De Nile is just a river in Egypt

On Saturday morning after flying from Cairo to Luxor we were picked up and taken to our Nile cruise. There are apparently more than 350 large ships making the trek back and forth between Luxor and Aswan. At the height of tourist season the river can be pretty packed.

Our ships name was the Jasmin, like in the flower and not Aladdin’s girlfriend. The boat is quite large and designed to carry more than 80 passengers, plus a large complement of staff. Christine and I have managed thus far on our vacation to avoid doing any tours with large groups. In Cairo we thought we were going to be on a bus tour and were happy to have only the two of us with a van, driver and guide. On the large ship we thought that our luck had finally run out. However, when we arrived on the ship we found out that there were only 6 passengers, us and 2 Egyptian couples. One of the couples was not very interested in sight seeing and just the cruise, so often it was just Christine, myself, one Egyptian couple and our guide on the tours. (Left - our boat the Jasmin)

The ship is so large and with so few people on it, it almost feels like a ghost ship. The staff to customer ratio is about 4 to 1 and at meals we have at least 2 personal attendants just staring at us, waiting to take our plate or get us something to drink. We made the mistake of tipping a few people early on before our guide told us to give one tip at the end to be distributed. This resulted in pretty much every employee on the ship trying to give us special service for a tip. At some points we had 4 personal waiters serving us and the barman keeps trying to get us to hang out at the bar. It was definitely a unique cruise experience.

Our first day in Luxor took us to Karnak Temple, which is an absolutely amazing complex. It was built more than 3000 years ago and after it was completed each new pharaoh tried to add something spectacular to try and leave their mark on it. The structure is incredible in size and the carvings cover the surface of everything. Giant pillars spill out in all directions and multiple temples have been built on the one site. Following this we visited the Luxor temple, which is less grand in scale, but still amazingly ornate. A double line of sphinx mark an ancient roadway for approximately 3 kilometres between the two temples. (Right - Sphinxes at the entrance of Luxor Temple)

On Sunday we took a tour of the Valley of the Kings. This is the location of what appears to be more than 50 burials tombs for pharaohs. Apparently there are other valleys for Queens, scribes, priests and so on, but obviously the pharaoh’s is the most spectacular. It’s here that Tutankhamen and Ramses II are buried. The burial sites were a design of the New Kingdom which was still over 3000 years ago and was in response to all the pyramid grave robbings. They were supposed to be a new, more secure design.

We managed to visit three tombs, each bigger and better than the last. The last tomb belonged to Ramses III who was considered the final great Pharaoh of Egypt. There were many that came after him, but each presided over an increasingly shrinking and weaker kingdom. Ramses tomb was beautifully carved, with the paintings on the wall still in full colour and fairly bright. The tomb leads fairly deep into the earth and has quite a nice wide passageway down to his final resting place. The builders used giant mirrors made of silver to reflect the sunlight down the chamber as they did their chiseling and painting. Unfortunately they don't allow photos in the tombs, so we don't have any to show you.

Something both fascinating and quite funny is the development of the first graffiti in Egypt. Back before the Roman empire adopted Christianity they were seriously into persecuting and killing Christians. Early Christians in Egypt took refuge in the pharaohs tombs to escape death. While down there they did drawings of Jesus, apostles and other Christian writings. So we are talking about graffiti that is almost 2000 years old.

Following the Valley, we moved on to see the temple of Hatshepsut, a great and powerful Queen of Egypt. When the pharaoh died, she managed to hold power from her step son who was nine years old, the next pharaoh in line to the throne. She built a great many things, including a massive temple that had an underground cave leading to her burial chamber in the Valley of the Kings. She tried to pass her self off as the child of a god and made imagery that had her appear as a man. She engaged a lot of tricks and manipulation to stay in power and ruled to the end of her life. When her step son came to power he damaged and removed a lot of the work she built in her image to get even with her for withholding the throne from him. (Left - Temple of Hatshepsut).

That afternoon we set sail further down the river and Christine and I enjoyed a relaxing afternoon reclining on the deck chairs pool side. The view was very pleasant cruising down the river with the scenery slowly rolling by. The Nile is amazing as the life blood of Egypt and it is clear to see how dependant the country is on it. All along it’s banks are irrigation pipes and the land is green and fertile along the shore. Often though, to look 30 feet beyond the river bank and the landscape shifts instantly from fertile green to sandy desert. The width of the greenery is dependant on the farmers and their irrigation, but it never seemed to stretch very far from the river. (Right - Relaxing on the boat).

We never seemed to lack activities on the boat between the tours, lazing about and eating. There were pool tables, ping pong tables, board games, books, TV, a swimming pool, nghtly activities and much more. They tried to get some cocktail parties and dance parties going, but it’s difficult when Christine and I show up and we are the only party guests. I guess that is one downside to having such an empty boat. (Left - The River Nile)

On Monday we stopped in Edfu to visit a temple dedicated to the god Horace, who is the son of Isis and Osiris. The spectacular temples continued, but we were starting to get used to the style. It seems that every pharaoh who builds a temple spends most of the wall space sucking up to the gods. They carve images of giving offerings to the gods, bringing their enemies before them, bowing before them, dancing and so on. Even though a temple may be dedicated to one god, they still throw in images of most of the other big ones, probably trying not to offend any of them. (Right - Carvings etched in the temple. The figure on the left is Horace).

After Edfu we sailed further down the Nile to Kom-Ombo to visit another temple dedicated to other gods. By now the temples are starting to be from the Ptolemaic era and are after Alexander the Great conquered Egypt. The new rulers still maintained strong links to the Egyptian gods and started mixing it with their own religion. (Left - Sun setting over the river).

At one point along our journey we had to pass through a lock. The lock was just the right size for our ship, so I guess they are built to the specs of the lock, as a bigger ship would not be able to get through. The system was remarkable and we rose about 30-40 feet in only a few minutes and were steaming our way up the Nile once more. A very cool and efficient system.

On Tuesday we arrived at Aswan, the final destination in our boat trip. Our first tour took us to the High Dam, which is a very large superstructure providing much of the power to Egypt. The Dam is very large and has created a lake over 6000 square kilometers in size. The lake is 500 kilometres long and about 150 of that stretches past the Egyptian border into Sudan. I wonder if the Egyptians asked the Sudanese for permission before creating a huge lake in their country. The dam was built with major Soviet assistance and was to bring the USSR and Egypt closer together. Apparently if it were to break, most of Egypt would be washed away and after seeing the size of the lake and the fact that the majority of the population lives in a long stretch down the Nile River, it seems believable. (Right - Hovan at the Aswan Dam).

After the high dam we visited the temple of Phillae. The temple itself is really nice, but what makes it unique is that it was completely relocated to an island in the dam made lake after it was flooded over. Divers dredged the whole site from the bottom of a lake and relocated to an adjacent new island. This is an incredible project and took 10 years to complete. Christine and I thought it would be funny if some of the massive stones were mislabeled. It may have led to the discovery of “new gods” with different heads on different bodies. (Left - Hovan at the temple of Phillae).

Following the temple we visited the site where granite was carved into stone statues and then shipped down the river to different temples. The last obelisk is left standing there and it is 40 metres in length, weighing 1000 tons. To this day they still have no idea how the ancient Egyptians managed to get the stones down to the river, into the temple and then erected. (Right - the unfinished obelisk).

In the afternoon we enjoyed a tranquil falouka ride down the Nile. The boats are a transportation vessel and could carry up to 10 or 12 people comfortably, and they had a unique shaped sail. The ride was a pleasant couple of hours as we traveled downwind to visit a couple of islands, see a few sites and just relax. We were joined on the trip by our 2 fellow Egyptian couples. On our way back the wind died and so the captain of the boat had to get out the oars and row casually for about a half an hour to get us back to shore. (Left - A Felucca sailing down the river).

Our next stop is to spend 2 and 1/2 days relaxing in the sun at Sharm El-Sheik which is apparently some kind of beach resort for locals and foreigners. After that we start to make our way back to Canada via Cairo and Amsterdam and the trip home will take a couple of days.

The best of the season,

Christine and Hovan