The Never Ending Journey

 Writing this from the comfort of my own abode, my body is still unsure that it agrees with the clock on the wall, thanks to an entire day of travelling and a 9 hour time difference.  Friday began with another early wake up call at 4 am, boarding a bus to the Aswan airport at 4:45. We made a brief visit to the Aswan High Dam to take a few final photos before flying back to Cairo. After loading our luggage on the bus, we headed into downtown Cairo for a stop at the central market. Arriving during the Friday noon prayers we found the place largely closed down, with literally thousands of locals all facing Mecca while a lengthy series of prayers boomed over the area from loudspeakers attached to the minaret of a nearby mosque.  Interestingly, many locals, including women with full burkas moved through the area oblivious to the prayers, making one question their choice of attire, considering their lack of adherence to their religion. But that’s a whole other subject!  Ma...

 An insanely early wake-up call found our group barely awake on one of several motor coaches parked in Aswan at 2:45am while we awaited the arrival of a police escort for the 250km trip to Abu Simbel (Police escorts seemed to be a relatively normal phenomenon when travelling to remote sites. Terrorist risks of late have been less frequent but I had no issues with the added reassurance of police protection.) I imagine an early morning police escort did not come without cost- perhaps some slightly diverted funds from our collective tip pool, collected in Cairo. The trip took a bit over three hours, most of it in darkness with little to see until dawn finally came, just before as we arrived.  Reaching the site around 6:30am, I was surprised to see that we were not the first group to arrive- 5 buses were already parked. Originally located at a site that is now underwater due to the building of the Aswan High Dam,  the site was broken down, moved several hundred feet to higher...

 For some reason our boat and the other cruising craft spent the better part of Tuesday evening anchored a few Km north of the first set of locks on the river. They didn’t actually enter the locks until 3 or 4 am when almost everyone was sleeping. So we missed one of the potential highlights of sailing the Nile. I woke at 6 :30, just missing the sunrise. Our boat arrived in the town of Edfu around 8 am  where we would anchor on its West Bank while we visited the nearby Temple of Horus. The trip to the site was taken by horse and carriage, each couple in their own with a driver and single horse. The route through town was a busy and very pot holed road with heavy traffic, including trucks and buses flying by at varying speeds. The various carriages were driven rather quickly. Such that we had to ask the driver to slow down to avoid getting bounced around. One couple’s carriage actually lost a wheel but luckily no injury were sustained. Arriving at the Temple we alighted at a la...

 A planned balloon ride over the desert was cancelled due to the expectation of high winds. Consequently the scheduled 2am wake-up call was bumped back to 7am. Following breakfast the day started with a water taxi ride to the West Bank of the Nile where our bus driver was waiting for us. Our first stop was the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut a large terraced three story structure set into the face of a large mountain.While the first floor was mostly in ruins, the second featured several supporting columns and rooms on each side painted in a variety of colours with ceilings representing the heavens with hundreds of stars. On the top floor were several statues and an inner courtyard. Our “educational” stop for the day was an alabaster factory complete with a humorous “demonstration” of the hand work required to produce a finished piece. We were then taken to a display area featuring hundreds of, (most likely) machine produced vases, statues etc. Having purchased several pieces on our trip...