My Egypt Trip - III

We landed at the Aswan airport around 01:00 am the next day, Saturday, 14^th March. I had tried to catch as much sleep as possible during the flight journey, but I still felt very drowsy after landing. This time, a boy, Mahmud, was waiting for us. As usual with our Tour Company people, he too was very involved and active. During our ride back to the hotel, he asked us to be ready by 4 o’ clock in the morning. ….WTF? ….That was our unsaid reaction to this least expected plan. First, you booked our flight so late and then you are asking us to be ready by the time only roosters wake up. I was literally fuming for the kind of callousness shown by the Travel Company. But what to say to this boy?

With pent-up anger, we reached the hotel which was at least better than the one in Cairo. We had only about 2-3 hours to pass, but most of that time went in joking about our current situation. Anyway, I slept for an hour; but we were fully ready by 04:00 am. This time, our guide was Fatimah, a typical Arabic Muslim girl, with scarf on her head. Also, the van was bigger this time, which actually helped us later in sprawling and managing some much-needed sleep. We owed something to that boy Mahmud, later nicknamed Half-Ticket by Saurabh, for this foresight or consideration.

Ah! I forgot to tell you where we were going in those wee hours. Our destination was Abu Simbel, the last minute addition to our itinerary owing to its eye-catching photographs we had seen earlier on the Internet. It lay about 290 km south of Aswan, but the traveling buses or vans needed to be escorted by a security convoy which only left at 04:15 or 04:30 am for the earlier part of the day. That explained some of that early morning exercise. I did feel sheepish for my enraged soul earlier :)

We joined the security convoy on time and off we were for the amazing temples on a desert safari. Fatimah tried to explain a few historical things, but I was too dopey to heed or hark anything, and invariably crawled off to the last seat to gather some sleep. I woke up a couple of hours later and gropingly put on my glasses. What I saw was hitherto inexperienced in my life: vast stretches of sand on either side with no modicum of life to be seen anywhere, and our van moving along with the caravan on an endless journey. My mind moved on to those similar scenes in the movie “Resident Evil: The Last Extinction”. Wow – I had to say.

Fatimah wasn’t very amused with our sleeping for those many hours. She wanted or needed to talk about history. Since Saurabh was in the front, he did most of the talking with her. There was some wrong information given to her by Mahmud about our itinerary back in Aswan, but it was sorted out with us having to skip some places, like Aswan High Dam, due to the cramped schedule.

Abu Simbel:-

Abu Simbel remains one of the most astonishing feats of engineering marvel. There are two temples there, the bigger one of Ramses-II and the smaller one of his most beloved wife-Nefertari. After the construction of Aswan High Dam, the temples were slowly getting immersed in the rising water of Lake Nasser. With the danger then clearly in sight, UNESCO with concerned people from all over the world, worked to move the temples completely to a relatively higher and safer position. With engineers and workers working round the clock, this movement was completed in a record 5 years time in 1972. Since then, the place has got added popularity.

We reached there around 09:00 am and we, by then, were relatively refreshed. There were lots of tourists too, all coming in the caravan escorted by the two security convoys. So, it was a bit of a rush to enter the two temples. But before that, Fatimah briefed us about the history of the temples from a booklet containing their pictures. Guides were not allowed inside the temples, nor was any photographing. As usual, the history was riveting. This man, Ramses-II was all powerful and omnipotent, as you could see he was everywhere we went. His full story, I will narrate in my writing detailing our Luxor sojourn.

We first went inside the bigger temple which is dedicated to Ramses-II. On the façade, four big statues of his, one slightly deformed by an earthquake, welcome you awe-inspiringly. Inside it, there are columns, and engravings on the walls. At the foremost place in the passage is the sanctuary, considered the most sacred place. There, on a black wall, are rock-cut sculptures of four seated figures: Ra-Horakhty, the deified king Ramses-II, Amun-Ra and Ptah. On a particular day in each of the two halves of the year, sunlight falls on these statues, barring that of Ptah, the God of Dark and Underworld, from a crevice located on the right upper part of the room.

The smaller temple of Nefertari is almost a replica of the former; the only difference being that it is dedicated to the female folks: Nefertari and goddess Hathor. The importance of the queen, Nefertari can be gauged by the fact that this is the only temple in the Egyptian art where the statue of a queen is higher than the knees of her husband. Ramses-II did attach a lot of importance to her and as he did to himself, he accorded a divine status to her.

Despite the magnificence of the temples and the abutting Lake Nasser, I didn’t feel that excited after seeing them. May be I had got too expectant after reading about them on the Internet, or the still-accompanying drowsiness had acted as a dampener. Interestingly, Saurabh too shared the same feelings. But we were definitely delighted to visit a great location of history.

After coming from the temples, we had to search for our guide, as she had moved to a relatively isolated place to bird-watch from her binoculars. Here was a girl completely different to our earlier guide. Grown-up in traditional way but very educated and carrying lots of dreams, she was indeed a product of modern Egypt. It was interesting to meet different people.

We returned to our van to go back to Aswan. After having breakfast which we had got packed from the hotel, on the van, I could afford another round of sleep there in. Philae Temple was where we stopped next.

Philae Temple:-

Again due to the submersion caused by rising water, Philae Temple was moved in toto from its earlier location of Philae Island to a relatively higher Agilika Island, located about 550 metres away. But the temple is famously named on its earlier location only. We had to go through a ferry to the temple, and we could see its earlier site, half submerged in water.

The temple is dedicated to the Goddess, Isis. She was the wife of Osiris and mother of God Horus. In the myth, Osiris was murdered by his brother, the wicked God Seth. Seth scattered Osiris pieces in various places. Isis tirelessly searched for Osiris' body parts and then using her Goddess powers, joined the pieces together and brought Osiris back to life. Following Osiris' resurrection, Isis and Osiris conceived Horus. Osiris then adopted the role of ‘God of the under world and judge of the dead’. At the end of the tale, Horus grew up to avenge his father’s death by defeating Seth in combat. Philae Temple is also the legendary burial place of Osiris.

What surprised us most there were the stark and vivid engravings on the walls. They were very intense and depicting. Although, we could not get everything of those because of our lack of knowledge of the exact history, we could roughly make out the happenings which would have taken place. Greco-Roman and the subsequent Christian history too was very evident from the different sculptures and constructions.

While Fatimah was explaining us the engraved writings, a group of boys speaking in Arabic dispersed around us. One of them clearly didn’t say something pleasant to her, as was evident from the subsequent hush of disapproval from her face. We could understand that; young ruffians are everywhere. A few moments later, one of them approached her and spoke in Arabic to ask us for our approval to be photographed with them. Ah! Here we were, always taking photographs of foreigners with us back in India, and then there, we were being photographed! They were glad to take some snaps and I too took one of them. Later Fatimah told we looked like film-stars to them. I don’t know about myself, may be Saurabh looked like one :) Meanwhile, they continued to have their bouts of photographing with other groups of tourists. I had told you before; Egypt is very much like India.

Coming back from the place on the same ferry, we headed off to ‘The Unfinished Obelisk’ site.

The Unfinished Obelisk:-

The site is located right on the side of a main road. In earlier times, it was a quarry, where Egyptians carved out granite stones in a single piece, called obelisk. These obelisks were the show of grandeur of the pharaohs, and each of them raised many to exhibit his power. There is an unfinished obelisk lying in the middle and that has become a matter of study and visit for the current people. Some say, it was left like that as the people digging it found it to be weak enough to be raised as an obelisk. Hmmm…anyway the real significance of obelisks was known to us in Karnak Temple in Luxor where we saw the actual erected ones.

Felucca Ride:-

Having had enough of historical sites, we needed to have some recreating moments. What better than a boat ride on the Nile River? It isn’t exactly a boat; it is famously called felucca in Egypt. Half-Ticket had arranged for us a small felucca for our sailing in the river. It felt really great to be amongst the water of Nile River. We sailed for about an hour around Elephantine Island, seeing the nearby scenery. There were many people relaxing in the shade of the feluccas. I wished, someday I too could afford that with time and money.

We hadn’t had lunch till then, and obviously felt very hungry. Our guide accompanied us to a very good restaurant where we were served delicious chicken tomato curry (the exact name I have forgotten). Needless to say, we gorged and guzzled everything.

We had to go to the railway station then to move to our next destination, Luxor. Fatimah meanwhile left us. I don’t know why but the words “God Bless You”, generally reserved for older people to utter, came out of my mouth when she was parting. Probably because of the sheer amount of respect I had developed for her by then.

Mahmud took us to our seats in the train and bade good-bye. We were apprehensive about the seating train compartment not being comfortable, but it was actually very cozy. Those bogies were especially for the tourists, it seemed, and soon we could find many others joining us. Two Chinese girls (could have been Japanese, Korean etc but I hope you got the drift) sat in front of us, and we kept talking about them under the guard of our Hindi. Typical boys naa, on a trip! Soon though, I was in the arms of sleep and Saurabh with a meal in front of his seat.

Three hours later, we reached the Luxor station where Mr. Malak was waiting for us. He looked a very reserved guy, and our talk remained very minimal during our ride to the hotel. As usual with the hotels provided to us, this again was a very sub-standard one. But our frustration grew into extreme wrath on seeing the room. It was pathetic; we were more annoyed on being taken for a ride like that. We decided to bring this up the very next day in no uncertain terms. Despite having a memorable time in the day, the end was as bad as was the start. Suddenly Luxor didn’t seem enjoyable, but we were so wrong.