I was surprised when I went back to look at our Life’s To Do List and did not find an item related to a Nile River cruise. That just seems like something that should have been on our list. Even though it wasn’t on the list, it’s something I have thought about in the past and I have wanted to experience it, so that was next on our plan. Sandy did quite a bit of research to find the ship that we’d like best and that would work with our dates (there are about 75 different ships that do Nile River cruises). She found our itinerary and ship through an online agency called Luxor and Aswan Travel and they turned out to be fantastic. They coordinated everything for our five-day, four-night journey from Luxor up the Nile to Aswan. We spent four nights on the Blue Shadow – Saturday night was overnight in Luxor, Sunday night was up the river in Edfu, and Monday and Tuesday nights were in Aswan.
The ship carries a hundred passengers or so and has five decks. Deck one has the restaurant – breakfast, lunch, and dinner are served buffet style, and the food is good and there is a lot of variety. You also have the option of ordering anytime off a small room service menu for an extra charge. Deck two is the reception area and has a nice bar area, although we didn’t spend much time there because the weather was so nice. Decks three and four are filled with cabins. They all have large windows that open to the outside and deck four also has a small massage/spa area. The cabins are comfortable – king size bed, seating area, television that usually has a signal even when sailing with about 14 channels, a safe, closet space, and a bathroom that is a little larger than what we have found on larger cruise ships.
The top deck is the sun deck and it has a couple of bars, a pool, a small workout area with free weights, a rowing machine, and stationary bike, and then there is plenty of seating – both in the sun and covered. That was our favorite place to hang out.
The staff on the ship was fantastic – very friendly and helpful. One example, we asked the pastry chef if one of the desserts on display was basbousa. He indicated no. Later, while we were at our table a server brought us two warm pieces of basbousa! As a part of our package, we had an assigned tour guide who was with us for the first four days. We skipped an optional tour on day five and so Mahmoud was able to head home to be with his family after our sightseeing on the fourth day. Mahmoud was great!
We started on Saturday morning with a pickup at Golden Mountain Villa by Mahmoud and Salaam our driver a little after 8am. Because we were staying on the west bank, we did the west bank sightseeing in the morning and then went to the ship. People staying on the east bank would have checked into the ship and then done their east bank sightseeing on Saturday. Our first stop was the Colossi of Memnon. These statues marked the entry point to Amenhotep III’s mortuary temple complex – he ruled Egypt from 1390BC to 1353BC. If they were standing instead of sitting, they would be around 80 feet tall. Archaeologists from all over the world continue to do excavation work at this site, and they continue to find new statues and artifacts from the ancient temple.
From the Colossi of Memnon, we drove to the Valley of the Kings. There were a lot of people here and understandably so. This is where the kings from the New Kingdom were buried. The New Kingdom covered nearly 500 years from 1500BC to 1000BC. We visited four tombs while there – Ramesses IV, Ramesses IX, Merenptah, and Tutankhamun. Each tomb was beautifully painted. Some were longer than others to reach the burial chamber. The highlight for me was seeing the mummy of Tutankhamun after getting so familiar with the artifacts found by Howard Carter when his tomb was discovered more than 100 years ago. We speculate that the reason King Tut’s mummy remains in the Valley of the Kings and not in one of the museums is because it draws so many visitors to the Valley of the Kings and the entry fees produce a significant income for the government (the Egyptian people are very smart!).
Following the Valley of the Kings, we stopped at Hatshepsut’s Mortuary Temple. She ruled for 21 years in the early part of the New Kingdom and is one of the strongest female rulers from Ancient Egypt. There were only six or seven throughout history – Cleopatra being the last. This temple is actually built into the mountain.
After Hatshepsut’s Temple, we went to the Blue Shadow to get checked in, have lunch, and settle into our home on the water for the next several days. One of the most interesting things we learned today is that they expect there to be around 5,000 tombs on the west bank and only ten percent have been discovered. Archaeologists from around the world continue the excavation work here every single day.
Sunday was our day to explore the east bank temples. The first destination was the Karnak Temple complex. It is huge – one of the largest religious complexes in the world. It was one of the most important temples of the New Kingdom. The annual festival of rebirth started each year from this temple when the king would be taken from this complex along the Avenue of Sphinxes to the Luxor Temple. [Side note: Avenue of Sphinxes is one of Sandy’s favorite sites in Egypt. If we had been feeling 100% and had the time, we would have walked it from end to end – 1.5 miles.]
The festival was a huge celebration for the people of Luxor and would be two weeks filled with celebrations and debauchery. We appreciated Mahmoud’s style – he would take us to a destination and share the overview of information with us and then let us explore on our own for periods of time.
After Karnak we went to Luxor Temple and explored this one. This is a much smaller temple but still filled with interesting history and stories carved on the walls.
We were back on the Blue Shadow at 12:45pm and set sail on the Nile around 3pm. We were thrilled – here we are in Africa, sitting on the sun deck and sailing the River Nile. We felt a lot of gratitude. We enjoyed teatime on the sun deck and then went down to the bar to read. We heard a bunch of yelling going on and I looked out one of the windows to see a small boat with two young men tied to ours. I thought we were being taken over by pirates. It turned out that they were running a market on the river. They were selling gallabiyahs, the ubiquitous Egyptian robes worn by men and women. They were yelling at passengers up on the sun deck. The first two men tied to our boat twice attempted to throw their product all the way up to the sun deck, but they couldn’t make it and lost both pieces in the water. They eventually went back to retrieve their products. A new set of young men pulled up and they convinced their customers to come down to deck two where we were. With the windows open, they would toss the product into the boat for the customers to evaluate. Eventually the group on the boat decided on four gallabiyahs for a cost of around $35. With business complete, they untied and probably went to find a new ship of customers or floated down the river back to their homes, which had to be many miles downriver by the time they were finished with our ship. It was totally fascinating and something neither of us had ever heard about.
We woke up Monday morning in Edfu and took a horse and carriage to the Edfu Temple. This temple is one of the best-preserved temples from ancient Egypt. It’s actually pretty young as it was built in Ptolemaic times – its construction started around 2,250 years ago. The temple is dedicated to the god, Horus. The battle between Horus and Seth is foundational to the development of kingship and cosmic order in Egyptian history and belief. I started listening to a podcast called The History of Egypt before we came to Egypt and the Horus/Seth story was covered in one of the early episodes (very interesting), so this was of particular interest to me.
Back on the ship, we relaxed, napped, read, watched the scenery go by (I actually was lazy and laid in bed while Sandy described the scenery as we sailed by), and hung out on the sun deck until we pulled up at our next temple, Kom Ombo. This one is right at the docks so it is just a short walk.
This temple is rare in that it is symmetrical and it is dedicated to two different gods – Sobek and Horus the Elder. Sobek is the crocodile god associated with fertility and creation. Horus the Elder is a sky and kingship deity. Kom Ombo is about 100 years newer than Edfu. While here, we also visited the crocodile museum, which has 15 or so mummified crocodiles. It’s small and efficient. We covered the temple and the museum in about an hour and we were back on the ship at 5:30pm. We hung out on the sun deck, enjoyed dinner, and got to bed early.
We arrived in Aswan on Monday night, so when we woke up on Tuesday morning, we had breakfast and started our sightseeing with Mahmoud at 9am. Our first stop was the Unfinished Obelisk. There is a large granite quarry in Aswan where most of the obelisks from around Egypt were created. The red granite quality is very high here. The quarry has an unfinished obelisk that is interesting to see as it is evident how much work went into creating these monuments and then of course transporting them down the river to places like Luxor and Giza. The unfinished obelisk would have ended up being the largest one created, but it was abandoned because of cracks in the monument.
After the obelisk we drove out to see the Aswan Dam, the older one built in 1902 and the first effort to control the flow of the Nile and then continued out to the High Dam, which was finished in 1970. These are tremendous engineering projects and resulted in an increase in agricultural yields of 30% for Egypt. The dams created Lake Nasser, one of the largest manmade lakes in the world upriver of the dams. This control of the Nile caused an entire population of Nubian people (around 40,000) to be displaced and the government found new homes for them – many in the Aswan area. After the dams, our last stop with Mahmoud was the Philae Temple – another totally interesting monument. This one required a boat to get to the island on which it sits. It’s a beautiful temple and it is dedicated to Isis, the mother of Horus. The complex is amazing, but what is even more amazing might be the story of its survival. The construction of the first dam put the temple underwater for part of the year. The construction of the High Dam was going to put it underwater permanently. UNESCO and many countries came together to save the temple. They developed a site on a neighboring island that was higher in elevation, cut the temple complex into nearly 50,000 pieces, and relocated the complex to the higher island. The process was completed between 1972 and 1980. Incredible and a demonstration of the kinds of things that can be done when we work together on hard problems. Loved this story and the experience of being there.
We went back to the ship and said our goodbyes to Mahmoud. On the ship we had a chance to chat more with Alan (and eventually his wife Annysa). They are a young couple from Los Angeles on an amazing 38-day trip to many places on this side of the Atlantic. They are on a fascinating journey and we hope to stay in touch with them because we can tell they are going to continue to have interesting experiences to share. Later, we walked into town to explore the bazaar. Aswan’s bazaar is much larger than we expected. Along the way we got hijacked by a dishonest man claiming to be the chef from our ship. He wasn’t, but we followed him anyway to a spice shop and he and his spice shop friend tried to get us to buy a bunch of spices. Knowing how we travel, you can imagine how bad we needed a bunch of spices – we didn’t, so we were happy to leave with him not getting anywhere near what he was hoping for from us. I did tip him the equivalent of $4 and in hindsight I am kicking myself at even that. I don’t like dishonesty! Back on the ship, we sat on the sun deck and enjoyed a bottle of Egyptian white wine (same winery as what we had back at Le Steak restaurant in Cairo), toasted a great trip on the Nile, and then had a wonderful conversation with Lily and Maggie, a daughter and mother traveling for ten days from New York. We really enjoyed getting to know the two of them.
This morning was our last morning to wake up on the Blue Shadow. We had breakfast and then waited in the reception area until our transportation came to get us a little before 10:30 to take us to our next home, the King Kassem Nubian Guest House in the southern part of Aswan.
It was nice to be able to check in as early as we wanted to (although Omar, who greeted us probably disagreed – we woke him up and he just wanted to go back to sleep). We settled in and then we walked to the Nubian Museum to learn about Nubia and the Nubian people. Nubia is an area basically from Aswan in southern Egypt to a little south of Khartoum in Sudan. They have a distinct culture, history, and language and the museum does a nice job of explaining their history and their culture. I enjoyed the experience. We were hungry, so we walked a few minutes north to the Old Cataract Hotel. This is a beautiful historic hotel that opened in 1899. It’s where Agatha Christie (amongst other luminaries) stayed and where she wrote some of Death on the Nile. They charge roughly $30 per person to visit, but that $30 goes toward food purchased, so it worked out because that is what we were hoping for. We shared a Greek salad, Sandy had penne pasta with red sauce, and I had a club sandwich. The brownie we had for dessert was excellent.
We then walked around the property to explore its views and history through pictures. After the hotel we walked home, stopping at Carrefour to pick up a few groceries. We watched an episode of Frasier because we had decent WiFi again for the first time in a few days and then went to bed. It was a wonderful experience overall for our Nile River cruise!
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