Cairo to Aswan

Me getting ready for our camel ride to the Nubian village
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After meeting up with our travel group (23 of us all together) we met our tour leader Hamada. He gave us a break down of what we were going to be doing, and there were optional parts of the tour that you only did if you wanted to pay the extra, we signed up t o 3 of the extra t6hings as they all looked pretty good.  We were supposed to be leaving Cairo for Aswan by train, but the train was running on Egypt time and was very late so the company gave us the option of a bus instead which we took.

Henna tattoo in the village
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Aswan is located in the south of Egypt some 680 km (425 miles) south of Cairo, just below the Aswan Dam and Lake Nasser. Compared to Cairo and Luxor, Aswan is a far more relaxed, if smaller, alternative as a traveller's destination. Aswan is the smallest of the three major tourist cities based on the Nile. Being the furthest south of the three, it has a large population of Nubian people, mostly resettled from their homeland in the area flooded by Lake Nasser It was just over 15 hours to Aswan by bus; I think that is the longest bus ride I have ever been on!  Not recommended but the bus was quite new and it was only our group so we didn’t need to be worried about our gear.  When we arrived in Aswan we checked into our hotel and had some time to get cleaned up, then we headed for a short cruise on the Nile to a Nubian village where we had some time to swim in the Nile, which mark and I decided not to do, kind of dodgy, water is only really clean enough to swim in some parts, and the rest of the time you can get pretty sick, so we opted out.  We then took a camel ride in to the Nubian village and had a wee tour and a traditional dinner. I got a nice henna tattoo from one of the village woman there, don’t worry mom, it washes off.  The Nubians have open air rooms in the summer and closed top ones for the winter. This one family had a tank of alligators and Mark held one, it seemed pretty tame so that was good.  We then returned to Aswan for the night.

Mark riding his camel
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Nest day we got up at 330am for a 400am convoy to Abu Simbel to see the temples of Rameses II and his wife Nefertari. For most of the year, the bus convoys leave Aswan around 3:30am to avoid the searing desert heat for at least the outward journey. Abu Simbel is in Upper Egypt and was saved from the rising waters of Lake Nasser, growing behind the Aswan Dam, in a massive archaeological rescue plan sponsored by UNESCO in the 1960s.  We took convoys every time we took the bus for safety, that way all the buses traveled together.  At this point we were traveling in total desert area so the extra security was better. We also passed about 20 police check points every time we went anywhere.  Our tour guide always had to call them all ahead of time to give over all our info before going through.  The temples were amazing and the sunrise over the desert was something you truly need to see, was so nice.  It was about 40 in Abu Semple by about 9am so it was VERY warm, but at least we were not out in it in the heat of the day.  After seeing the temples we took the bus back to Aswan to get ready for our Nile cruise.