Questallia

This story is the second part of My Forgettable Trip to Egypt, therefore I invite those you who did not read Part I, to do this first, then come back here again for more Egypt travel tips.

C. Asswan and Egyptian time
In our last evening in Cairo, we were announced that we are going to leave early next morning, heading to Asswan. We were told not to be late, as we are going to travel in a convoy, because crossing the desert may imply dangers for lonely tourists. The information was that the travel is going to take about 4 hours. Ok, here we are in the morning, the bus moves on, we join the convoy in about 30 minutes and then we set sail for adventure. Hour after hour are passing by, we feel like we would like to stop for a while but nobody seems to care. After 4 hours we finally stop, but not at our destination. We were somewhere in the middle of the desert, at a half-ruined shelter which hosted two toilets and three small boutiques, guarded by about 50 military men. As all the 50 buses in the convoy had stopped there, you can imagine the lines that formed in front of the settlement. We were supposed to stop only for 15 minutes. Almost none of us managed to use the great facilities offered, as we had to go back in the bus, to move on. I imagine that not many of you had the chance to see how a 50 buses convoy starts to move, but I can tell you that our vehicle got in motion after 30 minutes! Great, I was already hungry; I had nothing to eat because I did not bring any food into the bus, imagining that for 4 hours trip it is not necessary. Yes, but Egyptian hours last much longer: the total journey took about 8 or 9 normal hours. We had one more stop at a point, and then our driver managed to get lost from the convoy! They solved the dangerous desert problem by assigning a young man with a big gun to travel in the bus with us. I am sure that was a very effective way to protect a 40 tourist bus from desert thieves.
The Big Dam of Asswan, great tourist objective, was of such importance to me, that I was standing on it asking where it is. I’m not a very technical person; I imagine that others might have seen the beauty of an old stone dam, all grey and dirty, with some poles and wires spread around. Then we were taken to the Great Unfinished Obelisque: actually there was no monument; it was only a huge rock with a crack in it. The guide’s explanation was that when they tried to build the obelisque, the stone cracked and it was left unfinished (although I could have sworn that it was left unstarted). We all refused to climb on the precious monument, so we moved on towards the harbour, to take the ship for the Nile cruise.
D. The Nile Cruise and Valley of Kings
This was the best part of the trip. The ship was comfortable, with large open decks with a small pool and fitness facilities, and with that Internet connection facility which made it possible to do transactions online: even send money to Philippines, if so you wanted. The cabin was large enough to accommodate two people, it even had a nicely arranged corner with a table and two armchairs. It resembled very much to a hotel room. Keep in mind though that it was a 5 star ship, looking like 3 star to me.
But before getting on the ship, it was a really funny moment. At the docks, the ships were parked in parallel, in bunches of three or four ships. Ours was the third in the row, so we had to cross the other two ones in order to get to it. All passages were very narrow and we had a lot of luggage with us (for two weeks trip). We were all striving to move without falling into the water, between those ships, carrying that huge baggage on top of our heads. In the meantime, all the waiters on the ship were aligned at the door, smiling, saying welcome, but not doing even the slightest movement to help us with the luggage. Strange way of being polite, isn’t it? I’m sorry I have no pictures with those moments, as nobody was available to take some.
The cruise lasted four days. The ship was stopping from time to time and we could get down and visit some ancient temples. At some of them we stopped at night, and it was great, as the temples were illuminated. Pictures were hard to take though, as I’m no photographer but just an amateur.

The Karnak temple in Luxor is really impressive and it is so well preserved that even color paintings are still visible on some of the walls. We were told about this pharaoh who wanted to save money on building statues with this own representations, so he decided lo leave in place the statues of his predecessor, replacing only the name tables with his ones. How the historians discovered this trick? Very simply: they recognized the pharaoh wife’s statues as being of the wife of the first pharaoh.

The Temple of Isis is also fabulous, as it was carved directly in the rock of a mountain.
But the best of all was the Valley of the Kings, ancient Egypt’s huge cemetery. We took the effort of climbing on the hills and this paid off: the landscape was superb, the feeling was great, and we could see all over the valley; we were so high that people looked like colored ants.

Unfortunately, we had to go down running, as our guide was quite crazy: all our colleagues were already down there, heading for the bus, preparing to leave the spot.
This is the most unpleasant part of trips to such dangerous places: you are never left alone to spend as much time as you like in the places that inspire you. It is always like in the school camps: you have to stay in line, with the group, respect the schedule and meanwhile have some fun (if you still can).