Aswan: A Nubian Village, temple of Philea, a Felucca boat ride & Abu Simbel

Day two in Egypt and we wake up at 3:30 am to take our Uber to the Cairo airport. It’s time to travel 12 hours south of Cairo along the Nile to Aswan. We speed up the trip by taking a flight instead of driving. We read that many choose the overnight train instead of flying but that is $100 US per person, Jeff is a pretty light sleeper and probably wouldn’t sleep well on an overnight train so I think it’s best to fly. Some say it saves the price of a hotel but a hotel in Aswan is only $40 a night, so it didn’t seem worth it. I was happy to find airline tickets for $70 each so that seemed like a “win-win”. We talked to other budget travelers who took the day train for only $11 per person but that sounded grueling to be on a train for 12 hours!

Our flight went smoothly and I always enjoy chatting it up with my local travelers. There was a couple in their 30’s on our flight, they are from Chicago but originally from Romania! The husband had a Romanian accent but the wife had lost most of her accent in the 11 years spent in America. It was interested to hear their perspective on life in America and growing up in Romania. The wife was on the cautious side and they were vegans, Romanian vegans. She had booked her entire trip through a travel agent because she was worried about safety. She thought I was brave to be making my own arrangements and staying in Airbnbs! It made me slightly concerned that I should be more concerned. They were a nice couple and I really enjoyed talking with them, we would continue to see them from Cairo to Aswan to Luxor.

After the flight we disembarked our plane and boarded a bus to take us to the main terminal. On the shuttle I talked with an affluent looking couple in their 60’s or 70’s. Their appearance “screamed” money and she told me they were on a cruise and they would continue on their cruise aboard a luxury ship on the Nile. They had been whisked everywhere in style from their drivers to their 5 star hotel. Of course they didn’t need to scramble all over Cairo dodging traffic looking for an ATM machine because their fancy hotel had one inside. But they had gone to the outdoor market so I’m sure they couldn’t dodge the reality of a Cairo completely. It’s interesting to see all of the different ways people travel. We appear to be somewhere in the middle. Not five star and not backpack style.

We had arrived in Aswan. Our Airbnb had offered to pick us up at the airport for $25 but I was told it was easy to get a taxi. I thought it would be only $10 so I “cheaped out” and declined the offer. When we arrived at the airport we knew we would be accosted as soon as we stepped out for a taxi. I think Jeff was ready to say “yes” to the first person who offered after being weary of saying “no” so many times. Well, he said “yes” to a young man who seemed a little surprised he actually “caught” a tourist! He told us the amount in Egyptian pounds. What!? It’s the same price our Airbnb had quoted us! 

Basically I saved no money and had the stress of getting a young (possibly unlicensed) driver! We haggled a little but lost the battle. He lead his weary and beaten down passengers to his taxi. Wait! What is this?!? I don’t even know what kind of car this is! Is it a hearse? Is it a hybrid child of an El Camino and a Pinto circa 1970’s!? Oh my gosh, does it have leopard print plush seat covers? I’m going to die. I’m really not happy about this. “Just get in” Jeff says as I stare at the jallopy with my mouth gapping open and my eyes large with disbelief. I get in. I’m really upset about this. Why, oh why, did I not allow our Airbnb person to pick us up? They would have had a nice sign with our name on it as we walked out of the airplane … and a nice car, the owner of the bnb is from Italy for crying out loud! Oh, how nice Italy sounds right now. Why did I ever leave my little villa? 

These are the thoughts in my mind as I travel down the desert roads with my arms folded sitting in the leopard printed seat of the jalopy. Our driver is trying to chat with me but I’m not in the mood. I sit and pout. Even Jeff tries to make light of the situation and starts to sing some song. That’s really not like him, to be singing, without music, he must know I’m about to freak out….

Well, I hold it together. I can’t tell you much about my first impression of Aswan. I think they tried to make it pretty by plantIng some bright pink Bouganvilla along the road. There are also some attempts at planting rows of palm trees. I normally would have appreciated this effort but my “Pollyanna” rose colored glasses are sitting a little crooked on my nose at the moment. 

Our young driver is Nubian, it is the race of people from Aswan. They are ancient descendants of Cush, a nation of black people in Egypt. They are a colorful people, known for their brightly colored houses and boats. They like bright floral and whimsical patterns…everywhere. From the tassels hanging from the roof of the boat to the bright paintings on the outside of the houses. They are also gentle, I learned later on, when they aren’t trying to sell you a boat ride or taxi service or trinket. The men wear the long white shirt down to their toes, one piece, like a dress. It fits well with the dusty desert environment. Our young Nubian driver tries to point things out to us in his limited English and tried to do a good job as a guide but I still wasn’t feeling it. I’m not ready to laugh about this yet.

Soon we arrive in Aswan. He drops us off at the KFC. (Yes, Kentucky Fried Chicken) I was told by the Airbnb that we would need to cross the Nile river on a ferry boat to get to our bnb. I had read all of the reviews. Everyone said it was as easy as crossing the street (presumably a street in America with a crosswalk, not a Cairo Street). Since I am the planner of all of these details, Jeff was not aware that we would need to cross the river to get to our bnb. Now it’s his turn to be traumatized. So that means it’s my turn to be the calm one, I have snapped out of my funk primarily because I survived my drive in the jalopy and didn’t die in the desert in a leopard print car. 

I tell Jeff it’s ok, the ferry is right here, it’s easy and only costs a few cents to cross. We are standing on the side of the road with our luggage in tow, we are sitting ducks for all of the taxi hawkers. All we want to do is get off of the main road so we aren’t so visible. Everytime we think someone is scamming us they really are the ones trying to honestly help us. Everytime we think someone is being nice they are actually lying to us, go figure. 

So after a little jostling around we walk down to the ferry. It’s a simple boat that carries the inhabitants of Elephantine Island back and forth each day. As we wait to embark we watch little school children no older than four years old get off of the ferry. They are Nubian and so adorable, each one has a little flower tag on their shirt and each one holds on to the other one as they get off the boat. Their teachers are helping them, these women are wearing full hajib (the garment that covers a woman from the top of her head to her toes). This little cuteness overload helps calm our nerves as we enter the boat. A few minutes later and we are on the other side, Elephantine Island. 

This is a Nubian Village, we get off the boat and wheel our luggage through the dirt lanes of the Village. Jeff says “why are we staying on an Island anyway….?” As he looks around pulling his luggage through the dirt. “I read all of the reviews, everyone says you should stay in a Nubian Village on Elephantine Island…” I say to him as I trail behind him pulling my luggage through the dirt. 

We have to walk across the island about 100 feet to our Airbnb, the Nubian Lotus. It is run by a family, he is from Elephantine Island and she is from Italy. They have two sons, 8 and 10. As we walk we feel as though we have left Egypt and entered Blue Fields Nicaragua, or Belize or Jamaica. Somewhere tropical, island and remote. The first inhabitants to greet us were a mixed group of goats that were bleeting and running, playing and eating garbage. There were mango trees and little brightly painted houses. The men were wearing the long shirts and the women in full black Muslim attire. One old lady was sweeping her porch as she peered back at me from the slit in her hajib.

I felt comfortable here, it was a quiet and simple life they led. Soon we were approaching the Nubian Lotus, a white four story building with bright blue trim. A kind neighbor man called out to the owner who was on the rooftop, he greeted us and came down to let us in. Soon Marta (the Italian wife) was coming around the corner, she greeted us and showed us to our room. It was simple, clean and welcoming. We put our things down and climbed to the rooftop, this is where they serve breakfast and dinner. It had a beautiful view of the Nile River and the botanical garden island across the water. I looked down and could see the vegetable garden where they grew their own produce.

The owners offer to cook a dinner for us for $10 each. So we place our orders for dinner that night. I ask for the grilled Nile fish bbq and Jeff orders the “Tagine” that is vegetables and meat cooked in a clay pot. The husband is a very kind and gentle man, he warmly gives us advice on traveling to Philea, the ancient Egyptian Roman temple in a nearby island. This trip also requires a taxi so I ask him if we should be concerned about which taxi to take, because our first one was in an old car and I wasn’t sure he was licensed. The Nubian owner of the bnb just smiled at me and said “no, don’t worry, it’s fine”. I learned later that all the Nubians are practically related and they all know each other in a warm friendly network. Our young driver was the son or cousin or nephew of everyone else. 

So we leave our little bnb and walk back across the sand, through the mango trees and past the goats to cross the ferry again to the other side. Once we step back up to the Main Street of Aswan we are ready to take a taxi. We actually feel pretty happy to give someone the business they so desperately want. A taxi rolls by and Jeff motions for him to stop. He practically comes to a screeching halt. This taxi looks nice, like the taxis I wish I had gotten at the airport instead of the jalopy. But as I climb inside I see the same leopard print seat covers. Ok, so that’s just a “thing” here. We were told by our bnb that the cost of the taxi to Philea should be 350 Egyptian pounds ($18). You have to negotiate the price before climbing in. We say “350 for return trip, ok” he says “370” and for some reason Jeff agrees. I guess he thought the extra 20 was only $1, but still, it’s the principle. He agrees to wait for us the hour and a half that we will be in the Philea Temple. This is how it works apparently. You negotiate the price, they drive you there and back and wait for you too. 

So we arrive and next we must get into a boat that will carry us to Philea. You also have to negotiate the price. We were previously told 200 ($10) is the maximum we should pay for our boat and driver for both of us. We try to negotiate this but get some resistance from a young Nubian in his long beige dress. An older Nubian man sitting in the boat in his long white dress tires of the back and forth and motions for us to come for the price we have set. The young man thought he could get more out of his victim but the experienced older man could recognize when a traveler had been well informed. 

We get on his boat and he drives us to the island where the Philea is located. It is beautiful to cruise down this section of the Nile, there are large red rocks that look like the landscape of Utah or Arizona. Palm trees dot the banks of the river and the sky is hazy from the dusty desert. It looks like “picture perfect” Egypt, complete with our Nubian boat and driver. We pull up to the temple complex and get out of the boat. The entrance fee is $10 each. 

Philea isn’t as old as the pyramids. Egyptian history is broken up in Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom. This is the New Kingdom, it is the period right before and during the time when Rome took over in Egypt. It dates back to 380-362 BC but was also worked on during the time of the Ceasars, such as Augustus and Herodian. It was a temple dedicated to Isis and is a huge stone temple full of Egyptian hieroglyphs and bas-relief carvings larger that life. It was built by Pharoah Nectonebo of the 13 dynasty and last of the native Pharoahs. 

Philea was moved piece by piece and relocated to higher ground when the construction of the high dam was underway. Otherwise it would have been under water. In some areas of the temple you can find that the hieroglyphics were scratched off, this may have been during the Christian period in 100 AD when the Christians fled persecution in Rome and fled here to Egypt. They often took up lodging inside of the Egyptian monuments but were offended by the Egyptian and Roman worship of many gods so they scratched some out. You can also find graffiti from the 1920’s, even back then someone wanted to carve their name and date over two thousand year old artifacts.

After our little stroll through thousands of years of history and engineering feats we stopped and were chatting it up with an Australian couple in their 20’s who were on a four month tour of the Middle East. As we were comparing notes and enjoying western conversation we were approached by our Nubian boat driver in his long white dress. He said “It’s been an hour, it’s time to go”. We felt like we had been scolded by our father for missing curfew and had to follow him in shame. No, the truth is we were ready to go and he was right, we had negotiated an hour wait with him. 

So we climbed back into his boat and cruised back to our waiting taxi driver on the other side. This all happened quite leisurely and enjoyably. Our young taxi driver tried every attempt to sell us another tour somewhere but we needed time to regroup. Jeff went to pay but didn’t have exact change so the 370 Egyptian pound turned into 300. Jeff was peeved that he wouldn’t give change so he said “that’s it my friend, if you don’t have change there will be nothing else, no more taxi rides and no boat ride later today” ( there had been some discussion about taking a felucca ride later that evening and of course our taxi driver “knew a guy”.).But as Jeff climbed out of the taxi the hunter became to prey as our taxi driver lost out on future earnings. It’s all a game of who can outsmart who.

 But now we were dumped off back on the Main Street of Aswan, in the heat of the day without a clear idea of what to do next. That’s never a good idea to be two hapless tourists standing at the side of the main road blinking dumbly into the sunlight. Soon we were accosted by everyone trying to give us a taxi ride, a boat ride, a guide, a trinket…yikes! Where can we duck into? I suggest we cross the river to the quiet Elephantine Island and walk on that side, possibly up to the fancy hotel at the end of the island for a little reprieve. Jeff is opposed to the idea for some reason and wants to stay on the honking, traffic filled, hawkers side of the city. He says “I just want to walk, maybe get a coffee and try to break this money up into smaller change. We start walking but I am interested in a felucca (Egyptian sail boat) ride at sunset. That’s in two hours. I am curious if I can  negotiate a ride for 100 Egyptian pounds ($5) for an hour. I read that you could get one for that price. Of course they will quote you much higher and Jeff doesn’t believe they will give you an hour sail boat ride for $5. 

So that’s the problem, if they are offering you a service and you don’t want it, you can keep walking, eyes straight ahead and usually they will give up after maybe 3-4 attempts. But if you are interested and you look sideways at them, or hesitate for a second or heaven forbid start to engage them in pricing it’s on like Donkey Kong. 

Well this is what happened. We are walking along without clear directions, it’s hot, bright sunlight, traffic, beeping horns and hawkers trailing us shouting out enticements. I hesitate and show interest in a felucca. Now I have a very large Nubian man with glasses taped with masking tape and a long flowing dress trailing me, intensely negotiating with me. I have a tired and frustrated husband looking straight ahead and leaving me in the dust. What to do? What to do? The Nubian man doesn’t want me out of his clutches and my husband is not standing for anymore ridiculousness. I finally shake loose of my Nubian boat driver and run after my husband. He makes his way to the spice market but we are too frazzled and tired to enjoy it. Finally we stumble into the McDonalds. Never have I loved the sanctuary of a cool, air conditioned McDonalds so much. We order two hot fudge Sundays and sit down with a view of the Nile and the Felucca boats drifting by effortlessly.

We stay in this sanctuary long enough to regroup. It took an hour and the addition of a fish filet, large fries and super large fizzy coke, with ice, to regroup sufficiently. None of our experience in Italy has ever driven us to find solace in a fish filet and coke before. Wow, we have sunk to all new levels of Americaness. Egypt can do that to you.

Ok, we were ready to face the world again. We had taken the time to count our money, literally count how much Egyptian pounds we had, how many euros and how many dollars. We think we have enough “exact change” to negotiate our felucca ride, pay for our transit tomorrow to Abu Simbel and pay for our dinner tonight. Ok, we think we are ready to negotiate our boat ride.

We step back onto the busy crazy heat. A young Nubian man in full white dress is the first to approach us for a felucca boat ride, he starts to trail after us but he seems so young, what is he? 16? How can he have a felucca? Could he even operate one? Two older Nubian men are sitting along the road and they offer us a felucca ride. We stop to talk to them, they speak English, we want them to be the driver of our sail boat. But the young man won’t have it. He speaks to the older men firmly and slaps his chest to indicate that we are his prey, he got us “fair and square” and he wasn’t giving us up. The older men yield to his valid claim to ownership. 

“But why do we have to choose him just because he was the first to call out to us,…we want you” we try to protest to the older men. But no, there is an order to these things, we are the possession of the young man, he got us fair and square. 

At least we communicate with the older men and tell him exactly what we are willing to pay, we have $10 US dollars, we want a sunset cruise until 5:00 and we want to stop at the Old Cataract Hotel and he must wait for us as we go in. Also, we will not pay a tip, it is $10 total. The older men explain clearly to the young man and he agrees to our terms. We try once more to get the older men to be our driver but he says “frankly, I wouldn’t do it for that price”. Ok, I guess you get what you pay for and we get the insistent young man.

So we follow him reluctantly to his boat, wondering what kind of boat we are going to get? I’m remembering the jalopy taxi and am a little fearful. How will we even talk to him? The old men reassured us that his cousin will come along and he speaks English. Soon the cousin joined us and we scrambled down the rocks to the docked felucca boat. The young man deftly jumped down the rocks  barefoot with his trailing white dress and swiftly untied the boat and soon we also were climbing aboard.

Actually, it was a beautiful felucca, painted shiny white with a great white triangular sail. They quickly pulled out cushions upholstered in Egyptian style fabric for us to sit on.  While our 20 year old “captain” and his cousin “first-mate” busied themselves with unfurling the sail and disembarking, I busied myself with snapping pictures from every angle, it was so beautiful and peaceful out on the Nile. 

We sailed past the tombs of the nobles that looked like little caves on the other bank of the river. We admired the palm trees and hotels along the Nile. As we drifted along with the wind in our sail I could see the seaweed waving green just beneath the service of the water. A fish jumps out of the water near our boat and makes a gentle splashing sound. Our Nubian staff are happy that we are happy and smile at us as we lull along contentedly under their care.

As we approach the “perfect sunset point” the wind dies down and we are at a standstill, as a sailboat needs a little wind to move. We don’t mind at all because we are gazing at the setting sun over the hill with a Christian Monastary illuminated on the top of the hill. We were lounging around at the front of the boat while our ship mates tried to figure out how to set sail once again. Soon another boat came up close and our boys flagged it down and tied up to it. Soon were being towed down the Nile by another boat. 

I asked our captain how long he had been sailing and how he learned the trade. He said (through his cousin interpreter) that he has been sailing for 8 years and he learned from his older brother, his father died when he was very young. He certainly looked like he knew what he was doing and you could tell the two young Nubian men were comfortable on the water. They explain to us that on this section of the Nile River, near Aswan, it is only Nubians who operate the Felucca sail boats and its only one family. 

Soon we have rounded the tip of Elephantine island and our ship mates call out to the boat towing them that they are ready to stop. Our crew ties our boat up to the dock so we can see the The Old Cataract Hotel. This high-end hotel is pristine and beautiful with fountains, palm trees, perfect landscaping and an “old world” inviting atmosphere. This is where Agatha Christie wrote her famous murder mystery “Death in the Nile”. It has also had such famous guests as Winston Churchill and Princess Diana. Hard to believe those people have visited Egypt and stayed in Aswan! They must not have had the same travel agent as us!

The light has now changed from the orange glow of sunset to the light blue sky of dusk. The moment when the lights turn on along the banks of the river reflecting their bright colors on the water. Everything looks beautiful and the stresses of the day have been forgiven. We are sailing in the Nile River and it’s beautiful.

We return to our bnb and enjoy a delicious dinner on the rooftop terrace. I have grilled Nile fish, white rice, pita bread, humus and a Greek salad. Jeff enjoys a “tangine” that is sautéed vegetables like eggplant, tomatoes, carrots, peppers and onions cooked in a clay pot. I drink a beer and this is my first drink of our trip since this is a “dry” country. The stars are out and there is a gentle breeze, I soak in the view across the Nile of the botanical gardens and then retire to bed early. Tomorrow is another day.

We will wake up at 3:30 in order to have time to walk across the island, catch a ferry and then join our tour group for our big trip to Abu Simbel. Our host is very gracious and wakes up early to provide a bagged breakfast and to walk us across the island and drive us in his boat to the other side. Then he waits for us until the bus comes. He pays the fare and we get on.

We are about 10 people on the bus, there is a British couple in their twenties, a young German man, an Asian couple and a single woman traveler. We will travel for three hours south, just 25 miles north of the Sudan border! Here there is the famous temple of Abu Simbel. It was built by Pharoah Rameses II in 1279-1213 BCE, this was during the time of the biblical Judges. Abu Simbel is not as old as the Pyramids of Giza but it is still amongst the oldest of the monuments that we will see. 

The drive through the desert goes quickly for me because I had so much to write! Most of the passengers used the time to sleep. The sun rose an the desert as we traveled to our destination. Finally we arrived and started exploring the site. 

Rameses was the first Pharoah to want to be a god during his lifetime. It was normal for ancient Pharoahs to believe that they would become gods in the afterlife but non prior to him became gods while they were still alive. He built this temple to prove his point. The four colossal figures carved into the sandstone mountain are all Rameses, from his youth until his old age, although they all looked the same to me. I guess it’s not nice to depict the ravaging affects of age on a Pharoah. Once inside you can find more giant statues and artwork depicting the triumphs and “amazingness” of Rameses. 

Next to this temple of Rameses you will find the temple dedicated to his first and favorite (he had 30 wives) wife, Nefertari. It is dedicated to her and depicts her encouraging her husband not to fight. She is depicted with cow eyes and ears since the cow was a compliment….back then.

Both of these mammoth monuments were deemed world heritage sites by UNISCO in the 1960’s. The building of the High Dam that would ultimately keep the Niles banks from flooding and causing much destruction to the surrounding cities. But building the dam would ultimately destroy these monuments and many more. So they moved them to higher ground by sawing them from the mountain, piece by piece. It took twenty years to move and millions of American dollars. 

It’s interesting on many levels, the engineering feats of the ancients to have built these structures and the modern engineering feat of moving them to preserve them. Inside Rameses temple there are two openings that allow light in only twice a year. On Rameses birthday and on coronation day. The light would shine in and illuminate the the main gods of ancient Egypt. So when they reconstructed the temples they had to situate the building to allow the light to shine in exactly on these days. Great effort was taken to accomplish this but after waiting a year to see if they were successful they were actually one day off. So, the ancients were smarter than modern man.

After our enlightening tour we got back on the bus and came home to Aswan. The three hour drive again passed quickly as we had enjoyable conversation with a fellow passenger, this was the single woman traveling alone. She works as a research and development contractor. She does research on energy conservation and environmental impact. She was here on a summit for energy options for Africa and subsaharan africa. 

As we arrived back into Aswan we were all very hungry because we had been up since 3:30 am without much to eat. So we joined the British couple in going to a restaurant that specialized in Nubian African grilled spicy chicken. It was delicious! We had a whole grilled chicken, french fries, spicy olives humus and a big delicious Greek salad. 

The couple was interesting, they were not yet 30, had been married 8 years and had traveled extensively in their young lives. She was a nurse and he was an accountant. For their honeymoon they took a year off from work and traveled around the world. From what I can understand, they have been all around India and Asia. They are definitely not traumatized by Egypt. 

We decide to visit the Nubian museum in Aswan, we heard good things about it. It was actually arranged quite nicely and in some ways was better than the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The ticket price was around $7. We tried to wrap our mind around who the Nubians were, they have been around as long as the Egyptians and are descendents of Cush. If that name sounds familiar to you it’s because Cush is a son of Ham, one of the three sons of Noah. He is also the father of a Nimrod, so the Cushites go back very, very, far. The Bible uses “Cushite” to describe people of the dark skinned race, in the New World translation it uses the word “Ethiopian” in all but two cases, where Cush was rendered in Hebrew. Cush was the progenitor of the dark-skinned branch of the human race. Some think the curse given to Noah’s son was on Cush but actually it was on his brother Canaan, so there is no truth to a biblical curse on dark-skinned people.

The Nubians are depicted in many of the drawings on the walls of the tombs of the Pharoahs. They were slaves, solders, hard workers and held office. In fact the Nubians ruled Egypt as Pharoah for over one hundred years in the 7th century BC. They ruled their own kingdom of Cush for 1000 years centered right here in Aswan stretching through to Sudan.

We made our way back to our quiet island across the Nile and prepared for our early morning departure. We fall to sleep to the sound of a donkey braying in the quiet Nubian Village on Elephantine Island.