drink! The next night's entertainment was an Egyptian band with a belly dancer and a whirling dervish.

The days were great on the boat! My kind of sightseeing, which involved relaxing on the top deck with a cool drink watching the sights of the Nile glide past and having a refreshing dip in the pool when it got too hot.

We stopped on the way at Kom Ombo. This was superb temple right on the Nile which is dedicated to both the crocodile god Sobek and Horus the elder.

Some of the columns still had some colour on them and the temple is 2500 years old!

There was another good temple on the way at Edfu, however we anchored there late at night and the temple was closed and the boat sailed again the following day at 8am meaning that you would have to have got up at 6.30 to see it, so we have that one a miss. We thoroughly enjoyed our Nile cruise. It was a great way to get from Aswan to Luxor.

Aswan, Aswad, Aslan

On Wednesday evening we caught the Abela Egypt Sleeping Train from Cairo and made our way 900km South to the town of Aswan. The train was excellent and consigned the horrors of overnight train travel that we experienced in Burma / Myanmar to a far and dusty corner of our minds. The overnight trip took 14 hours, most of which were spent asleep in the comfort of our own private air-conditioned berth.

The main reason that we have come to Aswan is that it's the best place to base yourself for visiting the temples at Abu Simbel. However it's still a palaver to get to as it's another 280km further South through the desert from here. As if that wasn't awkward enough the only way to get there is under an armed escort. Thanks to the Islamist insurgency that occurred in the 1990's travel in some parts of the Nile Valley (and the Red Sea coast) can only be done under the protection of an armed police convoy.

We've been quite lucky with our accommodation in Aswan. We're staying at a hotel called the Memnon which we booked through our new most favourite web site, hostel world. We've been lucky enough to bag a room on the top floor which gives us great sunset views of the Nile.

Not bad for less than a tenner a night. The only problem that we . . . well I have with the Memnon is that one of the staff members has taken a bit of a liking to me. Not normally a problem but usually the guys go for Liz rather than me!

Whilst we've been trying to sort out our trip to Abu Simbel and our onward journey to Luxor we've also sampled some of the sights a little closer to Aswan.

During the pharonic period Aswan was the source of Egypt's best granite. Lying in the Northern Quarry on the outskirts of town is the Unfinished obelisk, over 40m long and weighing in at 1168 tonnes. It would have been the heaviest piece of stone cut by the Egyptians. However, some unfortunate stonemason caught a flaw in the rock and cracked it before the last face was cut free.

Unfortunately quarrys, even pharonic ones, aren't particularly photogenic.

The other slightly less than photogenic sight is Aswan High Dam, built in the 1960's to generate electricity and help to control the annual flooding of the River Nile. The damming of the Nile created Lake Nasser, the worlds largest man made lake, which goes all the way into Sudan and covers an area of about 5250 sq km.

South of the dam most of the ancient monuments of the Nubian Desert would have been lost if it weren't for the actions of Unesco. Between 1960 and 1980 Unesco helped co-ordinate the Nubian Rescue Campaign which, with the help of more than 50 countries, saved 14 of the ancient monuments in the Nile Valley from the flood waters.

One of the sites saved was the Temple of Isis on Philae Island which dates back to around 380 BC. The whole temple complex was disassembled brick by brick and rebuilt on the higher nearby island of Agilkia on the outskirts of Aswan.