Morning of the second day on board. We woke up to an amazing sunrise and went on the upper deck to enjoy the early morning life by the river and on the river. In October, the morning breeze is nice and refreshing but AC is essential to go through the night. With limited number of hours of electricity available on board, we were advised to turn the AC on in our rooms from 8:00 pm to 11 pm and close down all the doors to cool down the room as much as possible. This technique kept our room nice and cool for the first night.
After the breakfast, Abdollah explained the day plan for us which included a visit to the temple of Edfu in the morning and a visit to a local village by the Nile called “Wadi El Shet”.
Temple of Edfu is one of the best preserved temples in the whole Egypt and before getting there, Abdollah explained its history to us and gave us some lessons on Egyptian Hieroglyphs. I found it interesting to some extent but it was too much at some point. Amir was the worst and left the learning sessions to take photos of the fishermen on the Nile.
After about an hour of history lesson, the dahabiya moored at Edfu, and we got off to take a short carriage ride to the temple.
Temple of Edfu:
We were lucky and got to the temple early in the morning before the bigger groups from the cruises get there. The temple of Edfu which is also called the temple of Horus ( Falcon God ) built started 237 BC. It is consisted of an interior building with lots of different rooms and an amazing court yard surrounded by high walls and amazing pillars. There are some damage on the exterior walls as French army used it as an army based and made the holes in the walls to shoot the intruders from.
Well inside the temple, we had to follow Abdollah and listen to the history lessons. don’t get me wrong, I found it interesting to some extent, especially I loved learning about ancient Egyptian language symbols and get to some cool indoor rooms which they kept perfumes and all the walls were covered with different perfume recipes with quantities. But the annoying part was the fact that we didn’t have any option to choose to listen or not. That was fine for me but Amir couldn’t handle that as he was more keen to find the perfect angles and take the best photos that he could which all takes time. That’s why we didn’t go to visit any archaeological sites in Luxor, we knew that we will get enough of that during the Nile trip. We got back with the same carriage back to the dahabiya for lunch and a shower before going to the interesting part of the day, a village visit.
Wadi El Shat:
So as I explained in our previous post , one of the main reasons to pick Dahabiya trip was the opportunity that it was giving us to visit some remote villages on our way south. The second day on the boat, we had a chance to go and visit the first village, Wadi El Shat.
As we walked up the hill from the river side to get to the sealed road that leaded us to the village, we passed the village school when the school was about to close so all these kids rushed out of the school and surrounded us. Too many kids and all of a sudden the calm vibe changed to chaos. Dust went into the air, some of them got their donkeys from nowhere to ride on and go back to village, some were following us and some were running ahead of us to get to the village earlier than us. That was fun!
We absolutely had a lot of fun in the village, an amazing authentic place to be. But because of all the kids following us, Abdollah thought that it is not convenient for other travelers to walk back through the farms back to the dahabiya so he got us on a pickup with a probably 14 years old driver, at first, I wasn’t happy to end the adventure there and get at the back of the ute. But the drive was so fun!!!! we had an epic drive through the farms and palm trees and desert landscape to get to the dahabiya on the other side of the village. It definitely made sense to take the ride considering how much we already walked before getting to the village.
The rest of the day plan was hanging out on the upper deck and do our own things. The vibe on the boat is completely different in the afternoons. Everyone start to wind down and find a corner to sit in silence and do their own thing or stare at the horizon. It’s the same for the our travel mates and the crew. It’s hard to describe the calmness and the beauty of the sunsets followed with stunning evenings on the Nile in the absolute silence.
Day 3 on the Nile: Visiting Jebel El Silsila and Kom Ombo Temple
After waking up to another amazing sunrise, we had the same morning rituals, enjoying early morning views, breakfast and a history lesson with Abdollah. We kind of loved the idea of being on the boat for 4 days rather than three. The more we travel, the more we see the beauty of travelling slowly. Unfortunately time s not on our side at the moment, but still I prefer to see less but travel slowly. In the case of this boat trip for example, after the second day, you come up with the routine which is out of the normal life routine but still we can get the sense of a routine life somewhere out of our ordinary life and share more time with other people to feel their normal routine life as well.
We stopped by Gebel El Silsila not long after leaving our last last night sleeping spot to explore the ancient sandstone quarries and rock-cut chapels of Horemheb, Seti I, Ramesses II and Merenptah. The interesting part of the quarries was the fact, that it shows some evidence on how the big quarries supplied massive rock pieces for building the temples all across the Egypt and also Pyramids, were ran by different group of workers and contractors and each team had to carve their own group signatures on their stone blocks and how their wage payments were calculated and registered. While we were listening to Abdollah’s stories, Amir was walking around and taking photos of the chapels guardians. We got back to boat to have a quick shower on board and some lunch before heading to the next stop. Even in October, it gets really hot around noon and we did appreciate having access to shower all day.
We weren’t as lucky as we were in Edfu in Kom Ombo, we got there in the afternoon with quite a few Cruise ships which means there were couple of hundreds of people in the temple which was located within walking distance from the river. The Temple of Kom Ombo is an unusual double temple in the town of Kom Ombo. The southern half of the temple was dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek, god of fertility Meanwhile, the northern part of the temple was dedicated to the falcon god Haroeris. It was built between 180-47 BC and the carvings of Crocodile and Falcon gods can be found everywhere on the walls. The first documented Egyptian calendar is carved in one of the columns of this temple. There’s also Crocodile museum filled with Crocodile mummies at the entrance of the temple complex.
After spending an hour or two there, we walked back to the boat to have another stunning evening on tranquil banks of the Nile. Honestly we were more happy to stay on board for most of the time and just get off to see the village life more frequently but it’s not up to us on a trip like this. We were still happy to pick the best itinerary to match our interests in the limited time that we had. Let’s have a look at some of the views from the third day afternoon below. In the next post, we see the camel market of Daraw together and our 4 days trip on Nile before heading to our next and last stop in Egypt.
