Skip to main content

Arriving in Aswan -- the second day

Image
By
An early morning pickup from the hotel with four boxes of breakfast arranged by our travel agent May Sedky of See Egypt.  Much quicker ride back to the airport as less traffic at 6 AM. The early morning light allowed us to see "the other side" of Cairo - crumbling slums much like the back side of the Kulri Bazaar Road in our former home in Mussoorie, India. Exteriors of even tony apartment buildings show the wear due to temperature extremes and natural sand blasting.
The Cairo airport is modern, efficient and the EgyptAir employees polite.  Our travel agent escorted us to security, quite a nice service when you are blurry and in a new airport.  An easy domestic flight got us to Aswan by late morning.  We were met by the local See Egypt agent who extolled us with the benefits of the smaller, quieter Aswan over the noisy, crowded city of Cairo. We arrived at our boat, the Swiss Movenpick Radamis II, with time for some sun up on the deck, and meeting our fellow travelers.  Fortified by lunch in L'Orangerie, we began our tour of the day by bus to see the unfinished obelisk. The "needle" was huge and carved from a single piece of granite, but was discarded after a fissure was discovered in the stone.
The Unfinished Obelisk
 Our guide told us that to this day, it is a mystery as to how a solid piece of granite could have been unearthed and moved to its site outside a temple.  As we left, our tour guide, Hossam, advised us to "walk like a camel" looking straight ahead through the gauntlet of very persistent souvenir vendors.  It worked.
Hossam explains walking like a camel

Our next stop was the High Dam of Aswan, and at first sight is clearly large, but its size is most apparent when we view the tremendous lake that gathers behind it.  Hoover Dam is taller and much more impressive because of its sheer height and verticality. It is a simple wall of concrete that reinforces our iconic idea of a "dam." Aswan Dam is a mix of earth fill and concrete, so it appears more as a part of the landscape, almost a natural feature - but its straight lines and the myriad silver electrical towers give away its true function as the primary supplier of electricity to the entire country.
We then went by Nubian owned small boats to the Philae Island temple – full of defaced carvings in the rock of Egyptian gods, goddesses and hieroglyphics. Even tell tale carvings of the Copts were evident in the alter and crosses carved later made in the sandstone walls. This temple was moved a short distance from an island submerged by the lake created by the High Dam. 
The coffee table book our travel agent gave us added that the hieroglyphics for the name Cleopatra found on an obelisk on this island were instrumental to unlocking the code of hieroglyphics made by French scholar Jean Francois Champollion in the 1800’s. Unfortunately, the obelisk is no longer on the island but supposedly graces a private yard in southern England.
Cole & Chris at Aswan Dam
We went back at dark, weary from the first day of the tour and the travel that brought us all here. We enjoyed dinner then all went to bed early in preparation for another day’s exploration of Egypt.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Where we are working now

By
ISG Jubail School is the Anglo-American school for this area: Jubail is one of two planned industrial cities in Saudi Arabia, given a special royal commission for development and planning.  Our district, the seven schools of International Schools Group, runs the school in the other industrial city -- Yanbu -- as well.   Jubail is on the east coast, between Dhahran and Kuwait.  Our nearby "big city" is the tri-city metropolis of Dhahran-Khobar-Dammam, where all the big shopping malls and quaint old markets are, along with the central 3 schools of our district, where Coleman attends high school.  ISG Jubail has 410 students -- an average of 2 homerooms for each grade, K-10.  Class size varies, up to 22.  I have 12 in my required course "Computers & Information Management"; Barb has 12 students in her first-grade class.   Most of the teaching staff come from the U.S., some from the Commonwealth.   Several teachers are wives of engineers an...
Post a Comment
Read more

Riding the Bus often

By
From 201010 Saudi scenes It is ironic that this land of cheap gasoline has so much group transport -- buses. From 201010 Saudi scenes Our housing compound has a Toyota-Coaster bus that takes some to/from school (we usually go earlier and return later, on a similar bus that the school provides). Driver Yahya takes residents on the 90-minute trip down to the Big City shopping every Thursday morning. The above picture shows our group one Thursday, usually going to Ikea or the new Lulu's Hypermarket , or the Dhahran Mall. Coleman rides a different bus every day to and from school -- usually 100 minutes there, 80 minutes back.  His bus is evidently an old tourist bus, usually comfortable but a bit dusty.  The air-conditioning usually works too well.  I've ridden it with him several times, to attend business meetings at the district office. From 201010 Saudi scenes There he is, at 5:45am every morning, at the start of the bus run. Fortunately only about 20 stu...
2 comments
Read more

Reservoir of European Youth, Parliament

By
 A few days ago I walked to the nearby Pasteleira Park, planning to visit the city museum at the Reservoir.  Walking through the park I noticed a large group of young people gathered in a circle, engaged in team-building activities.   My days in education attuned me to the spectacle and piqued my interest, so I sat on a nearby bench and watched as a succession of enthusiastic students ran to the center and started an activity, which all the others joined enthusiastically.  What sort of group would this be?  A typical high school class would include a portion of disinterested teens, and others only half-heartedly participating.  This crowd was unanimous in their excitement.   I also noted that the leaders were speaking in English, though the breeze muffled the words.  I walked around, found a couple of older participants on the side, with official-looking lanyards, and asked:  this was an activity of European Youth Parliament , simil...
Post a Comment
Read more