Most people go to Aswan to enjoy the sleepy atmosphere, take a felucca ride on the Nile and use it as a base for Abu Simbel. To get to Aswan, we took an overnight train from Cairo to Aswan. Fourteen hours, blasting air conditioning competing with a blaring stereo and luggage piled around everywhere. And that was just in our compartment.
We shared the 6 person compartment with some locals traveling to Edfu and Kom Omba. Once we broke the ice, if not the language barrier, we all shared food (since it was after sunset). When it came time to get some shut-eye, I walked up and down the car trying to find an empty compartment. I found one down at the other end of the car, but for some reason, sleep wouldn’t come. Maybe it was the constant drone of voices from the next compartment, or the man with a machine gun who kept walking up and down the length of the car and poking his head into the compartments (there were no doors). Maybe it was one of our travel companians who recited the Koran for several hours while right next to him the next person snored loudly. Finally after a cramped and uncomfortable time of it, we reached Aswan. And it was hot. At least 35 Celsius. And that was strictly average- it can go up to 40!
Later, we took a felucca ride on the Nile. We stopped at Elephantine Island, (so named because the large boulders that make up the island resemble elephants) which has ruins of Nubian temples and a village.
Apparently, it was one of the oldest islands in this area, with artifacts from 5500-3100 BC. The people who still live here speak Nubian and Arabic (Nubia was once the area that is the southern part of Egypt and the northern part of Sudan). After visiting the island, we continued on our lazy ride down the Nile, gently refusing our guide’s suggestions to “drink of the river-it will make you strong!’ and opting for our bottled water instead. The boat captain also broke his fast during our felucca ride - he offered us sugarcane juice and also hibiscus juice. His two assistants were teenagers who were on their summer holidays.
We saw a beautiful sunset and enjoyed a longer than usual ride back to the docks- the head wind had picked up in the mean time and to go back we had to zig zag the boat from shore to shore. The boat captain and crew took great delight in getting as close as they could to other boats and the shore before turning aside just in time. We decided to go to sleep early to prepare for Abu Simbel.
-Smruti
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