Aswan Travel Blogs | Travelogues | Travel Journals

Last night was awesome!  We took a nice boat over to a Nubian island for dinner.  Along the way, we were dancing on our boat to some drums....good times.  The sun was just setting over the Nile. Today, Ramadan has started.  The streets were packed last night with people and a lot of the stores are closed today.  Noone eats or even drinks until the sun goes down. Tonight, we board our felucca for three nights....should be awesome.

...you're not actually in Egypt.  I swear I have never met a people less willing to give you a straight answer.  Everything involves a wheel-n-deal type of interaction.  It can be quite tiring. Our train arrived late, about 10:30am, so we were rushed on our sightseeing list of Aswan.  At the hotel we hired a car to ake us around three main sights: the Unfinished Obelisk, the Temple of Philae, and the High Dam of Aswan.  Hiring a car is the same as paying for cabs to …

[ Apologies  for bland-blogging but photos will eventually follow after the return of my 'lost' camera to the UK.  Normal photographic services will recommence as soon as I've stopped crying about the impact of a new stop-gap camera on my travel budget :)   ] A rushed morning of sight seeing activities postponed from the other day when we arrived late in Aswan.  Bashaa is my very talkative and seemingly very well informed guide for the day.  First we hit the Hig…

When i and my friend - Ana - had decided to visit Egypt we didn't know that Ehab (Maher) would accompany us during our whole trip but i don't know what we would have done there without him...This trip wasn't just a dream coming true but also the beginning of an amazing and a hopefully everlasting friendship. Shukran Ehab for these unforgetable 9 days - you're an incredibly nice person! God bless Travbuddy!!!!! :-))))

I normally don't take pictures of airports but the Aswan Int'l Airport is a totally different ballgame. It's not only clean but its interiors are quite well decorated. Also I found the duty free shopping in here quite good. We arrived here early morning, the only pain is that there's usually a huge queue for the carpark itself. But other than that, departure back to Cairo was peaceful. Only sore point of the day was that my mum was down with a BAD stomachache. Click on Next Entries on …

Arriving in Aswan mid-morning we view the unfinished obelisk and visit the High Dam. We sailed on a felucca to the Botanical Gardens before joining our cruise ship.

I jumped a bus from Luxor to Aswan early the next day.  It was an interesting experience trying to find the right bus but all good and thinking back to my last experience of public transport in Africa (Morocco in '92) I was pleased to enjoy a compfy seat!  It was as we were making our way South that I discovered there was really only one road rule in this country.  It was one I'd seen on a sign near a blind corner, but it seemed to be expected everywhere, "Horn Loudly".  A…

Then it was off to Wadi Rum in Jordan, a desert region of sand dunes and impressive vertical rock mountains made famous by the exploits of Lawrence of Arabia, who used it as a base during WW1, and also lived there for some time after the end of the war. It wasn’t long before our 4wd truck got bogged in the fine dry sand. Despite it’s large tyres and a lot of digging, we were stuck fast until some local Bedouins drove by in their 4wd and towed us out of the super soft sand patch. …

The first Egyptian temple I ever visited was in an unusual spot - it was in the middle of Madrid in Spain - and not in Egypt. So what is an Egyptian temple doing in Madrid - the ancient Egyptians never made it all the way to Spain to settle down and build temples there?   The reason is the place I am going to see now. When president Naser decided to build the Aswan dam the level of the Nile would rise significantly. This would mean several old temples would be flooded. The…

We made it to the train station with actual tickets and ended up meeting two guys from Illinois on the train traveling separately.  One is an engineer who also quit his job to travel for 6 mos.  He keeps saying that  everything is much crazier in India.  Can't wait for that...anyway he has been traveling with us ever since. Speaking of crazy, I am uncovering some of the meaning behind what appears to be total disorder on the roads.  No one dr…

We arrived in Aswan around 10am. The train ride was tolerable despite the cramp space and the inedible train food. Washing up was a challenge as well, but we made do. The original plan was to go straight to see the Aswan Dam and felucca ride before heading off to the cruise boat but with luck - we were given a couple of hours to check-in our luggage, take a shower and have lunch on the boat before seeing the sights. It was heaven being able to take a shower! And lunch was pretty good - a…

We awoke on the second morning of our Felucca trip with the boat still moored.  Perhaps the captain was affording himself a bit of a sleep in today? Last night was quite a late one and we had certainly made good progress to date. We didn’t get underway until after breakfast.  The weather was again fine and there was enough breeze to keep the boat moving and to keep us cool.  We’d been on the boat for two whole days now and none of us had been for a swim.  So at around …

sept 2006

Egypt is amazing.. so different than Europe, especially the weather.. haha ;) i went to Egypt with a good friend and we had the time of our lifes.. nice people and warm people.. only the men were driving us crazy.. haha i hope to come back sometimes and visit some good old friends again..

Aswan is delightful, very picturesque, the Nile is beautiful here with various islands and plantlife where there had been none in Aswan, greenery was a very pleasant sight indeed. Add to that the comparative lack of touts, although still many barges, if only Aswan had Luxor's treasures! I only hope that the Luxor planners have looked here for inspiration. I had intended to visit Abu Simbel but, on checking my visa, time in Egypt was fast running out. The trip would have been a full day star…