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We are getting to know the staff on the Doma now, and they are all very friendly and helpful. Osama the barman very kindly presented me with a scotch on the house last night, and it seems to have worked wonders - my bowels are working properly for the first time since I arrived (I never had any problem in Africa, but they don't seem to have taken so well to Egyptian food).
Day 14. Fri 26th September Abu Simbel and the Nubian Village
DaveMidgley2005-10-22 13:54:22
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We are getting to know the staff on the Doma now, and they are all very friendly and helpful. Osama the barman very kindly presented me with a scotch on the house last night, and it seems to have worked wonders - my bowels are working properly for the first time since I arrived (I never had any problem in Africa, but they don't seem to have taken so well to Egyptian food).
We arrived at Aswan sometime during the night, and are woken at 02:30 for the trip to Abu Simbel. This is made slightly more bearable by the fact that the clocks went back in the night. (Although Egypt is not quite in the tropics, nevertheless the seasonal variation in the duration of daylight is very small compared with ours, and I cannot understand why they should need to change the clocks - mind you, I've never quite understood the logic of it even in England).
We have been given the choice of flying or driving to Abu Simbel. The drive is about three hours each way, the flight is a good deal more expensive and actually only saves about an hour, so several of us, myslef included, decide to go in the minibus. We sleep for a good deal of the journey.
I have to say that I am starting to get a bit templed out by this stage, and my enthusiasm for yet another dose of statues and hieroglyphics is wearing slightly thin. What impresses me about Abu Simbel, more than the temples themselves, is the fact in the late 1960s, after the Aswan dam was built, the entire edifice was cut into blocks and moved 65 metres higher up to rescue it from submersion in the rising waters of Lake Nasser. In a project lasting several years and costing millions of dollars the two temples were rebuilt onto artificial mountains and even carefully positioned to maintain the orginal orientation to allow the sun's rays to penetrate the inner chamber twice a year, as in the original design.
Abu Simbel is yet another of the gigantic conceits of Rameses II, and comprises two temples, one for
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See photographs from:
Egypt Gallery
