Our coaster escaped the desert and into the city of Aswan. It is a beautiful city enriched with blessings from Nile. Aswan, like many other Egyptian cities, also has its share of archaeological sites, and one of it was our next stop.

Throughout the travelogs, you may have seen a couple of obelisks in the pictures of the several temples that I visited. Obelisks, colossal pillars with sharp tips piercing the skies, are a significant item in the school of Egyptology. Ancient Egyptians have a strict rule when it comes to creating things out of stone blocks. Many of the carved stone statues are built upon a very important rule - that they must be carved out of ONE solid piece of rock, under the basis that it should retain the spiritual energy that is to be contained within them.

Obelisks are no exception to this rule. Especially so since obelisks are as important as an entire temple complex itself. Erecting an obelisk is a grand achievement for any pharaoh, and many pharaohs have erected several obelisks to signify their divinity. Obelisks are built with the purpose of channeling energies from the sun-god, Ra.

In order to allow the energies to pass through efficiently, obelisks must be carved out of stone, and must remain one single solid block of rock in order to let the energy flow through uninterrupted. To illustrate this fact, our tour guide happily took us to a site that was the quarry of the Ancient Egyptians. In this quarry lay an unfinished obelisk, an important evidence that the structures of the Ancients were indeed built not by aliens, but by the hands of highly skilled men.

This particular obelisk was left unfinished because there was a crack in the middle of its structure. If you look carefully, you can see a straight sloping surface that is one side of the obelisk. From where I stood, there was not much to be seen, so we went up the walkway to get a better angle.

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Winter mornings bring about swift dawns, and in only a short time the dark starry night turned into a bright sunny day. After the burst tyre incident, our vehicle continued down the barren desert highway for about another hour before we reached the desert city of Abu Simbel.

The first sight that greeted us was a grand view of a lake in the Upper [South] Nile, Lake Nasser. It is a very large man-made lake, formed by holding the waters of the Nile at the Aswan Dam. In that way, it’s very similar to our very own Kenyir lake.

The entire temple complex was a huge one. We actually had to go around the temple to see the entrance and facade. When we got around, we were greeted with an astonishing view.

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Small Talk:
Here’s the much-delayed update of the Egypt Travelogs series, sorry for the long wait.

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After the tour of Kom Ombo, the ship departed and journeyed the whole night to the last city of the tour. At 2.30 AM, our ship docked at the port city of Aswan, and it was a very, very cold morning.

Despite the fact that Egypt is a desert country, our trip was during winter, and even if it doesn’t snow here, the morning air was still cold enough for a cup of steaming hot coffee to cool down in mere seconds. I exercised good judgment to have brought my thick socks and sneakers to keep my feet warm.

The plan for the day was for our group to join a convoy of buses, vans and coasters on a 3-hour drive across the bare Egyptian desert to the distant city of Abu Simbel. We were to head far South to the Upper Nile region, very near to the Egypt-Sudan borders. The convoy was to leave the Aswan port at 4 AM, and Mahmud, our tour guide, reminded us to be seated on the coaster by 3.15 AM the latest.

That morning, Malaysians could not have been more punctual. I was honestly surprised at the efficiency of our group, despite having seniors and children in the group, everyone was at the coaster doors by 3.00 AM. I was very impressed at how things have went so far. No delays, no missing itinerary items, no canceled events, nothing.

Up until that point, everything was going according to plan. It was all smooth and perfect. At least, until I smelt burning rubber at about 5 AM, and I was already half-asleep inside our coaster that was heading to Abu Simbel. There was a loud noise, and our vehicle came to a stop, and everyone was awakened by the shock. It didn’t take long for us to understand the situation.

Our coaster had a burst tyre.

In the middle of the Egyptian desert.

At 5 AM, in the dark of night.

On a freezing winter morning.

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Yeah, I know I’ve been dragging my legs to finish posting up my set of Egypt pictures. There’s still two more sets after this one, so I’ll try to finish them as soon as I can :p Luckily for me, I wrote down the events of each day as it passes in a book just for this purpose, might as well put that to good use yeah?

Anyway, back to the travelogs! Last post was about the cruise along the Nile. After a long day’s cruise, the boats made a stop at another temple site. From far, one could easily spot the sight of the temple of Kom Ombo.

We reached there quite early, around 3pm or so, and the tour wasn’t supposed to start until 5pm. This ‘leisure time’ is supposed to allow the tourists to tour the riverside bazaar and gently hint them to spend more money. A well-coordinated tourism strategy, I say.

Since I’ve had enough of bazaars and all, I decided to enjoy a nice quiet evening with a hot cup of tea at the top deck. Since most of the people are out shopping, now there aren’t that many people on board. It was so calm, even birds started coming down to snack.

At first they were quite afraid of me, but I thought of something that might work. Before we left Malaysia, I brought with me a pack of mixed Famous Amos cookies. I took a piece, crushed it into tiny little crumbs, and laid them down. The result can be seen below.

I woke up to a dark morning with the ships still docked at Edfu. After a hearty breakfast, I realised that there’s still some 2 hours before the ships were to depart. Since the air was pretty cool, and the sun was rather warm that morning, so I decided to go up to the top deck with a copy of Readers’ Digest that my mom brought from home.

Before I realised it, I fell asleep on the chair lulled by the songs of river birds and lively sounds of the morning Edfu neighbourhood. It was a short nap and after rubbing my eyes a little bit, I walked around, snapped a couple more pictures and then it was time for the ship to start moving again.

Everyone on board seem to be enjoying themselves, since the crew has set up the top deck cafe again, and it was a merry scene with children in the swimming pool, and seniors playing ping-pong, and people just leaning back enjoying the breeze and beautiful scenery of the blue, blue Nile.

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