Cruising on the Nile: Luxor and Aswan (Part 1)

Over the Thanksgiving weekend I opted to take another AUC/ALI sponsored trip. The ALI (Arabic Language Institute) organizes trips throughout Egypt in a highly efficient manner and usually they so much fun that one doesn’t even have to try to have a good time. This was trip #3 of 5 in my traveling while abroad.

One of the better things about the ALI is that it takes into consideration that the study abroad students will have a tough time adapting to Egypt and the rigorous intensive Arabic program that it has. With the students in class for about 5 hours a day, 3 more hours for commuting to school, topped off with a good dose of homework each night, the real study abroad experience of seeing the Egyptian culture and its history is quiet limited. However, it is my opinion that students would be able to see the culture and use the language more, if they didn’t have to spend 3 hours, or more sometimes, on a bus, 6 days a week; a little counter productive I think.

The trip to Luxor and Aswan only cost me about $400 and it included, all transportation and flights to and from Cairo; which were a godsend compared to traveling on the train, along with food, entrance fees to all the sites, and the Nile cruise ship that we would be staying on.

I became very excited to go on this trip because I was finally going to see the Egypt that exists in all of the dreams everyone wanting to visit Egypt growing up. I was proud of myself for choosing to come to Egypt. I knew that I was going to see the culture that thrived along the Nile for thousands of years, whom had in their possession the technology to build and develop their society to an advanced level. More advanced than many other modern cultures and societies today.

Our first stop was to Aswan, which is towards the southern part of Egypt, about 300 miles north the Sudanese-Egyptian border. We flew from Cairo to Aswan on a wonderful and clean Egypt Air flight, that only took about 2 hours from Cairo, and as I mentioned earlier is much more convenient than the 14 hour train ride, if the train didn’t derail or worse enroute. In Aswan we were to visit the High Dam, Abu Simble, Elephant Island, the Nubian Museum and also board our cruise boat. We landed and the weather in Aswan was marvelous, it was about 83 degrees with no wind and the sun was shining. I could instantly feel warmth of the city, and being a summer person within a heartbeat my mood perked up significantly and I was ready to be a tourist, well partially; coming from Tahoe and Reno I don’t like tourists…


The High Dam is huge dam, but its design makes it less impressive than other dams that I have seen in my life, such as the Hoover, Lake Powell, and Bonneville dams. The High Dam is thick in its width, and it is tall, hence the High Dam name, but as you can see from the picture, it height is spread out over gradual steps, and the slope of the face of the dam is very shallow. I believe the reason for this is to be to give the dam the strength to withstand the massive force exerted upon it by Lake Nasser, which is now the worlds largest man made lake and extends the 300 miles or so from the High Dam into Sudan. However, the beauty of the dam comes not from it size or design, but from the importance of it existence in Egypt, and the role it played in the international political systems during the Cold War between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.

The dam’s role in Egypt was to stop the annual cyclical flooding that would destroy towns and farms that sat along the Nile River each year and killed thousands of people each time. Instead, the dam regulates the flooding and as an upside provides a constant year round supply of water that can be used to irrigate the Nile valley and provide for three agricultural growing periods each year, instead of just one before the dam was built. This constant water supply also is a contributing factor in the population explosion that Egypt has faced, as now about 60+ million people (maybe as much as 80 million) live in the Nile Valley alone.

The role the High Dam played in the international community was a turning point in the U.S.’s relationship with the Middle East, both then and now, with the Socialist Nasser regime in 1956, and more importantly the efforts to stop the communist expansion of the U.S.S.R. President Nasser of Egypt was looking to propel Egypt into the modern western world through a large variety of government subsidized programs which included developing a large agricultural base to export goods to the world through the building of the High Dam. However, Nasser did not have the funding to so and asked the U.S. for financial assistance to build the dam. The U.S. refused to give the money to Egypt as a result of Nasser nationalizing the Suez Canal. The result of this refusal gave the U.S.S.R. and opportunity to gain a footing in the Middle East as they sent money and advisors to Egypt to construct the High Dam. This allowed for a Soviet influence and arms trade to develop in the Middle East, until President Sadat kicked them out in the 80’s. After the dam was completed the U.S.S.R. built a large monument of friendship to Egypt at the site of the high dam in the shape of a lotus flower, but to me, it looks like a giant signal or temple to aliens, like in the movie Contact, and is probably more impressive looking when seen from space as communists were never known for their style. See picture below.

However, the best part of this dam was to see my first Nile crocodile! In the Lake Nasser side of the dam is where all of the old Nile crocs live, and we saw a “Big Mother!” as Steve Irwin would say, swimming along the dam waiting for something to fall in. My friend Graham and I were trying to coax our 5’1” friend Laurie to approach the water’s edge, so that we could get a better look at the croc. We were confident that we were able to pull her out of harms way quick enough to get a picture. Oh and to save her too….;)

Abu Simble

Visiting Abu Simble was a very long journey from Aswan, but is probably in the top 2 sites to see in all of Egypt after Luxor. In Abu Simble is the large temple of Ramses the 2nd. This temple and about 11 others, not including the thousands of discovered and undiscovered graves and temples of the Nubian kingdom, were to be drowned in water as Lake Nasser filled up after the completion of the High Dam. Under what I think is the largest and best example of international cooperation ever, the UN (UNESCO) and 35 countries from all over the world realized the importance of the Ramses the 2nd Temple and the 11 others in the area south of the High Dam, and a massive effort went into place to save these sites from being lost forever. However, the same effort was not put into saving the Nubian sites and temples, so they now lie at the bottom of the Lake. In the case of Abu Simble (Ramses the 2nd) UNESCO cut up the temple into thousands of pieces, each weighing anywhere from 1 to 10 tons, and piece by piece reassembled them in perfect unison about 300ft higher up the mountain they were carved into, so that they would now be located on the beach of the new Lake Nasser, instead of beneath its waters.

The magnificence of Ramses the 2nd’s temple is breathtaking. This temple is one of the largest and most detailed temples ever built by man, and the original paint, hieroglyphics and sculptures, are still in amazing condition. When visiting this temple, you walk around the mountain from behind and come the face of the temple along the waters edge, and you stop instantly in front of what lies before you. Few times in my life have I paused like this, but really this is something that gives me hope in the art and scale of creation that humans are capable of. In addition to think that this temple was cut up and put back together again. This temple was built 2500+ years ago and still looks this good. I can promise that not many of our current structures will last this long and let alone look this good!

After taking around 200 pictures of the temple, inside and out, it was time to head back to Aswan. I hope that one day, I will be able to visit this temple again, as it is well worth a second trip to Egypt, well 3rd for me ☺

Next post coming soon!